Tag Archives: genre

An Interview with Michael Griffin

Happy Walpurgisnacht! Today marks the release of Michael Griffin‘s The Lure of Devouring Light. We’re currently launching the book with Mike at the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival in San Pedro, but a few days ago, Sean M. Thompson interviewed Mike about the collection.

The Lure of Devouring Light by Michael Griffin

What do you feel the role of genre is in fiction?

Genre is especially useful for booksellers, marketers and publishers. I think genre divisions are useful for people trying to find their way toward work they would enjoy, as a way of herding together works that share certain traits. From the opposite perspective, that of a writer, I would stop short of saying genre is a negative thing, as I’ve seen some other writers say. Some writers gladly align themselves to a genre, wear it like a badge on their sleeve, and go around proudly waving the flag. Many writers, though, don’t want to think about it too much, and look at genre as a necessary thing unavoidably imposed upon them. The writers I most respect pretty much seem to do what they want to do without consciously aiming at a certain genre target. The create the work, and their agent or their publisher or the critics decide what it is. I think this last approach makes the most sense to me, but I don’t want to disparage those who are flag-wavers for their chosen territory, and who exclusively write (and read) within it.

How do you think the weird has evolved in modern fiction, if you think it has at all?

I used to believe the weird had evolved a lot, but the more widely I read beyond the obvious starting point (Lovecraft) the more I discovered examples of weird writers throughout history creating all kinds of challenging and diversely varied stuff. I do feel that in the last ten or fifteen years, the number of people writing truly strong, individual work is higher than it has ever been before. But I no longer believe that the kind of thing being written now is entirely different in kind from what came before my lifetime. Maybe a slow evolution.

You’ve told me before you’re a proponent of a lot of edits. What’s the most you’ve ever edited your work?

There are different kinds of edits. I used to line edit endlessly, second-guessing word choices, adding commas, changing pronouns and shifting around phrases. That’s still important, and I spend a lot of time trying to get every word and every sentence just right. Certainly more important, though, is editing with a wider angle of view. By this I mean looking at the overall shape or trajectory of the story, maybe trimming or adding entire pages or even scenes. Once I start writing, I continue to pause, step back and look at my stories with a wider view. Sometimes I do what I call a “reverse outline,” where I look at the structure of the story as it’s written, and I create an outline from it. This helps me find things like jumps in logic, or especially repetition. Sometimes in a reverse outline I discover something like, “Hey, I don’t really need to have him visit the lawyer’s office and talk about the case in scene 9 because he basically did the same thing in scene 6.” I make sure each piece of the story contributes something, or else it gets changed or removed. I have to say, I read a lot of stories that could benefit from this kind of structural analysis. Very often stories include dead scenes or repetitive sections. But to answer the original question, I have stories I’ve reworked at least 20-30 times, and quite a few that have gone through more than 10 versions. As I get better at this, so I make fewer mistakes and follow fewer dead-ends to begin with, it seems like I’m able to get by with fewer drafts, maybe four to six.

What is the significance of the title of your collection?

First of all, it’s the title of the lead story, so that’s why it’s the title of the collection, not just because it’s the first story but because it’s also representative of what I do, and a good opener, neither too long nor too short, and not too confusing. But to explain the significance of the story’s title, I’d say something that’s important to me is to avoid the too-easy trap of Horror and Weird writers making everything “black” and “dark.” There’s certainly plenty of darkness and nighttime and black imagery in my work, but I’m interested in different kinds of fear and unease. Also, the story makes the point that sometimes people or things that are dangerous or malicious don’t in fact appear horrifying or gruesome. They may be appealing, attractive or seductive. They have something to offer, something to draw us nearer, otherwise we would just run the other direction.

How do you think your style has changed from when you first started writing?

My style hasn’t changed too much, in terms of how I tend to build sentences. What has changed is that my way of conveying to the reader what’s happening has shifted to give a perspective from inside the mind and senses of the point of view character. As much as possible, everything should be filtered through the mechanism by which this person makes sense of their surroundings and what they see and hear unfolding around them. I guess a simpler way to say this would be that I try hard to make the point of view more subjective.

Ultimately what do you hope readers take away from The Lure of Devouring Light?

Aside from the obvious, like wanting to provide entertainment or enjoyment, the outcome I most hope for is that readers will find the characters believable, convincing human beings. I also hope some of the images or situations will linger in the mind after the reading is done.

An Interview with E. Catherine Tobler

Sean recently chatted with E. Catherine Tobler, author of the wildly entertaining Folley & Mallory Adventures as well as a number of our favorite short stories. Here’s what transpired.

What do you think the role of genre is in fiction?

I’m not certain what true purpose genre has beyond acting as a guideline for the reader, maybe–though the more I read, the less I’m convinced of “genre,” as bits of one tend to end up in another, and work out perfectly fine. As a writer, the same is true for me; why not use whatever you like in whatever “genre” they think you’re writing?

Tales of Jack the Ripper edited by Ross E. Lockhart

Your story from Tales of Jack the Ripper, what was the genesis of it?

“Once, November,” came pretty easy, because I wanted to take a route I didn’t think anyone else would. I suspected authors would write about the Ripper–and rightly so–but I wanted to explore his victims–who they were even after their violent deaths; I hope I’ve done them justice in some small way.

Do you find that you work quickly, slowly, or a little of both?

It depends entirely on what I’m working on; writers are surely some of the finest procrastinators on the planet. A good work ethic is important to me–maybe it’s doubly important when you’re your own boss. No one is looking over your shoulder, so if you don’t get the work done, the work doesn’t get done. And I can’t stand that. So we get it done–usually ahead of schedule.

Giallo Fantastique edited by Ross E. Lockhart

What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever read?

Lately, the daily news. In terms of fiction, I think my answer will change depending on when I’m asked. Presently, I’d say “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood. Both contain a horror that is timeless–and possibly not much different from the daily news these days…

What’s the longest you’ve ever edited a piece for?

Sometimes, stories don’t come so easily. I had an idea for one that actually took me eleven years to get right–so that’s probably the longest. It wasn’t that I actively edited or pursued it during those years, however. I wrote the draft, and knew it wasn’t right, but the idea of it still wouldn’t leave me alone. So every now and then we’d talk over coffee and see if we learned anything new about each other. Eventually, we came to terms and it sold to a pro market.

What did you enjoy about working with Ross as an editor?

I’ve worked with Ross on two projects now, Tales of Jack the Ripper, and Giallo Fantastique. Both times he was very welcoming and open to whatever this writer wanted to do. Also, his beer reviews and hair are complete perks.

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Got anything to plug?

The Honey Mummy, the third book in the Folley & Mallory Adventures, is out now, with the fourth volume out this coming fall. My circus novel, The Kraken Sea, is out this June from Apex Book Company. Short fiction is soon to appear again in both Interzone and Clarkesworld.

Xmas Hiatus / An Interview with John Langan

We’ll be taking a short break this week in order to spend the Xmas holiday with family, but we’ll be back to shipping orders on December 29. In the meantime, we’d encourage you to order Word Horde from the better bookstore near you. And to fill your stocking with Holiday Horrors, here’s Sean’s interview with John Langan.

What do you think the role of genre is in fiction?

I think of genre as a fundamental component of narrative (and here I’m using genre as Michael Chabon does in his introduction to Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, to indicate regions in a country, as compared to countries on a globe). It’s inescapable: every story has a context, has a set of texts to which it is related. To me, this is something to be celebrated and explored.

Your story from The Children of Old Leech, “Ymir,” deals with the Norse myth of, well Ymir. Do you often like to draw from myths in your work?

I love myth; I love comparative mythology. No doubt, I was led to it via comic books, The Mighty Thor in particular. When I was a kid, most of the books I could find dealt with Greek and Roman myth; although there were a couple about the Norse pantheon. I picked up a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology when I was eleven or twelve, and it laid the Greek and Roman myths out in order; there was also a brief section at the end about the Norse deities. Hamilton remains my go-to; though I loved Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (so much I named a character in a story after him [actually, he’s shown up in a few stories]). I suppose the differences between the Greek and Roman treatments of a figure such as Ares/Mars were what led me to an interest in comparative mythology, which was fed by reading both in other mythologies and in literary critics such as Northrop Frye, who pointed out the underlying similarities among mythic narratives. Especially given the current predominance of the Cthulhu mythos in fantastic fiction, the older myths can provide a welcome alternative narrative context.

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I know you can’t say a lot about your upcoming novel, The Fisherman, but what can you say about the novel?

The Fisherman tells the story of a fishing trip two widowers take to a haunted river that promises to allow them one last meeting with their loved ones. In the middle of that, they learn some of the occult history of the construction of the Ashokan Reservoir in upstate New York. Terrible things ensue. I hope to have more news to share about the book in the near future.

Have you ever wondered why memory works the way it does? Why some things burn themselves into your brain, but others won’t stay unless you go over them over and over?

Yes, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about memory and the way it functions. It’s at the heart of some of my favorite writers’ works: Ford’s The Good Solider, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Light in August and Absalom, Absalom!, Straub’s Ghost Story and Koko and Mrs. God. Proust and Eliot both obsess over the relationship between memory and time. The nature of memory is at the heart of the way influence functions, I think, which is one of my academic preoccupations. I did some reading of trauma theory years ago—especially Cathy Caruth’s Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History—as a way to approach questions of memory and influence (in light of what you might call traumatic memory, I suppose). Caruth explores the idea that it’s the very wound in your psyche that allows you to speak, which is kind of an updating of the argument that Edmund Wilson made decades earlier in The Wound and the Bow and which I’m not sure I (completely) agree with. At the same time, I think of Kirk’s declaration, in the otherwise-atrocious Star Trek V, that he won’t relinquish the pain in his life, because that’s what makes him who he is. To take things down a notch, it may very well be that the things that lodge in your memory, from annoying tunes to bits of dialogue to images you can’t place, are part of the material from which you construct yourself.

Do you consider yourself a weird fiction author, a horror author, or do you simply think of yourself as an author?

I think of myself as a writer working within the horror tradition. If someone wants to call me a horror writer, I’m fine with that. I’m also fine with being called a weird writer; though, to be frank, much of what has been included under the weird umbrella strikes me as a semantic fig leaf, horror writing looking to rebrand itself with a more appealing name.

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I remember hearing in passing that you, sir, are a fan of comic books. What are some of your favorites, and do you think that comics have influenced your work in any way?

Comics played a foundational role in my development, first as a reader, then as a writer. I became interested in comics during the seventies, when Marv Wolfman and Roy Thomas were working on The Amazing Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian, respectively. I followed Wolfman’s work on Spidey, The Fantastic Four, and then The Teen Titans and Night Force; recently, I picked up the black and white reprints of his and Gene Colan’s Tomb of Dracula. During the later seventies, there were paperback reprints of the first issues of The Amazing Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four, and this introduced me to Stan Lee and Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. When I was a little older, I discovered Alan Moore’s work on Swamp Thing, which led me to The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and pretty much anything by Moore I could get my hands on. In more recent years, I’ve been a fan of Gaiman’s Sandman, Mike Carey’s Lucifer and Unwritten, and Bill Willingham’s Fables. The entire run of DC’s Hellblazer was probably my single favorite comic, ever: pretty much every writer who worked on it rose to the occasion and produced some of their best work, ever. Lately, I’ve been reading Eric Powell’s The Goon, which I love for its astonishing, Bernie-Wrightson-esque art, and for the way it swerves wildly between raucous comedy and utter pathos, and the books in the Hellboy universe, especially The B.P.R.D., which seems to me unparalleled in its portrayal of a world dealing with the consequences of an ongoing apocalypse. I could talk about comics all day.
As to how they influenced me: when I was younger, I aspired to work in comics, first as an artist, then as an artist-writer. I think the Marvel comics I was reading when I was very young showed what you could do if you brought a relative degree of realism to your fantastic situations, if your superheroes struggled to balance their private and public lives, if they operated in a world something like ours. At their best, those Marvel books are master-classes in melodrama. Alan Moore’s work built on all of that, deepening the characters’ psychologies and thinking through the implications of their powers and places in the world more thoroughly. Gaiman, Carey, Willingham, and the Mignola crew constructed elaborate mythologies that they followed through long, intricate narratives.

How much of a role do you think where you live has to do with the type of fictional landscape you choose to create?

It would seem it has to have some connection, wouldn’t it? In my own case, I wonder how much my use of the mid-Hudson Valley in my work has to do with the fact that this is where I was living when I started to read those writers who made use of their particular places, Stephen King and William Faulkner (though I’m pretty sure I was planning a comic book set in this region before that, so maybe I’m wrong [or maybe I was responding to Stan Lee et. al.’s use of Manhattan and its environs…])? And yet, there have been places I’ve been to, Glencoe in Scotland, the varied landscape of Kentucky, that struck me the moment I saw them, and that have stuck with me since then. It’s funny, Simon Schama wrote an interesting book, Landscape and Memory, that touches on a couple of these interview questions.

Thanks for stopping by. Long live the Word Horde.

Thank you!

For more on all things John Langan, visit his website, or, better yet, read one (or more) of his books.

An interview with Bram Stoker Award-winning author Laird Barron

Sean M. Thompson recently sat down with Laird Barron, the Bram Stoker Award-winning author who inspired our Shirley Jackson Award-nominated anthology The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron, to ask him a few questions.

How did it feel to hear that Ross and Word Horde wanted to publish a collection in homage to your work?

I wasn’t keen on it initially. However, I trust Ross. He and Justin Steele worked hard to put the anthology together and avoid pastiche. The contributing authors wrote great stories. It was a humbling experience and altogether fascinating to see what bits and pieces of my universe they responded to. The anthology succeeded, so all’s well, et cetera.

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What do you think the role of genre is in fiction?

Genre is a default, a convention. You start with horror as a broad concept and that’s genre. Then you subdivide and subdivide, or you strike out into other territory. For an author, it’s the beginning of a conversation. For editors and publishers and booksellers, it’s often the end of a conversation.

What scares you?

My dog stood at the top of the steps yesterday, deciding. After a while she limped down and we went outside. She trotted around the yard once, then collapsed in a patch of sun and looked at me and panted. Her eyes are getting a blue tint and her face is going white. I couldn’t egg her into playing like we used to do. Back in the house, she drank some water, curled up on the couch in my office and began to snore. I sat for a long time, adding the numbers, moving them around, looking for loopholes—people years versus dog years, what I have got left versus what she has left. I couldn’t make it add up to anything equitable.

Do you have anything in particular you like to do during the fall season?

Late August through October is my favorite stretch of the year. As I write this, I’m living in the countryside in the Hudson Valley. There are massive stands of sycamore around the house, a dairy farm across the road, and farther on, fields, streams and foothills of the Catskills. Way back in the day, this was the season I’d return home from the cannery or salmon processor and start cart training my team of sled dogs. I’d hook them up to my old Ford truck or a four-wheeler and we’d cruise for miles on back country roads. These days, long walks through farmland suffices, but I admit, the smell of September dampness and cold dirt still gets me.

Would you consider a hip, new iteration of your infamous cosmic monster-deity: Young Leechy?

I think the Cartoon Network should be brought in on this.

What’s your favorite dog from a novel?

Buck from The Call of the Wild. I’m also partial to Blood from A Boy and His Dog.

What’s the scariest part of where you currently reside in upstate New York? Is it John Langan’s bear hugs? (optional to answer second part of question)

I am nimble enough to evade John’s bear hugs. It’s between him and Paul Tremblay now.

Nothing is particularly scary about the Hudson Valley, although I have a lot of exploring to do. Closing in on four years since I moved here from the west. The geography (old towns surrounded by dense forest; mountains, rivers, caves…) appeals to me as does the rich history. There’s a distinct sense of wildness at the edge of civilization. It will influence my writing in years to come. And I hope some of that will be scary.

An interview with Molly Tanzer, author of Vermilion

Recently, intrepid interviewer Sean M. Thompson spoke with author Molly Tanzer about Vermilion, the role of genre in fiction, and more. Here it is…

Molly Tanzer

What made you want to release Vermilion with Ross and Word Horde?

I’ve worked with Ross on a number of short projects, and over the years I’ve also enjoyed many of the novels he acquired and edited for Night Shade, so I’ve known for a long time that he’s a great editor. And, given that we once discussed our mutual love for the Mr. Vampire series of films, which in part inspired the book, I figured having my agent send it his way wasn’t a bad idea.

What do you think the role of genre is in fiction?

People have to figure out where to shelve books in bookshops!

This is actually something that’s been on my mind for a while. Genre tropes are fascinating things, and playing with them can be really fun. For example, I deliberately inverted the tropes of the Western for Vermilion. But, I also think genre can be a crutch; it can keep both writers and readers searching for the same things over and over again, or at least keep them comfortable with one thing instead of exploring.

Do you prefer dogs, or cats?

Cats.

Do you have any writing rituals?

Every day, I get up, give myself a coffee enema, then submerge myself in a bathtub full of ice water for thirty minutes. I shiver myself dry after climbing onto the roof. Only then am I ready to strap my ankles into my inversion desk and write exactly 2500 words. The muse is cruel, but I must follow where she takes me.

Are you someone that comes up with story titles first, or do you usually come up with them later into the process?

It really depends! Vermilion wasn’t the original title of the novel, and yes, I did come up with that title before writing the novel. That happens for me just as frequently as writing something and then struggling like hell to figure out what to call it.

What’s your favorite Western?

In terms of Western films, I’d have to say a tie between Red River and The Good, The Bad, and the Weird. Novels, definitely True Grit.

Would you say that we are in the midst of a new weird renaissance?

No, I usually don’t say things like that!

Do you have any plans to delve into another less explored genre to do a mash up, such as…
Uh…

Yes!

Vermilion by Molly Tanzer

Ask for Vermilion wherever better books are sold.