Maps and Metamorphoses

It’s February 2nd, and that marks the day when we shift from maps to chitin. Submissions for The Journal of Unlikely Cartography are now officially closed, and we are now accepting buggy fiction for The Journal of Unlikely Entomology.

In the meantime, we’re pulling together final artwork and such for The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography, which will be out mid-month.

Thanks to everyone who submitted their work, and, of course, to our readers, without whom there would be little point in all this work.

Unlikely Story Acceptances – ToC and (dis)Honorable Mentions

Well, it’s done. We’ve read the Journal of Unlikely Story Acceptances slush. We’ve discussed it. We’ve re-read some of them and discussed some more (thank Dog they’re short). And now we’re ready to give you a taste of the pain that we inflicted upon ourselves.

With a couple exceptions, most of the stories were bad. Really bad. A good many descended into awful. Ten stories stood out as Exceptionally Awful. Sadly, we can’t publish all of them. Budgets are a harsh mistress. And we had to make some tough choices.

The Worst of the Worst (AKA The Journal of Unlikely Story Acceptances ToC):

War of the Were-Mice by Julie Frost

Why, Ethan, Why?!?!? 🙁 by Brynn MacNab, regrettably

All Flesh is Grass by Kelda Crich

Whinny If You Love Me: A Love Story by Andrew Kaye

Twisty by Siobhan Gallagher

Runners-Up:

A Dark and Stormy Night by Somebody Who Definitely Is Not Mari Ness Or Any of Her Alter Egos. Really.

The Bestest Story I Got (With Helpful Comments from the Writer in Magenta) by A.T. Greenblatt

The Sanguine Prophecies: Book One: A Destiny Revealed by Virginia Campen

Look Inside by Melaine Rees

Neville, the Crime-Fighting Locomotive by Oliver Buckrum

~

There was so much badness in this set of submissions that we couldn’t possibly mention it all, but in a clear case of misery loving company, we wanted to take this opportunity to inflict additional pain upon our readers. We have a few (dis)Honorable Mentions, for worst title, and a few (very) special categories.

(dis)Honorable Mentions:

Worst Title (that didn’t already make it to the ToC):

The Sanguine Prophecies: Book One: A Destiny Revealed by Virginia Campen

For Whom the Bellhop Always Rings Twice by John A. McColley

How Legends of Monsters Begin by Jennifer Linnaea

Why Zombies Started Eating Living Brains by Ronald D. Ferguson

Best (worst) gratuitous use of dinosaurs with bells and zombies and the phrase Dark and Stormy Night:

A Dark and Stormy Night by Somebody Who Definitely Is Not Mari Ness Or Any of Her Alter Egos. Really.

Worst example of breaking our rule about no bodily functions:

Appearances by Deva Shore

Best cutesy use of puns/best clever inside-joke for writers. Also for it not actually being a story:

The Style of Elements by Jetse DeVries

Best (worst) use of an actual author as a fiction character:

Neil at the Moon by Hunter Liguore

Best (worst) reference to a classic genre story:

The Ink-Writing Man by Josh Vogt

Best (worst) (most redundant) (like, the same simile 13 times in 600 words) use of similes:

A Fish in the Sea by Jonas David

Best story (by which we mean, was actually a fun and clever story that wasn’t horrible):

Clause of Doom by Vajra Chandrasekera

~

The Journal of Unlikely Story Acceptances will (dis)grace our website on April Fool’s Day, 2014.

Author Interview – Mark Rigney

I [editor A.C. Wise] am a sucker for “found” stories. Was there a particular inspiration for Found Items that made you structure it as a series of audio tapes as opposed to a straightforward narrative?

I wrote this story maybe eight years ago, sent it out a few times, got rejected, and shoved it in a box. (The box was metaphorical; I keep stories in folders on my Mac, not in a box.) Anyway, now that eight years have passed, I no longer recall anything about the story’s genesis except that I adore cicadas, and that I remain fascinated by the combination of abject poverty and exceptional natural beauty that pervades Kentucky’s Red River Gorge area. As to why I put “Found Items” together as a disjunctional Blair Witch story, I truly have no idea. I wish I did. No doubt it had something do with imitation, an attempt to recreate something I’d read.

This is the second story of yours that we’ve published, so obviously we’re fans of your work. One of the things that keeps us hooked is the way you use each character’s voice to make them real and unique. This is critical in good writing, but also dangerous. Do you have any tips for accomplishing this, without falling into stereotype and caricature?

The great argument in favor of first person writing is that it so clearly denotes character. The danger is you wind up channeling yourself, ad nauseum. Third person (as with “The Latest Incarnation of Secondhand Johnny,” the first story Unlikely Story took on) is, theoretically, a medium of distance, a stratagem that establishes a relatively cool and unbiased viewpoint. This, of course, is balderdash. Or at least potential balderdash. Both first and third (not to mention second) person can step back, or can race in close. Consider the epistolary story, where two or more first person accounts vie for supremacy, and do so, usually, at a cautious remove. Consider unreliable narrators. Consider the plight of the baby harp seal!

Caricature stems from a lack of authenticity and heart, which in a story usually arises from one of three things: one, a lack of respect on the part of the writer for the character(s) being featured, which leads directly to stereotyping; two, a lack of any deeper understanding of said character(s); and three, a tendency to “write lite” and not delve into meaningful, substantive issues. I spent twenty years doing the latter (and one writer called me on it, screenwriter Harve Bennet). If age has done me any good at all, it’s my course correction away from low-cal story-telling.

What is your writing process like typically? Or do you have a different process for every story?

Every day is different. Two nights ago, at a Wyndam Hotel in Indianapolis, where I’d gone to––oh, never mind. Suffice it to say, I was there, and so was the Wyndham. My point is, I filled three small hotel notepad sheets with what will surely be the opening four chapters of my next novel. I scratched down a series of ideas, scraps of dialogue, and essential conflicts. This inspirational flurry began at twelve-thirty in the morning, and lasted for about twenty minutes, after which I went to sleep. Three days later, I’ve started “writing my notes,” and to my delight, they make sense, sense of the best kind: story sense.

On a good week, I write Monday through Friday, when my boys are in school, from about eight in the morning until about two in the afternoon, with a lunch break where I watch soccer or (in fragments) a movie. Around two it’s exercise time, and after that I’m Mr. Mom, a transportation chief, a grocery expert, and an unparalleled laundry-folding machine. Keeping those school hours sacrosanct is an ongoing battle that I often lose. Yes, I gather some writers write every day. If they have kids, and they’re also responsible for the house, meals, and the yard, I must say that that seems to me to be impossible.

What is your favorite piece of insect-related fiction?

My favorite piece of fish-related fiction is Swimmy, by Leo Lionni, but insects? Not Dr. Who and the Zarbi, no. Oh, bother! No, I’ve got it now. A.A. Milne. “In Which We Are Introduced to Winnie-the-Pooh and Some Bees, and the Stories Begin.”

As we mature, our relationship with the creepy-crawly elements of the world changes, as does our emotional (and sometimes physical) response. Can you tell us one early or notable experience you’ve had with bugs that helped shape how you view them?

Arachnids jump out more than bugs, primarily because mosquitoes, when they bother to bite me, do not leave a mark and do not make me itch. With spiders, I will never forget entering a Grand Canyon outhouse far down the North Rim’s Phantom Ranch trail, and discovering, once seated, that the entire outhouse, including the door and the lock, was infested with black widows. All sizes, with many egg sacs, and a curtain of fine-spun webbing. This might sound like a horrific encounter to many readers, but I was rapt. Careful, too. I may even admit to (slightly) speeding up my essential business.

What have you read recently/what are you reading currently/what is on your TBR pile that you’re excited about?

I’m excited about The Orphan Master’s Son, which I gather won the Pulitzer, and lurks now on my bed stand, alongside the various nightmares from my closet. I’m re-reading Little, Big, by John Crowley, which is even more brilliant on a second go-round, and I just polished off all nine hundred and eighty pages of Ken Follett’s The Pillars Of the Earth. I also just finished Issue #1 of Betwixt Magazine.

What are you working on now/what do you have upcoming that you want people to know about?

Since you asked about voice, I must talk up The Skates, Sleeping Bear, and Check-Out Time, all of which are part of my growing stable of Renner & Quist stories with Samhain Publishing. The first two are novellas, and The Skates is available (eBook only, because of its short length) right now. Reverend Renner, a petite, prissy Unitarian Universalist minister, and Dale Quist, an ex-P.I. and former linebacker, are as different as night and day, and the structural conceit of all these tales is that both men get their say, in first-person, in alternating chapters. Thus I get to indulge in Renner’s very erudite, sometimes smug voice, and then jump ship to Quist, who prides himself on being a straight-shooting pragmatist. Both men are (to their chagrin) sensistized to the supernatural, and that’s where their adventures take flight. If I had to peg these books, I’d call them literary horror, a throwback to the days when nobody had dreamed up the carnage of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the unseen remained more frightening than the seen. I’m working on the next in the sequence today, tentatively titled Bonesy. Remember the notes I took in the hotel, a few questions back? That’s Bonesy.

We all start somewhere, and the learning curve from first publication is a steep one. What’s your first ever published work, and how do you feel about it now?

Aside from newspaper work in high school, my first published piece was “The American-Made Bomb Speaks Out,” in Bibliophilos. It’s satire, really, and not strictly fiction. I think it holds up well. I dare you to seek it out.

Since we’re coming up on the holiday season, and there’s no escaping it -- what is your favorite holiday-related entertainment (movie, TV special, song/album, book or story)? What is your least favorite?

If there’s a piece of music in the galaxy more endlessly inventive than Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite, I’d like to know what it is. (The Tales of Hoffman from which it came are also well worth the time). That said, I’m a big fan of Clarisse the reindeer singing “There’s Always Tomorrow,” and when Yukon Cornelius hollers, “Didn’t I ever tell you? Bumbles bounce!” I become, in an instant, seven years old. I love that man.

Least favorite? Maybe that Cheech & Chong Xmas song…

One of the perennial points of contention in the world revolves around education -- who should get educated (and to what degree), what should be taught, who should be excluded. Meanwhile, children in their classrooms ask, “Why do I need to know this?” Tell us one obscure thing you learned in school that you think is important, and why.

I learned to sew in seventh grade “home ec.” But what really sticks out is economics proper. College-level economics should be required of all college grads, two semesters at least.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

Laird Barron’s “Bulldozer.” Makes the world tilt and go dark. Karen Joy Fowler’s “What I Didn’t See.” Forces you to go back and immediately re-read. “The Screwfly Solution,” by Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.) is perhaps my favorite sci-fi or spec fic story of all time, rivaled closely by Keith Roberts’ “Timothy.” The greatest novel ever written is The Once and Future King by T.H. White, with The Book Of Merlyn included, as it was meant to be and (to my knowledge) never has been yet.

Author Interview – Dennis Tafoya

In addition to being an effective horror story with a post-apocalyptic feel, The New World has an undercurrent of social and historical commentary, particularly as it relates to colonialism and the work done by religious missionaries. Did you set out wanting to write on that subject through the speculative fiction lens, or did those undertones creep into the story later?

The idea I started with was ‘bugs from another world.’ It takes me a ridiculously long time to write a short story, and during that time I read God’s Jury, Cullen Murphy’s beautiful and terrifying history of the Inquisition. It got me thinking about the religious component of the clash of cultures. The moral certainty that drove the ferocity of the subjugation of the Americas came out of the Church. Or at least it gave a moral framework to support that desire for conquest. Like it says in Romans, “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

What is your writing process like typically? Or do you have a different process for every story?

My process is all over the place. I write most productively when something comes out of the ether and hits my brain the right way. So, when I’m not working my day job I’m trying to expose myself to as much of the things that might do that; good books, poetry, art, strange music and good conversation. Having writer pals who understand helps!

What is your favorite piece of insect-related fiction?

Oh, there’s so much great stuff to choose from it’s hard to pick one thing. I remember reading “Leiningen Versus the Ants” in junior high school and being captivated by the fact that there really were such things as army ants, and my favorite story by Stephen King is “The Mist,” with its giant, mutated dragonflies and spiders. And I could go on about bug movies for days.

As we mature, our relationship with the creepy-crawly elements of the world changes, as does our emotional (and sometimes physical) response. Can you tell us one early or notable experience you’ve had with bugs that helped shape how you view them?

When I was a kid my friends and I spent all our time wandering the woods and fields around our neighborhood in suburban Maryland. I remember once coming on a spider suspended between two trees. It was probably a black and yellow garden spider – they typically get to be a couple of inches across, but I remember it as being this huge, bulbous thing as big as my hand. After that, my imagination had them lurking everywhere. I don’t think I’ve ever really gotten used to big bugs.

What are you working on now/what do you have upcoming that you want people to know about?

My next novel from St. Martin’s is coming in April. It’s called The Poor Boy’s Game, and it’s a crime novel, though it’s really about family, as are all my novels. The plot centers on a woman, an ex-federal marshal, who has to protect someone from her own father, a vicious thug and career criminal.

One of the perennial points of contention in the world revolves around education -- who should get educated (and to what degree), what should be taught, who should be excluded. Meanwhile, children in their classrooms ask, “Why do I need to know this?” Tell us one obscure thing you learned in school that you think is important, and why.

Oh, all the best, most interesting stuff is obscure to somebody. I was fascinated by the labor movement when I was young and remember reading about things like the Boston Police Strike and the Battle of Blair Mountain. Learning that companies would drop bombs on American workers to avoid paying living wages to folk who mined coal was pretty central to my understanding of the way things work.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

I don’t know if he would be considered obscure, but I love, love Tom Drury’s work. He wrote one of my favorite novels, The End of Vandalism, centering on a group of wonderful and seemingly very ordinary characters in a small midwestern town and his latest, Pacific, picks up the same characters years later. He’s one of those amazing writers who turn the smallest exchange into something both entertaining and revelatory about human frailty.

Unlikely Story #7 Reviewed

Unlikely Story #7 received a positive review from SFRevu in their January Issue. Congratulations to all our authors!

Slush Update

However unlikely it might seem, we’re running a bit behind with slush responses, particularly for the Unlikely Acceptances Issue. Between work, holidays, sickness, travel, and all the other pesky details of day to day life, we need a smidgen more time to get caught up. If you haven’t heard from us within our usual four-weeks, don’t panic. We’ll do our best to get back on track over the next week or two and send out responses as soon as we can. Thank you for your patience and best wishes for the start of the new year. May it be an unlikely one in all the best possible ways!

Author Interview – Nghi Vo

The theme of one insect using another as a host for its eggs, or an insect masquerading as human impregnating another human is one that turns up frequently in fiction, but in Pompilid you avoid the common tropes of body horror, holding the impregnation back as the surprise twist, or using the story as a thinly-veiled commentary on gender roles and relationships. Was this something you consciously set out to do? If not, what did you have in the back of your mind as you wrote this story?

When I first started as a writer, I was in love with splatterpunk, and there’s a part of me that still delights in being the gross kid who likes to throw worms at people. This story comes from that, and from a picture that I found when I was about 7. It was in a book about animals, and it featured a wasp entombing a tarantula in the way that’s described in the story. That picture and the description of the process fascinated me, and to me, the story never needed to be anything beyond a conversation conducted over a process that was both brutal and perfect. It never needed to be about humans or about how we see ourselves reflected in this intimate and ultimately fatal relationship. While they’re necessarily anthropomorphic, I wanted to keep the wasps and the tarantula a lot colder and more matter-of-fact than people are. I wanted to the tarantula to be resentful, but not furious or terribly fearful, and I wanted the wasps to see this as a perfectly natural, beautiful thing. I wanted us to see the process as they did.

What is your writing process like typically? Or do you have a different process for every story?

My writing process is a lot like trying to push a stuck cart down a hill. At first, it takes a lot of time, effort and research, and everything feels hard as I try to get the cart moving. After a while, the cart picks up its own momentum, and then I can just worry about making sure it doesn’t crash horribly. During times like this, I can knock out 5000 words without a problem, though whether they are good words or not is something that I only find out later on, in edits. Sometimes, the story never picks up momentum, and it’s a slog from beginning to end. The weird part is that I can’t tell the difference between stories that come easily and ones that are like pulling teeth after I have finished them.

What is your favorite piece of insect-related fiction?

This is probably a gimme for the audience of Unlikely Entomology, but E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees.” This is an amazing story, and if you’re reading this magazine and you haven’t read this story yet, go find it and read it right away!

What are you working on now/what do you have upcoming that you want people to know about?

Mostly I have short stories coming out in anthologies. My short story, “A Memory of White Flowers” is being published in the anthology, The Future Embodied, and it features memory implants and family history. “Neither Witch Nor Fairy,” a story about gender identity, family, the last witch burned in Ireland, and playing games with fairies, is being published in Long Hidden.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

Oh man, this could be quite a list. I don’t know if Angela Carter is obscure, and it feels a little presumptious to say Italo Calvino, hmm. How about Rikki Ducornet?

Author Interview – Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

The Wall Garden plays with disturbing imagery, shifts in time, and loops in on itself more than once. Did all that make it harder or easier to write? The image of the creatures trapped in the wall garden is particularly striking. Did the story have its genesis there, or did the idea of the wall garden evolve with the writing?

The story’s central idea, which was indeed that of something living inside a wall, derives from a series of nightmares I had back in 2003. At the time I lived with my family in the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, in a largish house with a generous basement. In the dreams I became convinced that someone was living inside the basement walls, an extremely gaunt sort of quasi-person that could go years without eating, and moved extremely slowly, sometimes taking months to traverse a few inches. The element that was most unsettling about the dreams wasn’t the creature itself, though, but the anguish of feeling that if such a creature existed, there was no way I’d be able to convince anyone else of its reality, short of knocking down the walls. “There’s something alive inside the walls” became an eerie, and eerily undermining, proposition. In order to demonstrate that it was untrue, one would have to tear apart one’s home.
As I was casting about for scary ideas back in the summer of 2013, I remembered those dreams. I wanted to convey to the reader the sense of dread and inescapability of the something-inside-the-walls proposition, and I thought that one way of accomplishing that might be by forcing the reader inside those very walls. I read some go-to passages by Kafka, as well as Octave Mirbeau’s The Torture Garden (1899), for inspiration. The latter’s exploration of decadence got me thinking about the moral dimensions of my story. I then backed into the notion of a person who commits a wicked deed, and whose conscience (itself possessing consciousness) is shoved inside the walls in the form a bug-like creature, while the rest of that person, unfettered by conscience, roams free. How could that person ever be made whole again, his or her two parts re-united? Pondering the possible answers to that question generated the story’s plot. I then wrote several versions of the story that used various flash-back and loop structures as a means of drawing the reader in and creating claustrophobia. After several attempts I hit on one that I felt worked, and to which early readers responded favorably (with eloquently apposite comments about the sickness of my mind). I’m glad you found the imagery disturbing.

What is your writing process like typically? Or do you have a different process for every story?

I tend to start with a striking image, which I try to turn into an ending, and then work my way backwards to the story’s opening. Sometimes the image turns out to be the opening, which screws things up. I like to have a plot outline, a setting and some character backgrounds before I sit down to write the story. Often I have a title before I begin.

What is your favorite piece of insect-related fiction?

As a child I was terrified by the giant spiders of Them! (1954). As a pre-teen and early teen I read a lot of Spider-Man comics. Then there were the arachnoid “Bugs” of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959). As a late teen, I remember that I was quite struck by Floria Sigismondi’s insect-themed video to Marilyn Manson’s “Tourniquet” (1997). Not sure how it holds up. I was also intrigued by the relationship that Edgler Vess, the killer of Dean Koontz’s Intensity (1995), had with spiders. Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), of course. And the X-Files episode “War of the Coprophages” (1996), as much for Darin Morgan’s writing as for the critter effects, is one of my favorites.

As we mature, our relationship with the creepy-crawly elements of the world changes, as does our emotional (and sometimes physical) response. Can you tell us one early or notable experience you’ve had with bugs that helped shape how you view them?

Playing in a sandbox in a Southern California school when I was seven years old and being repeatedly stung by red ants didn’t encourage my love for them. And I’d already seen Them!.

What have you read recently/what are you reading currently/what is on your TBR pile that you’re excited about?

Recent reads are D. T. Max’s bio of David Foster Wallace, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story (2012), and Joe Queenan’s One for the Books (2012). Currently reading Javier Marias’ The Infatuations (2011) and Isaac Asimov’s The World of Carbon (1958). Exciting TBR items: all of them, of course! (That’s why they graduate to the TBR pile). A few titles: The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets (2013) by Simon Singh, Proxima (2013) by Stephen Baxter, Shaman (2013) by Kim Stanley Robinson and Evil Eye: Four Novellas of Love Gone Wrong (2013) by Joyce Carol Oates.

What are you working on now/what do you have upcoming that you want people to know about?

I recently finished my first solo novel, tentatively titled Reyla’s Song, and I will be working on edits and submissions to agents in early 2014. My short story “Hot and Cold” will be appearing in Analog sometime in 2014. I’d like to alert UK readers to the British publication of When the Blue Shift Comes, a two-novella collaboration with Robert Silverberg, in March 2014.

We all start somewhere, and the learning curve from first publication is a steep one. What’s your first ever published work, and how do you feel about it now?

My first story (sold for token payment) was “The Filigree” in 2008. I like the idea but today I’d execute it differently.

Since we’re coming up on the holiday season, and there’s no escaping it -- what is your favorite holiday-related entertainment (movie, TV special, song/album, book or story)? What is your least favorite?

I’m looking forward to reading the Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams-edited anthology Isaac Asimov’s Christmas (1997). Every year I say, “This is the year.” This is the year.

One of the perennial points of contention in the world revolves around education -- who should get educated (and to what degree), what should be taught, who should be excluded. Meanwhile, children in their classrooms ask, “Why do I need to know this?” Tell us one obscure thing you learned in school that you think is important, and why.

I believe that the act of remembering something can make it important, even if it isn’t objectively so. I sympathize with Fred Madison in David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), who says “I like to remember things my own way.” I’ve forgotten most of what I learned in school, so I’m not sure I can form a defense on those grounds.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

I’m not sure I love any truly obscure writers. If I know them, how obscure can they be? Well, except possibly for the nine “Soviet Latvian” poets gathered in the 1973 anthology Let Us Get Acquainted: Aleksandrs Caks, Janis Grots, Arvids Grigulis, Bruno Saulitis, Ojars Vacietis, Imants Ziedonis, Imants Auzins, Viktors Livzemnieks, and Maris Caklais. I think they’re pretty obscure. But I’m not convinced I love them. I mean, that’s a strong word. You might enjoy their poems. The short story collection The Book of Sei (1987) by David Brooks is perhaps not well-known, and I recommend it.

Announcing Unlikely Story #8: The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography

We’re delighted to announce the ToC (in no particular order) for our next issue, Unlikely Story #8: The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography.

• Two Things About Thrand Zandy’s TechnoTheque by Gregory Norman Bossert
• Ink by Mari Ness
• How My Best Friend Rania Crashed a Party and Saved the World by Ada Hoffmann
• Chilaquilies Con Code by Mary Alexandra Agner
• Something in Our Minds Will Always Stay by Barry King

Thank you to everyone who submitted work to this issue. We received a lot of truly excellent stories, and we look forward to sharing these cryptographic delights with you. The issue will be available in late January or early February. Stay tuned!

Author Interview – Darren O. Godfrey

Strange Invasion is, well, strange. Where did the idea for gravy-boat shaped alien ships with long, sticky tongues come from? On a related note, and you don’t have to answer if you prefer it to remain a mystery, but did the scorpions rise to defend the earth from the invasion, or were they acting more with a rats-fleeing-a-sinking-ship mentality?

It’s all about “picturing it” with this story. So, picture it: a perfect summer day, a beautiful green golf course. I was playing the back nine with my step-dad, my ball resting about 20 yards from the 13th green. That’s when I pictured it – my shot, I mean. It went just as the shot described in the story (rare for me), though nothing burst forth from the hole to stop the ball. However, that arachnid-filled scenario played out in my head on the way to the next hole. Then, during play on the 15th hole, I envisioned an alien invasion (while I should have been concentrating on my game, but, well, as a better writer than I once put it, the mind’s a monkey). It occurred to me then to try and transport myself into the skin of my step-dad to see how he might handle such a thing. The next morning, at my desk, it all came together and I wrote it. I have no idea why the ships are gravy-boat shaped, nor why they have sticky tongues – that’s just how I pictured it. (I suspect, but don’t know for certain, that the scorpions are in cahoots with the aliens.)

What is your writing process like typically? Or do you have a different process for every story?

I had a normal writing process, once upon a time: up at 5:30, at my desk by 6:00, write till noon or when I’ve hit the 2,000-word mark, whichever came first. These days, though, the process seems to change not only from one story to the next, but from one day to the next. I get the writing in whenever, and wherever, I can.

What is your favorite piece of insect-related fiction?

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. I also get a kick out of King’s “They’re Creeping up on You” from the film Creepshow.

As we mature, our relationship with the creepy-crawly elements of the world changes, as does our emotional (and sometimes physical) response. Can you tell us one early or notable experience you’ve had with bugs that helped shape how you view them?

Picture it: a very old, rusted-out hulk of a car lying upside down in a field. I was eleven years old and curious as all get-out. (Which is what I should have done: got out.) I saw it and couldn’t resist. I dropped to all fours and crawled inside, not knowing that a wolf spider the size of a grown man’s hand was waiting for me. I’d rather not say much more (ick! It was bad), but the bite on the back of my neck swelled up to the size of a …well, a golf ball.

What have you read recently/what are you reading currently/what is on your TBR pile that you’re excited about?

I’m venturing, for about the fifth time, into what is often called “the blue rose trilogy” by Peter Straub. It consists of Koko, Mystery, and The Throat. There are also some short stories that factor into the mix: “Blue Rose”, “The Juniper Tree”, “The Ghost Village”, and “Bunny is Good Bread” (this last under the title of “Fee” in Borderlands 4). I’ve reread all but the last half of The Throat, so it’s almost over. Again. Which makes me sad.

What are you working on now/what do you have upcoming that you want people to know about?

I’m trying very hard to finish a novel, but I’m getting my butt kicked. Meanwhile, a story of mine, “Recess” was selected by Mort Castle for his All-American Horror of the 21st Century, the First Decade. This anthology is said to feature “the best short horror fiction published by magazines, anthologies, and web sites spanning the years 2000 – 2010,” and deals with “uniquely American” themes and subjects. I don’t know about mine being “the best” of anything, but I look forward to reading the book.

We all start somewhere, and the learning curve from first publication is a steep one. What’s your first ever published work, and how do you feel about it now?

The first ever was “A Snowman’s Chance in Hell” in the Goofus Office Gazette. I still like the humor of the piece, but the writing’s not so hot (pun intended). Oddly enough, though, I feel better about it than I do my first professional publication: “Clam Bake at Opaque Lake”. I wish I had that one back.

Since we’re coming up on the holiday season, and there’s no escaping it – what is your favorite holiday-related entertainment (movie, TV special, song/album, book or story)? What is your least favorite?

Favorite is Scrooge, starring the inimitable Albert Finney. I quite like all adaptations of Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, but this version has clever, catchy songs, a brilliant Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley, and the most sagacious Ghost of Christmas Present ever. I also thought the little side-trip in hell was hilarious.

Least favorite? Next to the flood of holiday-related, money-grubbing TV advertising, I’d have to say Grandma Got Run-Over by a Reindeer. Idiotic song made into an even more idiotic animated movie.

One of the perennial points of contention in the world revolves around education – who should get educated (and to what degree), what should be taught, who should be excluded. Meanwhile, children in their classrooms ask, “Why do I need to know this?” Tell us one obscure thing you learned in school that you think is important, and why.

Unfortunately, I didn’t learn it till after school. I spent a good deal of my time, you see, asking “Why do I need to know this?” I had no idea that the very process of schooling, of absorbing information (whether it’s needed or not) is so integral to the development of not only one’s intelligence, but one’s character.

I wish someone had been able to get that into my head at an earlier age. Parents and teachers who demand you do something just “because I said so” are not really helping. Grasping and putting to use a variety of information really qualifies the difference between living a flat, insipid existence and one that is robust and well-rounded.

We all have our favorite authors, some of whom everyone has heard of, and some of whom are relatively obscure. Who is one of the more obscure writers you love? What do you love about their work? Tell us which story or novel of theirs we should drop everything to read right now.

David Goodis comes immediately to mind: he was a crime writer who started out in the late 30s, was fairly productive through the 40s and 50s. I’ve always liked the old pulp-era, tough-guy stories of Hammett, Cain and others. Goodis’s work, though, seems a bit different. Seductive, hypnotic, and just a little…off. In a good way.

One French publication (I think he sold better in France than America) termed his work “noir-stained existentialism.” A good description.

My favorites of his are the novel Dark Passage (originally serialized in The Saturday Evening Post, and later made into a Bogart & Bacall movie) and the short stories “Black Pudding” and “It’s a Wise Cadaver”.