by ed. Pela Via
ROBB: Did you happen to listen to Caleb Ross’s interview? He was talking about how he first met Stephen Graham Jones and how he first met you, and both of them involved lying to you. [laughs]
CRAIG: I did not know this. That’s so cute. Here’s one. I was a huge fan of Kiss Me, Judas, of course, and I’d finished writing the Handbook. This was back, more than 10 years ago, give or take, and do a web search for Chris Baer, or Will Christopher, as he was, or is, and I wouldn’t find much, other than he’s from Memphis, lived in northern California and Colorado and whatnot, but not much else. So, I was living in Santa Barbara at the time. There was this coffee shop down the street from my apartment where, one of the few human beings I saw on a fairly regular basis was the guy at this coffee shop. I’d pretty much locked myself up for a couple of years to work on the Handbook. It had come out, I got a job at the bookstore, so I was on my way to work one day and I stopped by the coffee shop, and the owner knew I’d had this book come out, and he’d read it and he said, “So are you a fan of Will Christopher Baer, then?” I said, “Absolutely, yeah, I love him.” He goes, “That’s funny, I thought you might like him. He used to work here.” And I went, “Excuse me?” It turns out Chris and I had been living about eight blocks from each other. And so I passed a copy of the Handbook to the owner to pass on to Chris. Chris and I end up corresponding via e-mail over the course of a few weeks. Turns out he’s working at the local independent paper down in Santa Barbara, The Independent—the focus group came up with that one. . . . We finally agreed to meet. He said he’s going to interview me for the paper, “but we should just hang out anyway.” We met at a little Mexican restaurant/bar, and it was just weird. Both sat down: boots, jeans, black shirts, sleeves rolled up, tattoos, drove the same car, and our birthdays were a week apart. It was a little weird. And kind of amusing. So yeah, that’s that story. And then he moved to Memphis.
And Vincent Carrella I met while I was bartending. I had a standing rule whenever I bartend that my coworkers do not tell anyone that I’ve written books because I just don’t want to have people thrusting, you know, fan fiction at me. Because it’s happened. But I heard Vincent talking to a buddy of his about his book, and I could glean from the conversation—because I’m a bartender and we hear everything—that he was legit. So I started talking to him about it, and that’s how I met Vincent Carrella and how he came into the mix. Lot of random stuff.
I was staying down in Bolivia with Wendy Dale and her boyfriend. Wendy was the first person who actually first sent my book to The Cult and got it into Dennis Widmer’s and Chuck Palahniuk’s hands. So it’s just one great big North Beach in the ’60s . . . no it’s not. [laughs]
LIVIUS: If there’s one bit of advice you could offer to aspiring writers, what would it be?
CRAIG: Easy. Write every story like it’s your last. I have a list of writing advice things I’ve put up before, but first and foremost, write every story like you’re on your deathbed. Don’t think about your career or your portfolio. Don’t save the good stuff for a later thing. Just make it do-or-die. Make every one matter like it’s your last, final deathbed shot at getting a story down. Just put everything into every single one. That’s my advice.
Chris Baer is very good at coming up with names: Ryder Fell and Phineas Poe and whatnot. I’ve tried to work on it, but I’ll just never be that . . . I used random name generators; they just don’t work as well. One of my prized reference volumes is a Manhattan White Pages. You’ve got just about every ethnicity on the planet crammed together. That, and a baby-naming book, and you’re good to go.
ROBB: I just assumed that since you had that whole big section in Contortionist’s about finding names that are kind of under the radar, that that’s actually something you used when naming your characters.
CRAIG: Actually, that’s one of the things that I completely made up. I have no idea what the criteria are for picking a name if you are faking a name. But yeah, I pulled that one out of thin air. I’m waiting for someone to get caught trying to do something based on something they learned, because they screwed up, thinking it was all factually accurate, and therefore sue me and get some PR out there. Because there’s no better PR than being sued.
Here’s what’s funny to me. My first two books, I’m always being told how dark they are. “They’re really dark.” And I’ll grant you that, but they’re not violent. Violence in my books is virtually nonexistent, and what little is there is sort of offscreen, or it’s referred to but happens outside the narrative. But there is no overt, explicit graphic or gratuitous violence anywhere in my books at all. So for me, that just allows me to press the question: so what’s dark about it, then? Tell me. Because it seems to me that we’re okay with watching this sort of stuff on reality TV fairly routinely, and that’s considered primetime viewing. In fact, both books, the e-book versions finally turned up in the Apple Store and got rated as 12+ “for occasional tobacco and alcohol use, and vague sexual references.” So it’s clear to me that nobody read my work, when they rated it at the Apple Store. But I’m also very careful about whatever key words or phrases they’re looking for in these, that they’re not catching them, because I work very hard to strip that stuff out.
ROBB: Is there anything outside of writing or reading that you’re really geeked out about right now?
CRAIG: Oh, I go through different waves of geekdom. After researching the Handbook, I taught myself how to count cards, and that went away. Every now and then I’ve got to flex the left side of my brain. I’ve been collecting antique mugshots for a little while now. I’ve been meaning to scan some and post them, but yeah, that’s where I’m geeking out now. Specifically, like, early 20th century.
LIVIUS: Where do you find antique mugshots? [laughs] Is it in stores, or is there like, a web site? I mean, it sounds like a very cool hobby, it’s just that I don’t think that I’ve ever seen an antique mugshot, ever.
CRAIG: It’s like anything else: once you get past stamps and coins and comics and whatnot, you’re not going to find Criminals-R-Us or anything like that; you’ve just got to start digging. There’s a vintage paper fair coming up; that’s where I get most of mine. That’s basically an antique fair that’s anything printed, aside from stamps and comic books. It’s a lot of antique postcards and photographs. It just takes some rummaging, and one thing I’ve learned is that in the antique world there’s a fetish for everything. So I’ve yet to really shock anybody with my request, because most dealers find people that go after some tiny minutiae of antiquery—I don’t know if that’s a word . . . Met a woman who told me she had a collector of antique funerary hardware, so, a guy who collected coffin handles. I shit you negative, that was an actual thing. So rummage antique stores, piles of old photographs, and this particular fair, and just look for cat burglars and prostitutes and pickpockets from the ’20s. And I gotta tell you something, they knew how to dress back then. Even the most lowlife, derelict criminal had a suit and tie on for his mugshot. He probably slept in it, but they had a suit and tie on for their mugshot.
ROBB: Craig, can you tell people where they can find you online?
CRAIG: Well obviously craigclevenger.com, but I’ll be honest, my web site’s in transition, so you can look for it, but it’s not really that complete. I’ve got a landing page there with links to elsewhere. Most of my activity is on Facebook right now until I get my web site back up.
ROBB: Well I just want to say thanks. Every time we have an episode go up for these Warmed and Bound Sessions, you’re really getting it out there, so I really appreciate you getting the word out about these interviews we’ve been doing.
CRAIG: I appreciate you guys giving the anthology so much support. I’m looking at the time setting on my Skype here, and it’s already been an hour. I don’t think I’ve said anything that informative . . . so I hope I gave you some soundbites for your collection.
Interview Transcript:
Brian Evenson
Hosts Robb Olson and Livius Nedin
Transcript of a live interview produced 8/01/2011 by Booked Podcast
Audio available at bookedpodcast.com
BOOKED: Brian, can you start off by telling us a little bit about how you came to be involved with Warmed and Bound?
BRIAN EVENSON: I think it was Caleb Ross who contacted me and expressed an interest in having me be part of it. It just kind of went from there. We talked a little bit about what story might be good and whether it should be a new story or whether it should be an older story and it just kind of went from there. And I think he was the one also who ended up introducing me to The Velvet, and once I was introduced it was strange. I knew a lot of the writers who were involved or who posted there, but somehow I hadn't heard of it before. That was a few years ago that that happened.
BOOKED: So, are you an active member on The Velvet or you just have some relationships with some of the authors there?
BRIAN: I'm a lurker on The Velvet, I kind of go on it periodically and look at things and see what's being said and who they're talking about, what writers they're interested in, but no, I don't actually actively contribute to it.
BOOKED: It's good to know I'm not the only one that just lurks at The Velvet. I feel bad telling that to some of the Velvet people while we're on. I say, "Oh, yeah, I've been on there for a while," and they've never seen me post anything, I'm just reading.
BRIAN: Yeah, no, I like that. I mean, I like seeing what the conversation is like without me, especially since they're talking about a lot of work I feel connected too or work that's transgressive in a way that I like. So, I do like to kind of just see what's being said if I'm not there monitoring it, or if they don't know that I'm there monitoring it.
BOOKED: As far as Warmed and Bound goes, do you want to tell the listeners about your story that's in it, called "The Killer"?
BRIAN: Yeah, it's a story about a guy who's reading a book about a killer and just kind of gets obsessed with the story and what's going on and then finds the story itself beginning to take over his life in ways that he can't anticipate and doesn't expect. So, it's a story that kind of breaks the boundaries between reality and fiction, and does so hopefully in a way that still has a lot of dramatic tension and strangeness to it.
BOOKED: How did you come about the inspiration for that story?
BRIAN: That's a very good question. I don't know, honestly. It's a story that I wrote a while ago, and I think it came from a time when I was really getting interested in reading detective fiction, but also reading people like Jorge Luis Borges, and so was interested in a way in which detective fiction and literary fiction and crime fiction could kind of cross and intersect. So, I think that was probably what it was, but it's been long enough that basically what I'm doing is making up an answer.
BOOKED: We've noticed, and this is kind of a question related to some of your other writing. We try not to spend too much time on the short stories because it's impossible not to spoil them when they're coming in at ten and twelve, fourteen pages. You do some writing under the name B.K. Evenson, which appears to be mostly for series including HALO, Aliens, and Dead Space. Your other literary fiction is kind of under just your name, Brian Evenson. Is that an intentional separation by you or by your publishers?
BRIAN: It was something that originally I think I did because my agent and I were talking about it. The Aliens book was the one I did first and was really excited to do, partially because I grew up on that movie series, and so I had a really strong, personal connection to it. But talking to him, we started thinking, "All right, these books are contract books, they're going to sell a lot. Do I really want them to be the first thing that comes up on Amazon under my name?"
And, you know, we just figured it might be good to have a kind of separation. Then that was more, it's less if you look at those books it talks about, you know it uses my name in the bio note and everything. It doesn't try to hide the fact that I'm B.K. Evenson, it just lets readers know in advance what they're getting, I think. Is it going to be something that's my more literary stuff or is it stuff that's still me but kind of working in worlds other people have made. And I think the name thing partially came from Iain Banks, who writes literary fiction under his name, Iain Banks, and then science fiction Iain M. Banks, he uses his middle name. It's a way of designating kind of immediately, when you look at the book, this is a book that fits into this category, without denying that, you know, the book belongs to him still. That was, I think, what I was trying to do by doing that.
BOOKED: That's actually come up with a couple of the other people that we've talked to, the idea of publishing under different names for different reasons, and it seems like, from my perspective, and I'm pretty much just a reader, that there is that kind of impression that if you write something under a different name, you're trying to not hide your identity but separate yourself from it. That's a really strong point, I guess, that you just want to be clear to your readers what they can expect.
BRIAN: Yeah.
BOOKED: That's actually, really, I think a really great way to advertise that to your readers: what type of writing you're in for.
BRIAN: Yeah, and I think if you, you know, you don't have that, in some way or another, and you have that to some degree by the cover, by the words on the cover, but if you don't have a sense of that, I think you go into books with expectations that are going to be disappointed. I think it's also, you know, it does kind of freak my colleagues at Brown University out a little bit that I write this stuff, so it's also that they're tired and overworked enough that they don't actually look far enough down on the Amazon list and see that there's a B.K. Evenson book if you type in my name.
BOOKED: You mentioned a little bit about writing in an existing universe that isn't your own. Do you find those books easier to write or more fun to write?
BRIAN: The first one I did, I got asked to do it by Victoria Blake, who was working at Dark Horse at the time, and has gone on to start her own press, Underline Press, and she said, "I want to run this by you. I've got this idea: I'd love for you to do an Aliens novel. Is this something you'd like to do?" My first response was, "Oh, you know, I don't know if I can do that." And she said, "Well, just go ahead and write a summary and see what you think." And so I ended up doing what I thought was a two page summary and, very quickly, it became twenty pages, and I realized, in doing that, you know, I could do this Aliens book in a way that was connected to some of the things I do in my other work, that wouldn't be a compromise, at least in my opinion, and that would reach a whole bunch of readers who would admire it for what it did. So, I think that was the thing that kind of got me started on it.
It's definitely a bit of a challenge to work in worlds that aren't your own. When I did the Aliens book, they gave me what they called the 'Aliens Bible', which was like a list of everything you could and couldn't do. You know, Aliens don't have emotions, they don't have feelings, you know, all that kind of stuff. And you had all these constraints, but I found it really fun and challenging to kind of work within those constraints. And then, also, I do think there was a certain amount of release, as well. I mean, I could do things in it. The Aliens book is very mood driven.
So, both with Halo and Dead Space, again, you have with the video game worlds you have these very vividly depicted worlds, very interesting and a lot of depth to them, and so you kind of have a lot of things that are predefined. With Halo, the thing I wanted to do was to create a character that kind of worked against what I saw as all the patriotic fervor of that world, and so I wanted someone who has been part of the program that creates these kind of ultra soldiers, who had dropped out and been destroyed by the program. With Dead Space, I mean, it seemed like a very natural fit for me. It's a world that's full of madness, it's really quite menacing, very, very violent.
I think, with both the Aliens book and the Dead Space book, I really felt like I was entering these spaces where no one was going to care how violent I was. Whereas with my literary fiction, often that's the ob
jection people have, that it's too visceral or too violent, and the initial draft of the Aliens book, I think the response I got was, "You can make it more visceral."
So, I think, the challenges with these worlds that are created worlds is that you have to kind of direct your own aesthetic concerns to kind of fit in to the things that are all ready there in the world, and I find it challenging and interesting. They definitely write quicker than the literary fiction, but also I think they have a complexity to them that you don't always find in video game novels or movie-based novels.
BOOKED: So, how much video game research went in to this? How many hours did you spend in front of the X-Box doing research before writing these?
BRIAN: I do have an X-Box, it's true. I play a lot of video games. I had played Dead Space before they asked me if I wanted to do it, and once they asked me to do it, I went back through and played it again, kind of took notes and looked at it. So, it was quite a few hours, and I found it pretty satisfying in creating a sense of mood that would inflect my prose and work its way into it.
BOOKED: So, is this type of fiction something that you are receptive to doing kind of ongoing, or is it something you're dabbling in and you're going to step away from?
BRIAN: I think it's something I might do again. It looks like I'll do a second Dead Space novel. I don't want to do too much of it because it does take time away from other things that, you know, I'm probably a little bit more interested in doing. But, you know, I like the challenge of it, and the thing I find really satisfying about it is that I do reach readers that would never see my work otherwise, you know, people who maybe only read one book a year or who read only a handful of books and are reading this because they love the game, Halo or Dead Space or love the movie with Aliens so much, and so I really do like that I can be part of that person's one or two book a year reading experience.
