The title of your story, "A Murder of Crows", seems a perfect fit and works on many levels. Did you start writing the story with the title in mind or if not, how did you come up with it?
The title of my story, "A Murder of Crows," came to me, almost as a gift, while I was writing the second draft. A friend was telling me about all these wonderful names for groups of animals: a something-of-something, a parliament of owls, a murder of crows--and I had an AHA! moment.
I had wanted to write something about animals turning the tables on humans ever since I read Patricia Highsmith's "Beastly Tales of Animal Murder," particularly "Ming's Biggest Prey," about a Siamese cat that kills her mistress's lover.
What is your writing process like? Did you initially know where the story would take you or was the fable-like style and ending a product of your subconscious?
"A Murder of Crows" began with a scene: a man is burying his wife in the backyard; a tiny lapdog (Chekhov's animal protagonist in "Lady With a Dog") runs out onto the lawn. I sat down to write and the story kind of poured out of me. When I sent the story to David Gates, my first teacher at the Bennington Writing Seminars, he pulled it out of my pile of pale T.C. Boyle imitations, and said "this may not be the sort of story that you want to write, but it may be the sort of story that you do write." Or something like that. Anyway, he helped me get on the road of fantastical fiction.
In the first draft, I had given the story a comic happy ending, but Martha Cooley, my second teacher at Bennington, chastised me for pulling my punches. That's when I realized that the crows would not be able to go on living their happy crow lives after killing the man. So it's Martha's fault that the crows had to die.
How does it feel to be a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards? Will we be seeing more fiction from you in the future?
I'm about 2/3 finished with a novel entitled, LIFE CYCLE OF THE STURGEON. It's about Russian history, the concept of the "10th muse," and two women who come to realize that they are mythological creatures.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
Monday, June 30, 2008
Jack Haringa Must Die! reviewed
Following the light-hearted novels of Christopher Moore and Jeff Strand, humor has become an increasingly popular trend in horror fiction. Kaufmann's collection blends Strand and Moore's comedic horror with heady doses of the dark and twisted.....After the first twenty-five pages, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Jack Haringa Must Die is easily the most amusing read I've sat down with in ages. If ever I need a text to dissuade me from misplacing my semicolons, or ending a sentence with a preposition, this is it! An overall recommended book from this montage of Haringa's colleagues.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Charles Tan Interviews Glen Hirshberg
What inspired you to write "The Janus Tree"?
As is often the case with me, bits and pieces of the story came from different sources. At the core is my memory of the only actual fist fight I’ve ever had. It occurred in 8th grade, and as in “The Janus Tree,” the thing that made the deepest impression on me wasn’t the completely ridiculous fight but the surprisingly complex personality revealed by the bully I believed I was confronting.
Then there is the astonishing, tragic, fascinating history of Butte, Montana, which really was the richest city in America for a very brief time and is now an environmental disaster area whose inhabitants are still struggling to redefine their hometown decades after the largest mining companies abandoned the region. In my story, I use the name Silver City for Butte. That name actually first appears in a melodramatic but wonderfully colorful and affecting novel called WIDE OPEN TOWN by the Montana writer Myron Brinig, and is meant as an homage of sorts.
Did you have to do a lot of research for the story?
My Silver City is a sort of impressionist’s dream of Butte, and while resemblance is not only inevitable but intentional, the city in the story is my own invention. A number of the historical events mentioned in the story, from the mining laws to the boxers that the narrator researches, are again based on actual events or people. But the formation of this piece came less from pure research than from living in Montana for several years, delving into the incredibly rich past of the whole place, and then letting everything I’d seen and discovered mix itself up with my own memories.
What elements are needed to make a horror story effective? Were you conscious of this when writing "The Janus Tree"?
I don’t believe in any one set of elements that will always make a horror story—or any story, for that matter—effective. For me, each individual piece generates its own set of requirements and poses its own challenges. “The Janus Tree” is driven, I think, partially by the volatile, unpredictable, and increasingly desperate kids at its heart and partially by the scarred and transfigured landscape. Therefore, I devoted much of my writing time on this story to infusing the whole brooding, half-imaginary streets of my Silver City with life. I also tried to give every character the space to develop into layered individuals hopefully capable of seeming disconcerting and sympathetic at the same time.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Charles Tan Interviews Jim Shepard
Considering how many books and articles you've listed in your acknowledgments, what's the research process like for you? Do you initially start out knowing these materials will be helpful in your writing or do you simply try to read a lot and realize that they can be mined for stories?
It's really a matter of my reading turning into stories, in that what happens is that I read a lot of weird stuff -- mostly non-fiction -- like a history of plague, or whatever, just out of an interest in the subject, and then some of the details that I encounter continue to seem plangent to me. They give off a little emotional resonance that's simultaneously evocative and mysterious. Details stay with me. And I begin to suspect, or assume, that they're touching on something in my emotional life that I want to further explore. At that point, I begin researching as though writing a story: in other words, looking to fill in the gaps in my knowledge that the narrative requires.
How different is your novel-writing process as opposed to your short-fiction process? What do you think is the strength of the latter?
Novel-writing is much more elaborate and longer-sustained for me, but otherwise it's the same process. But I've recently become more impatient with those aspects of the novel that seem to me like furniture moving: setting things up. I've gotten more attracted lately to the appeal of guerilla tactics, as it were -- get in and get out fast -- no matter how much research I've done.
What were your conscious goals when writing the stories in Like You'd Understand, Anyway?
I just each time wanted to tell a story that held my interest and might hold someone else's, and didn't seem lame, in terms of its emotional complexity.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
It's really a matter of my reading turning into stories, in that what happens is that I read a lot of weird stuff -- mostly non-fiction -- like a history of plague, or whatever, just out of an interest in the subject, and then some of the details that I encounter continue to seem plangent to me. They give off a little emotional resonance that's simultaneously evocative and mysterious. Details stay with me. And I begin to suspect, or assume, that they're touching on something in my emotional life that I want to further explore. At that point, I begin researching as though writing a story: in other words, looking to fill in the gaps in my knowledge that the narrative requires.
How different is your novel-writing process as opposed to your short-fiction process? What do you think is the strength of the latter?
Novel-writing is much more elaborate and longer-sustained for me, but otherwise it's the same process. But I've recently become more impatient with those aspects of the novel that seem to me like furniture moving: setting things up. I've gotten more attracted lately to the appeal of guerilla tactics, as it were -- get in and get out fast -- no matter how much research I've done.
What were your conscious goals when writing the stories in Like You'd Understand, Anyway?
I just each time wanted to tell a story that held my interest and might hold someone else's, and didn't seem lame, in terms of its emotional complexity.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Charles Tan Interviews Nathan Ballingrud
Does your experience as a father have any bearing or impact when you wrote "The Monsters of Heaven"?
In as much as I can't imagine a worse situation than losing your child and knowing you're the one responsible for it, yes. Like many parents, I'm sure, I can't imagine life would be endurable afterwards. Being a parent is the highest responsibility afforded to us. I suspect single parents like myself are particularly sensitive to that. I know I frequently worry about failing her in some fundamental, yet currently invisible, way. The protagonist of this story fails his son on a catastrophic level. To me, it's absolutely the worst thing imaginable, because it brings with it the possibility of the child's continued suffering, and -- possibly even worse -- a sustained, doomed hope for all parties.
But as much as fatherhood impacted this story, I think it was more deeply affected by being a husband. I went through a divorce just before writing the bulk of this story, and that experience was a huge influence. There's nothing like a divorce to make you question your self-worth, and so I sought a kind of catharsis, I think, by writing about a man who was living at the bottom of the barrel, who had failed in his role as a husband and a father in just about every sense. Right or wrong, the means by which many men gauge their own value center around their effectiveness as a family protector, their virility, and their strength. That some or all of these notions may be outdated doesn't change the fact that many still set their scales by them. If these things are lost or undermined, is there any value left? If so, how do you find it? How do you measure it?
"The Monsters of Heaven" uses powerful imagery and juxtaposition. How conscious were you of these elements?
I was very conscious of them. The element of horror fiction I respond to most viscerally is the juxtaposition of horror with beauty. In this I am very much influenced by early Clive Barker. I like to take it a little further, though, and apply it both to characters who might initially seem unsympathetic or even criminal, and to events which taken at face value seem ghastly and unforgivable. In this story specifically, there are two characters whose marriage is dissolving in the wake of their child's disappearance. They want to go on together, ultimately, but in order to do so they must pay a grievous price. Parents have to do this in real life, all the time, on a much smaller scale. Whether it's surrendering custody or simply acknowledging the thousand minor failures in a normal life, they somehow have to come to terms with letting their children down. It's a selfish act that's absolutely necessary for survival.
As for the imagery, well, that's where I have the most fun as a writer. As a reader, I respond to strong, vibrant imagery in a story, maybe more so than to any other sensory detail. Maybe that's because I'm a child of the cinema, or maybe I'm just wired that way. In each of my stories there's usually one image that stands out as a personal favorite, usually because it comes without forethought and signifies that the story has taken on a life of its own; often it's a small detail that doesn't impact the actual narrative at all. In this story it's of the obese man on the tv news stepping out of his house and holding aloft the severed head of an angel. It made me feel like things were happening in the story that were beyond my sphere of influence, and that's always a good feeling.
What was the inspiration behind your story?
Fear. Plain and simple. When I write horror stories I write them because something scares the bejesus out of me. I'm not talking about monsters, of course. Monsters are just the pulpy element that makes the story fun to write and, I hope, to read. I'm talking about losing your family, bankruptcy, illness, powerlessness ... the things that we're all vulnerable to. I'm not afraid of serial killers, for pete's sake; I'm afraid of being inadequate. If written well and honestly, I believe horror stories exploring these more mundane fears can be as scary and disturbing as anything the genre has to offer.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
In as much as I can't imagine a worse situation than losing your child and knowing you're the one responsible for it, yes. Like many parents, I'm sure, I can't imagine life would be endurable afterwards. Being a parent is the highest responsibility afforded to us. I suspect single parents like myself are particularly sensitive to that. I know I frequently worry about failing her in some fundamental, yet currently invisible, way. The protagonist of this story fails his son on a catastrophic level. To me, it's absolutely the worst thing imaginable, because it brings with it the possibility of the child's continued suffering, and -- possibly even worse -- a sustained, doomed hope for all parties.
But as much as fatherhood impacted this story, I think it was more deeply affected by being a husband. I went through a divorce just before writing the bulk of this story, and that experience was a huge influence. There's nothing like a divorce to make you question your self-worth, and so I sought a kind of catharsis, I think, by writing about a man who was living at the bottom of the barrel, who had failed in his role as a husband and a father in just about every sense. Right or wrong, the means by which many men gauge their own value center around their effectiveness as a family protector, their virility, and their strength. That some or all of these notions may be outdated doesn't change the fact that many still set their scales by them. If these things are lost or undermined, is there any value left? If so, how do you find it? How do you measure it?
"The Monsters of Heaven" uses powerful imagery and juxtaposition. How conscious were you of these elements?
I was very conscious of them. The element of horror fiction I respond to most viscerally is the juxtaposition of horror with beauty. In this I am very much influenced by early Clive Barker. I like to take it a little further, though, and apply it both to characters who might initially seem unsympathetic or even criminal, and to events which taken at face value seem ghastly and unforgivable. In this story specifically, there are two characters whose marriage is dissolving in the wake of their child's disappearance. They want to go on together, ultimately, but in order to do so they must pay a grievous price. Parents have to do this in real life, all the time, on a much smaller scale. Whether it's surrendering custody or simply acknowledging the thousand minor failures in a normal life, they somehow have to come to terms with letting their children down. It's a selfish act that's absolutely necessary for survival.
As for the imagery, well, that's where I have the most fun as a writer. As a reader, I respond to strong, vibrant imagery in a story, maybe more so than to any other sensory detail. Maybe that's because I'm a child of the cinema, or maybe I'm just wired that way. In each of my stories there's usually one image that stands out as a personal favorite, usually because it comes without forethought and signifies that the story has taken on a life of its own; often it's a small detail that doesn't impact the actual narrative at all. In this story it's of the obese man on the tv news stepping out of his house and holding aloft the severed head of an angel. It made me feel like things were happening in the story that were beyond my sphere of influence, and that's always a good feeling.
What was the inspiration behind your story?
Fear. Plain and simple. When I write horror stories I write them because something scares the bejesus out of me. I'm not talking about monsters, of course. Monsters are just the pulpy element that makes the story fun to write and, I hope, to read. I'm talking about losing your family, bankruptcy, illness, powerlessness ... the things that we're all vulnerable to. I'm not afraid of serial killers, for pete's sake; I'm afraid of being inadequate. If written well and honestly, I believe horror stories exploring these more mundane fears can be as scary and disturbing as anything the genre has to offer.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
The Lottery
"The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny, with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day; the flowers were blossoming profusely and the grass was richly green."
So opens "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, first published in The New Yorker (which you could purchase for 20 cents) 60 years ago today, June 26th, 1948.
So opens "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, first published in The New Yorker (which you could purchase for 20 cents) 60 years ago today, June 26th, 1948.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Charles Tan Interviews Sarah Monette
What do you think will readers find most appealing in The Bone Key?
Well, I think it depends on the reader. Many readers find Booth an extremely appealing and sympathetic protagonist; others enjoy the prose style or the ghost stories just as ghost stories. I know that for me, what keeps me writing stories about Booth is the combination of this very articulate but shy and fearful narrator with the kind of classic ghost stories that I can maneuver him into.
In the collection, the story is narrated from the point of view of Booth. When you wrote the first Booth story, did you know it'll lead you to all these different stories?
No, I had no idea. I expected "Bringing Helena Back" to be a one-off experiment. But then I had an idea for another story about the same character, and then another . . . and well, now there are twelve of them (all either published or in press), and I'm working on the thirteenth, fourteenth, and maybe fifteenth.
How have the authors M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft influenced your work and how did you make your own fiction distinct from theirs?
I love both James and Lovecraft quite madly, Lovecraft for the sheer lush lunacy of his imagination, James for his ability to write highly intellectual, sesquipedalian, decorous prose which nevertheless scares the living daylights out of the reader. I love the way they work by indirection and implication: that they can scare you without wading through blood up to their knees. Where I differ from them, the reason that my stories are more than just pastiches, is that I'm interested in the psychology of haunting--and the psychology of my poor hapless characters. So there's another layer to my stories that mostly Lovecraft and James weren't interested in.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
Well, I think it depends on the reader. Many readers find Booth an extremely appealing and sympathetic protagonist; others enjoy the prose style or the ghost stories just as ghost stories. I know that for me, what keeps me writing stories about Booth is the combination of this very articulate but shy and fearful narrator with the kind of classic ghost stories that I can maneuver him into.
In the collection, the story is narrated from the point of view of Booth. When you wrote the first Booth story, did you know it'll lead you to all these different stories?
No, I had no idea. I expected "Bringing Helena Back" to be a one-off experiment. But then I had an idea for another story about the same character, and then another . . . and well, now there are twelve of them (all either published or in press), and I'm working on the thirteenth, fourteenth, and maybe fifteenth.
How have the authors M.R. James and H.P. Lovecraft influenced your work and how did you make your own fiction distinct from theirs?
I love both James and Lovecraft quite madly, Lovecraft for the sheer lush lunacy of his imagination, James for his ability to write highly intellectual, sesquipedalian, decorous prose which nevertheless scares the living daylights out of the reader. I love the way they work by indirection and implication: that they can scare you without wading through blood up to their knees. Where I differ from them, the reason that my stories are more than just pastiches, is that I'm interested in the psychology of haunting--and the psychology of my poor hapless characters. So there's another layer to my stories that mostly Lovecraft and James weren't interested in.
Our fundraising anthology, Jack Haringa Must Die! is now available. Price: $10
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