Your writing is some of the most deliciously dark, disturbing, and intriguing that I’ve come across in some time. What deep shadowy recesses of your mind do your ideas come from? My ideas actually come from an abandoned post office in Topeka. There’s a homeless gentleman there called OneShoe Phil who hands me a cardboard box every three months. In the box is a scrapbook of ideas cobbled together by crass, conjurors hands. I choose one. The rest I feed to a goat. When that fails though, I just use my brain. I pull a few ideas from the dark places. I pull a few ideas from happier places (probably at a 3:1 ratio) then I smash them together and see what happens.
on coming. At the same time, it’s that inescapable nature of it that is frustrating. It feels like fate is locked tight into place, that we can do nothing to dodge the bullet that tumbles in painful slow motion toward our heads. Miriam is an expression of how it feels to be trapped by death and pinned by fate. And, in a sense she’s a power fantasy (albeit a rather grim, snarky, chain-smoking fantasy) about breaking out of that trap. In that mode of existence and further, she’s a fantasy (albeit a rather grim, snarky, chainsmoking fantasy) about breaking out of that mode. She’s the pivot point between fate versus free will and I think we’ve all felt like that from time to time. The question becomes: which way will we pivot?
Do you bounce ideas off of the people around you before beginning a new story or are you more of a “get it on paper, feed it to be public and then see if they squeal, gasp, or puke” kind of guy? I no longer bounce my ideas off anyone. In part because a story is more than the sum of a single idea and I’ve found that sometimes you’ll put the idea out there and if the reaction isn’t just right, it defeats some of your enthusiasm for it. Better to get it on paper, see if it flies or dies.
“Everything I write feels like my greatest love and my dearest enemy, and perhaps more importantly, each piece is itself a profound teacher.”
Have you ever written something that made you shock even yourself? Ever have moments when you think, “Oh this has just gone too far”? Is there anything that actually is too far? I went back and re-read Blackbirds in preparation of writing Mockingbird and, yeah, damn, I forgot just how double-fucked some of the stuff in that book happens to be. Not the gross stuff. I can deal with that. Like, there’s a scene in Double Dead involving the vampire and a morbidly obese cannibal queen that is probably the most epic, disgusting thing I’ve ever written. But that doesn’t disturb me. It’s stuff that cuts deeper. The knife that sticks in the heart and mind is far crueler than the one that pierces the gut. Blackbirds has a few of those scenes. Actually my newest, Bait Dog, has some real “uhoh” moments too. Writing about dogfights and teen abuse is tough stuff. One of your standout characters is Miriam Black from your novels Blackbirds and Mockingbird. She’s an extremely strong, outspoken, outrageous woman with just enough under the surface to keep the reader liking her. What was the basis for Miriam’s character? What pieces of your own self are built into who she is and what she becomes? Miriam grows out of my own experiences with death. Death is a great equalizer. None of us escape the Grim Reaper’s cattle-catcher because that train just keeps 36 www.fourculture.com | ISSUE TWO
What about the character Coburn from Double Dead? With the entire vampire/ zombie/werewolf craze out there these days, what goal did you have in mind with creating this character? I just didn’t want my vampire to sparkle. I like my vampires to be monsters. The only way Coburn glitters is if he eats a stripper. The fun part about him was taking this monster and putting him in a world where he must cultivate a kind of non-monstrousness to survive. The added benefit is playing with that idea that vampires are subverted humans. They’re not monsters from birth but they’re made that way by circumstance. The human soul and psyche still remain somewhere inside of him, though buried under layers and layers of “bloodsucking asshole.” Err, not a literal bloodsucking asshole, because, ew. Though maybe that’ll be my next story. You’ve written many short stories, some of which you’ve anthologized. Have you ever thought any of them deserved to be expanded into novels?