Carpe Noctem Interviews - Volume 2

by Carnell, Thom

  What prompted you to agree to write your column for Fango and why did you to cease doing it?

  I started out writing columns, and I like editorial writing. Nonfiction writing. “Raving & Drooling” – the title – was cooked up about 12 years ago when a friend and I decided to write, for Fangoria, a pseudonymous column that just arbitrarily ripped the shit out of all comers, indiscriminately. It was satirically intended. It was supposed to be like punk writing. “Raving & Drooling” was also intended as a riddle –the first person to place the reference correctly would get a free subscription to Fangoria. That idea died the death it basically deserved. Ever since I did the two-part Chainsaw III “set diary” for Fangoria, Tony Timpone periodically asked if I’d do a column. Virtually every horror magazine in business in 1990 asked me for a regular column at one time or another. I quickly calculated that I could spend all my writing time cranking out columns and make very abysmal money indeed. I took Tony up on the standing offer in 1992 based on two things: My need to write nonfiction, and Fangoria’s readership – 250,000, which blew any and all similar competition into the mud. I wrote 40 columns totaling about 80,000 words of text. That’s a novel. I stopped because you could never get far enough ahead on deadlines, and my short story output was eroding. Stories go out into the world and get reprinted, resold, anthologized and collected if you’re lucky; people keep reading them. Readers read columns once and that’s it. I’ve said that I wrote the Fango column as a two-page spread so people could read it at the newsstand if they resented the cover price of the magazine. Except for the fact that Fangoria is prohibited from printing the f-word, I was never censored or restricted in any way. Tony gave me complete freedom to ramble on about whatever I wanted. Early on, he did change two columns both for the better. I think he could sense when I wasn’t inspired, there; I always have trouble with titles. Presently there’s interest in collecting the columns in book form. Tony has graciously told me the door’s open at Fangoria any time I want to continue. I put the column down, the deadlines evaporated, and I quickly finished seven or eight new stories, two of them novelettes, all of which should be out by the time this interview is read by paying customers.

  What is the present situation with the anthology you’re editing, Look Out He’s Got a Knife?

  It’s not an anthology, but a collection of my own stories, and it bit the dust basically when a small press did, and got subsumed into a larger new collection with the provisional title Crypt Orchids – another term I got from Bob Bloch, by the way. If the fates are with me, it should be out sometime in 1997.

  Can you tell me a little about how you and Christa Faust met, fell in love and got married?

  We met in New York City, in Linda Marotta’s apartment, and spent lots of time walking around the city in the dead of night. The “love” part was totally out of our control; it overwhelmed us. Christa hauled stakes for Los Angeles to live with me and promptly got physically attacked by a mentally ill (that is, clinically diagnosed) ex of mine; Christa made like Sigourney Weaver in Aliens when she blows the parasite out of the airlock… then she and I had a very nice dinner with friends. About a year later, we got officially married three times, the first time in a helicopter at the stroke of midnight. For us. The second time was for family, and the third, for friends on Halloween.

  What can we expect to see from David J. Schow in the near future?

  Ever since writing movies became my “day job,” I’ve learned not to curse in-work projects by talking much about them. The most perfect assembly can go horribly wrong at the last minute, and in the most annoying way. Anybody who hasn’t by now read a recent short story of mine hasn’t been reading anthologies. Novel #3 is still on hold. The totally-revamped Outer Limits Companion will be out, I hope, this year. If you’re after new stories, check out Dark Terrors 2 (ed. Stephen Jones), Love in Vein 2 (ed. Poppy Brite), Lethal Kisses (ed. Ellen Datlow), Rage Magazine #7 (the Valentine’s Day 1997 issue), and the new issue of Midnight Graffiti. Let me know what you think of Doug Winter’s gigantic new concept anthology, which will be called Revelations in America (May 1997), but Millennium everywhere else. Things I just kicked out the door: A 2000-word piece on Karl for the aforementioned Exorcism & Ecstasies, and an Introduction for Volume 3 of the Prima Books series of Outer Limits novelizations edited by Debbie Notkin. One day, suddenly, you check and realize you’ve got a whole file drawer full of odds-and-ends writing like these. It’s all to drive bibliographers crazy.

  Caitlin R. Kiernan

  At DragonCon one year, I met Ms. Kiernan when she appeared on a panel called “Do Goths Read?” Her natural humor and personality made her a person of great interest to me. I approached her after the panel and asked for an interview. She agreed. Below is the product of our talk. A short time later, Caitlin agreed to come onboard Carpe Noctem as a contributor and we were all really excited by that. Her being a part of the team elevated our credibility and made us feel like we’d made it. Since then, Caitlin’s written some amazing books and continues to be a personal favorite.

  Unraveling the Layers of Silk – Volume IV, Issue 2

  In order for any art form to survive, there must periodically be a razing of the ground so that the older deadwood can be clear and younger, more vibrant things might grow. In the past few years the horror and dark fantasy genres have undergone just such a purging. Now, new voices are being heard from writers whose vision is not clouded by the older ideals and (mis)conceptions of what makes a hero or the ‘proper’ way to construct a macabre tale. These young turks are writing stories their own way and with characters that are not always wholly likable, but fully rendered three-dimensional people. One of the brightest voices sending its voice skyward into the night is author Caitlin R. Kiernan. Born near Dublin, Ireland and currently residing in Athens, GA, Caitlin has been giving us all a hint of her dark perspective in short stories published in such volumes as Dark Destiny: Proprietors of Fear, The Urbanite, Sandman: Book of Dreams, Love in Vein II, Lethal Kisses and soon in her first published novel, Silk, which will be available in February of 1998. Now, Caitlin has signed to write several story arcs for the DC/Vertigo title The Dreaming. Although this seems like a departure from her earlier work, this gifted writer is a natural to write these tales of otherworldly delight and mystery. I met Caitlin Kiernan at a panel discussion organized by the con’s planning committee that she was leading with the laughable title “Do Goths Read.” Her candor and ebullient manner was endearing and she immediately struck me as someone born to be in the pages of this magazine. So, here she is, submitted for your enjoyment, Caitlin Kiernan; author, musician, former paleontologist and exotic dancer, film fan and a charming, erudite young lady as well.

  First off, tell me a little about your new book, Silk.

  Silk’s about being weird and queer in the South, more than anything else, I guess. It’s set in Birmingham, Alabama, and it’s got spiders and shamanism and insanity. It’s about half William Faulkner and half H.P. Lovecraft. And it’s really very hard for me to try and explain the plot. Poppy Brite says it’s the weirdest book she’s ever read, and Neil Gaiman calls it magical realism. I think people will just have to read it and decide for themselves what Silk’s about. I had the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice in mind throughout much of the novel. Anyway, there will be a mass-market edition from Penguin/Roc, and a limited edition from Darkside Press. The limited will be illustrated by Clive Barker and have a Dave McKean cover, with my share of the proceeds from that edition going to an Atlanta gay teen support group.

  Wow, Clive Barker and Dave McKean… How did those guys get involved?

  I asked nicely. Well, actually, there was a little more to it than that, but not much.

  What do you think is the root of the cause of the present sorry state of the horror genre?

  A lot of greed, and very little self-restraint. Low standards, on the part of publishers and authors and readers.

  What authors do you hold in high regard?

 
Just authors in general? I’m pretty stuck on the modernists, especially James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot. W.B. Yeats has been getting a lot of my reading time lately. William Kennedy, Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, Patrick McCabe. I read a lot of nonfiction, especially science and mythology, people like Joseph Campbell (a major influence) and Adrian Desmond.

  Who do you think are writers (specifically horror writers) who are at the top of their craft?

  Ray Bradbury (another major influence), Kathe Koja, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Poppy Z. Brite, Thomas Ligotti, Brian Hodge, A.R. Morlan. Anne Rice’s first three vampire novels. Shirley Jackson, but she’s dead.

  I’m quite surprised that you mention Anne Rice. Personally, I’ve always found most of her books to be nothing more than dime store romance novels with a dash of adolescent sexuality thrown in.

  That’s why I specified the first three vampire novels. I think they’re really good and important novels, excellent examples of the vampire as a sexually transgressive literary image, and of the monstrous as heroic. When I first read Interview with the Vampire, about 1989, the only vampire fiction I’d ever read was Dracula and Carmilla, and it affected me very deeply. I was struggling with a lot of shit at the time, issues of sexuality and gender and death and religion, what it means to be a freak in a very freak unfriendly world, and, well, I’m not going to go on and on. But I think a lot of people turn their noses up at Rice because she’s so successful, and yes, she’s also produced a lot of lazily-crafted, poorly written junk. But that doesn’t lessen her accomplishment with those three books. Oh, and I also liked A Cry to Heaven.

  Have you read Brian Hodge’s The Convulsion Factory and what did you think?

  I really loved The Convulsion Factory. I think Brian’s doing some of the best short story work in dark fantasy that’s being done right now.

  How fully rendered do you make a story outline before you sit down to begin to write?

  I virtually never use traditional outlines. A lot of writer friends think that’s strange, but it’s just not the way I write. With Silk, I did a little bit, very, very, very brief chapter synopses right before I’d start a new chapter. And I made what I guess you’d call a map or diagram sort of thing at one point, based partly on Joseph Campbell’s depiction of the hero cycle, just to make sure I’d tied everything together the way it was supposed to be. What I came up with looked kind of like a web woven by a spider on psilocybin, which was pretty cool and entirely appropriate. However, when I started writing for The Dreaming, I was required to do formal story proposals beforehand. That’s taken some getting used to. Mostly, I just think everything, no matter how good or bad it might be, sounds stupid summarized.

  Why do you think that horror (film and literature) does not get the respect it deserves?

  There are probably a lot of reasons, too many to get into really. But I think part of the blame can be laid on horror and dark fantasy writers and filmmakers themselves. As a group (and that’s part of the problem, perceiving ourselves as a group distinct from fiction as a whole) we have a tendency to cater to the lowest common denominator, and so I think a lot of times we have it coming when the critics say, “Hey, that’s crap.” For every Something Wicked This Way Comes (the book) or Silence of the Lambs (the movie), you have a hundred schlocky vampire novels or slasher films. Of course, that’s true of all fiction and all film, but since we’ve already been segregated from the “mainstream,” partly by our own design, it’s much easier to dismiss all dark fiction as trash. I think good dark fiction often does get the respect it deserves. It’s the genre that gets snubbed, and the genre usually has it coming. A lot of the very best ‘horror’ these days is coming from ‘mainstream’ authors, or at least authors perceived as writing outside the genre, stuff like Caleb Carr’s The Alienist, Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, and Andrei Codrescu’s The Blood Countess.

  I can agree with all of that, but don’t you think that a lion’s share of the blame lands firmly on the part of the undiscerning readers? I mean, the publishers follow perceived trends and authors write for the market that the publishers set. And since trends are set by the populations buying habits, it is Joe Schmoe out there buying a book because the “cover art is cool” that is doing more of a disservice to both themselves and the authors/publishers they are frequenting.

  Publishing doesn’t work that way. That’s probably the general impression most people have, including a lot of writers, but I think publishers tend to invent the trends they supposedly perceive. For instance, The Vampire Lestat spends X number of weeks on the bestseller’s lists and publishers conclude that people want vampire novels. So, for a while, they, the publishers, buy a lot of vampire novels, creating an enormous literary marketplace for vampire novels. Never mind whether the books stink or not, because the publishers believe they’ll sell, simply because they’re stories about vampires. But the reading public usually doesn’t want five or six new vampire novels a month by unknown authors, or even mid-list authors they’ve never heard or – they want more Anne Rice vampire novels. Eventually, the publishers wind up losing money and stop buying vampire novels. How many bestselling books about vampires have there been in the last fifteen or twenty years, that weren’t written by Anne Rice? Writers tend to pay attention to what publishers want, and, because they have to eat and pay bills just like everyone else, will often write something simply because that’s what publishing houses are buying, regardless of whether it’s a subject they genuinely give a shit about. It’s a cycle that breeds pulp and wastes trees and we have to try to have our own motivations as artists, beyond what we think will sell.

  Don’t you find that it is the publishing houses that segregate horror writers rather than them doing it themselves? I mean, how many times do you hear of a blatant horror writer suddenly calling himself an “imaginative writer” who uses aspects of the horror genre to get his point across? Let’s call a spade a spade, ok?

  Horror writers are at least as responsible for this segregation as publishers, and I think more so. That’s what groups like the Horror Writer’s Association are all about. A few years back, one of the major book chains (I can’t remember which one) decided to do away with its ‘horror’ section, and you should have heard the commotion from a lot of HWA members. That this company has integrated ‘horror’ with most of the rest of its fiction (they did keep SF and fantasy and mystery, as I recall), was perceived as a threat to people’s careers. Maybe it was. That was about the time I think publishers were starting to realize that the public was not quite as horror-hungry as had earlier been suspected.

  Do you think it’s possible for an author/artist to keep their vision pure and still have commercial success?

  I think it’s hard, but I think it’s possible. It takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of thick skin and a lot of luck, but it can and does happen. Certainly, there are a good number of dark fantasy authors who’ve managed to do it with their fiction, people like Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman and Peter Straub.

  Do you find that it is harder for a woman to get noticed in the business of writing than it is for a man?

  No. Actually, there was a lot of bitching in the “horror community” a while back, when the Dell/Abyss line was at its peak in the early nineties, about how much easier things were for women than men. Of course, the bitching was being done by men who’d had novels rejected. Anyway, personally, no, I’ve never found my gender a handicap, but I think things have changed a lot for women writers in the last century, or just in the last thirty years or so.

  Do you think that, in horror fiction, there are any taboos left?

  Hmmm. I think that question’s hard to answer, because there are so many outlets for horror fiction today. I mean, no one’s going to stop you from writing whatever you want, and if you can’t sell to a pro market or a small press or a fanzine or an e-zine, you can always self-publish on the web. So, in a sense, there are only taboos with regard to where certain things can be published. And yes, in
that respect, there are still taboos. Usually sexual taboos, especially if you’re writing about underage sex or sadomasochism. For example, when Poppy solicited stories for Love in Vein II, she told everyone there were absolutely no restrictions, that she wanted to see really extreme stuff. And she accepted stories based on that, only to have her publisher pull three or four of them over explicit content before the anthology was published.

  Are you a film fan? If so, what are some of the films you believe are “must sees”?

  I’m a film nut, actually, the kind of person that tries to see everything, even when I know it’s probably gonna stink. Unlike a lot of writers today, I think film’s my first love, and my writing’s a sort of consolation prize for not getting to do film. But, anyway, “must sees”? God, that list would go on for pages. But recently, back to ‘92 or so, let’s see… The City of Lost Children, Fargo, Lost Highway, The Crying Game, Alien 3, Michael Collins, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, The Piano, Seven, The Ghost and the Darkness, Kids, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Howard’s End, Batman Returns, In the Name of the Father, The Nightmare Before Christmas… see what I mean? And there’s no point in even trying to list stuff like Apocalypse Now and Citizen Kane. Most recently, I’ve had an infatuation with Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element.

  See, I was one of the few people I know that got a kick out of The Fifth Element. Please explain to me what it was about that film that won you over?

  Well, it was wonderful eye-candy, and I adore Gary Oldman and Milla Jovovich, and just thought it was one of the freshest science fiction films I’d seen lately. I’ve had some people point out that the storyline is basically Star Wars meets Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Blade Runner, and they’re right, mostly. But certainly no more than Star Wars was ‘just’ a combination of old westerns and pirate films and Buck Rogers, or Blade Runner ‘just’ Sam Spade with androids. I don’t think The Fifth Element was as good as those three films, but it was beautiful and the actors seemed to be having a delightful time… it worked for me. I saw it four times at the theater, which is a bit excessive, even for me.