Ha! Yeah, nobody knows which category I belong in, including me. All of them. I don’t care where I go. My stories are weird ones. I write them and then I send them off, usually with a note that says, I dunno, do you? I think the world is inherently strange and wonderful, and that’s the way I try to write. I want to write about things you don’t imagine happening, and then, when they happen, you see that they were always there, that everything is possible. That means my work is a wide spectrum of every kind of story about possibility, and that’s how I like it. I try to write wonders and aberrations, monsters and ghosts like they just happened before my eyes, like they’re the headlines, like they’re the person beside me at the bar, telling me a casual story about a bird that burst into flame or popcorn falling from the sky. I try to live that way, too. I listen to liars. I listen to ferocious truth-tellers. It’s all part of the same wide category of story. Sometimes I listen to the people on the subway and pretend all the things they’re saying are part of one huge love letter to one person, their stories of lost dollars and weather, their stories of cheating girls and stupid boys, their stories of stalled trains and benders, of political anger and that one time they kissed a stranger. If you do it the way I do, it swiftly becomes clear that there is no such thing as genre separation. It starts to make very little sense to separate anything from anything.
A playwright, screenwriter, fiction genius, editor, essayist, and now one of the forces behind an upcoming theater musical. Your words are everywhere! Is there a particular writerly pipe dream lurking in the shimmering depths of your imagination?
The musical is being developed right now, and it’s epic. I’ve been having so much fun working with my friend Lance Horne, the composer, on three centuries of story. Next, I want to write an opera. I have career ambitions, too, things I’d love to have happen, but really mostly I just want to write new kinds of things. I’d also really like to write a TV series, but only if I could do all twelve episodes alone, with no one bothering me, and that’s a very unlikely version of reality. You never know, though! I have a thing in mind. That’s like an opera, really, the way TV is now, and it’s so cool to write a twelve-or fourteen-hour narrative, to be able to get to something that huge, in a form that’s not a novel. Which isn’t to say that I don’t have novel ideas, too. I have a draft of a new beast mostly done, and it’s full of creation myths I made up, legends of lost manuscripts, and volcanoes. More to do, though. I think I thought it was a small novel, and really it wants to be a huge, time-traveling multi-century epic. Welcome to my typical mutterings.
To whom do you turn when you want to get your fiction on? What writers excite your sense of wonder?
I could go on for ages here, but a few, all over the map. I gobble, and I just gobble what I like. Which is everything. All these writers are different kinds of stylists, whether poetry or prose or mash-ups, and all deal in extraordinary specificity, which makes me happy: Kelly Link; Victor LaValle; Inger Christensen (especially her book-length poem “Alphabet,” which I just read over and over in perpetuity. It brings me back to life); Helen Oyeyemi; Ali Smith; Kathryn Davis; Joy Williams; Gayl Jones; Liz Hand; Jeff Ford; Frances Justine Post’s collection of poems, Beast; Yusef Komunyakaa; Alice Sola Kim; Carmen Maria Machado; Sarah McCarry; Eduardo Corral; the Icelandic poet and novelist, Sjón (From the Mouth of the Whale, OMG); Ada Limón; Brigit Pegeen Kelly; Lauren Groff; Alice Munro; a billion more, ending up at Shakespeare, who keeps me obsessed.
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ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.
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Author Spotlight: Sean Williams
Sandra Odell | 1020 words
“The Lives of Riley” is a short, vicious gut punch of a story. What inspired this exploration of identity?
“Riley” has been stewing for a long time. As far back as ten years ago, when I was writing the first book of my Astropolis series, I had a character who (it was implied) routinely cloned himself and conducted vast, onanistic orgies. This side of his personal life wasn’t really explored, which seemed a waste of a good concept to me.
My Twinmaker universe presented the perfect opportunity to come back to it. In a near future dominated by matter transmitters, surely someone would copy themselves purely for the purpose of sex … and more.
The thing I really hoped for with this story was to convey the emotional life of a person who might engage in a loving relationship with multiple versions of themselves, the efforts they might go to in order to preserve that relationship, and the personal cost of it all going horribly wrong. Which seemed likely to me. Relationships are fragile enough even between two very similar people; turning the color further up implied that there probably wasn’t going to be a happy ending.
The slow reveal of information through the story kept me reading until the very end, and a satisfying end at that. Every scene leads to the reader’s realization that, yes, the duplicates are Riley, which is why the traitor breaks away to turn the others in. Did you know how the story would end when you started writing? Are you a plotter or a pantser?
I’m really glad you liked the conclusion. It’s fun to let short stories change course without reining them in, and I’ve stumbled on some interesting territory that way, but in general, I’m a plotter. “Riley” was mapped out in advance, more or less. I wasn’t sure exactly how many Riley viewpoints there’d be, but I knew the key flaw that would unite them and I knew how that flaw would tear their relationship apart. The story twists around that flaw in a way that makes it hard for me to decide if it’s an unhappy ending or not. It certainly is for the Rileys left behind, but it may not be for the Riley that escapes—and how can you or I tell them apart? That’s the squicky heart of this story, not all the sex stuff. The past version of me who ate all the chocolate has robbed the present me of a treat (not to mention necessitated my going on a diet) but they’re both still me, by most definitions of “me.” Same with Riley. Isn’t the escapee entitled to pursue his own individual vision, even if it means sacrificing the ones who don’t see that vision? Or has he committed a bizarre kind of suicide? Language struggles with these concepts, which only makes them more fun to explore.
Writing is an exploration of ideas and concepts that often make people uncomfortable. Here you touch on identity, privacy, government surveillance, and the meaning of self. How conscious are you of the layers of inference and meaning in your stories? Do you set out to say X or allow yourself to explore the meaning of X, Y, Z?
Oh, there was so much I wanted to say with this story. So much I despaired of ever getting it down, even covertly. (There’s a bit of a stab at heteronormativity as well.) I despaired because stories don’t start with ideas and concepts, they start with characters, and until I had Riley and his plan to take over the world and his flaw and the terrible threat to his entire being, all I had was some notes in a file about how, gee, it would be cool to write a story about using matter transmitters to have sex with yourself, wouldn’t it? Which might be good for (some) dinner conversations, but isn’t ever going to move anyone to think any differently. I think good SF can and should at least attempt to do that, through the right kind of story. Once I had the vehicle for presenting those ideas, it all fell into place quite neatly, thank goodness.
You are a prolific writer of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Tell us about your writing routine, the nuts and bolts that keep Sean Williams’ words flowing.
I write what I love. That’s what it boils down to. I write what moves me on an emotional level and what excites me intellectually, and when I’m moved and excited by a project, it’s not so hard to get to work every day. That’s my ideal routine. Some days are tougher than others, of course, particularly th
e ones where I’m not actually writing. The great secret of being a full-time writer is that you don’t do anywhere near as much writing as you expect. No one told me about that when I was starting out—not that it would have changed how I moved forward. The only thing slowing me down these days is chronic pain, but I’m finding ways to feed that creatively back into my work, so even though I’m slower now, working in short sprints rather than long hauls, I hope that what I’m writing is better, on craft and personal levels.
Wait, that doesn’t really answer your question. Sorry. Chocolate. It all boils down to chocolate.
What’s next for Sean Williams? What can readers look forward to in coming months?
The aforementioned chronic pain has necessitated a bit of a slowdown in my output, so this year sees no new novel, my first “bye” year since 1999. There will be the odd short story, though, including another Twinmaker story in Jonathan Strahan’s Drowned Worlds anthology. I return next year with the beginning of a new middle grade fantasy series co-written with Garth Nix and a YA novel about social anxiety, based in part on my own experiences with panic attacks, called In My Mind.
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ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.
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Author Spotlight: Tim Pratt
Sandra Odell | 1012 words
It’s not often a story starts out with an unexpected volcano, but “The Wilderness Within” fits the bill and only gets better from there. What inspired this particular tale?
I was reading about the sudden emergence of a volcano in Mexico—like, a sulfurous crack opened in the ground in 1943, and a day later there was a cinder cone fifty meters high, and people were displaced—and I thought, “If that happened around here (in the Bay Area) nobody would even notice the volcano’s appearance because they’d all be looking at their phones.” (To be clear, I support people looking at their phones. I am much happier standing in lines and riding on mass transit and so on when I have a phone to look at. The phone-absorption-is-common thing is an observation without the obvious associated judgment.)
I was also thinking of a great line from a Utah Phillips bit: “Make a break for it, kids. Flee into the wilderness. The one within, if you can find it.” The combination of that line and the thought of a volcano that no one noticed coalesced nicely. The sex part is there because, I dunno, sex is pretty interesting? Like most people, I think about it a bunch.
Helena is a truly believable character, from her emotional breakdown over her breakup, to her justifications when using the phone app for a ride, to how she handles Kilroy’s advances. When writing, how do you approach character creation? Do you have a set idea in mind, or do you let the characters progress with the story to see how things turn out?
Usually I have some weird idea for a peculiar situation, but that doesn’t make a story; characters make story. (“Plot” is just what your characters do, after all.) Once I had the idea of sexually transmitted natural landscapes, I tried to think of the kind of characters who would be most transformed traumatized bothered / interested in that kind of thing, and Helena and Kilroy emerged. Then it was just a case of thinking about what they’d do if they met as their conflicting needs and desires collided. For the most part in my writing, I try to create simulations of humans and extrapolate what they’d do in a given strange situation. Ideally extreme situations, because that makes for better drama.
You address Helena’s sexuality and Andi’s gender-identity as a matter of course. Nothing fancy, no presentation for shock value. Such openness lends itself well to the story, adding depth to both the characters and the city of San Francisco. Some writers would be uncomfortable with this portrayal because it challenges the perception of “mainstream values.” How important is representation to you as a writer and reader?
While I grew up in the deep-ish south and things were pretty heteronormative, I’ve lived in Northern California for a good fifteen years, and currently reside in Berkeley. There’s no shortage of bi, gay, trans, asexual, kinky, poly, questioning, genderfluid, etc. people in my life (I may even tick a couple of those boxes myself), and it would be weirder for me to not write about those sorts of people. It would feel pretty strange to create fictional worlds that were less diverse than my birthday parties or backyard barbecues.
Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, you write it all. In an ideal world with your fill of wealth, free time, comfort, and security, what would your writing time look like? Are there any projects you’d like to try?
Perfect world? Most days I’d sleep late, write for two or three hours, and read and drink beer on patios with friends and nap in the hammock, weather permitting, the rest of the day. It may be a good thing that I have more responsibilities than that. Hedonism in excess shortens one’s lifespan. I pretty much do what I want to do, writing-wise, though I would enjoy taking a crack at comics writing sometime. For a while I wasn’t writing enough short fiction for my taste, but in 2015 I started a “new-story-every-month” Patreon, and that helped me prioritize short fiction again.
In your secret identity as Tim Pratt, senior editor at Locus Magazine, you have a unique insider’s view of the ebb and flow of the SF/F/H genres. Are there any recent trends in genre fiction that have sparked your interest as a writer or editor?
Eh. Trend-chasing is a bad idea. By the time you notice a trend and try to write something and get it to market, the trend is probably over, or the market is saturated and the backlash has begun, or something. Better to just write whatever you love writing. You’re vanishingly unlikely to get rich anyway, so it’s best to just take pleasure in the work. I like reading mostly in subgenres I don’t write: grimdark fantasy, crime novels, space opera—okay, space opera does interest me as a writer, too, and it’s nice to see that revitalized in recent years, with fun smart books by James S.A. Corey and Ann Leckie and the like.
What’s next for Tim Pratt? What can eager fans look forward to?
I’m writing Closing Doors, the tenth and final full-length novel in my Marla Mason urban fantasy series, and that should be out late this year or early next; I ran a Kickstarter for it in the spring. That’s my giant brain-eating project for the summer. The next thing contracted after that is a funny fantasy about goblins, which should keep me occupied through the fall and winter. Next year I have some thoughts about weird contemporary fantasy; there are at least two novels I want to write in that space. Otherwise, interested readers should sign up for my Patreon, at patreon.com/timpratt . I publish a new story every month for patrons, and you only have to give $1 month! (Not that I turn my nose up at more.)
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ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.
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Author Spotlight: Alec NevalaLee
Robyn Lupo | 753 words
What was it that drew you to write a story about Hemingway investigating a miracle? When writing “Ernesto,” were there any surprises in the process?
The most surprising thing about the story was the presence of Hemingway himself. I originally wanted to build a scientific mystery around William Coley’s theory that a bacterial infection, such as erysipelas, could cure certain types of cancer, and I ended up combining it with an unrelated idea about the investigation of a miracle involving a religious relic. I decided that St. John of the Cross, who had died of erysipelas and whose tomb was located in Spain, would make for a promising subject, and it also occurred to me to wr
ite it as a period piece, ideally set during wartime, which would allow me to conceal the solution for as long as possible. This led naturally to the Spanish Civil War, and at that point, I really had no choice but to include Hemingway. In other words, Hemingway might seem like one of the first elements that went into this story, but in fact, he was one of the last.
The story has some existential elements, and there’s a real and dismaying veracity that, in some sense, it didn’t seem to matter whether the events at the shrine were miracles or scientific marvels. Where do you go when you want to replenish yourself in terms of new ideas or themes to explore in your work?
The intersection between the scientific and the unexplained is a theme to which I’ve frequently returned, mostly because it’s a wonderful idea engine, especially if you’re trying to write mysteries. Part of this is due to my longtime love for The X-Files, and many of my stories can be described as puzzles in which Scully’s worldview, rather than Mulder’s, is ultimately proven right. But it’s a tradition that goes back at least as far as the work of Eric Frank Russell, whose Sinister Barrier —one of my favorite science fiction novels ever—is the best example I know of a writer using the paranormal as a springboard for a logically rigorous suspense story. Exploring the places where the supernatural shades into the rational is a consistently useful strategy for generating stories, which is one of the reasons why I’ve gone back to that well so often.
You’ve worked in a variety of formats, from blog posts to novels. How conscious are you of selecting the appropriate length of a work? Have there been cases where you thought a work was a novel, but it ended up being a short story, or something similar?
Lightspeed Magazine - September 2016 Page 26