An Unlikely Mini Interview with Sara K. McNeilly

Do you find clowns to be a) creepy b) downright terrifying c) mildly amusing d) laugh out loud funny e) some combination of the above or f) none of the above (please supply your own alternate adjective/description)?

A? Really it’s ​F. Unsettling​ more than creepy​. All that make up.

On a related note, what is you earliest clown-related memory, and how did it scar you and or shape your view of clowns?

An older cousin used to draw the most terrifying clown, call it the joker, and tell me it was going to get me. I think I was about five or six.

What lead you to take the particular approach to clowns you used in your story, Perfect Mime?

I think mimes are far more unnerving than clowns. I wanted to play with their unwillingness to communicate verbally versus an inability to communicate verbally and really push the concept of slapstick​-​cum​-violence as spectacle. I wanted the reader to be scared for the mime.

Unrelated to clowns (or not, as the case may be), what else are you working on/have you published recently/have upcoming that you’d like people to know about?

I’m working on a few longer projects at the moment, none of which are close enough to completion to really brag about.