Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
New Advisors, Jurors added for The Shirley Jackson Awards
Boston, MA (October 2009) -- In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
The jurors for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards are, alphabetically:
F. Brett Cox, co-editor (with Andy Duncan) of Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004); author of numerous short stories, critical essays, and reviews; English faculty at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.
John Langan, author of House of Windows (Night Shade, 2009) and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime, 2008); nominated for the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards; English faculty at SUNY New Paltz.
Erika Mailman, author of novels The Witch's Trinity (Random House, 2007; a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book and finalist for Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel) and Woman of Ill Fame (Heyday Books, 2007); MFA in Creative Writing, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Lisa Tuttle, author of numerous short stories and novels, most recently, The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries, and The Silver Bough; winner of the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Mid-Length Fiction for “Closet Dreams”.
The Board of Advisors for the Shirley Jackson Awards includes editor Bill Congreve; renowned scholar and editor S.T. Joshi; author and teacher Jack M. Haringa (co-editor, with Joshi, of the critical journal Dead Reckonings); and author Mike O’Driscoll; editor Ann VanderMeer; and award-winning and best-selling novelist Stewart O’Nan. In 2009, Peter Straub, Elizabeth Hand, and Stefan Dziemianowicz (bios below) join this illustrious group along with former jurors Sarah Langan and Paul Tremblay.
Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. They include Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, In the Night Room, and two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House. He has written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction, and he edited the Library of America’s edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s Tales and the forthcoming Library of America’s 2-volume anthology, American Fantastic Tales. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. In 2006, he was given the HWA’s Life Achievement Award. In 2008, he was given the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award by Poets & Writers.
Elizabeth Hand is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-winner), Glimmering, Mortal Love, and Generation Loss, and three collections of stories, most recently Saffron and Brimstone. She has been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. She is a regular contributor to the Washington Post and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Stefan Dziemianowicz has compiled more than forty anthologies of horror, mystery, and science fiction, and collections of macabre fiction by Louisa May Alcott, Robert Bloch, Joseph Payne Brennan, August Derleth, Henry Kuttner, Jane Rice, Bram Stoker, Henry S. Whitehead, and others. A former editor of Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction and the Necronomicon Press short fiction series, he co-edited Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. He is the author of Bloody Mary and Other Tales for a Dark Night and The Annotated Guide to Unknown and Unknown Worlds. His reviews have appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus, and the Washington Post Book World.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at Readercon 21, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Websites: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org
Readercon.org
Media representatives who are seeking further information or interviews should contact JoAnn F. Cox.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
The jurors for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards are, alphabetically:
F. Brett Cox, co-editor (with Andy Duncan) of Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004); author of numerous short stories, critical essays, and reviews; English faculty at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.
John Langan, author of House of Windows (Night Shade, 2009) and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime, 2008); nominated for the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards; English faculty at SUNY New Paltz.
Erika Mailman, author of novels The Witch's Trinity (Random House, 2007; a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book and finalist for Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel) and Woman of Ill Fame (Heyday Books, 2007); MFA in Creative Writing, University of Arizona, Tucson.
Lisa Tuttle, author of numerous short stories and novels, most recently, The Pillow Friend, The Mysteries, and The Silver Bough; winner of the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Mid-Length Fiction for “Closet Dreams”.
The Board of Advisors for the Shirley Jackson Awards includes editor Bill Congreve; renowned scholar and editor S.T. Joshi; author and teacher Jack M. Haringa (co-editor, with Joshi, of the critical journal Dead Reckonings); and author Mike O’Driscoll; editor Ann VanderMeer; and award-winning and best-selling novelist Stewart O’Nan. In 2009, Peter Straub, Elizabeth Hand, and Stefan Dziemianowicz (bios below) join this illustrious group along with former jurors Sarah Langan and Paul Tremblay.
Peter Straub is the author of seventeen novels, which have been translated into more than twenty languages. They include Ghost Story, Koko, Mr. X, In the Night Room, and two collaborations with Stephen King, The Talisman and Black House. He has written two volumes of poetry and two collections of short fiction, and he edited the Library of America’s edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s Tales and the forthcoming Library of America’s 2-volume anthology, American Fantastic Tales. He has won the British Fantasy Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, two International Horror Guild Awards, and two World Fantasy Awards. In 1998, he was named Grand Master at the World Horror Convention. In 2006, he was given the HWA’s Life Achievement Award. In 2008, he was given the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award by Poets & Writers.
Elizabeth Hand is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-winner), Glimmering, Mortal Love, and Generation Loss, and three collections of stories, most recently Saffron and Brimstone. She has been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. She is a regular contributor to the Washington Post and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Stefan Dziemianowicz has compiled more than forty anthologies of horror, mystery, and science fiction, and collections of macabre fiction by Louisa May Alcott, Robert Bloch, Joseph Payne Brennan, August Derleth, Henry Kuttner, Jane Rice, Bram Stoker, Henry S. Whitehead, and others. A former editor of Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction and the Necronomicon Press short fiction series, he co-edited Supernatural Literature of the World: An Encyclopedia. He is the author of Bloody Mary and Other Tales for a Dark Night and The Annotated Guide to Unknown and Unknown Worlds. His reviews have appeared in Publishers Weekly, Locus, and the Washington Post Book World.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented at Readercon 21, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.
Websites: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org
Readercon.org
Media representatives who are seeking further information or interviews should contact JoAnn F. Cox.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Darrell Schweitzer (Interview by Charles Tan)
Darrell Schweitzer--Living with the Dead
The novella utilizes multiple points of view and has a mosaic-novel feel to it. What made you decide to use such a technique?
The truth of the matter is that it was not planned as a novella. I began with the initial episode, "The Most Beautiful Dead Woman in the World," as a complete story and sold it as such, to INTERZONE. But it demanded a sequel, and then another and ultimately a complete structure emerged. The last episode in particular does not stand alone, and completes the work overall. The technique, I will freely admit, is derived from Zoran Zivkovic's various story-cycles, which he publishes as small books. But it began by simply writing the first couple paragraphs, and following through from there.
What were the challenges in writing Old Corpsenberg? Did you have several cities/towns in mind when you envisioned the location?
I suppose the chief challenge was to maintain the "reality" of the setting without slipping into illogic or absurdity. Outright comedy would have been wrong, but a decidedly ironic edge is required. It would have been a profound misstep to make Corpsenberg some kind of afterlife or purgatory. It can't be that simple. It must remain a mystery. Why does all this happen? Why don't the corpses rot? Where do they came from? The whole point is that even the Observatory Committee, whose job is to understand these things and appreciate how well the place is run, hasn't a clue. People do what they do because they always have, and no one can remember otherwise. You've heard of the "dead hand of the past." This is more like the whole body. The story requires, if you will pardon the expression, a deadpan approach, which one can learn from, among others, Kafka. Once the outrageous central image is taken for granted, all else follows.
What was the inspiration for Living With the Dead?
Hard to say. Besides the influences of Zivkovic and Kafka, I can't deny that of Jason Van Hollander's wonderfully twisted and surreal artwork. I would describe the setting as a Mitteleuropan town out of a Jason Van Hollander illustration.
The novella utilizes multiple points of view and has a mosaic-novel feel to it. What made you decide to use such a technique?
The truth of the matter is that it was not planned as a novella. I began with the initial episode, "The Most Beautiful Dead Woman in the World," as a complete story and sold it as such, to INTERZONE. But it demanded a sequel, and then another and ultimately a complete structure emerged. The last episode in particular does not stand alone, and completes the work overall. The technique, I will freely admit, is derived from Zoran Zivkovic's various story-cycles, which he publishes as small books. But it began by simply writing the first couple paragraphs, and following through from there.
What were the challenges in writing Old Corpsenberg? Did you have several cities/towns in mind when you envisioned the location?
I suppose the chief challenge was to maintain the "reality" of the setting without slipping into illogic or absurdity. Outright comedy would have been wrong, but a decidedly ironic edge is required. It would have been a profound misstep to make Corpsenberg some kind of afterlife or purgatory. It can't be that simple. It must remain a mystery. Why does all this happen? Why don't the corpses rot? Where do they came from? The whole point is that even the Observatory Committee, whose job is to understand these things and appreciate how well the place is run, hasn't a clue. People do what they do because they always have, and no one can remember otherwise. You've heard of the "dead hand of the past." This is more like the whole body. The story requires, if you will pardon the expression, a deadpan approach, which one can learn from, among others, Kafka. Once the outrageous central image is taken for granted, all else follows.
What was the inspiration for Living With the Dead?
Hard to say. Besides the influences of Zivkovic and Kafka, I can't deny that of Jason Van Hollander's wonderfully twisted and surreal artwork. I would describe the setting as a Mitteleuropan town out of a Jason Van Hollander illustration.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Tom English (Interview by Charles Tan)
Tom English – Bound for Evil
Bound for Evil is a thick and large tome. What made you decide to go with this particular format, in addition to settling for the "book" theme?
Both the format and theme of the anthology grew out of a consuming passion for books. Although I’d like to believe I’m not a bibliomaniac---that it’s I who am in control, and not the thousands of books smugly regarding me from the overstuffed shelves of my library---Bound for Evil could serve as pretty damning evidence in my insanity case. Originally, the book was to be a thin paperback, perhaps seven supernatural tales exploring the power of books. After producing an 800-page hardcover with 67 stories, one might say I got a little carried away. I wrote a psychological ghost story in 2005, about a tormented bibliomaniac who carries his lifelong obsession to the grave (and perhaps beyond the grave). A few months later Barbara Roden accepted the tale for All Hallows, and that was almost the end of the matter. But while flipping through the notebook in which I jot down ideas for future stories, I realized about half of my ideas involved books and writers. Why was that? Writers tend to write about things they know, things that interest them: among those things are books and the creative process. I also realized I love reading stories about strange and forbidden books, ancient texts and lost knowledge. I thought of Lovecraft’s “Necronomicon” and Chambers’ The King in Yellow and several other classics of weird fiction, and numerous bookish stories by Ramsey Campbell and other contemporary writers. Putting together an anthology consisting entirely of such tales seemed like a fabulous idea and I couldn’t understand why no one had done it before. But I put the whole idea on a back burner until early 2007. During this gestation period, I decided two very important things about the direction the anthology would take. First, all the stories needed to flow naturally from some aspect of books, writing, reading and collecting. The book in each tale had to be integral to the story’s plot, and not simply a prop. And the book featured in each story had to be dangerous or somehow involved in a bit of devilry, because I wanted to lure back people who’ve thrown off books for movies and video games. I’m not sure why, but we’re often drawn to things that are exciting, forbidden, even dangerous. Put a warning label on a pack of cigarettes and you’ve just given it the best advertisement imaginable. Print a blazing skull on the package and change the brand name to “Instant Death” and you won’t be able to stock enough packs. Well, the idea behind Bound for Evil is that books can be hazardous to your health (and your bank account). What, are you reading again? Do you want to lose your mind? Don’t go near that book, you’ll put out your eye! So, in this way, I hoped to remind us all of the glamour and mystique of books. And what’s sobering about my little scheme is that books really do have incredible power, not only to effect good in our society but, as history bears witness, sometimes evil.
What was the research and solicitation process like? What was the most challenging experience?
By the time I started working on Bound for Evil I had researched, edited, and written introductions for close to two dozen chapbooks. At least half of these little books contain 3 to 5 stories united by a common theme. So I felt reasonably comfortable tackling BfE. For the most part, I enjoyed reading the slush pile. The majority of the material I received was well written, much of it by accomplished writers who were excited by the theme of the anthology. I think the most challenging aspect of editing BfE was completing the task while not neglecting a very demanding day job as a chemist. By the time the book was finished I was exhausted both mentally and physically. What got me through the last few weeks of editing was the support and encouragement of my wife, Wilma, whose patience should have been worn quite thin during the whole process but instead proved extremely durable. Thank God she’s a book person!
There's a couple of easter eggs in the anthology. How did you come up with them and what made you decide to include them?
Jeff Ryan submitted a piece of flash fiction that worked splendidly as a … well, that would be telling. I asked him if I could use the piece in an unusual way and without his byline. Being just as mischievous as I am, if not more so, he gleefully assented. Since many of the stories in the anthology deal with ancient books harboring dark and terrible mysteries, it seemed only fitting that, veiled within its pages, Bound for Evil should hold a few secrets of its own.
Bound for Evil is a thick and large tome. What made you decide to go with this particular format, in addition to settling for the "book" theme?
Both the format and theme of the anthology grew out of a consuming passion for books. Although I’d like to believe I’m not a bibliomaniac---that it’s I who am in control, and not the thousands of books smugly regarding me from the overstuffed shelves of my library---Bound for Evil could serve as pretty damning evidence in my insanity case. Originally, the book was to be a thin paperback, perhaps seven supernatural tales exploring the power of books. After producing an 800-page hardcover with 67 stories, one might say I got a little carried away. I wrote a psychological ghost story in 2005, about a tormented bibliomaniac who carries his lifelong obsession to the grave (and perhaps beyond the grave). A few months later Barbara Roden accepted the tale for All Hallows, and that was almost the end of the matter. But while flipping through the notebook in which I jot down ideas for future stories, I realized about half of my ideas involved books and writers. Why was that? Writers tend to write about things they know, things that interest them: among those things are books and the creative process. I also realized I love reading stories about strange and forbidden books, ancient texts and lost knowledge. I thought of Lovecraft’s “Necronomicon” and Chambers’ The King in Yellow and several other classics of weird fiction, and numerous bookish stories by Ramsey Campbell and other contemporary writers. Putting together an anthology consisting entirely of such tales seemed like a fabulous idea and I couldn’t understand why no one had done it before. But I put the whole idea on a back burner until early 2007. During this gestation period, I decided two very important things about the direction the anthology would take. First, all the stories needed to flow naturally from some aspect of books, writing, reading and collecting. The book in each tale had to be integral to the story’s plot, and not simply a prop. And the book featured in each story had to be dangerous or somehow involved in a bit of devilry, because I wanted to lure back people who’ve thrown off books for movies and video games. I’m not sure why, but we’re often drawn to things that are exciting, forbidden, even dangerous. Put a warning label on a pack of cigarettes and you’ve just given it the best advertisement imaginable. Print a blazing skull on the package and change the brand name to “Instant Death” and you won’t be able to stock enough packs. Well, the idea behind Bound for Evil is that books can be hazardous to your health (and your bank account). What, are you reading again? Do you want to lose your mind? Don’t go near that book, you’ll put out your eye! So, in this way, I hoped to remind us all of the glamour and mystique of books. And what’s sobering about my little scheme is that books really do have incredible power, not only to effect good in our society but, as history bears witness, sometimes evil.
What was the research and solicitation process like? What was the most challenging experience?
By the time I started working on Bound for Evil I had researched, edited, and written introductions for close to two dozen chapbooks. At least half of these little books contain 3 to 5 stories united by a common theme. So I felt reasonably comfortable tackling BfE. For the most part, I enjoyed reading the slush pile. The majority of the material I received was well written, much of it by accomplished writers who were excited by the theme of the anthology. I think the most challenging aspect of editing BfE was completing the task while not neglecting a very demanding day job as a chemist. By the time the book was finished I was exhausted both mentally and physically. What got me through the last few weeks of editing was the support and encouragement of my wife, Wilma, whose patience should have been worn quite thin during the whole process but instead proved extremely durable. Thank God she’s a book person!
There's a couple of easter eggs in the anthology. How did you come up with them and what made you decide to include them?
Jeff Ryan submitted a piece of flash fiction that worked splendidly as a … well, that would be telling. I asked him if I could use the piece in an unusual way and without his byline. Being just as mischievous as I am, if not more so, he gleefully assented. Since many of the stories in the anthology deal with ancient books harboring dark and terrible mysteries, it seemed only fitting that, veiled within its pages, Bound for Evil should hold a few secrets of its own.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Laird Barron (Interview by Charles Tan)
Laird Barron – “Lagerstatte”
The title of your story is apt. What made you decide to go with Lagerstatte? When did you first encounter the word?
Lagerstätte is a German word meaning “resting place.” Paleontologists use the term to describe areas that are particularly rich in intact fossil records, such as the Burgess Shale and the Le Brae Tar Pits. Lagerstatte is certainly a reference to dual aspects of the story, literal and metaphorical. And to some extent, it’s a nod to Darren Speegle’s work. European titles are one his trademarks.
What made you decide to go for psychological horror? What makes it effective in contrast to other horror tropes?
I’ve been working on a collection that features psychological horror in a major way. Even when submitting to various themed anthologies, I keep in mind how a piece will fit into a larger whole. The Lagerstatte represents what will be the core of the next book. Psychological horror is attractive to me because among other things, it introduces ambiguity. Where does reality end and the nightmare begin? If I want to unnerve a reader, I leave them to their own devices in a dark room. They’ll take that ambiguity and conjure mental images of terrors far beyond the scope of my ability.
Was the story originally intended to be horrifying or was that an element that evolved as you were writing a story for The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy?
I wrote The Lagerstätte in reaction to tragedies loved ones of mine have endured. Danni’s fugue and her survivor’s guilt are details that revealed themselves once I began researching grief and its manifold incarnations, the damage it inflicts. The horrific aspects seemed integral from the first draft, but I envisioned them to be more remote, more emotionally restrained. In the immortal words of Nathan Ballingrud, “you go where it takes you,” and this one took me to far darker places than I’d bargained for.
The title of your story is apt. What made you decide to go with Lagerstatte? When did you first encounter the word?
Lagerstätte is a German word meaning “resting place.” Paleontologists use the term to describe areas that are particularly rich in intact fossil records, such as the Burgess Shale and the Le Brae Tar Pits. Lagerstatte is certainly a reference to dual aspects of the story, literal and metaphorical. And to some extent, it’s a nod to Darren Speegle’s work. European titles are one his trademarks.
What made you decide to go for psychological horror? What makes it effective in contrast to other horror tropes?
I’ve been working on a collection that features psychological horror in a major way. Even when submitting to various themed anthologies, I keep in mind how a piece will fit into a larger whole. The Lagerstatte represents what will be the core of the next book. Psychological horror is attractive to me because among other things, it introduces ambiguity. Where does reality end and the nightmare begin? If I want to unnerve a reader, I leave them to their own devices in a dark room. They’ll take that ambiguity and conjure mental images of terrors far beyond the scope of my ability.
Was the story originally intended to be horrifying or was that an element that evolved as you were writing a story for The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy?
I wrote The Lagerstätte in reaction to tragedies loved ones of mine have endured. Danni’s fugue and her survivor’s guilt are details that revealed themselves once I began researching grief and its manifold incarnations, the damage it inflicts. The horrific aspects seemed integral from the first draft, but I envisioned them to be more remote, more emotionally restrained. In the immortal words of Nathan Ballingrud, “you go where it takes you,” and this one took me to far darker places than I’d bargained for.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
John Kessel (Interview by Charles Tan)
John Kessel – “Pride and Prometheus”
What were some of the challenges in combining Jane Austen with Mary Shelley?
Yes. Though PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and FRANKENSTEIN were published within five years of one another, they are very different types of novels. Austen's book is a novel of manners, a social comedy with serious overtones written from the point of view of a witty omniscient narrator who slyly comments on the action and characters, very unobtrusively. Shelley's is a gothic romance, written by a series of unreliable first-person narrators, indulging all the excesses of emotion and description of romantic literature, but with a critical intelligence and social commentary behind the melodrama.
The two things are hard to fit together. For one thing, no one is wittier than Jane Austen, and though I could attempt her prose style, I am not in her league as a wit. I made some attempts. My story deliberately starts as close to Jane Austen as I could manage, and gradually slips into Mary Shelley style as it goes along and the sf/gothic element comes to center stage. I thought of it as FRANKENSTEIN over PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. But in the end I wanted to pull back from the gothic, too. The climax of the story comes, not with a mortal struggle on an ice floe at the north pole, but with Mary Bennet and the monster sitting at a table talking about marriage. I think of Austen and Shelley as the mothers of the modern novel of manners and of science fiction. As such, it was appropriate for a writer like me, who has been influenced by both, to try to merge them.
In your opinion, what are the strengths of the short story--or in this case, the novelette--especially in light of your writing goals for "Pride and Prometheus"?
I think this kind of pastiche can get out of hand at novel length. The game playing is not enough to sustain a novel. I wanted the story to be more than a joke, more than just a high concept; it had to be a story about real people with serious issues, as much as I could make it. The novelette form works well for me with these situations. I saw the opportunity to insert my story into the narrative of FRANKENSTEIN in the middle of chapter nineteen of that novel. By keeping it to story length, you could imagine all the events of "Pride and Prometheus" occurring between paragraphs of that chapter, after which FRANKENSTEIN moves on to the rest of its plot unaltered. That was one of my goals in writing it. To do as little violence as possible to either PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (my story takes place ten years after it ends, though I tried to make my characters recognizably the same people they were in that book) or to FRANKENSTEIN. This wasn't meant to be PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES.
As an author who's written a lot of material over the decades, does the writing experience become easier or is it more difficult as you become conscious of your own style or attempt something new?
Having written many stories, I guess I have learned a lot of craft that theoretically can help me in writing new ones. But every time I start something new I feel like I am reinventing the wheel. Often with a sense of panic. The one thing I can tell myself is, "you did this before, so the feelings of not knowing how this is going to come out ought to be familiar to you. Stop fretting."
I do try to do new things, so that helps keep me fresh. I don't want to write the same story over and over, though I think it is inevitable that a writer has certain obsessions that come out regardless of his intention. In putting together my recent collection THE BAUM PLAN FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE, I did notice certain repetitions, and I'm wary now of doing the same things again--time to strike out in a new direction.
But I don't think the writing, for me, has become easier. Or rather, some things have become easier, but different things are still hard.
What were some of the challenges in combining Jane Austen with Mary Shelley?
Yes. Though PRIDE AND PREJUDICE and FRANKENSTEIN were published within five years of one another, they are very different types of novels. Austen's book is a novel of manners, a social comedy with serious overtones written from the point of view of a witty omniscient narrator who slyly comments on the action and characters, very unobtrusively. Shelley's is a gothic romance, written by a series of unreliable first-person narrators, indulging all the excesses of emotion and description of romantic literature, but with a critical intelligence and social commentary behind the melodrama.
The two things are hard to fit together. For one thing, no one is wittier than Jane Austen, and though I could attempt her prose style, I am not in her league as a wit. I made some attempts. My story deliberately starts as close to Jane Austen as I could manage, and gradually slips into Mary Shelley style as it goes along and the sf/gothic element comes to center stage. I thought of it as FRANKENSTEIN over PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. But in the end I wanted to pull back from the gothic, too. The climax of the story comes, not with a mortal struggle on an ice floe at the north pole, but with Mary Bennet and the monster sitting at a table talking about marriage. I think of Austen and Shelley as the mothers of the modern novel of manners and of science fiction. As such, it was appropriate for a writer like me, who has been influenced by both, to try to merge them.
In your opinion, what are the strengths of the short story--or in this case, the novelette--especially in light of your writing goals for "Pride and Prometheus"?
I think this kind of pastiche can get out of hand at novel length. The game playing is not enough to sustain a novel. I wanted the story to be more than a joke, more than just a high concept; it had to be a story about real people with serious issues, as much as I could make it. The novelette form works well for me with these situations. I saw the opportunity to insert my story into the narrative of FRANKENSTEIN in the middle of chapter nineteen of that novel. By keeping it to story length, you could imagine all the events of "Pride and Prometheus" occurring between paragraphs of that chapter, after which FRANKENSTEIN moves on to the rest of its plot unaltered. That was one of my goals in writing it. To do as little violence as possible to either PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (my story takes place ten years after it ends, though I tried to make my characters recognizably the same people they were in that book) or to FRANKENSTEIN. This wasn't meant to be PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES.
As an author who's written a lot of material over the decades, does the writing experience become easier or is it more difficult as you become conscious of your own style or attempt something new?
Having written many stories, I guess I have learned a lot of craft that theoretically can help me in writing new ones. But every time I start something new I feel like I am reinventing the wheel. Often with a sense of panic. The one thing I can tell myself is, "you did this before, so the feelings of not knowing how this is going to come out ought to be familiar to you. Stop fretting."
I do try to do new things, so that helps keep me fresh. I don't want to write the same story over and over, though I think it is inevitable that a writer has certain obsessions that come out regardless of his intention. In putting together my recent collection THE BAUM PLAN FOR FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE, I did notice certain repetitions, and I'm wary now of doing the same things again--time to strike out in a new direction.
But I don't think the writing, for me, has become easier. Or rather, some things have become easier, but different things are still hard.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Doug Dorst (Interview by Charles Tan)
Doug Dorst - Alive in Necropolis
What made you decide to use San Francisco as your setting?
Alive in Necropolis started out as a short story that took place in Iowa City, where I was living at the time. I got nowhere with it, though, so I put it away for a year or so, until I had moved back to San Francisco. The local newspaper ran a feature piece about Colma and its cemeteries, and I realized that that was the setting I should use for this story (which starts out with a chance discovery in a graveyard). I had lived nearly all of my adult life in the Bay Area, and I felt like I could write both passionately and confidently about it.
Since Alive in Necropolis is your first novel, what was the most challenging process? How did you overcome it?
The most challenging part of writing the novel was following the advice that many friends had given me: on the first draft, just keep going -- even if you don't know where you're going, even if you think everything you're writing is terrible, even if you'd rather do anything but sit down and face the screen. Just write and write and get to the end, without agonizing over the little stuff, because you're going to have to go back several times to revise, anyway. I have a perfectionist streak, which is useful when I'm revising but deadly when I'm trying to generate new material. I spent a ridiculous amount of time polishing my first 50 pages, and guess what that got me? Fifty shiny-brite pages, and the vast majority of a book still to write (and many people not-so-subtly clearing their throats and tapping their watches).
Another friend of mine taught me the trick of setting a timer for 20 minutes and challenging myself to write a draft of a full scene in that time. No backspacing, no fixing things, no pausing-- not even to think. I'd end up throwing away 95% of the actual text that came out during that stretch, but I'd nearly always end up with a detailed map for a scene that flowed organically, felt alive, and had something surprising in it. It's a great way to get un-stuck.
Character is important in the book. How did you get a handle on the characters and what made you settle on the Point of View you used?
Some of the characters revealed themselves immediately, and I understood them intuitively. Others took me much longer to understand, and I had to keep writing (and, in most cases, throwing out) sketches of scenes with them in order to figure them out-- not just as individuals, but also in terms of their relationships with other characters in the book.
As for point of view, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to work in limited third person. I was at first inclined to use only one viewpoint character (Mercer, the cop), but the story kept getting bigger and bigger, and I needed to be able to write scenes that he wasn't in. So I ended up using a rotating third person, which allowed the narrative to range farther afield and also get deeper into the inner worlds of more characters.
What made you decide to use San Francisco as your setting?
Alive in Necropolis started out as a short story that took place in Iowa City, where I was living at the time. I got nowhere with it, though, so I put it away for a year or so, until I had moved back to San Francisco. The local newspaper ran a feature piece about Colma and its cemeteries, and I realized that that was the setting I should use for this story (which starts out with a chance discovery in a graveyard). I had lived nearly all of my adult life in the Bay Area, and I felt like I could write both passionately and confidently about it.
Since Alive in Necropolis is your first novel, what was the most challenging process? How did you overcome it?
The most challenging part of writing the novel was following the advice that many friends had given me: on the first draft, just keep going -- even if you don't know where you're going, even if you think everything you're writing is terrible, even if you'd rather do anything but sit down and face the screen. Just write and write and get to the end, without agonizing over the little stuff, because you're going to have to go back several times to revise, anyway. I have a perfectionist streak, which is useful when I'm revising but deadly when I'm trying to generate new material. I spent a ridiculous amount of time polishing my first 50 pages, and guess what that got me? Fifty shiny-brite pages, and the vast majority of a book still to write (and many people not-so-subtly clearing their throats and tapping their watches).
Another friend of mine taught me the trick of setting a timer for 20 minutes and challenging myself to write a draft of a full scene in that time. No backspacing, no fixing things, no pausing-- not even to think. I'd end up throwing away 95% of the actual text that came out during that stretch, but I'd nearly always end up with a detailed map for a scene that flowed organically, felt alive, and had something surprising in it. It's a great way to get un-stuck.
Character is important in the book. How did you get a handle on the characters and what made you settle on the Point of View you used?
Some of the characters revealed themselves immediately, and I understood them intuitively. Others took me much longer to understand, and I had to keep writing (and, in most cases, throwing out) sketches of scenes with them in order to figure them out-- not just as individuals, but also in terms of their relationships with other characters in the book.
As for point of view, I knew from the beginning that I wanted to work in limited third person. I was at first inclined to use only one viewpoint character (Mercer, the cop), but the story kept getting bigger and bigger, and I needed to be able to write scenes that he wasn't in. So I ended up using a rotating third person, which allowed the narrative to range farther afield and also get deeper into the inner worlds of more characters.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Ann/Jeff Vandermeer (Interview by Charles Tan)
Ann VanderMeer/Jeff VanderMeer - Fast Ships, Black Sails
What spurned both of you to work on a pirate anthology? Did you pitch the concept or was it assigned to you?
A - The good folks at Nightshade asked us to do it. It sounded like a lot of fun, an all-original pirate anthology. We were excited to do it.
J - In addition to the fun aspect, I wanted, following on the New Weird antho, to show that we could also deliver a satisfying traditional good-old-adventure-and-excitement kind of anthology. Thing is, we usually focus on the more surreal stuff because no one's really doing that. But we both love more traditional fiction, too. So in a way we got to satisfy another part of our reading experience with this opportunity. I'd like to do more in this vein, in addition to the more cutting edge stuff.
You mentioned in the introduction that there were some stories that surprised you. Did the fact that you were open to submission for the anthology affect that result or is it more due to the diversity of the subject matter?
A - Having an open reading period is what made all the difference. It allowed us to discover other writers we might not have read before. In addition, I have published some of those writers in Weird Tales, too! So the surprises were delightful ones. I understand the appeal of doing anthologies purely by invitation only, but in doing so you run the risk of all anthologies being exactly the same, with the same writers. Pirates is also a broad theme and we were determined to create a book that showed diversity.
J - We picked about half the stories from the open reading period. Kelly Barnhill's story is amazing, for example. We wouldn't have seen that one otherwise. Even writers we rejected, like Jonathan Wood, wound up getting into Weird Tales because of the open reading period. And Jonathan Wood went on to become a good friend, in part because of that. There's a guy who is going to hit the big time soon. So you also keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on out there by reading slush. Whenever possible, we're committed to that process. We make money on anthologies, but we don't edit anthologies to make money, if that makes sense. I mean, we can do a four-hour workshop and make more than you usually get from anthos, so you have to edit for the love. The Conrad Williams story up for a Jackson Award (which cracks us up, since our cat is named Jackson) was, I believe, by invitation, though. We just thought Conrad would create something mysterious and bloody and weird. He's such a great writer--totally underrated no matter how much praise he gets.
What were your criteria in selecting stories for the antho?
A - Well-written, unusual and unique - first. Then we make sure that the stories work well together. We wanted to make sure that each story was completely different from all the rest. That's why you'll see a traditional adventure story next to a horror story next to a humor story.
J - Yeah, but we also did want to work off of a more traditional model, and some of our favorite writers who are known for being more off-beat delivered in that sense--like Rhys Hughes, whose story is hilarious. We must have done something right, since stories were taken for several year's bests and they continue to be up for various awards. It's very satisfying.
What spurned both of you to work on a pirate anthology? Did you pitch the concept or was it assigned to you?
A - The good folks at Nightshade asked us to do it. It sounded like a lot of fun, an all-original pirate anthology. We were excited to do it.
J - In addition to the fun aspect, I wanted, following on the New Weird antho, to show that we could also deliver a satisfying traditional good-old-adventure-and-excitement kind of anthology. Thing is, we usually focus on the more surreal stuff because no one's really doing that. But we both love more traditional fiction, too. So in a way we got to satisfy another part of our reading experience with this opportunity. I'd like to do more in this vein, in addition to the more cutting edge stuff.
You mentioned in the introduction that there were some stories that surprised you. Did the fact that you were open to submission for the anthology affect that result or is it more due to the diversity of the subject matter?
A - Having an open reading period is what made all the difference. It allowed us to discover other writers we might not have read before. In addition, I have published some of those writers in Weird Tales, too! So the surprises were delightful ones. I understand the appeal of doing anthologies purely by invitation only, but in doing so you run the risk of all anthologies being exactly the same, with the same writers. Pirates is also a broad theme and we were determined to create a book that showed diversity.
J - We picked about half the stories from the open reading period. Kelly Barnhill's story is amazing, for example. We wouldn't have seen that one otherwise. Even writers we rejected, like Jonathan Wood, wound up getting into Weird Tales because of the open reading period. And Jonathan Wood went on to become a good friend, in part because of that. There's a guy who is going to hit the big time soon. So you also keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on out there by reading slush. Whenever possible, we're committed to that process. We make money on anthologies, but we don't edit anthologies to make money, if that makes sense. I mean, we can do a four-hour workshop and make more than you usually get from anthos, so you have to edit for the love. The Conrad Williams story up for a Jackson Award (which cracks us up, since our cat is named Jackson) was, I believe, by invitation, though. We just thought Conrad would create something mysterious and bloody and weird. He's such a great writer--totally underrated no matter how much praise he gets.
What were your criteria in selecting stories for the antho?
A - Well-written, unusual and unique - first. Then we make sure that the stories work well together. We wanted to make sure that each story was completely different from all the rest. That's why you'll see a traditional adventure story next to a horror story next to a humor story.
J - Yeah, but we also did want to work off of a more traditional model, and some of our favorite writers who are known for being more off-beat delivered in that sense--like Rhys Hughes, whose story is hilarious. We must have done something right, since stories were taken for several year's bests and they continue to be up for various awards. It's very satisfying.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Daryl Gregory (Inteview by Charles Tan)
Daryl Gregory - Pandemonium
You're highly-praised for your short fiction. Was it a difficult transition, progressing from writing short stories to a novel? What was the most challenging aspect?
I don't think I've "progressed" from one form to the next, because I'm still trying to figure out how to write short stories, and I'm certainly still struggling with novels! Also, my messy chronology doesn't follow an ascent-to-novels arc. I first published a few short stories in the early 90's, disappeared for ten years while I worked full time, helped raise babies, and slowly pecked out a sprawling, unsellable SF novel. Then I went back to short stories, and realized that the novel-writing process -- and ten years of life, I suppose -- had helped me figure out some things about how to write short fiction. Only then did I start on Pandemonium.
One of the things I had to learn about novels was that even though they gave me so many more pages to play with, they still had to be focused, and I was going to have to leave out much more than I put in. I know that sounds dead obvious, but I went into my first novel with the naive idea that I'd have room to dump every interesting thought I'd have during the course of the writing. That went about as well as you'd expect it to.
I can be a little looser than I am in a short story -- there's room, for example, to tell several characters' stories and show how they intersect -- but everything has to serve the aims of the book. Still, at the end of a first draft of a book, I'm always disappointed by how many ideas didn't make it from my notebooks to the final page.
What is it about the novel format that you couldn't accomplish with the short story, especially in light of the "dark fantastic"?
Even though I learned that I couldn't put everything into a novel, I did enjoy the broader range of effects that are possible. One of the things I particularly enjoyed was being able to shift tone and voice over the course of the work. In the limited space of a short story, I usually take a very Poe-ish policy about unity of effect. I can shift mood at the end if I bring the readers with me, but that's about it.
In Pandemonium, however, I could skate back and forth across that line between light and dark, especially in regard to the horror elements. My first person narrator helped me out here. His first response to terrible events is irony, banter, emotional distance -- but then the irony becomes untenable, banter fails, and he can't keep his distance. I wanted to have that same effect on the readers. My, isn't this amusing! Then hit them with a blind-side tackle.
In your novel, you draw inspiration from various sources. What is it about mash-ups that appeal to you as a writer and as a reader?
Mash-ups are a form of play. When they're done well, by writers such as Kim Newman and Philip José Farmer, and Alan Moore, they're just fun in a way that's hard to define. Maybe it's because mash-ups are an expression of how our minds work. Each of us has a personal collection of pop-cultural fragments floating loose in the brain, and when they slam together in the right way, old familiar things seem fresh and strange. So, one way to consider this book is as a graph of Daryl's Head. Captain America occupies a point just north of Casey Jones, and Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick are next door neighbors. I gave myself permission to include all these references because the idea of the mash-up is one of the themes of the book -- Pandemonium is about a man literally constructing an identity out of all the stories he's read and heard from his family.
That said, pop cultural references or literary allusions are no substitute for character, or story. My rule was that the book had to pass the Thelma test, named after my mom, who's never read a superhero comic or an SF book (except mine, of course). If the reader catches the allusion, then that's a nice Easter egg, but the story has to make sense, and be engaging, on its own terms.
You're highly-praised for your short fiction. Was it a difficult transition, progressing from writing short stories to a novel? What was the most challenging aspect?
I don't think I've "progressed" from one form to the next, because I'm still trying to figure out how to write short stories, and I'm certainly still struggling with novels! Also, my messy chronology doesn't follow an ascent-to-novels arc. I first published a few short stories in the early 90's, disappeared for ten years while I worked full time, helped raise babies, and slowly pecked out a sprawling, unsellable SF novel. Then I went back to short stories, and realized that the novel-writing process -- and ten years of life, I suppose -- had helped me figure out some things about how to write short fiction. Only then did I start on Pandemonium.
One of the things I had to learn about novels was that even though they gave me so many more pages to play with, they still had to be focused, and I was going to have to leave out much more than I put in. I know that sounds dead obvious, but I went into my first novel with the naive idea that I'd have room to dump every interesting thought I'd have during the course of the writing. That went about as well as you'd expect it to.
I can be a little looser than I am in a short story -- there's room, for example, to tell several characters' stories and show how they intersect -- but everything has to serve the aims of the book. Still, at the end of a first draft of a book, I'm always disappointed by how many ideas didn't make it from my notebooks to the final page.
What is it about the novel format that you couldn't accomplish with the short story, especially in light of the "dark fantastic"?
Even though I learned that I couldn't put everything into a novel, I did enjoy the broader range of effects that are possible. One of the things I particularly enjoyed was being able to shift tone and voice over the course of the work. In the limited space of a short story, I usually take a very Poe-ish policy about unity of effect. I can shift mood at the end if I bring the readers with me, but that's about it.
In Pandemonium, however, I could skate back and forth across that line between light and dark, especially in regard to the horror elements. My first person narrator helped me out here. His first response to terrible events is irony, banter, emotional distance -- but then the irony becomes untenable, banter fails, and he can't keep his distance. I wanted to have that same effect on the readers. My, isn't this amusing! Then hit them with a blind-side tackle.
In your novel, you draw inspiration from various sources. What is it about mash-ups that appeal to you as a writer and as a reader?
Mash-ups are a form of play. When they're done well, by writers such as Kim Newman and Philip José Farmer, and Alan Moore, they're just fun in a way that's hard to define. Maybe it's because mash-ups are an expression of how our minds work. Each of us has a personal collection of pop-cultural fragments floating loose in the brain, and when they slam together in the right way, old familiar things seem fresh and strange. So, one way to consider this book is as a graph of Daryl's Head. Captain America occupies a point just north of Casey Jones, and Lovecraft and Philip K. Dick are next door neighbors. I gave myself permission to include all these references because the idea of the mash-up is one of the themes of the book -- Pandemonium is about a man literally constructing an identity out of all the stories he's read and heard from his family.
That said, pop cultural references or literary allusions are no substitute for character, or story. My rule was that the book had to pass the Thelma test, named after my mom, who's never read a superhero comic or an SF book (except mine, of course). If the reader catches the allusion, then that's a nice Easter egg, but the story has to make sense, and be engaging, on its own terms.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Ra Page (Inteview with Charles Tan)
Ra Page – The New Uncanny
What made you decide to collaborate on this anthology together and what was it like working with each other?
As an editor, I've always been interested in crossovers been scientific thinking and literature; my own background is in physics, and my father is a psychologist. Sarah, on the other hand is an artist and photographer, whose work has often delved into uncanny subjects and processes: unnatural interventions, dislocated spaces, foreign bodies. When it comes to re-evaluating Freud and the uncanny, the visual arts have been ahead of the curve for a while now: so when Sarah first showed me Freud's original essay, it was like a discovering Constantinople, a meeting point between two different continents of thought, a bridge for science to enter art, and vice versa.
As such, the editorial collaboration was perfect - an artist and a scientifically minded editor working together - it reflected the interchange going on in the essay itself.
My job was to champion the essay and break it down (if necessary) for the less science-friendly writers. Sarah's was to use her instincts in culling, cutting and tweaking those responses that didn't pass muster, as soon as any they came in. She can tell instantly if a story isn't working, while I have to work out why it isn't, before I can even decide that it isn't. So she works a bit quicker than me!
What is it about the short story medium that appeals to you and to Comma Press?
Oh everything. How long have we got?
First and foremost I think the short story is playful as a form. It encourages the writer to experiment and make something new of the story-shape, and it kind of winks and nods at the reader, too, allowing us to enjoy the fact that we're being, or we're about to be, messed with. It's a teasing form, and it's capable of projecting patterns outwards that are revelatory and wondrous, patterns and epiphanies that are almost impossibly clear. With a novel, it's different ball game - novels are all about detail, context and the wider texture of the characters' histories and backstories, interlocking and moving ever-forwards. With short stories, the image you get is only there for a split-second, but like a flash it burns its shape on the retina in the darkness left after the last line.
Nadine Gordimer has this great argument about the short story. She says, in life truth doesn't come with a capital T, and it doesn't accumulate and build up and up towards a singular monumental viewpoint at the end. Instead it's fragmentary, it's discrete, it hits us in flashes and leaves us ignorant as quickly it arrives, ignorant until our next, contradictory moment of insight. The short story, she says, is better equipped for this fragmented reality (unlike the novel which builds and builds over time), the short story's insights are clear and singular, and only last as long as they do because they're incompatible with any other story, or any other wider 'Truth'. It's like the particle theory of truth vs. the wave theory. We, at Comma, think it's a particle; we're all about the particle.
What was your criteria in selecting the contributors and the stories for the anthology?
Firstly, we wanted to get a spread of authors from different backgrounds; there's filmwriters and TV comedy writers in there, as well as masters of dark fiction and 'literary' big hitters. We wanted to show Ramsey Campbell, for instance, can easily hold his own against some of the best literary writers on the block - as there's a lot of snobbery out there towards 'dark fiction'. A S Byatt was the first author to get on board and, to be honest, her support for Comma has kept us going, one way or another, over the last couple of years. She's been like a fairy godmother to us. Once she was on board with this book it was all systems go.
Our main criteria in selecting stories was to only go for those that freshened things up. The task was to update the examples of uncanny archetypes that Freud talks about, to come up with genuinely new manifestations of them, and thus extend the canon. So we were looking for stories that would both slot into place and push the envelop, stories that respected the greats of the horror tradition and, at the same time, cleared the decks for something new. As a result it's quite interesting to see AS Byatt's 'Dolls Eyes' (which is classic Freud sprinkled with Rilke), alongside Adam Marek's 'Tamagotchi' and Frank Cottrell Boyce's 'Continuous Manipulation' (about the computer game, The Sims). They're all about essentially the same thing: life-imitating playthings. It's Michael Redgrave and the ventriloquist's dummy from Dead of Night all over again... but as you'd least expect it.
What made you decide to collaborate on this anthology together and what was it like working with each other?
As an editor, I've always been interested in crossovers been scientific thinking and literature; my own background is in physics, and my father is a psychologist. Sarah, on the other hand is an artist and photographer, whose work has often delved into uncanny subjects and processes: unnatural interventions, dislocated spaces, foreign bodies. When it comes to re-evaluating Freud and the uncanny, the visual arts have been ahead of the curve for a while now: so when Sarah first showed me Freud's original essay, it was like a discovering Constantinople, a meeting point between two different continents of thought, a bridge for science to enter art, and vice versa.
As such, the editorial collaboration was perfect - an artist and a scientifically minded editor working together - it reflected the interchange going on in the essay itself.
My job was to champion the essay and break it down (if necessary) for the less science-friendly writers. Sarah's was to use her instincts in culling, cutting and tweaking those responses that didn't pass muster, as soon as any they came in. She can tell instantly if a story isn't working, while I have to work out why it isn't, before I can even decide that it isn't. So she works a bit quicker than me!
What is it about the short story medium that appeals to you and to Comma Press?
Oh everything. How long have we got?
First and foremost I think the short story is playful as a form. It encourages the writer to experiment and make something new of the story-shape, and it kind of winks and nods at the reader, too, allowing us to enjoy the fact that we're being, or we're about to be, messed with. It's a teasing form, and it's capable of projecting patterns outwards that are revelatory and wondrous, patterns and epiphanies that are almost impossibly clear. With a novel, it's different ball game - novels are all about detail, context and the wider texture of the characters' histories and backstories, interlocking and moving ever-forwards. With short stories, the image you get is only there for a split-second, but like a flash it burns its shape on the retina in the darkness left after the last line.
Nadine Gordimer has this great argument about the short story. She says, in life truth doesn't come with a capital T, and it doesn't accumulate and build up and up towards a singular monumental viewpoint at the end. Instead it's fragmentary, it's discrete, it hits us in flashes and leaves us ignorant as quickly it arrives, ignorant until our next, contradictory moment of insight. The short story, she says, is better equipped for this fragmented reality (unlike the novel which builds and builds over time), the short story's insights are clear and singular, and only last as long as they do because they're incompatible with any other story, or any other wider 'Truth'. It's like the particle theory of truth vs. the wave theory. We, at Comma, think it's a particle; we're all about the particle.
What was your criteria in selecting the contributors and the stories for the anthology?
Firstly, we wanted to get a spread of authors from different backgrounds; there's filmwriters and TV comedy writers in there, as well as masters of dark fiction and 'literary' big hitters. We wanted to show Ramsey Campbell, for instance, can easily hold his own against some of the best literary writers on the block - as there's a lot of snobbery out there towards 'dark fiction'. A S Byatt was the first author to get on board and, to be honest, her support for Comma has kept us going, one way or another, over the last couple of years. She's been like a fairy godmother to us. Once she was on board with this book it was all systems go.
Our main criteria in selecting stories was to only go for those that freshened things up. The task was to update the examples of uncanny archetypes that Freud talks about, to come up with genuinely new manifestations of them, and thus extend the canon. So we were looking for stories that would both slot into place and push the envelop, stories that respected the greats of the horror tradition and, at the same time, cleared the decks for something new. As a result it's quite interesting to see AS Byatt's 'Dolls Eyes' (which is classic Freud sprinkled with Rilke), alongside Adam Marek's 'Tamagotchi' and Frank Cottrell Boyce's 'Continuous Manipulation' (about the computer game, The Sims). They're all about essentially the same thing: life-imitating playthings. It's Michael Redgrave and the ventriloquist's dummy from Dead of Night all over again... but as you'd least expect it.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Julia Leigh (Interview with Charles Tan)
Julia Leigh - "Disquiet"
How did you decide on the length of "Disquiet?" What is it about the novella format that makes it apt for this particular story?
My sense is that the length of a work is more or less determined by an author's stylistic choices. DISQUIET is very controlled - in keeping with the control of the characters, characters who cannot bring themselves to discuss their great losses, who try to hold themselves together as they bear towards breaking. There is more silence than there is consolation.
"Disquiet" explores several uncomfortable subjects. Did you have any difficulty with these scenes, or is that what you particularly enjoy when it comes to writing fiction?
The book comes from a place of intense feeling....I can't say it was particularly easy or enjoyable to write. Maybe there's such a thing as a difficult pleasure.
You're a lauded writer. In what way has your writing improved or altered since The Hunter, and how has your experience helped you in writing this book?
I almost feel as if I had to shuck off the first book in order to write the second. And I expect it will be the same with the next book: 'don't look back'. I have a great admiration for authors who have created a strong body of work, from book to book.
How did you decide on the length of "Disquiet?" What is it about the novella format that makes it apt for this particular story?
My sense is that the length of a work is more or less determined by an author's stylistic choices. DISQUIET is very controlled - in keeping with the control of the characters, characters who cannot bring themselves to discuss their great losses, who try to hold themselves together as they bear towards breaking. There is more silence than there is consolation.
"Disquiet" explores several uncomfortable subjects. Did you have any difficulty with these scenes, or is that what you particularly enjoy when it comes to writing fiction?
The book comes from a place of intense feeling....I can't say it was particularly easy or enjoyable to write. Maybe there's such a thing as a difficult pleasure.
You're a lauded writer. In what way has your writing improved or altered since The Hunter, and how has your experience helped you in writing this book?
I almost feel as if I had to shuck off the first book in order to write the second. And I expect it will be the same with the next book: 'don't look back'. I have a great admiration for authors who have created a strong body of work, from book to book.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Danel Olson (Interview by Charles Tan)
Danel Olson, editor of Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo
In both Exotic Gothic anthologies, there's a focus on stories not just by Western authors but by international authors as well. What made you decide to implement this?
On the one hand, British and Irish DNA must have a strand for writing great Gothic stories. Encouraging this genetic tendency are those countries' histories of royal sexual excess and decapitated queens, disputed estates, curses, revenge cycles, old graveyards, dark streets, thousands of castles, and dependable rain. So, know I love to work with their authors! They certainly do have a home-field advantage, as the Gothic was born there. Don’t you think their peoples' influence on Gothic literature, music, and film is unmatched?
But I'm not from those islands, and my curiosity to hear other voices from the back of beyond is keen. Discussing Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea or teaching Carlos Fuentes's Aura at Lone Star College, I realized how startling a Gothic frame appears outside its traditional home. How alluring but deceptive is the familiar in an exotic place, and how suggestive it is that the observer is wishing alive a reality. Why not then make a collection of out-sourced Gothika? Why not find storytellers from the farthest lands to take us to new castles & new dungeons?
Fortunately there was a publisher given to adventure (Barbara and Christopher Roden's Ash-Tee Press). There were also international artists who loved a challenge, and they smuggled the old Gothic impulse to seven continents. It worked a lot of mayhem, turns out. What Dean Francis Alfar, Edward P. Crandall, Steve Duffy, Milorad Pavić, and John Whitbourn showed happen in Asia shocked and captivated me. Astonishing, too, was a Cambodian retelling of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" by Genni Gunn. What George Makana Clark and Nicholas Royle let loose in Africa moved me. Three astonishing artists of Australia--Stephen Dedman, Terry Dowling, and Robert Hood--unfolded the mystifying in their homeland, and something heart-stopping there. Even stranger discoveries from my home continent awaited when I read of John Bushore's, Elizabeth Massie's, and Tia V. Travis's North American journeys. An uncanny wandering through one of South America's most desolate landscapes in Adam Golaski's tale--the salt flats of Bolivia-- gave new meaning to the idea of a brief encounter. And in Europe, but still outside of the traditional Gothic settings (of Ireland, UK, Germany, France, & Italy), many dark secrets were illuminated from Peter Bell, Nancy A. Collins, Christopher Fowler, Taylor Kincaid, Kenneth McKenney, Reggie Oliver, Steve Rasnic Tem, and David Wellington. Capping it on ice, an elusive Gothic blood tale of Antarctica was dreamt by Canadian Barbara Roden.
I'm proud that the next book in the original story/novel excerpt series, Exotic Gothic 3 (to be released September 2009) will feature writers of The Czech Republic, Serbia, Australia, Fiji, Malaysia, and Russia, and points beyond.
What was your criteria in selecting the stories? What for you makes a "good, Exotic Gothic" story?
Ever read a story that makes your body so cold no fire can ever warm you? Ever felt physically as if the top of your head were taken off? That story's perfect! That's the only way I know an exceptional Gothic tale. Emily Dickinson said the same when she was asked about how she knew what she read was poetry. I would add that a Gothic work stays with us when it shows a heart, mind, and spirit divided till the very end. All along the tale is mired in ambiguity--this could be Heaven or this could be Hell—even to the last sentence, even unto the character’s last breath.
What's the appeal of gothic fiction for you?
Its appeal is to revisit the delicious dread I felt at another time. My soul caught afire on first reading "Adventures of a German Student" by Washington Irving (when I was six years old), hearing "Hotel California" by the Eagles when it first came out in 1976 (when I was eleven), and writing on Wuthering Heights (at nineteen). So much wildness lives in all three of those! So much death-in-life! Doesn't their attention to physical longing and sudden loss, illusion and desire, remind us that we are merely lanterns carried in blood and skin? The intimate discoveries they share even sometimes encroaches on our real lives: that the one we love we might not really know, that she or he wears a masquerade or may damn us, that we are "prisoners of our own device"--victims partaking in her own victimization, that we shall never run fast enough to get out the door, that we can hate and love with a shameless intensity the same person. And that when she is gone, even gone behind the veil, we will go looking for her. Lovely morbidities, no?
Maybe the Gothic love is a strange nostalgia, too, for when I was little. My mother worked in a mental hospital with twenty-one identical red brick buildings, back in the time when you could still commit your relatives without so many irksome restrictions, and when small magic pills seemed the answer to every quirk. Starting when I was four years old, I would be toted along, as there was no one to care for me at home. I suppose it could be viewed as a slightly-off form of Headstart or Daycare. I spent my days playing in the halls and the dining rooms, and the asylum became a kind of kinder-home. It was very clean, and there were books, too, though mostly on mental diseases. But children generally adjust to abnormalities around them. Well, one lemony morning I saw a softly feminine woman staring out the window as we came in to the hospital; she was there staring off again when we left at 3:00. She would be there many mornings and afternoons after that, looking out the western window of Building 20. She had long hair that was dark and shiny, freckled skin, and blue and vacant eyes. I thought her odd, old (she was probably 20), and lovely. Naturally, I fell in love with all my sincere and bursting boy’s heart.
So here we had a mysteriously imprisoned woman, longing to be free (I thought anyway), but controlled, fed medication, and held within by An Authority Who Knows Best. She was not a figure of fiction that I picked up in college by reading Hardy's heart-breaking "Barbara of the House of Grebe" or Ray Russell's cold "Sardonicus", though she would in time remind me of them. No, this trapped woman--the central feature of the Gothic novel--was a breathing one. I never heard her to have visitors. What could she have done to be stashed there and forgotten? I learned her name was Kimberley, but that was all. And I remember to this day, very gothically, a woman who was made a ghost of the State, and who said nothing to me at all.
In both Exotic Gothic anthologies, there's a focus on stories not just by Western authors but by international authors as well. What made you decide to implement this?
On the one hand, British and Irish DNA must have a strand for writing great Gothic stories. Encouraging this genetic tendency are those countries' histories of royal sexual excess and decapitated queens, disputed estates, curses, revenge cycles, old graveyards, dark streets, thousands of castles, and dependable rain. So, know I love to work with their authors! They certainly do have a home-field advantage, as the Gothic was born there. Don’t you think their peoples' influence on Gothic literature, music, and film is unmatched?
But I'm not from those islands, and my curiosity to hear other voices from the back of beyond is keen. Discussing Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea or teaching Carlos Fuentes's Aura at Lone Star College, I realized how startling a Gothic frame appears outside its traditional home. How alluring but deceptive is the familiar in an exotic place, and how suggestive it is that the observer is wishing alive a reality. Why not then make a collection of out-sourced Gothika? Why not find storytellers from the farthest lands to take us to new castles & new dungeons?
Fortunately there was a publisher given to adventure (Barbara and Christopher Roden's Ash-Tee Press). There were also international artists who loved a challenge, and they smuggled the old Gothic impulse to seven continents. It worked a lot of mayhem, turns out. What Dean Francis Alfar, Edward P. Crandall, Steve Duffy, Milorad Pavić, and John Whitbourn showed happen in Asia shocked and captivated me. Astonishing, too, was a Cambodian retelling of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" by Genni Gunn. What George Makana Clark and Nicholas Royle let loose in Africa moved me. Three astonishing artists of Australia--Stephen Dedman, Terry Dowling, and Robert Hood--unfolded the mystifying in their homeland, and something heart-stopping there. Even stranger discoveries from my home continent awaited when I read of John Bushore's, Elizabeth Massie's, and Tia V. Travis's North American journeys. An uncanny wandering through one of South America's most desolate landscapes in Adam Golaski's tale--the salt flats of Bolivia-- gave new meaning to the idea of a brief encounter. And in Europe, but still outside of the traditional Gothic settings (of Ireland, UK, Germany, France, & Italy), many dark secrets were illuminated from Peter Bell, Nancy A. Collins, Christopher Fowler, Taylor Kincaid, Kenneth McKenney, Reggie Oliver, Steve Rasnic Tem, and David Wellington. Capping it on ice, an elusive Gothic blood tale of Antarctica was dreamt by Canadian Barbara Roden.
I'm proud that the next book in the original story/novel excerpt series, Exotic Gothic 3 (to be released September 2009) will feature writers of The Czech Republic, Serbia, Australia, Fiji, Malaysia, and Russia, and points beyond.
What was your criteria in selecting the stories? What for you makes a "good, Exotic Gothic" story?
Ever read a story that makes your body so cold no fire can ever warm you? Ever felt physically as if the top of your head were taken off? That story's perfect! That's the only way I know an exceptional Gothic tale. Emily Dickinson said the same when she was asked about how she knew what she read was poetry. I would add that a Gothic work stays with us when it shows a heart, mind, and spirit divided till the very end. All along the tale is mired in ambiguity--this could be Heaven or this could be Hell—even to the last sentence, even unto the character’s last breath.
What's the appeal of gothic fiction for you?
Its appeal is to revisit the delicious dread I felt at another time. My soul caught afire on first reading "Adventures of a German Student" by Washington Irving (when I was six years old), hearing "Hotel California" by the Eagles when it first came out in 1976 (when I was eleven), and writing on Wuthering Heights (at nineteen). So much wildness lives in all three of those! So much death-in-life! Doesn't their attention to physical longing and sudden loss, illusion and desire, remind us that we are merely lanterns carried in blood and skin? The intimate discoveries they share even sometimes encroaches on our real lives: that the one we love we might not really know, that she or he wears a masquerade or may damn us, that we are "prisoners of our own device"--victims partaking in her own victimization, that we shall never run fast enough to get out the door, that we can hate and love with a shameless intensity the same person. And that when she is gone, even gone behind the veil, we will go looking for her. Lovely morbidities, no?
Maybe the Gothic love is a strange nostalgia, too, for when I was little. My mother worked in a mental hospital with twenty-one identical red brick buildings, back in the time when you could still commit your relatives without so many irksome restrictions, and when small magic pills seemed the answer to every quirk. Starting when I was four years old, I would be toted along, as there was no one to care for me at home. I suppose it could be viewed as a slightly-off form of Headstart or Daycare. I spent my days playing in the halls and the dining rooms, and the asylum became a kind of kinder-home. It was very clean, and there were books, too, though mostly on mental diseases. But children generally adjust to abnormalities around them. Well, one lemony morning I saw a softly feminine woman staring out the window as we came in to the hospital; she was there staring off again when we left at 3:00. She would be there many mornings and afternoons after that, looking out the western window of Building 20. She had long hair that was dark and shiny, freckled skin, and blue and vacant eyes. I thought her odd, old (she was probably 20), and lovely. Naturally, I fell in love with all my sincere and bursting boy’s heart.
So here we had a mysteriously imprisoned woman, longing to be free (I thought anyway), but controlled, fed medication, and held within by An Authority Who Knows Best. She was not a figure of fiction that I picked up in college by reading Hardy's heart-breaking "Barbara of the House of Grebe" or Ray Russell's cold "Sardonicus", though she would in time remind me of them. No, this trapped woman--the central feature of the Gothic novel--was a breathing one. I never heard her to have visitors. What could she have done to be stashed there and forgotten? I learned her name was Kimberley, but that was all. And I remember to this day, very gothically, a woman who was made a ghost of the State, and who said nothing to me at all.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Stephen Graham Jones (Interview by Charles Tan)
Stephen Graham Jones - "The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti"
How did you come up with the structure for "The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti?"
It was complete and total luck, all documented here. I was planning on writing something completely different, set in a nursing home, but then the first line of Nolan Dugatti just came at me out of nowhere, and it's the kind of line that has a back-and-forth structure just built right into it. And, if you're going to jam a novel onto paper in seventy-two hours like I did with Nolan Dugatti, you need that back-and-forth kind of thing happening, because you don't really have time to stop and wonder what comes next. That next thing needs to be already happening. So, with the 'investigation' monologue and the suicide letters handing the story off to each other constantly, I never had to stop and get all second-guessy, could just roll. And that's the best kind of writing. Doctorow (E.L., not Cory) compares writing like that to taking dictation, and that's it exactly. Some days your fingers can hardly type fast enough.
What was the most difficult aspect when it came to writing the story?
Not letting the father's voice just dominate. Because I knew early on that it wasn't his ('my,' yes) story, really, but Nolan's. But the father, the dad, always trying to kill himself in stupider and stupider ways, he kind of draws the spotlight. Then too, though, he has no camopede in his parts of the story either, and no ninjas either, an no shrimp floating across the page. So maybe I was nervous for no reason.
Another difficult part -- but it wouldn't be writing if it weren't difficult -- would be the ending, I suppose. Even ninety-percent through the thing, probably even ninety-five, I had zero clue how this was all going to come together. Which is to say I was setting myself up for one of those stupid 'literary' guess-the-ending final paragraphs, where the idea's that the reader's supposed to have read close enough to now be able to project what's going to happen, making it unnecessary for me to actually stoop to write it. Except those kinds of endings are really just the writer not having nerve, not having confidence, so he or she takes the easy way out, foists it all off onto the reader then calls them stupid if they don't get it. But we all know where the stupidity lies there, yeah?
"The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti" combines science fiction, horror, and speculative fiction. In your opinion, how do these elements--when used properly--can strengthen a work of fiction, horror or otherwise?
I think an answer here starts with what I think each of those three does, just in general. So. Horror, what it does is remind us that we're human. It engages that animal part of our brain that still remembers that there's stuff around every corner, just waiting to chomp down on us. Except, in today's world, we've got the place so lit that the dark corners aren't so dark. Horror gives that darkness back, lets us be what we are, instead of some cleaned-up version. And it's good to feel human in that most basic way. As for science fiction, it lets us feel wonder, that pure, unadulterated kind. I mean, sure, you can read it all as cautionary tales, dystopias, critiques of whatever's going on now, but I choose not to. I read science fiction like a kid, just going so slow through those sentences where some character looks out the window, sees galaxies spread out that we can't even see now with telescopes. Fiction's a much better lens, finally, allows us to see so much deeper into reality. The only reality that matters, anyway. And, speculative fiction, which kind of takes from horror and science fiction both -- fantasy as well, I'd say -- it's usually more just our everyday world, but with a little bit of that magic reintroduced, to perturb (fix?) everything. And that's a very, very important thing to do. It makes us look at the world outside the story in a different way, I think. A way in which things are possible, in which small things matter -- or, this gets as what I think art in general does, really: say you've just hit a stageplay, and what you've seen up there for the last couple of hours is this narrative efficiency, this economy of characters and events, where every word said aloud matters, where every pistol on the mantle has big meaning. Now, when you leave that theatre, don't your eyes kind of stick like that for a while, such that the next newspaper to blow up against your leg, you look down at it wonder what column's there unaccidentally, specifically for you? What's the world, efficient itself, trying to tell you here, with this? We're all in stories, after all. What good fiction can do is teach us better how to navigate within them, maybe even rise above every once in a while, see through the page to the bigger page, and on and on.
But that maybe wasn't exactly the question. As for how these -- horror, science fiction, speculative fiction - can strengthen a work: how can they not? Given the choice (and we all are given that choice), I'd much rather read a werewolf novel than a non-werewolf novel. Just because, at the end of the book, even if the werewolf story's failed in some grand, obvious fashion, still, I've maybe seen a werewolf, and am now maybe a little more afraid to step out into the alley with my trashbag. Give me the werewolves any day. Please. I can keep stacking the trash up by the back door for as long as necessary.
And, this is maybe the same answer all over, but finally there's just the boredom factor. I have zero interest in reading kitchen sink drama, just for the obvious reason: I've got plenty of that particular kind of drama in my everyday life. No, if I'm going to stay interested in something, sure, I need real people in that story, just because I need to identify, to engage, to be lured into investing myself, but I also need a cyborg bear standing on the sidewalk every now and again, just reading today's newspaper, waiting for a certain blue Chevrolet to crawl by, its limo-tint windows at half-mast, at which point the game's on, the newspaper's floating behind him, he's down on all fours giving chase, and I'm right there behind him, smiling, thrilled again to be part of a world like that, even if just for a little while.
How did you come up with the structure for "The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti?"
It was complete and total luck, all documented here. I was planning on writing something completely different, set in a nursing home, but then the first line of Nolan Dugatti just came at me out of nowhere, and it's the kind of line that has a back-and-forth structure just built right into it. And, if you're going to jam a novel onto paper in seventy-two hours like I did with Nolan Dugatti, you need that back-and-forth kind of thing happening, because you don't really have time to stop and wonder what comes next. That next thing needs to be already happening. So, with the 'investigation' monologue and the suicide letters handing the story off to each other constantly, I never had to stop and get all second-guessy, could just roll. And that's the best kind of writing. Doctorow (E.L., not Cory) compares writing like that to taking dictation, and that's it exactly. Some days your fingers can hardly type fast enough.
What was the most difficult aspect when it came to writing the story?
Not letting the father's voice just dominate. Because I knew early on that it wasn't his ('my,' yes) story, really, but Nolan's. But the father, the dad, always trying to kill himself in stupider and stupider ways, he kind of draws the spotlight. Then too, though, he has no camopede in his parts of the story either, and no ninjas either, an no shrimp floating across the page. So maybe I was nervous for no reason.
Another difficult part -- but it wouldn't be writing if it weren't difficult -- would be the ending, I suppose. Even ninety-percent through the thing, probably even ninety-five, I had zero clue how this was all going to come together. Which is to say I was setting myself up for one of those stupid 'literary' guess-the-ending final paragraphs, where the idea's that the reader's supposed to have read close enough to now be able to project what's going to happen, making it unnecessary for me to actually stoop to write it. Except those kinds of endings are really just the writer not having nerve, not having confidence, so he or she takes the easy way out, foists it all off onto the reader then calls them stupid if they don't get it. But we all know where the stupidity lies there, yeah?
"The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti" combines science fiction, horror, and speculative fiction. In your opinion, how do these elements--when used properly--can strengthen a work of fiction, horror or otherwise?
I think an answer here starts with what I think each of those three does, just in general. So. Horror, what it does is remind us that we're human. It engages that animal part of our brain that still remembers that there's stuff around every corner, just waiting to chomp down on us. Except, in today's world, we've got the place so lit that the dark corners aren't so dark. Horror gives that darkness back, lets us be what we are, instead of some cleaned-up version. And it's good to feel human in that most basic way. As for science fiction, it lets us feel wonder, that pure, unadulterated kind. I mean, sure, you can read it all as cautionary tales, dystopias, critiques of whatever's going on now, but I choose not to. I read science fiction like a kid, just going so slow through those sentences where some character looks out the window, sees galaxies spread out that we can't even see now with telescopes. Fiction's a much better lens, finally, allows us to see so much deeper into reality. The only reality that matters, anyway. And, speculative fiction, which kind of takes from horror and science fiction both -- fantasy as well, I'd say -- it's usually more just our everyday world, but with a little bit of that magic reintroduced, to perturb (fix?) everything. And that's a very, very important thing to do. It makes us look at the world outside the story in a different way, I think. A way in which things are possible, in which small things matter -- or, this gets as what I think art in general does, really: say you've just hit a stageplay, and what you've seen up there for the last couple of hours is this narrative efficiency, this economy of characters and events, where every word said aloud matters, where every pistol on the mantle has big meaning. Now, when you leave that theatre, don't your eyes kind of stick like that for a while, such that the next newspaper to blow up against your leg, you look down at it wonder what column's there unaccidentally, specifically for you? What's the world, efficient itself, trying to tell you here, with this? We're all in stories, after all. What good fiction can do is teach us better how to navigate within them, maybe even rise above every once in a while, see through the page to the bigger page, and on and on.
But that maybe wasn't exactly the question. As for how these -- horror, science fiction, speculative fiction - can strengthen a work: how can they not? Given the choice (and we all are given that choice), I'd much rather read a werewolf novel than a non-werewolf novel. Just because, at the end of the book, even if the werewolf story's failed in some grand, obvious fashion, still, I've maybe seen a werewolf, and am now maybe a little more afraid to step out into the alley with my trashbag. Give me the werewolves any day. Please. I can keep stacking the trash up by the back door for as long as necessary.
And, this is maybe the same answer all over, but finally there's just the boredom factor. I have zero interest in reading kitchen sink drama, just for the obvious reason: I've got plenty of that particular kind of drama in my everyday life. No, if I'm going to stay interested in something, sure, I need real people in that story, just because I need to identify, to engage, to be lured into investing myself, but I also need a cyborg bear standing on the sidewalk every now and again, just reading today's newspaper, waiting for a certain blue Chevrolet to crawl by, its limo-tint windows at half-mast, at which point the game's on, the newspaper's floating behind him, he's down on all fours giving chase, and I'm right there behind him, smiling, thrilled again to be part of a world like that, even if just for a little while.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem (Interview by Charles Tan)
Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem – The Man on the Ceiling
What were some of the difficulties in combining real life with fiction?
Melanie:
The underlying creative reason for using that combination technique was to say more about the themes and events (factual and imaginary) than either straight-ahead non-fiction or pure fiction could have done. So the ongoing requirement was to find the right balance, the most illuminating angle, so we could tell the most truthful truth. We also had to grapple with the question of when we were being self-indulgent and when we were being creatively honest, and the converse: when were we withholding something out of timidity, and when did the story demand a less direct approach?
Steve:
I’d say giving up one’s natural urge to self-protect, or at least severely compromising it, was the most difficult part for me. I’m generally willing to do anything a piece demands. In this case the piece demanded that I not worry about how I, personally, was coming across to the reader—that was difficult to swallow sometimes. I had to just grit my teeth and push through.
One of the stranger aspects of this writing experience, and it’s in keeping with the goal of the book itself, was that throughout the writing of THE MAN ON THE CEILING I never felt as if I were writing fiction. The childhood and young adult delusions and fantasies were the very ones I had experienced at the time. They were an important part of my reality. I grew up fairly isolated in a town of 600. I wasn’t allowed to go out much, even within that small community, and because of my father’s alcoholism people rarely visited. So much of my experience was inside my head. To call that experience fiction would have been to call a large segment of my life fiction.
As much as anything else, TMOC is also about spiritual experience and the spiritual aspect to fiction. Is spiritual experience fiction? I would tend to say yes, but with the caveat that it’s fiction of a peculiar sort, in that it’s fiction created because no other narrative tools are adequate to capturing the experience you’re trying to illuminate. I’d say that spiritual fiction is as valid and as important as everyday reality. But that its validity is most sound within a personal context. Once you have a number of people authoring that spiritual fiction as a group collaboration and proselytizing it to others as something that should be their fiction as well, things become a bit dicey. I get antsy inside churches, or around large groups of people who all seem to believe the same things.
There's a lot of things you end up doing with Point of View in the novel. How did you decide who'll write each scene and what does it feel when the other person is writing from "your" POV?
Melanie:
Seeing how far we could go with point of view was one of the most exciting aspects of writing this book for me. Writing from each other's point of view had the interesting effect of showing me aspects of my own experience that I hadn't considered before.
Steve:
POV changes everything, really. If you change a story’s POV you’re writing a completely different story, assuming that POV is adequately realized. That became so obvious when writing this particular book it was actually a bit intimidating. There could have been potentially a dozen or more very different versions of the book. I think finally aspects of the story were divided up according to who felt the strongest about a particular area of content. Some chapters are practically “life testimonies” for one or the other of us. And some sections were a kind of indirect answer to what the other had written. Some of the more unexpected uses of POV were an attempt to break things open, to help us find out things we had forgotten, or never knew.
How did you decide which elements to fictionalize and which to maintain? How do you think your novel interacts with the reader-writer relationship?
We ask a lot of the reader in this book. We ask a particular kind of suspension of disbelief--really, we ask the reader to set aside the belief/disbelief paradigm, to put on hold the impulse to figure out what "really" happened and look at what's "true" in a different way. It seems to have worked for some readers. No doubt others are still annoyed by it, or just stopped reading when they realized what we wanted from them.
Bottom line, The Man On The Ceiling was an attempt to use the tools of fiction because no other tools seemed adequate to the task of trying to capture the breadth of everyday lives which have both an exterior and an interior, an observable shape and an invisible shape, a forward progress not only in consensus reality, but in the imagination as well.
What were some of the difficulties in combining real life with fiction?
Melanie:
The underlying creative reason for using that combination technique was to say more about the themes and events (factual and imaginary) than either straight-ahead non-fiction or pure fiction could have done. So the ongoing requirement was to find the right balance, the most illuminating angle, so we could tell the most truthful truth. We also had to grapple with the question of when we were being self-indulgent and when we were being creatively honest, and the converse: when were we withholding something out of timidity, and when did the story demand a less direct approach?
Steve:
I’d say giving up one’s natural urge to self-protect, or at least severely compromising it, was the most difficult part for me. I’m generally willing to do anything a piece demands. In this case the piece demanded that I not worry about how I, personally, was coming across to the reader—that was difficult to swallow sometimes. I had to just grit my teeth and push through.
One of the stranger aspects of this writing experience, and it’s in keeping with the goal of the book itself, was that throughout the writing of THE MAN ON THE CEILING I never felt as if I were writing fiction. The childhood and young adult delusions and fantasies were the very ones I had experienced at the time. They were an important part of my reality. I grew up fairly isolated in a town of 600. I wasn’t allowed to go out much, even within that small community, and because of my father’s alcoholism people rarely visited. So much of my experience was inside my head. To call that experience fiction would have been to call a large segment of my life fiction.
As much as anything else, TMOC is also about spiritual experience and the spiritual aspect to fiction. Is spiritual experience fiction? I would tend to say yes, but with the caveat that it’s fiction of a peculiar sort, in that it’s fiction created because no other narrative tools are adequate to capturing the experience you’re trying to illuminate. I’d say that spiritual fiction is as valid and as important as everyday reality. But that its validity is most sound within a personal context. Once you have a number of people authoring that spiritual fiction as a group collaboration and proselytizing it to others as something that should be their fiction as well, things become a bit dicey. I get antsy inside churches, or around large groups of people who all seem to believe the same things.
There's a lot of things you end up doing with Point of View in the novel. How did you decide who'll write each scene and what does it feel when the other person is writing from "your" POV?
Melanie:
Seeing how far we could go with point of view was one of the most exciting aspects of writing this book for me. Writing from each other's point of view had the interesting effect of showing me aspects of my own experience that I hadn't considered before.
Steve:
POV changes everything, really. If you change a story’s POV you’re writing a completely different story, assuming that POV is adequately realized. That became so obvious when writing this particular book it was actually a bit intimidating. There could have been potentially a dozen or more very different versions of the book. I think finally aspects of the story were divided up according to who felt the strongest about a particular area of content. Some chapters are practically “life testimonies” for one or the other of us. And some sections were a kind of indirect answer to what the other had written. Some of the more unexpected uses of POV were an attempt to break things open, to help us find out things we had forgotten, or never knew.
How did you decide which elements to fictionalize and which to maintain? How do you think your novel interacts with the reader-writer relationship?
We ask a lot of the reader in this book. We ask a particular kind of suspension of disbelief--really, we ask the reader to set aside the belief/disbelief paradigm, to put on hold the impulse to figure out what "really" happened and look at what's "true" in a different way. It seems to have worked for some readers. No doubt others are still annoyed by it, or just stopped reading when they realized what we wanted from them.
Bottom line, The Man On The Ceiling was an attempt to use the tools of fiction because no other tools seemed adequate to the task of trying to capture the breadth of everyday lives which have both an exterior and an interior, an observable shape and an invisible shape, a forward progress not only in consensus reality, but in the imagination as well.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Nadia Bulkin (Interview by Charles Tan)
Nadia Bulkin – "Intertropical Convergence Zone”
Your story references various cultures and myths. Did you have to do a lot
of research for these? What made you decide to mash them up?
I grew up in Indonesia, and in writing my story I used a combination of urban and local legends that I knew from childhood. I like sewing together bits and pieces of magic folklore to make my own "laws of magic," so to speak - in Indonesia, myth and spirituality are usually what you make them, and its sources are almost always diverse. As far as I know, however, I invented the specific rituals used in the story.
What was the most difficult part in writing the story?
I would say getting the right events in place and setting the right tone.
How does your political science background influence your writing?
Political science plays a huge role in my writing, although I don't always write explicitly about politics. Political science is really just the interaction of a whole lot of powerful plots and characters, which is why I love it. "Intertropical Convergence Zone" was a way for me to write about a political period (the Suharto era) that had a lot of impact on me personally with the freedom, texture, and emotional punch of fiction.
Your story references various cultures and myths. Did you have to do a lot
of research for these? What made you decide to mash them up?
I grew up in Indonesia, and in writing my story I used a combination of urban and local legends that I knew from childhood. I like sewing together bits and pieces of magic folklore to make my own "laws of magic," so to speak - in Indonesia, myth and spirituality are usually what you make them, and its sources are almost always diverse. As far as I know, however, I invented the specific rituals used in the story.
What was the most difficult part in writing the story?
I would say getting the right events in place and setting the right tone.
How does your political science background influence your writing?
Political science plays a huge role in my writing, although I don't always write explicitly about politics. Political science is really just the interaction of a whole lot of powerful plots and characters, which is why I love it. "Intertropical Convergence Zone" was a way for me to write about a political period (the Suharto era) that had a lot of impact on me personally with the freedom, texture, and emotional punch of fiction.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Conrad Williams Interview (by Charles Tan)
Conrad Williams--"68° 07’ 15"N, 31° 36’ 44"W"
"68° 07’ 15"N, 31° 36’ 44"W" has a certain tone. Was it easy or difficult for you sustaining that particular tone?
I found it fairly easy, once I'd played around with the voice of the story for a while. But maybe that had something to do with its relatively short length. I was trying for a kind of vile elegance. I felt the story needed some unusual textures, something skewed and knotty. I wanted readers to sense insanity trembling at the edges of the page. I'm not sure how successful I was in capturing that, but I had enormous fun writing it.
What was the inspiration for the story and what made you finally settle on the coordinates as the title?
I've always been in thrall to the kind of character that possesses a supernatural elusiveness. He's always a few steps ahead, flitting out of view at the moment you think you have him. Dracula is the obvious example. I'm also attracted to the idea of the enemy within. I thought about someone driven to the edge of madness by a foe who has killed off his crew and goes in pursuit no matter what it takes. I love maps and I was spending some time looking at Google Earth, trying to find a dramatic location where I could end the story. I found a great ice mass in the Arctic and it was really only as I was shutting down the application that I noticed the coordinates in the bottom corner of the screen. Written down they look evocative, mysterious. You know they refer to a tangible spot on the planet, but without a map, it's all just so much alien code. Although there is a drawback. I was asked at the World Horror Convention what my pirate story was called and I couldn't remember... In future I think I'll refer to it as '68'.
Ending a story can sometimes be tricky but you succeed with this one. Was this originally the ending that you envisioned and for you, how does endings play a role in scaring the reader?
SPOILER ALERT - Don't read this if you intend to check out the story...
You can either go for the big payoff in which you tie off all the strands and leave it neat, or choose something a little more ambiguous. I think ambiguity, especially in horror fiction, is an underrated element. You can draw out enormous power by leaving things a little vague; leaving things to the reader to decide in other words, because what is going on in the little cinema behind their eyes is much more intense and frightening that anything you, as a writer, can confront them with on the page. I liked the idea of Captain Low finally cornering Greenhalgh – who he has suspected is Fetter throughout the story – in the icy wastes. The ship, his crew... they're no longer important to Low. He has found what he was looking for. His quest – he believes – is over. Now he wants to simply walk his quarry into the wilderness. He's forcing the pace, he's waiting for something to happen. What comes next is up to the reader...
"68° 07’ 15"N, 31° 36’ 44"W" has a certain tone. Was it easy or difficult for you sustaining that particular tone?
I found it fairly easy, once I'd played around with the voice of the story for a while. But maybe that had something to do with its relatively short length. I was trying for a kind of vile elegance. I felt the story needed some unusual textures, something skewed and knotty. I wanted readers to sense insanity trembling at the edges of the page. I'm not sure how successful I was in capturing that, but I had enormous fun writing it.
What was the inspiration for the story and what made you finally settle on the coordinates as the title?
I've always been in thrall to the kind of character that possesses a supernatural elusiveness. He's always a few steps ahead, flitting out of view at the moment you think you have him. Dracula is the obvious example. I'm also attracted to the idea of the enemy within. I thought about someone driven to the edge of madness by a foe who has killed off his crew and goes in pursuit no matter what it takes. I love maps and I was spending some time looking at Google Earth, trying to find a dramatic location where I could end the story. I found a great ice mass in the Arctic and it was really only as I was shutting down the application that I noticed the coordinates in the bottom corner of the screen. Written down they look evocative, mysterious. You know they refer to a tangible spot on the planet, but without a map, it's all just so much alien code. Although there is a drawback. I was asked at the World Horror Convention what my pirate story was called and I couldn't remember... In future I think I'll refer to it as '68'.
Ending a story can sometimes be tricky but you succeed with this one. Was this originally the ending that you envisioned and for you, how does endings play a role in scaring the reader?
SPOILER ALERT - Don't read this if you intend to check out the story...
You can either go for the big payoff in which you tie off all the strands and leave it neat, or choose something a little more ambiguous. I think ambiguity, especially in horror fiction, is an underrated element. You can draw out enormous power by leaving things a little vague; leaving things to the reader to decide in other words, because what is going on in the little cinema behind their eyes is much more intense and frightening that anything you, as a writer, can confront them with on the page. I liked the idea of Captain Low finally cornering Greenhalgh – who he has suspected is Fetter throughout the story – in the icy wastes. The ship, his crew... they're no longer important to Low. He has found what he was looking for. His quest – he believes – is over. Now he wants to simply walk his quarry into the wilderness. He's forcing the pace, he's waiting for something to happen. What comes next is up to the reader...
Monday, May 4, 2009
Jeff Vandermeer (Charles Tan interview)
Jeff VanderMeer - The Situation
What is it about insects, mollusks, and Cthulhu-esque creatures that fascinate you and make them effective in producing the desired effect on the reader?
Heh. No disrespect to Lovecraft, but these creatures have existed for millions of years. I first encountered them in nature, and in nature books. Looking at them, they seemed like alien life forms on Earth. I'm fascinated by them because I find them beautiful in both their forms and their complexity, but I also know that in fiction they tend to enhance the sense of other or the alien. So they seem like effective delivery systems for making the familiar strange. So, in "The Situation" you have a typical office situation rendered up with bugs and giant fish, among other things, so that the reader will come to see that our modern "typical office" situations aren't, er, actually all that normal. But to get to that point, or the reader to get to that point, you have to add an element of disorientation. Personally, though, having grown up in a family with a father who studied rhinoceros beetles, moths, and fire ants, it's really the odd beauty of these creatures that drives me. Besides, I always seem to need to have a totem animal in my fiction. In "The Situation" that totem is actually fairly conventional: a giant bear-like creature. But, in the context of the other stuff, he seems normal even when he floats.
What made you tackle the corporate workplace in The Situation? Personal experience, catharsis, or simply another creative outlet?
In some ways, it's a fictionalization of certain events that happened to me. To get it out of my system, I wrote out the circumstances of my own "situation" and then one night woke up with the image of a giant fish and a giant bear in my head, sat down and typed the full rough draft of "The Situation." By that point, of course, only the bare bones of reality were left--just the basic situation at the core. Now, of course, it's being turned into a graphic novel for Tor.com, with the art of Eric Orchard, and thus undergoing a totally new transformation through Eric's imagination.
As one of the editors of The New Weird anthology, do you think your novelette fits that category? (Why or why not?)
That's a good question. Not to dance around an answer, but one reason to edit but not be in a New Weird anthology is to stand a little apart from it, to have some distance from it. I don't consider myself a New Weird writer, but someone who writes some fiction that can be considered New Weird every once in awhile. I don't know if "The Situation" is New Weird or not, and I'm not sure it matters. This is what I mean about editing an anthology. As a reader, as an editor, perhaps as a critic or reviewer, I have interest in the term "New Weird." But as a writer, I'm not that interested in labels. What I'm most interested in is trying new things and pushing myself.
What is it about insects, mollusks, and Cthulhu-esque creatures that fascinate you and make them effective in producing the desired effect on the reader?
Heh. No disrespect to Lovecraft, but these creatures have existed for millions of years. I first encountered them in nature, and in nature books. Looking at them, they seemed like alien life forms on Earth. I'm fascinated by them because I find them beautiful in both their forms and their complexity, but I also know that in fiction they tend to enhance the sense of other or the alien. So they seem like effective delivery systems for making the familiar strange. So, in "The Situation" you have a typical office situation rendered up with bugs and giant fish, among other things, so that the reader will come to see that our modern "typical office" situations aren't, er, actually all that normal. But to get to that point, or the reader to get to that point, you have to add an element of disorientation. Personally, though, having grown up in a family with a father who studied rhinoceros beetles, moths, and fire ants, it's really the odd beauty of these creatures that drives me. Besides, I always seem to need to have a totem animal in my fiction. In "The Situation" that totem is actually fairly conventional: a giant bear-like creature. But, in the context of the other stuff, he seems normal even when he floats.
What made you tackle the corporate workplace in The Situation? Personal experience, catharsis, or simply another creative outlet?
In some ways, it's a fictionalization of certain events that happened to me. To get it out of my system, I wrote out the circumstances of my own "situation" and then one night woke up with the image of a giant fish and a giant bear in my head, sat down and typed the full rough draft of "The Situation." By that point, of course, only the bare bones of reality were left--just the basic situation at the core. Now, of course, it's being turned into a graphic novel for Tor.com, with the art of Eric Orchard, and thus undergoing a totally new transformation through Eric's imagination.
As one of the editors of The New Weird anthology, do you think your novelette fits that category? (Why or why not?)
That's a good question. Not to dance around an answer, but one reason to edit but not be in a New Weird anthology is to stand a little apart from it, to have some distance from it. I don't consider myself a New Weird writer, but someone who writes some fiction that can be considered New Weird every once in awhile. I don't know if "The Situation" is New Weird or not, and I'm not sure it matters. This is what I mean about editing an anthology. As a reader, as an editor, perhaps as a critic or reviewer, I have interest in the term "New Weird." But as a writer, I'm not that interested in labels. What I'm most interested in is trying new things and pushing myself.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Charles Tan to interview the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award Nominees
As Charles did last year, he is interviewing many of our Shirley Jackson Awards nominees. Keep an eye on this blog in the coming weeks!
Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has conducted interviews for The Nebula Awards and The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as for online magazines such as SF Crowsnest and SFScope. He is a regular contributor to sites like SFF Audio and Game Cryer. He used to contribute reviews at Comics Village. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has conducted interviews for The Nebula Awards and The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as for online magazines such as SF Crowsnest and SFScope. He is a regular contributor to sites like SFF Audio and Game Cryer. He used to contribute reviews at Comics Village. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Alleged Haunting of B_____ House now live
The Shirley Jackson Awards online auction of a rare book to benefit the award is now live. Peter Schneider has kindly donated a first edition of the 1899 publication of The Alleged Haunting of B----- House.
Persons may bid on this item from Tuesday, April 21 through midnight on Thursday, April 30, 2009.
Good luck
Persons may bid on this item from Tuesday, April 21 through midnight on Thursday, April 30, 2009.
Good luck
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Nominees Announced for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards
Boston, MA (April 2009) -- In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards will be given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
The nominees for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards are:
NOVEL
Alive in Necropolis, Doug Dorst (Riverhead Hardcover)
The Man on the Ceiling, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries)Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
The Resurrectionist, Jack O'Connell (Algonquin Books)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
NOVELLA
Disquiet, Julia Leigh, (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton)
“Dormitory,” Yoko Ogawa (The Diving Pool, Picador)
Living With the Dead, Darrell Schweitzer (PS Publishing)
The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, Stephen Graham Jones (Chiasmus Press)
“N,” Stephen King, (Just After Sunset, Scribner)
NOVELETTE
“Hunger Moon,” Deborah Noyes (The Ghosts of Kerfol, Candlewick Press)
“The Lagerstatte,” Laird Barron (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ballantine Books/Del Rey)
“Penguins of the Apocalypse,” William Browning Spencer (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, Subterranean Press)
“Pride and Prometheus,” John Kessel (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)
The Situation, Jeff Vandermeer (PS Publishing)
SHORT STORY
“68° 07’ 15”N, 31° 36’ 44”W," Conrad Williams (Fast Ships, Black Sails, Night Shade Books)
“The Dinner Party,” Joshua Ferris (The New Yorker, August 11, 2008)
“Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account,” M. Rickert (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2008)
“The Inner City,” Karen Heuler (Cemetery Dance #58, 2008)
“Intertropical Convergence Zone,” Nadia Bulkin (ChiZine, Issue 37, 2008)
“The Pile,” Michael Bishop (Subterranean Online, Winter 2008)
COLLECTION
A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
ANTHOLOGY
Bound for Evil, edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press)
Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo, edited by Danel Olson (Ash-Tree Press)
Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Night Shade Books)
The New Uncanny, edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page (Comma Press)
Shades of Darkness, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday, July 12th 2009, at Readercon 20, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Hand, Readercon Guest of Honor, and author of Generation Loss, which won the 2007 Shirley Jackson Award for “Best Novel”, will act as host.
Websites: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org Readercon.org
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards will be given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
The nominees for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards are:
NOVEL
Alive in Necropolis, Doug Dorst (Riverhead Hardcover)
The Man on the Ceiling, Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries)Pandemonium, Daryl Gregory (Del Rey)
The Resurrectionist, Jack O'Connell (Algonquin Books)
The Shadow Year, Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow)
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
NOVELLA
Disquiet, Julia Leigh, (Penguin/ Hamish Hamilton)
“Dormitory,” Yoko Ogawa (The Diving Pool, Picador)
Living With the Dead, Darrell Schweitzer (PS Publishing)
The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti, Stephen Graham Jones (Chiasmus Press)
“N,” Stephen King, (Just After Sunset, Scribner)
NOVELETTE
“Hunger Moon,” Deborah Noyes (The Ghosts of Kerfol, Candlewick Press)
“The Lagerstatte,” Laird Barron (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Ballantine Books/Del Rey)
“Penguins of the Apocalypse,” William Browning Spencer (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, Subterranean Press)
“Pride and Prometheus,” John Kessel (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)
The Situation, Jeff Vandermeer (PS Publishing)
SHORT STORY
“68° 07’ 15”N, 31° 36’ 44”W," Conrad Williams (Fast Ships, Black Sails, Night Shade Books)
“The Dinner Party,” Joshua Ferris (The New Yorker, August 11, 2008)
“Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter’s Personal Account,” M. Rickert (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2008)
“The Inner City,” Karen Heuler (Cemetery Dance #58, 2008)
“Intertropical Convergence Zone,” Nadia Bulkin (ChiZine, Issue 37, 2008)
“The Pile,” Michael Bishop (Subterranean Online, Winter 2008)
COLLECTION
A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)
ANTHOLOGY
Bound for Evil, edited by Tom English (Dead Letter Press)
Exotic Gothic 2: New Tales of Taboo, edited by Danel Olson (Ash-Tree Press)
Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Night Shade Books)
The New Uncanny, edited by Sarah Eyre and Ra Page (Comma Press)
Shades of Darkness, edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press)
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday, July 12th 2009, at Readercon 20, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts. Elizabeth Hand, Readercon Guest of Honor, and author of Generation Loss, which won the 2007 Shirley Jackson Award for “Best Novel”, will act as host.
Websites: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org Readercon.org
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Readercon to host the 2008 award Ceremony
Readercon to host ceremony for The 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards
Boston, MA (April 2009) -- The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday, July 12th 2009, at Readercon 20, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards will be given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
Nominees for The 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards will be announced later in April.
Website: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org
Readercon.org
Boston, MA (April 2009) -- The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday, July 12th 2009, at Readercon 20, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards will be given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
Nominees for The 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards will be announced later in April.
Website: ShirleyJacksonAwards.org
Readercon.org
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Fundraiser "Lottery" a Success for the Shirley Jackson Awards
Boston, MA (February 2009) – The Shirley Jackson Awards online raffle, or “lottery,” was an overwhelming success. Fifty-seven individuals from across the United States, and from Canada, England, and Germany, were selected as winners for an array of donated prizes from well-known authors, editors, artists, and agents.
The Board of Advisors and jurors thank all of the donors and ticket buyers for their tremendous support and generosity. All proceeds go to support the administration of The Shirley Jackson Awards.
The full list of winners can be found online.
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday, July 12th 2009, at Readercon 20, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.
www.shirleyjacksonawards.org
The Board of Advisors and jurors thank all of the donors and ticket buyers for their tremendous support and generosity. All proceeds go to support the administration of The Shirley Jackson Awards.
The full list of winners can be found online.
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented on Sunday, July 12th 2009, at Readercon 20, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Burlington, Massachusetts.
www.shirleyjacksonawards.org
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Fundraiser Winners Annoucned!
The Shirley Jackson Awards is excited to announce the winners of our fundraiser “lottery.” We wish to thank everyone for supporting the Awards, and we wish to give a very special thank you to all the prize donors. Winners are listed below by name, city, country, and order number. The prize donors will contact the winners by email to arrange for shipment.
Now, on to the winners!
Signed copies of TAKE NO PRISONERS & DRAGONS OF MANHATTAN (SIGNDPBARNETT):
Roy Anati of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Order ID: 67
Limited edition of David Drake’s BALEFIRES (BKNIGHTSHADE3):
William Lindblad of Plano, Texas, United States
Order ID: 208
The Arthurian Tarot donated by Jody Rose (TAROTJROSE):
Linda Addison of Bronx, New York, United States
Order ID: 172
THE DEVILS IN THE DETAILS signed by James Blaylock & Tim Powers (SIGNDBLAYLOCKPWRS):
Bethany Herron of Oakland, California, United States
Order ID: 3
Signed copy of IN FOR A PENNY by James Blaylock (SIGNDBLAYLOCK2):
Bethany Herron of Oakland, California, United States
Order ID: 3
Editorial evaluation of a novel proposal by John Douglas (CRITJDOUGLAS):
Lydia Ondrusek of Richardson, Texas, United States
Order ID: 128
Novel manuscript critique by Stephen Barbara (CRITSBARBARA):
Christine Nguyen of Cupertino, California, United States
Order ID: 165
Personally inscribed keyboard from Neil Gaiman (SIGNDKYBDNGAIMAN):
Alison Campbell-Wise of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, United States
Order ID: 13
Personally inscribed keyboard from Jeff Ford (SIGNDKYBDJFORD):
Chris McLaren of Hubley, Nova Scotia, Canada
Order ID: 85
More than a Tuckerization from Nick Mamatas (TUCKNMAMATAS):
Nick Kaufmann of Brooklyn, New York, United States
Order ID: 107
Tuckerization by Richard Bowes (TUCKRBOWES):
Chris McLaren of Hubley, Nova Scotia, Canada
Order ID: 85
Signed copy of ALCHEMY OF STONE and gift from Ekaterina Sedia (SIGNDBKESEDIA):
Alexandra Reddick of Denver, Colorado, United States
Order ID: 37
Copy of PAPER CITIES & a subscription to SYBIL’S GARAGE (BKMAGMKRESSEL):
Brian Chandler of Poteau, Oklahoma, United States
Order ID: 49
Signed and numbered edition of John Clute’s THE DARKENING GARDEN (SIGNDJCLUTE):
Eric Anderson of Superior, Wisconsin, United States
Order ID: 89
Limited edition version of Laird Barron’s THE IMAGO SEQUENCE (BKNIGHTSHADE1):
Geoffrey Goodwin of Natick, Massachusetts, United States
Order ID: 180
Manuscript critique of a short story by Sarah Langan (CRITSLANGAN):
Stacey Friedberg of Short Hills, New Jersey, United States
Order ID: 112
Signed copy of Cherie Priest’s novel DREADFUL SKIN (NVLCPRIEST):
Dan Pietrasik of Milpitas, California, United States
Order ID: 31
Signed, numbered limited edition of COSMOCOPIA, Paul DiFilippo (SIGNDPDIFILLIPO):
Bill Hendee of Worcester, Massachusetts, United States
Order ID: 15
Signed afterword to the novel HIDE AND SEEK by Jack Ketchum (SIGNDJKETCHUM):
Matt Schwartz of Jersey City, New Jersey, United States
Order ID: 94
Signed, numbered ed:AND NOW WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A PARTY (SIGNDNGRIFFITH):
Lisa Eckstein of Santa Clara, California, United States
Order ID: 87
Personally inscribed: THE CHAINS THAT YOU REFUSE, Elizabeth Bear (SIGNDBKEBEAR):
Alison Campbell-Wise of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, United States
Order ID: 13
Signed copy of THE IMAGO SEQUENCE & a new story by Laird Barron (SIGNDLBARRON):
William Lindblad of Plano, Texas, United States
Order ID: 208
Limited edition of Tim Lebbon’s WHITE AND OTHER TALES OF RUIN (BKNIGHTSHADE2):
Jody Rose of North Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Order ID: 14
Personally inscribed galley of THE LITTLE SLEEP by Paul Tremblay (SIGNDGALLEYPTREMBLAY):
Nicholas Curtis of New Paltz, New York, United States
Order ID: 65
Signed copy of Gahan Wilson’s The Cleft and Other Odd Tales (SIGNDBKGWILSON):
Robert Brouhard of Salem, Oregon, United States
Order ID: 61
Signed copy of Cherie Priest’s novel NOT FLESH NOR FEATHERS (NVLCPRIEST2):
Chris McLaren of Hubley, Nova Scotia, Canada
Order ID: 85
Signed copy of the VAMPYRICON trilogy by Douglas Clegg (BKDCLEGG):
Michael Cieslak of Ferndale, Michigan, United States
Order ID: 72
Critique or tuckerization by Ekaterina Sedia (CRITESEDIA):
Mark Huenken of Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Order ID: 81
Tuckerization by Laura Anne Gilman (TUCKLAGILMAN):
Mary Robinette Kowal of New York, New York, United States
Order ID: 113
Three collections by Sheridan Le Fanu, from Ash Tree Press (BOOKLEFANU):
Paul Edson of Alexandria, Virginia, United States
Order ID: 55
Advance copy of Elizabeth Hand’s WONDERWALL (GLLYEHAND):
Lisa Morton of North Hollywood, California, United States
Order ID: 18
Inscribed copies of two essay collections by Michael Dirda (SIGNDMDIRDA):
Edward Jacknitsky of Georgetown, Texas, United States
Order ID: 150
Manuscript critique by Alice Turner (CRITATURNER):
M. M. De Voe of NEW YORK, New York, United States
Order ID: 136
Signed copy of THIRTEEN PHANTASMS by James Blaylock (SIGNDBLAYLOCK1):
Carla Morales of Bronx, New York, United States
Order ID: 48
Novel submission materials critique by Beth Fleisher (CRITBFLEISHER):
Jason Gruber of Homewood, Alabama, United States
Order ID: 130
Carnivorous plant terrarium (PLNTPRIDDELL):
Paul Walther of Hopkins, Minnesota, United States
Order ID: 116
Signed copy of an unproduced screenplay by Stewart O’Nan (SCRPLAYSONAN):
Kristi Petersen Schoonover of Danbury, Connecticut, United States
Order ID: 141
Slip of Paper with Black Spot (BLACKSLIP):
Melissa Higuchi of San Francisco, California, United States
Order ID: 25
A reading copy of THE SKYLARK, Part 1, by Peter Straub (MSCRIPTPSTRAUB):
John Harvey of Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Order ID: 167
Manuscript critique by Helen Atsma (CRITHATSMA):
M. M. De Voe of NEW YORK, New York, United States
Order ID: 136
Graphic novel or comics critque by Chris Claremont (CRITCCLAREMONT):
Karin Huehold of Redwood Meadows, Alberta, Canada
Order ID: 111
NC Literary Review SciFi & Fantasy issue, signed by F. Brett Cox (SIGNDMAGFBCOX):
Geoffrey Goodwin of Natick, Massachusetts, United States
Order ID: 180
Signed copy of THE LIVING DEAD and WASTELANDS (SIGNDJJA):
David J Corwell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Order ID: 74
Signed John Langan’s MR. GAUNT AND OTHER UNEASY ENCOUNTERS (SIGNDJLANGAN):
Barbara Roden of Ashcroft, British Columbia, Canada
Order ID: 39
Payseur & Schmidt Ephemera (EPHEMERA):
Matthew Betts of Columbus, Ohio, United States
Order ID: 181
Manuscript critique by Don D’Auria of Leisure Books (CRITDDAURIA):
Monica ORourke of Astoria, New York, United States
Order ID: 189
Nonworking laptop from Brian Keene (LPTPBKEENE):
Mark Sylva of Blacklick, Ohio, United States
Order ID: 47
Signed galley from Brian Keene of his forthcoming novel, SCRATCH (SIGNDPRFBKEENE):
Dave Perie of Santa Cruz, California, United States
Order ID: 126
Signed bound proof from Brett Savory of his novel IN AND DOWN (SIGNDBKBSAVORY):
Robert Brouhard of Salem, Oregon, United States
Order ID: 61
CROSSROADS, signed by editors F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan (SIGNDBKBCOXADUNCAN):
John Harvey of Providence, Rhode Island, United States
Order ID: 167
Signed, recent limited edition novella by David Niall Wilson (SIGNEDDNWILSON):
Michael Cieslak of Ferndale, Michigan, United States
Order ID: 72
Caitl?n R. Kiernan signed paperback set (SIGNDKIERNAN):
Allyson Bird of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Order ID: 146
Signed, afterword to the novel ONLY CHILD, by Jack Ketchum (SIGNDJKETCHUM2):
Matt Schwartz of Jersey City, New Jersey, United States
Order ID: 94
Signed SPARKS AND SHADOWS & LAUGHING BOY’S SHADOW (SIGNDHWPRESS):
Robert Brouhard of Salem, Oregon, United States
Order ID: 102
Early draft of Mary Robinette Kowal’s forthcoming first novel (ROBINETTEMSS):
Mark Huenken of Aachen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Order ID: 171
Signed afterword, Jack Ketchum: TALES FROM A DARKER STATE antho (SIGNDJKETCHUM3):
Devin Poore of Hoboken, New Jersey, United States
Order ID: 161
Signed Screenplay of Scott Nicholson’s “Appalachian Haunting” (SIGNDSNICHOLSON):
Paul Berger of New York, New York, United States
Order ID: 200
Monday, February 9, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Kelly Link added as a fifth juror for The Shirley Jackson Awards
Kelly Link is fifth juror for Shirley Jackson Awards
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
The website, ShirleyJacksonAwards.org, provides information on the 2007 winners, the award categories, and the selection process.
The jurors for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards are, alphabetically:
F. Brett Cox, co-editor (with Andy Duncan) of Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004); author of numerous short stories, critical essays, and reviews; English faculty at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.
Kelly Link, author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters; winner of three Nebula Awards, a Hugo Award, and a World Fantasy Award. Co-editor, with Gavin J. Grant, of the fantasy half of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror; Co-founder, with Gavin J. Grant, of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
John Langan, author of short story collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime Books) and House of Windows (Night Shade Books, forthcoming 2009) and numerous critical essays and reviews; English faculty at State University of New York-New Paltz.
Sarah Langan, author of novels The Keeper (Harper, 2006; finalist for Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel) and The Missing (Harper, 2007; winner of Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Novel); MFA in Creative Writing, Columbia University; freelance writer currently living in New York City.
Paul G. Tremblay, author of collection Compositions for the Young and Old (Prime Books), novella “City Pier: Above and Below” (Prime, 2007), and novel The Little Sleep (Henry Holt); co-editor of the anthologies Fantasy and Bandersnatch.
The Board of Advisors for the Shirley Jackson Awards includes editor Bill Congreve; award-winning editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow; renowned scholar and editor S.T. Joshi; author and teacher Jack M. Haringa (co-editor, with Joshi, of the critical journal Dead Reckonings); author Mike O’Driscoll; editor Ann VanderMeer; and award-winning and best-selling novelist Stewart O’Nan.
www.shirleyjacksonawards.org
Media representatives who are seeking further information or interviews should contact JoAnn F. Cox: admin at shirleyjacksonawards dot org
In recognition of the legacy of Shirley Jackson’s writing, and with permission of the author’s estate, the Shirley Jackson Awards have been established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.
Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) wrote such classic novels as The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle, as well as one of the most famous short stories in the English language, “The Lottery.” Her work continues to be a major influence on writers of every kind of fiction, from the most traditional genre offerings to the most innovative literary work. National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem has called Jackson “one of this century’s most luminous and strange American writers,” and multiple generations of authors would agree.
The Shirley Jackson Awards are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection, and Edited Anthology.
The website, ShirleyJacksonAwards.org, provides information on the 2007 winners, the award categories, and the selection process.
The jurors for the 2008 Shirley Jackson Awards are, alphabetically:
F. Brett Cox, co-editor (with Andy Duncan) of Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004); author of numerous short stories, critical essays, and reviews; English faculty at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont.
Kelly Link, author of the collections Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters; winner of three Nebula Awards, a Hugo Award, and a World Fantasy Award. Co-editor, with Gavin J. Grant, of the fantasy half of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror; Co-founder, with Gavin J. Grant, of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
John Langan, author of short story collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime Books) and House of Windows (Night Shade Books, forthcoming 2009) and numerous critical essays and reviews; English faculty at State University of New York-New Paltz.
Sarah Langan, author of novels The Keeper (Harper, 2006; finalist for Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel) and The Missing (Harper, 2007; winner of Bram Stoker Award Winner for Superior Achievement in a Novel); MFA in Creative Writing, Columbia University; freelance writer currently living in New York City.
Paul G. Tremblay, author of collection Compositions for the Young and Old (Prime Books), novella “City Pier: Above and Below” (Prime, 2007), and novel The Little Sleep (Henry Holt); co-editor of the anthologies Fantasy and Bandersnatch.
The Board of Advisors for the Shirley Jackson Awards includes editor Bill Congreve; award-winning editor and anthologist Ellen Datlow; renowned scholar and editor S.T. Joshi; author and teacher Jack M. Haringa (co-editor, with Joshi, of the critical journal Dead Reckonings); author Mike O’Driscoll; editor Ann VanderMeer; and award-winning and best-selling novelist Stewart O’Nan.
www.shirleyjacksonawards.org
Media representatives who are seeking further information or interviews should contact JoAnn F. Cox: admin at shirleyjacksonawards dot org
Closed to submissions for 2008
We are now closed to publisher submissions to The Shirley Jackson Awards for works published in 2008.
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