#14 Donald Ray Pollock

20 Questions With Mourning Goats

INTERVIEW FOURTEEN

Donald Ray Pollock

I was introduced to Don by the Chuck Palahniuk website, a few years ago and have never been the same. He writes in a way that you don't grasp until after you're done reading, and once you do, you have a smile on your face that takes time to fade. He's not only an amazing author, but a great guy. Enjoy interview fourteen!

1.  What do you think of when you hear the term, Mourning Goats?

I think of a man I use to work with at the paper mill.  His name is Charley, but everyone called him "Goat" because he had a well-groomed van dyke beard.   He used to come to work very hungover at times, which reminds me of the "mourning" aspect of your question.  

2.  You just sold your novel, The Devil All The Time, to Doubleday, so what can you tell us about it?  When can we expect it out? 

The Devil All The Time is set mostly in Ohio and West Virginia during the 1950's and 1960's.  Picture a tough, upright young man, a pair of serial killers, a corrupt sheriff, dirty preachers, religion, lust, revenge, death, the often smudged line between good and evil, etc.  The dust jacket art is fantastic; as my friend Chris Tusa said, it's sort of a cross between Faulkner and Orwell.  The Devil All The Time will be published on July 12, 2011.

3.  I heard about your story collection, Knockemstiff, from Chuck Palahnuik.  Any idea how it got in his hands, and what it meant for the book?

Sure, the book was placed in Chuck's hands by my editor at Doubleday, Gerry Howard, who is also Chuck's editor.  I think a lot of things in publishing work this way.  Of course, having Chuck's endorsement helped the sales tremendously.  He's a damn nice guy, that's all there is to it. 

3.  What was it like going back to school after 28 years?  Do you think being a big reader made it any easier? 

Well, I started attending college in 1988, which was, thank God, before computers began taking over (Did you know that scientists are now saying that they will be able to build a robot that's smarter than humans within thirty years?  If that happens, we're screwed, though I guess it's inevitable that we will destroy ourselves, right?)  Anyway, I probably did much better in school at age 35 than I ever would have at 19 or 20.  For one thing, I was sober by then, I'd already been married a couple of times, and I had a lot of the horse-shit out of the way.  

Being a big reader will help make just about anything easier.  It's hard to believe there are people enrolled in college these days who have never read a book on their own.  It would be nice if, instead of lowering the standards of college classes so that people who are practically illiterate can pass, we could create more jobs for our citizens who, let's face it, aren't cut out for higher education.  Sorry, but I'm one of those people who believe that grades one through eight should be nothing but lots of reading, writing, and math, along with phys. ed.  Get back to the basics and quit fucking with new-fangled approaches or state tests.  Make it tougher on students, not easier.  And figure out something to do with those who can't cut it or won't try.  But then what do I know?  I was a high school dropout. 

4.  You said in another interview that you write from around 6 am to 11 am; is that still how you work, or did things change when you started writing the novel?

Well, I worked mostly mornings on The Devil All The Time until the last four or five months, and then I switched to nights, from around 7 or 8 pm until 2-3 am.  I like the idea of doing my work in the morning, of getting something done first thing so I don't have to fret about it all day, but I probably write a little better at night.  Still, the main thing is to make the attempt every day. 

5.  It sounds like you're a voracious reader; anything recently that's blown your mind? 

Believe me, I don't read that much.  I try to read two books per week.  I know that sounds like a lot to some people these days, but it's not, not if you want to be a writer anyway.  Or anything else for that matter.  I've got friends who read much more than I do.  Think of all the hours the average citizen spends watching TV or playing video games or talking on their cell phone or handing their Facebook "commitments."  Don't get me wrong, I can become as strung out on that junk as the next person, but it's not a good way to spend a major portion of your life (and I realize others would argue that reading isn't a good way either). 

Except for Fred Venturini’s novel, The Samaritan, the best fiction books I’ve read recently are all new story collections: From the Darkness Under Our Feet by Patrick Michael Finn, One Last Good Time by Michael Kardos and Volt by Alan Heathcock.  Great non-fiction books I've read in the last couple of months include Gulag by Anne Applebaum, Fraser's Penguins by Fen Montaigne and King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild.  I’m looking forward to reading the new memoirs by Mark Richards and Andre Dubus III.

6.  Are you planning on focusing more on novels now that one is under the belt or do you think you'll go back and forth between novels and shorts?

I'm not sure yet.  I have a new novel started (just barely), so that's pretty much all I'll be working on for next 18 months or so, and that's as far as I want to plan ahead.  I'm not one of those people who can work on several different things at once. 

7.  In a lot of interviews, it sounds like you started writing because you had a mid-life crisis; do you think that's it, or do you think you just made the decision to go after something you knew you had in you? 

Well, I think I just refer to that time as a "mid-life crisis" because I don't know what else to call it. But it wasn't like I was going to blow my brains out if I didn't change careers.  If I'd waited, oh, just a few more months when I was going through that deal before I started writing, I would probably still be working at the paper mill and be happy with it. 

8.  Your story reminds me a lot of Craig Clevenger's; he wanted to be a writer, quit his job, and went for it.  What do you wish you would have known before you quit? 

Nothing.  If I had known some of the things I discovered later on--such as the difficulty of landing a decent teaching job, what such a job entails (hard work!) if you do it right, the cost of health insurance, etc.--there's a very good chance I would not have left the paper mill. I had a good job there.  

9.  You've said that you were 45 when you decided you wanted to learn to write.  Do you think people learn how to write or are they born to write? 

I definitely believe you can learn to write.  Why not?  Hell, you learn to be a plumber or drive a truck or be a lawyer, don't you?  Granted, it takes longer to become a good writer than, say, a grill cook, but it's still a learned activity to a great degree.  Certainly talent in involved, but it mostly comes down to hard work, like anything else.  You can be the most talented writer in the world, but if you don't do the work, you might as well be whacking the heads off chickens in a processing plant. 

10.  One of my favorite pieces of advice that you give is that a person must learn to sit in the chair if he wants to be a writer.  What's another big one for you? 

You must read a lot if you really want to be a writer.  If you don't love books and love to read, you'll never be a very good writer.  And don't just read the type of stuff you like or aspire to write yourself.  Read the classics, read poetry, read history.  With the American library system, being ignorant or illiterate is inexcusable today, totally a matter of laziness and poor parenting and too much cable TV and "social networking."   Texting your pal to tell him/her you're taking the trash out or just left the grocery store is not only insane behavior--at the very least either a sign of egomania or complete helplessness/co-dependency--but is time wasted.  Those minutes add up.  Do you want to go to your grave knowing that you spent a substantial chunk of your life tweeting? 

11.  With Knockemstiff, you did your first book tour--did you like it?  What would you like to see happen with The Devil All The Time as far as touring goes? 

Even though I'm one of those people who has a hard time getting up in front of an audience and reading, I loved most of it.  It's very hard for a shy person to stay stuck away in a room months or even years and then suddenly emerge and go out and read in front of a group.  Still, it was a great experience, and I'm grateful for it.  I met a lot of wonderful people.  As for the tour for The Devil All The Time, the most I can hope for is that people like the book, and we sell a lot of copies. 

12.  How has the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship helped you finish your new book? 

The PEN/Bingham did just what it's supposed to do--gave me the free time to work on a novel. Going to New York and receiving that award has to be up there in the six or seven best days of my life so far. 

13.  I have read that you wanted to teach.  What made you go after that, and how has it been so far? 

Though I'm probably shooting myself in the foot by admitting this, I have come to the conclusion in the last couple of years that I'm not a very capable teacher.  To be good in the classroom, you have to at least think that you know what you're talking about, and I don't have that confidence.  Perhaps it's because I started too late, I don't know.  I don't think I'm bad with short gigs, like a week-long workshop or something like that, but I run out of new things to say after a few classes. 

14.  You have a website and a blog, but I didn't see a Facebook page.  Did I miss it?  What are your thoughts on social media these days? 

Actually, I'm still trying to figure that out.  I was on Facebook for a few months and then dropped off when it started taking up too much time and space in my head.  I have a very addictive/compulsive personality, and I found myself messing with FB when I should have been writing (believe me, sometimes I will do anything to keep from writing) or reading or exercising or anything else.  Not only that, but I believe people need a certain degree of privacy and quiet time, whether they realize it or not.  But now I’m back on FB, as of last week.  Believe me, I understand that it’s a great "marketing" tool, and also a great way to find people (and organize revolutions!).  Still, I have to admit that I’m one of those dinosaurs who sometimes pines for the days of snail mail and typewriters and rotary phones.

15.  I enjoyed reading your blog, but has the experience of quitting the mill, writing the book, going to school, and changing your life been all smiles?   What were some of the struggles that you want to remember? 

I really can't say I had any "struggles."  I had a lot of rejections, and I spent a lot of time staring at the wall in the attic, but I'd be hesitant to call that sort of thing a struggle.  Since I tend to compare my life with the lives of people who have it worse (not better), I see myself as very, very lucky.  You have to understand that most of my "struggles" took place before I began writing, in the years before I got sober. 

16.  Drinking and writing go hand in hand, and you haven't had a sip since 1986.  Do you think you'd be where you are today if you hadn't made the decision to quit? 

If I hadn't stopped drinking in 1986, I would have been dead by 1990 or so.  I still think about that, about how lucky I was to have that little moment of clarity one sick, hungover morning when so many people around me just kept on using until they died or ended up completely wasted. 

17.  You remind me of a darker Raymond Carver, maybe in the way you see the people that you write about.  Was he a big influence and/or who is??

Of course, I read Carver's stories, and I think his spare prose style has been a big influence, but as far as subject matter/tone, etc., I've probably gotten the most from the Southern writers--Barry Hannah, Flannery O'Conner, William Gay, Tennessee Williams, Larry Brown, Faulkner, Harry Crews.  But right now my favorite fiction writers are J.F. Powers and Muriel Sparks and William Maxwell. 

18.  What do you think Ms. Herman, at Ohio State University, meant for your writing career?

As I've said many times, I'd probably still be working at the paper mill if it wasn't for Michelle.  She published my first story in The Journal and encouraged me to apply for grad school.  She's been great to me and many other students at OSU.     

19.  Knockemstiff had a rather high print run for a short story collection.  How did that come about?  Did it make you nervous at all? 

I have no idea how they calculated the number of copies to print.  Actually, I don't even recall how many copies were printed.  The main thing I was concerned with was that they not lose any money on me.  I figured if they didn't lose any money, well, maybe they would be willing to take another chance on me.  The same with The Devil All The Time. 

20.  What does Don Pollock have planned for 2011?

I live a very quiet, small-town life for the most part. I get up and work a while, then try to get some exercise and read and that's about it.  Last night I went to a high school basketball game; tonight I'll probably watch a movie; tomorrow morning I'll go to church (St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Chillicothe, Ohio) with my wife.  Except for doing a book tour this summer, I'll probably just keep plugging away at the new novel. 

Thank you!

Goat

And finally, don't forget to "like" Mourning Goats on Facebook and pick up Chewing the Page: The Mourning Goats Interviews on Amazon! 

#13 Lidia Yuknavitch

20 Questions with Mourning Goats 

INTERVIEW THIRTEEN

Lidia Yuknavitch

Lidia's editor contacted me in February asking if I would do an interview for her upcoming book, The Chronology of Water. I didn't think too much of it because I'd never heard of Lidia at that point, I'm not too interested in memoir, and up until then, have picked all my authors personally...then I read the book. In all seriousness, I want to thank her editor for introducing me to this amazing author. Go buy her new book today and enjoy the interview, I know I did! 

1. What comes to mind when you hear, "Mourning Goats?"

I picture many sad goats, also Jesus.  There was still a lot of unfortunate goat slaughter around his time, as people tried to decide who and what to pray to.  I suspect there may have been goat support groups and therapy.  Underground goat havens. Goats who drank to ease the pain. I don't know what the goats thought of Jesus, but I bet they identified with him a little.

2. To tell you the truth, I read Chelsea Cain's introduction to the book, and said, out loud, "bullshit," after reading it, I agree with every word she wrote. How do you pack so much physical emotion in to such short pieces of non-fiction? 

Wow...THANK YOU!!!  That makes me laugh--what you said--I might have thought that when I read her introduction too!  But I think the answer to your question is that I tried to make the body the point of view.  Rather than a psychology or personality.  I tried to write by and through a corporeal experience -- to keep the body up front -- to keep everything we feel through our bodies the point of the story.  The swimming metaphor helped me to do that.  You know?  In a lot of memoir or nonfiction I feel like the body recedes and the personality or psyche gets big.  I tried to make the body big.

3. You are another Mourning Goats interviewee out of the Chelsea Cain, Chuck Palahniuk, and Monica Drake writing group, what is it about this group that is pouring out great books?

Very fine wine.  Almost exclusively Pinot Noir, because of Chelsea.  Joking aside (though there really is something great about wine), I am humbled every single week by the fact that I get to sit in a room with the most amazing writers on the planet.  It's not just that they are ALL titans of mind and spirit and talent (Cheryl Strayed, Suzy Vitello, Erin Leonard, Diana Jordan, Mary Wysong).  We all not only take extreme pleasure in writing but in the idea that, as Monica Drake says, "writing is a living practice."  We live it together -- the good bad and ugly -- we respect that writing is like a primary relationship -- we push and pull and love one another on the page with as much intimacy and seriousness and love as you would a person.  And as Chelsea says, sometimes we cry in the bathroom.

4. I love your quote, "I believe in art the way other people believe in god," can you go a little deeper in to this? Is writing a spiritual experience to you?

Boy howdy.  It's an altered state.  When I listen to people I respect talk about god or faith or ecstatic states, I think yep, I get that, only not about god.  Shhhhh.  All the times in my life when I was ready to hang it up?  Art was there.  Music or painting or books or plays -- something to believe in greater than yourself.  Something to give you hope and inspire you to do good in the world.  Something so beautiful and life altering you almost can't stand it.  Artists who sacrificed themselves over and over again to bring it to you.  Art gives me a moral compass.  Rules to live by.  How to be compassionate.  How to value beauty.  How to understand my "worth" in the world with regard to giving of myself, rather than to myself. I don't exactly pray to art, but I can sit in a roomful of Rothkos or Bacons or Joan Mitchell paintings and bawl my eyes out just from what it opens up in my chest.  I can pass out from a Beckett play.  I can orgasm from a Kathy Acker book.  Ecstatic states.

5. Your blog is very politically inspired, is this just a hobby, or something that you do outside of the blogosphere?

I'm not very bloggy.  I'm too sporadic to be hip like real blogsters.  But since it's a space you can inhabit however you want, I use it when things piss me off or chafe ... ha.  The only way in which I'm political is that I think we are uber responsible these days for educating ourselves, participating in civil discourse, asking good questions, and actively engaging each other in communities that stretch beyond the self so that our own society doesn't cave in to unbridled power or uneducated moronity.  We live in kind of dangerous times in terms of power and moronity, if you know what I mean.  It's easy to become too passive -- to become a media viewer from the comfort of one's home.  I'm still thinking about what to "do" amidst the current zeitgeist besides make art.  Though I'll say for the record that making art is a political act even when it's not.

6. I saw that your new book, The Chronology of Water, has a book trailer, what do you think of it, and book trailers in general? Is it a way to intrigue non-book readers? 

I love it!! It's fantastic!! Everyone!  Go immediately to 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq_KktMWq1I

Ha.  My husband Andy Mingo made that film/book trailer.  So I'm quite fond of it.  But it's also just a kick ass little movie.  And yes, the Oregon ocean is very freezing in November.  To answer your question, I like book trailers.  I understand why it makes authors cranky to have to produce "media" in addition to writing books, but I also understand that the gaps between modes of artistic production are closing, so inter media or multi media forms are exciting to me.  Books merging with music or visual art -- that's always excited me.  I've collaborated on projects that emphasize those mergings.  I'm for it.

7. It says on your website that you became a writer in 1986 and the first story in, The Chronology of Water, with the same title, is a piece focused on your daughter, is this the story that made you consider yourself a writer? 

Probably.  The event of my daughter's death is what cracked me open as a person, and what came out after I regained my wits and emotions, was writing.  And when I wrote that story, something got reflected back to me that didn't depend on the outside world's judgements or rejections.  My own intelligence and creativity.  That's all.  For some of us, that's a profound moment.  To claim an intellect or creative impulse -- to embrace it -- to say "mine" without shame or apology -- to stand up.  By the way, when I wrote that short story, I was in Diana Abu Jaber's creative writing class at UO.  She said, "Um, Lidia, I think this might be a book."  That was 20 years ago.

I'm slow.

8. Hawthorne Books sent me out a copy of The Chronology of Water, and a postcard with a picture of the cover on it. Is it true that they are doing a cover and a "censored" cover? What do you think the response to it will be? 

Yes there is a version with a "belly band" that covers up a naked breast with an in focus nipple on the cover.  I wrote an essay about that called "About a Boob, or, The Hermeneutics of a Woman's Body" over at the Rumpus.  It's been a little odyssey, actually, for both me and the publisher, Rhonda Hughes at Hawthorne Books.  I have very strong opinions about what is culturally, commercially, and literarily "sanctioned" in terms of the female body and its representation, and what is considered troublesome or problematic.  Talk about hypocrisy.  But the book's main metaphor is swimming.  So there is a woman in water on the cover.  And for anyone with itchies about that, there is a swank charcoal gray belly band.  Removable.

9. Our first interview on the site was with Stephen Elliott, Editor-in-Chief at therumpus.net, who have picked The Chronology of Water for their book of the month in March, how did the come to be?
Cheryl Strayed forwarded it as her selection when asked by The Rumpus.  The folks at the Rumpus, Stephen, Isaac, and a woman named Julie Greicius, have been incredibly kind and generous to me.

10. You don't write just memoir, you have books of short stories, a book of criticism, and you have a novel coming out, The Small Backs of Children, next year; which was your favorite to write? Why? 

I'm not sure I have a favorite, though fiction is my heartbeat I guess.  I love the form of fiction writing -- and by that I mean less than conventional fiction writing, because I am a language and form junkie.  I like to play in fiction.  Like paint.  Or music.  I'm not sure "memoir" is the best description for what I did in COW...it's more of a body story.  Wish there was such a category -- Whitman would be happy.  I suppose what I love most about writing is the poetics of it.  Swimming in language is like swimming in a very, very large pool. or the ocean.  I will say this, COW nearly did me in emotionally.  But then so did The Small Backs of Children.

The most FUN I've ever had writing a book is one I just finished -- a novel called Dora: A Head Case. Crazy fun.  Like laugh out loud fun.

11. With the authors I've interviewed, it seems as though one theme is the same for them all, their life is non-stop, action packed. Married, teaching, running Chiasmus Press, writing, doing readings, how do you do it? 

Pharmaceuticals.  Swimming.  Meditation.  Active sex life.  These things give me balance.

12. The story, Ecstatic State, is about dating your now husband, Andy, do you think that a support system at home is important when one of your occupations is centered around being alone? 

HUGELY.  I have a writing room and both Andy and my son Miles understand its sacred status.  Miles grew up understanding "mamma is writing right now" as a normal part of our household.  He's very respectful about it--even tells other people not to bother me.  But the other side of that is that I can hear them and smell them and feel them on the other side of the door.  Always.  An the animal in me needs that too.  To have the Mingo and Miles near me even in my solitude. 

I'm lucky too because I can write in furious speed flashes.  I could never write away from Miles and Andy, which I think is not the case with other writers...my "alone" is self induced.  Probably a keen trick I picked up from childhood -- creating alone worlds to survive no matter what is going on "around" me.

13. The Chronology of Water is coming out on the kindle, today (April 1st, 2011), what do you think about e-publishing and the move to digital?

Well I think it's exciting, because I'm a person who is always excited by new forms that are triggered in the ZOOM of our world, but right this second I guess it goes without saying it's a bit of a bummer for the artist/writer.  On the other hand, the books I've written have never made a ton of money, and I didn't write any of them with money in mind, so perhaps I won't miss it. Like I said before up top, multi media modes are pretty exciting to me.  I'm waiting for the nano technology where we won't even have techno objects to hold.  It'll all be "in us."  Cyborg nation.

14. Amazon's description of your book starts out, "this is not your mother's memoir," which I love, and agree with, what pushed you to write these stories down? 

Chuck Palahniuk dared me.  True story.

15. What do you think is the most difficult part of running Chiasmus Media? (Also, EPIC website!)

Not enough money to hire helpers.  Not being able to publish a zillion astonishingly unique writers.  Not enough people who want to read books that require a brain or that make your brains have cerebral sex...but it's nice to be small and "in the pocket," too...

16. Where do you see publishing going? Do you see it expanding into more of a mixed media? 

I guess you can tell from my answers that I'd say YEP.  A good example is Jaded Ibis Press, run by the wicked cool Debra Di Blasi in Seattle.  Also, when chiasmus comes out of hiatus in the fall, watch for something beyond textual.  Like I said, that doesn't bother me. But we do need to come up with structural models for production, distribution, and the divisions of labor and compensation that make sense...

17. It looks like you're doing some touring in the coming months, are you excited about it? What have your tours in the past consisted of? 

I'm hella excited!  Also terrified!  HA.  I've never had "tours" in the past.  I've only worked my ass off on my own to beg people to come let me read.  My dear friend Lance Olsen and I have done fairly well at making our own bling together.  We've read together wonderously in the past in SF and Seattle and Portland -- had great fun making it all up.  But it's exhausting.  Lance and I also invented a terrific writer's conference here in Portland called The Writer's Edge that has generated a ton of enthusiasm and created a tribe of thrilled innovative writers.  Lance is the Managing Editor of Fiction Collective Two.  So what I'm saying is, we've had to make ourselves up in terms of readings and performances.  But why whine? It's from the ground up.  Or underground.  Or counter-culture.

This mini-tour I'm doing in Seattle/Chicago/NYC/LA/SF/Colorado...brand new for me. But I am psyched.  Some of the events are performances, and I have a background in performance art so I'm tickled about that.  Like the plastic swimming pools we'll have on hand when I perform with Cris Mazza and Davis Schneidermann in Chicago.  

18. What's your favorite part about teaching writing and literature? I would think that talking about writing every day would be the best job in the world. 

Yes, that's cool.  What you say.  But I think my favorite part is running into the student...well hell, I really don't think of the people I work with as students any more -- just people -- running into the person who has a secret.  And their secret is, they are brilliant.  And they are just beginning to let their secret out.  And you get to be there for the start of that...the opening moment...and you get to usher them toward their own light.  It takes my breath away.  The people whose paths I've been lucky enough to cross blow the top of my head off.

19. What is the best advice you've received, or want to give, or both, to the writers reading this interview? 

Be who you are, don't let anyone tell you there's only one way to do things, and for the love of goats, don't stop.  Ever.

20. What's next for Lidia Yuknavitch? 

Trying to seduce someone into buying the Dora: A Head Case novel and finishing a new novel I'm currently tit-high in called Virgin, based on Joan of Arc.  And loving the people I love as hard as I can in this hard world.  THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME TALK TO YOU!

Thank you!


Goat

#12 John Langan

20 Questions with Mourning Goats

INTERVIEW TWELVE

John Langan

Paul Tremblay told me about John Langan a few months ago and after reading his interview here, as well as his books, I trust Paul's judgment; I was right in doing so. Enjoy the interview of an up-and-comer that I'm sure you'll be hearing a lot more about, soon.

1. What comes to mind when you hear, "Mourning Goats?"

A small herd of goats—maybe five or six—gathered near the grassy top of a modest mountain.  Their coats are almost comically long; their horns, undersized; the expression on their faces one of disaffection—indeed, they look like a talented child’s approximation of a goat.  At the very summit of the mountain, a grey stone box, its surface cracked, the cracks seemed with hardy lichen, rests.  The goats range nearer and farther from the box, but there is a certain distance they will not venture any closer to it, just as there is another distance they will not stray any further.  Ask one of the men or women who live in the village at the foot of the mountain about these animals, the stone box, and he or she will tell you that these are the Mourning Goats.  The man or woman will not contradict you when you state that their mourning must be connected to the box, but when you try to explore the matter further, ask if the box is a tomb, or a monument, or maybe an altar, he or she will refuse to answer you.  It is not good to speak of such things, you will be told, and that is all you will be told.  If you insist on hiking the mountain to examine the goats and their charge, you will see a look of panic flash across the face of the man or woman with whom you are speaking, but he or she will not stop you.  
 

2. You're a teacher at SUNY New Paltz, a story writer, novelist, non-fiction writer, father, husband, and practice karate-- that was tiring just to type out; how do you do it?

Well, I had to drop karate because my knees couldn’t take it, anymore, and I only teach part-time at SUNY New Paltz, which helps my schedule (if not my bank account).  Aside from that, it’s a balancing act.  I suppose it’s gotten a little easier in the last couple of years, as my son has reached school age, but even so, it’s a matter of prioritizing.  As just one example:  I used to try to do a lot more non-fiction—book reviews, especially—than I do now; that’s because I realized the number of book reviews I was writing was taking too much time away from my fiction writing, which was what I most wanted to focus on.  Life is fluid, so you have to be prepared to accommodate that.    

3. How has working with Night Shade Books been?  Do you see a lot of differences when working with different publishers as well as different genres of writing?

All things considered, I’ve been very fortunate in the publishers I’ve worked with.  Prime, who did my collection, Mr. Gaunt and other Uneasy Encounters, made sure that the book went out to a huge number of review outlets, as a result of which, I received reviews from publications such as The San Francisco Chronicle, The L.A. Times, and The Washington Post.  Night Shade took a novel, House of Windows, that the genre folks thought was too literary and the literary folks thought was too genre, and produced a lovely book.  When the hardcover didn’t sell as well as they wanted, they went back to the drawing board and redesigned the trade paperback edition, which has done somewhat better. 

Having worked with only two publishers, I’m not sure I’m qualified to make any kind of broad statement about publishing.  In terms of working in different genres, the only other genre in which I’ve published has been the non-fiction/academic one, and there, I’ve been very fortunate in terms of finding a number of editors who have been receptive to what I’ve wanted to write about.  

 4. As an academic, what are your thoughts on teaching writing, and learning how to write:  do you believe it's something that is taught, something that is just there, or something else?

I guess I’d have to say, “Yes.”  There’s no denying that some people have that facility with language and storytelling that we stuff under the name talent.  At the same time, no matter that raw ability, there’s always more that can be done to refine it, not to mention, to develop the discipline required to sit down at the page every day until the story or poem is done.  

A lot of this, I’m absolutely certain, has to do with how much and how well you’ve read.  We learn through imitation, and if you have that nascent ability with language and storytelling (which I suspect is far more widespread than we might think), then you want to allow yourself the maximum number of examples to learn from.  I know that writing workshops are very popular and certainly, they can be useful, but I’d suggest that it may be as, if not more, useful for a beginning writer to engage in a program of intensive reading, take a year or two and just soak yourself in the written word.

 5. I feel like most of my favorite authors have had very interesting jobs, any you'd like to share? Do you think that these experiences have shaped the way your writing has gone? Why?

My job experiences have been a tad less colorful:  aside from teaching since the mid-nineties, the majority of my past work-experience has been in eye-care:  in my younger years, I worked for both optometrists and ophthalmologists.  These were useful jobs, not because of anything to do with their specialty so much as because they brought me into contact with a wide variety of people, both in terms of my co-workers and the patients who came into the different offices.  (Now that I think about it, teaching at a state university these past years has done the same thing.)  It’s very useful for a writer to be exposed to as wide a range of people as is possible, since they are the raw material from which you will make your art.  That and stories:  the more people you meet, the more stories you hear, and what writer doesn’t love stories?    

 6. The first short story you had published, “On Skua Island,” was an 11 or 12 thousand word piece, which is quite long for a short story.  How did you get it in to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction? What did it feel like to have such a big piece taken by such a big magazine so early?

Yes, “On Skua Island” falls under that nebulous heading known as “novelette:”  too long for a short story, too short for a novella.  I submitted it to F&SF because they were one of the few magazines willing to look at such long fiction unsolicited.  (They still are.) I sent it to them the old-fashioned way, via snail-mail, and was astonished to receive a check and contract from Gordon Van Gelder within about a month.  I can still remember standing at the mailbox at the end of the driveway in my bathrobe, tearing open the envelope.  As I’m sure you can imagine, it was a big boost to the ego of a fledgling horror writer to have a story accepted by the magazine that had published Stephen King.  In addition, Gordon did a good deal to promote the story in the months leading up to its publication.  It was a little overwhelming; I had started at the top, not expecting to succeed there, and suddenly, I had and there I was.  It’s the reason I advise beginning writers to aim for the heights:  the worst that can happen is that you receive a rejection letter, the best is that you find yourself in a position of tremendous advantage.     

7. You've been teaching reading and writing for over fifteen years.  What's your favorite part, least favorite part?

I’ve loved the diversity of students teaching at a public university has brought me into contact with, and I’ve loved having the chance to expose them to a wide variety of literary texts.  As a writer, there’s no surer way to make sure you maintain contact with the classics than by teaching them on a regular basis.  I think I’ve benefited from returning to texts like “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and Heart of Darkness and The Turn of the Screw as many times as my teaching has made me.

What don’t I like?  Grading can be a bit of a drag, especially when you have a student who hasn’t taken the assignment seriously, and so has wasted their time and yours.   

8. In one interview you discussed that comics are slowly moving in to academia; do you see this as a shift in what is considered literary?

 Well, to split hairs, I see this as a shift in what modes of writing are considered worthy of academic attention; from what I’ve been able to tell, however, there hasn’t been much of a shift in the topics that are considered suitable for academic notice.  What I mean is, a comic such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which addresses the Holocaust and the vexed relationship between a father and son, treats subjects that are already considered literary; while a comic such as Eric Powell’s The Goon, which engages the history of pulp fiction conventions in a raucous and innovative fashion, is by and large still deemed beyond the pale.    

9. What's it like being a judge for the Shirley Jackson Awards? What does being a judge entail?

Being a juror for the first three years of the Shirley Jackson award was a great privilege.  No surprise, the job entailed a lot of reading, not just the books that publishers would mail you, but whatever you could seek out that might qualify.  I was quite pleased with the shortlists we arrived at:  if you wanted a cross-section of some of the best horror and dark fiction being written today, you could do a lot worse than use those lists as a guide.

10. You're co-editing a monster anthology called Creatures with another Mourning Goat interviewee, Paul Tremblay.  What's it like working with him; are you working on anything with any other authors right now?

Paul has been a real pleasure to work with; he’s uber-organized, conscientious, and professional.  To the extent that Creatures succeeds, it’s because of the weeks and weeks of hard work that he’s put into it.  At some point in the future, Paul and I are supposed to collaborate on what’s going to be a terrific short story or novelette; Laird Barron and I are also kicking around the idea of doing a story together.

11. In one of your Facebook posts you wrote that your son, David, was waiting to read the beginning of his first chapter book.  Was this a book he wrote, or a book he wanted to read to you? Either way, what are your thoughts on your kids getting into the literary world?

This was a book that David wanted to read to my wife and I; the title escapes me, now, but it had something to do with the labyrinth.  Since that time, though, he has begun work on his own book, The Dictionary of Monsters.  Yes, apples, trees, and all that.  My older son, Nick, has flirted with film-making at various points in his life; in fact, he was the one who shot and edited the trailer for my first novel, House of Windows.  He’s also written several screenplays for a cartoon series that would be great, if only he could find someone to take an interest in it.

On the one hand, there’s no denying the excitement you feel as a parent when your kid is doing what you do; there’s a kind of validation to it that is hard to describe and very gratifying.  On the other hand, kids have to find their own identities, which means that they’re likely going to wind up doing something different than what you do, the same way you chose to do something different from what your parents did.  That said, there’s no doubt that, whatever my boys choose to do, a facility with reading and writing can only help them. 

12. You're a two-time International Horror Guild Award finalist for short fiction and Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters was nominated for the 2009 Bram Stoker Award.  Do you find short fiction easier than novels? Which is your favorite medium to write and why?

Well, short fiction can provide more immediate gratification (relatively speaking) than novel-length projects, both in terms of the speed with which you can finish it and in which it can be published.  Right from the start, though, my work tended towards the longer end of the spectrum, long-novelette/short novella, so moving up to the novel felt like more of a natural progression than it might have had I been writing short short stories.  (Indeed, writing shorter stuff is something I’m still working on.)  At this point, I haven’t completed enough novels to compare writing them to writing stories of any length with any kind of certainty, but I’m a sucker for a good novella.  At about a hundred pages, you have the freedom to develop your characters and the situation confronting them in some depth, but you haven’t completely sacrificed the concision of effect.  

13. I saw that you went to World of Fantasy last year:  what did you think of it? Do you think that these kinds of events are important to aspiring writers?

Since I was completely left off the programming, an omission that wasn’t confirmed until I was standing in the convention hotel, trying to find my name somewhere on the schedule, this past World Fantasy was not among the best I’ve ever attended.  I suppose that extra free time did allow to me to spend a little more time with friends I don’t get to see that often, such as Nick Mamatas, which was good, and to make the acquaintance of a number of writers I knew only through their work, such as Gary Braunbeck, which was also nice.

The usefulness of these events depends, I think, on the individual writer.  I didn’t attend my first convention until I’d had three stories published in F&SF, two of which, as you’ve noted, had been nominated for an award.  As a result, I received a very kind reception from the people I talked to, and found the convention experience, on the whole, an encouraging one.  Had I gone before I had anything published, I’m not sure how I would have felt.  Based on my observations, the genre community tends to be fairly welcoming; however, the younger me, who was even more prone to self-doubt than the older me, might very well have been overwhelmed by meeting real writers who were actually writing, and that might have done me more harm than good.

14. Do you think that making a good horror is about making a monster that you detest as well as sympathize with?

I think good horror is more about making characters with whom the reader will sympathize.  A good monster is nice, but if those it threatens aren’t compelling, then you get a kind of slaughter-fantasy that doesn’t seem particularly interesting to me.  That said, a good monster combined with good characters is pretty hard to beat.

15. You have a facebook page, blog, and twitter account; do you think that social media is important for literature, authors, and the future of the written word?

With a few, Thomas Pynchonesque exceptions, I don’t think you can avoid social media at this point.  Some writers, such as Jeff Vandermeer, have employed it brilliantly to their careers’ advantages; I would not lump myself in with them.  I’m not sure what the implications of social media will be for the future of the written word; to be honest, from what I’ve seen, it strikes me as a danger to a lot of writers, a great time-suck into which a lot of the energy that should be going to your fiction gets drained.  There’s also the danger in presuming that, because you have a certain number of facebook friends, or twitter followers, or what have you, you have achieved something, that whatever flame wars you’ve spearheaded count for something in your life as a writer.  I’m all for people expressing themselves online, and I’ve no doubt a number of worthy conversations have happened there, but fiction writers write fiction.  That’s what they do.  If you’re spending all your time online, you may be doing a lot of things, but writing fiction is not one of them.

16. Your 10 year anniversary is coming up this year (congratulations!):  is your wife your first reader and what's it like being married to a fellow academic?

Thanks!  In many ways, it’s hard to believe it’s been that length of time.  My wife used to be my first reader—actually, it would be more accurate to say she was my first listener:  once I’d written one or two thousand words, I would read it to her, and she would tell me what she thought.  And she was honest, ruthlessly so.  My wife understands narrative mechanics in a more deep and profound way than anyone else I’ve ever met; I probably learned more from the years we spent doing that than I had in all my writing classes up to then.  After our son was born, though, it became much more difficult to maintain that kind of process, and it fell by the wayside; though I still have thoughts of returning to it, someday.

Certainly, the nice thing about being married to a fellow academic is that there’s a level of understanding between the two of us that is deep and immediate; we don’t have to explain or justify things to one another the way we might if we worked very different jobs.  At the same time, our areas of study are sufficiently different for us to preserve some sense of our own identities.

17. What are some of the most recent things you've read-- shorts, novels, whatever--that have knocked your socks off?

This year, I shied away from compiling any kind of “year’s best” list because I’m aware that there’s a great deal of fiction that I either haven’t read yet or that’s slipped completely underneath my radar.  That admission out of the way, the books published this past year that absolutely blew my doors in were Laird Barron’s Occultation and Paul Tremblay’s In the Mean Time, both collections of short fiction.

With his first book, The Imago Sequence (2007), Laird seemed to arrive on the horror scene fully-formed, his plots a demonstration of the continuing vitality of what I guess you could call the cosmic horror tradition, his language a decanting of Cormac McCarthy, Wallace Stevens, and Roger Zelazny.  Occultation consolidates the gains of the previous book while expanding Laird’s range; I’m especially fond of his long stories, “The Broadsword” and “Mysterium Tremendum,” but there isn’t a clunker in the bunch.  Laird could stop writing today and the achievement of his first two books would be sufficient to rank him with the major horror writers of the last century.

Paul’s first collection, Compositions for the Young and Old (2004, rev. 2005), marked him as a writer to watch, and the stories he’s published since that time have shown a learning curve so steep it’s pretty much vertical.  In the last half a dozen, seven years, he’s written stories such as “There’s No Light Between Floors” and “It’s Against the Law to Feed the Ducks” and “The Teacher” that have vaulted him to the forefront of contemporary horror writers.  For a good couple of years, now, I’ve been saying that when Paul’s next collection came out, it was going to be a major event, and there’s no other way to describe In the Mean Time.

I’d also like to mention a collection I’m in the middle of, Livia Llewellyn’s Engines of Desire, which is new this year.  Livia’s stories are a fierce, uncompromising blend of the erotic and the horrifying, and her book is not to be missed. 

18. As I'm sure you know, a lot of our readers are aspiring young writers.  What piece of advice do you wish you received when you started putting words down?

That’s a tough one.  I think it would have been something like, “Read widely and well, but trust the things you love to be sufficient for your ambitions.”

 19. What does your writing routine look like, every day, when the thought hits, morning, night?

I have a small office in the northeast corner of our house, and that’s my preferred place to work.  When I’m engaged in writing a new story or working on a novel, I sit at my desk and do my best to produce at least a new page every day.  Over the last couple of years, I’ve found myself more able to write in other locations—in my class, when my students are critiquing one another’s work, or at the café at the base of the building that contains my office—so if I have a decent block of time, I’ll try to use it to continue with whatever I’m working on.

20. You're currently working on your second short story collection and your second novel.  How are things going?  What can you tell us about either/both?

The collection is currently making the rounds at a number of different publishers.  It’s called Technicolor and Other Revelations, and includes eight stories, seven of which have been printed in places like John Joseph Adams’s first Living Dead anthology and Ellen Datlow’s Poe anthology, and one of which is brand new.  I suppose these stories continue the trend I began in my first collection, which is to say, revisiting the central archetypes of horror narrative and seeing what I can do with them.

My second novel has the working title of The Fisherman, and I’m probably about sixty percent done with it.  It’s about a fishing trip to a haunted river.  I hope to have it in to my agent come the beginning of summer.

Thank you, John!


Goat

#11 Chelsea Cain

20 Questions with Mourning Goats

INTERVIEW ELEVEN

Chelsea Cain

Chelsea is awesome. Period. When I read the advanced readers copy of Heartsick, years ago, I couldn't shake the physical descriptions that she described, and now, she's only getting better at making me cringe. Please go pick up her new book, The Night Season (out today), and enjoy the interview!



1. What comes to mind when you hear, "Mourning Goats?"

Sad goats.  Specifically, the goat I had as a kid.  Her name was Full Moon and I was weaned on her milk.  I loved that goat.  She got old and sick and my mother wanted to put her out of her misery, so she hired someone to do it.  He came by when we weren’t home and shot Full Moon in the head with a shotgun.  We came home and she was just lying there dead in her pen.  My mother felt terrible about that.   Big guilt.  I don’t remember it.  I’m not sure if I didn’t see her, or if I just blocked it out.  I was in my early twenties by the time my mom finally told me the story.  She still felt terrible, after all those years.  They buried her in the yard at that house.  I went by there about a year ago and they had torn down the old farmhouse and built a mcmansion.  But somewhere underneath it all are the bones of my old goat. 

2. Fellow Mourning Goats interviewee, Monica Drake, is in a writing workshop with you and Chuck Palahniuk, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think being in a group like this has been a big part of your success?

It certainly helped me with the first book – Heartsick.  When I joined the group, I was about 180 pages into Heartsick and I spent a year bringing it in a chapter at a time and rewriting it.  I knew nothing about how to write fiction.  And that group was like taking a master class.  They are all so incredibly smart about writing, and gifted at different aspects of the craft.  Of course we are also all nuts, so I think it’s good that we all have somewhere we can go once a week to remind ourselves that we are not alone, and to keep us off the streets so we don’t hurt ourselves.  I’ve been in writing groups before and personally I find them really useful.  But it depends on you, and it depends on who’s in your group.  Find people who make a living writing.  Ideally people who have MFAs, and know stuff.  People who are serious about it.  And meet on neutral ground.  Don’t meet at someone’s house.  Meet at an office.  Find a room at a library.  Meet every week.  And if it’s the wrong group, disband and find another one.  Eventually, you will find your people.     

3. What was it like going to number 8 on the New York Times bestseller list with Heartsick? As great as it must have been, was it stressful in any way?

That was up there with the birth of my daughter as a Best Life Moment.  Okay, it was better than the birth of my daughter.  That is probably a terrible thing to say – but it’s totally true.  I was in San Francisco, and my publisher and editor called me from a bar in New York where they were already celebrating.  There was lots of shouting.  I wanted to go right out and get a tattoo.  One, to commemorate the event, and two, because I figured that for the rest of my life people would ask me what I had the number 8 tattooed on my bicep, and that would be an excuse to tell them that I was a NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLING AUTHOR, THANKS FOR ASKING.  That night I did a reading in S.F., and no one came.  Not a single person!  Maybe if I’d gone through with the tattoo…

4. I saw you were thinking about giving out personalized floaty pens on your next book tour, have you done anything like this in the past? How did it go?

I’ve given out all sorts of stuff.  “I ‘heart’ Archie/Gretchen” buttons.  Severed fingers.  Severed hands and feet.  Rhinestone heart pins.  Jelly-filled people-shaped donuts with pretzel stabbed in them.  Temporary tattoos.  I’m always looking for novelty items to give away.  I guess I’m trying to make my readings an event.  A show.  On my last tour, I got friends to write murder ballads about Gretchen and perform them at a few of my readings.  There are so many authors and so many readings and so many bookstores, it just feels like anything extra helps.  If I could tap dance, I would. 

5. How does one write humor for The Oregonian, reviews for New York Times, AND horror that leaves the reader in physical pain?

Horror and farce aren’t so different in terms of structure.  It’s all about tension and reveal, timing, and the unexpected.  People are always so surprised to discover that I’m funny.  But I think my thrillers are funny.  Dark.  But funny.  And I think it’s important in a tense and nail-biting narrative to give the reader a break.  Maybe not a belly laugh—but the occasional wry smile.  Or at least a fleeting smirk.
        
6. I love the story on your website about wanting to be a firedog as a little girl, I think we all had big dreams as children, were your parents very supportive of the firedog? Being a writer?

My parents told me that I could be anything I wanted.  And I swear to you, I really believed that I could be a fire dog.  I was four or five by the time I realized that it was pretty much an impossibility to will oneself into becoming a Dalmatian.  I guess my parents didn’t want to limit my potential.  The only pressure I felt about what to do when I grew up was that I should choose something that would make me happy.  My mother thought I should be a stand-up comedian.  (I don’t know where she got this – because I was not a funny kid at all.)  The only time my dad ever seemed disappointed in me professionally was when I called him up at a low point and told him I wanted to go to law school.  By the time we got off the phone he had talked me out of it.

7. I read about the tattoo on your right shoulder, can you tell the readers what it is and what it means?

I have two tattoos.  I think you’re talking about the one on my left bicep.  It’s a tattoo of a snake.  Snakes are my one irrational fear, and I thought that by tattooing one on my arm, I could claim the fear and conquer it.  It didn’t work, but it’s a nice tattoo. 

8. Which is scarier and why? The worlds that you come up with in your writing, or dropping your little girl off at kindergarten for the first time?

Oh, God – Kindergarten.  A friend once told me that dropping your kid off for the first day of kindergarten was like throwing a puppy out the window of a moving car onto the highway.  I think that’s a pretty apt description. 

9. The advanced readers copy of Heartsick is beautiful, it's a white cover with a bloody hand smudge grabbing the book, what happened to that cover? Did you love it? Maybe this can be transferred to the movie poster?

Thanks!  That is a great galley.  They thought it was too gory for the general public.  But there’s a Japanese edition of Heartsick that used the design.  It’s tiny and square and completely cute in that particular Japanese way, and yet also blood spattered and disturbed.  Naturally, I love it.  

10. I read in an interview that you were planning on continuing to write humor books, under a pseudonym, can you give us any info on this? Are you working on anything?

I’d like to do one in the future at some point.  I miss those books.  I loved the collaboration with the illustrator.  Writing is such a solitary gig.  There’s interaction.  You work with an agent, an editor, marketing people, and then when it’s out in the world, there are readers and media people.  But mostly it’s you pulling threads of ideas out your nose and trying to knit something out of them.  I love working with an illustrator throughout the creative process.  We inspire one another.  There’s an energy to that that is absolutely thrilling.  As soon as I think of an idea—and find three months of free time—I’ll get right on that.   

11. You wrote your first book, Dharma Girl, and got it published in your early twenties, what do you feel has changed the most in your writing since then?

My advance for Dharma Girl was $1000.  My advances now have a lot more zeros.  It’s just completely different.  My whole approach is different.  I am part of something much larger, and there is more pressure, and I feel more responsibility.  This is my career, not a side project.  I wrote Dharma Girl by instinct.  It’s all gut.  I am much more purposeful and thoughtful about my writing now.  I guess that comes with practice.  Along with bad eyesight and cynicism. 

12. Again, with Dharma Girl, you say on your website that it is your favorite, why?

Dharma Girl is the story of my return to the hippie commune where I spent my early childhood.  It is the book that was burning to get out.  It’s youthful and intuitive and reckless and raw, but it will always be my favorite. It’s the book I had in me – the story I had to tell.  And it’s such a valentine to my parents and to my early childhood and to my mom (who died a few months before it was published).  It’s not my best book.  But it has a huge place in my heart. 

13. I don't like how everyone focuses around you being a woman (men and women can be equally sick in my mind), what are your thoughts on this kind of attention?

It baffles me.  Just last week a woman approached me at an event and asked me, “How can you write these books, as a woman?”  She was smiling, just making conversation.  But I was completely blind-sided.  It’s like asking someone how he can be a doctor as a redhead.  It doesn’t compute to me.  I think of myself as a thriller writer, not a female thriller writer.   

14. For all of our aspiring authors out there, what advice would you give them on writing? What do you wish someone told you when you started out in this career?

My most sage advice is the trickiest: you will never make a living writing, until you learn to write when you don’t want to. 

15. Thank you for giving your readers permission to laugh at your books! I think some of the subject matter is so scary and disgusting that laughter is the only thing that makes it okay. What's one of the sickest or most disgusting things you've written that you laughed at?

I’ve always thought that pulling someone’s small intestine out with a crochet hook was pretty funny. 

16. Which was more of an influence in starting this series, the Green River Killer or the hormones of pregnancy? I've read you comment on both in other interviews.

I couldn’t have written Heartsick without the influence of both. 

17. What have your tours been like? Are there a lot of interesting fans? Any scary stories?

I’m sort of disappointed at the normalcy and sweetness of my fans.  I expected more mouth breathers carrying axes.  But the vast majority of my readers are quite upstanding.  I do get the occasional creepy email or letter from people who like my books for, shall we say, the wrong reasons.   

18. I read an interview from the early 2000's and it seems like you never saw these books coming, was writing this series out of left field for you? A happy accident?

That first book was out of left field.  I’d always loved reading thrillers and watching cop shows on TV.  I had that idea for the first book, and halfway through writing it, I came up with the idea of writing a series because I had so many ideas for the characters and didn’t want to cram everything into one novel.  But I had no idea how huge they would be.  I still pinch myself.  I am covered with bruises from all the pinching.   

19. What's next for Chelsea Cain? Can you tell us anything about your next project?

The Night Season (book four in the series) comes out March 1, and I’m working on book five.   Gretchen moves off stage for most of The Night Season, so Archie and Susan and Henry have some room to grow as characters.  There’s a new serial killer on the loose, and Portland is threatened by massive flooding.  There is so much water in this book that I had to start looking up synonyms.  I ran out of ways to describe wet.  It’s a good old-fashioned heart-stopper of a thriller.  Less gore, and more action.  Lots of fun to write.  It’s also a good entry point to the series.  I wanted to write a book that people could read without having to read all the other books leading up to it.  But that would still be satisfying to loyal readers of the series.  Is that convincing enough?  Have you ordered a copy?   Please order a copy.  I’ll tap dance…

20. Heartsick, Sweetheart, and Evil at Heart are your last three novels, are you going to miss heart in the title of your new book, due in March, The Night Season?

Not at all.  I have a list of hundreds of heart titles they are each sillier than the last.  I’m excited to have some freedom.  Talk to me in a few books.  I’ll be back to “Heartburn.”

Thank you Chelsea!
Goat

And finally, don't forget to "like" Mourning Goats on Facebook and pick up Chewing the Page: The Mourning Goats Interviews on Amazon! 

#10 Wendy Dale

20 Questions with Mourning Goats

INTERVIEW TEN

Wendy Dale

Wendy just started working at an animal rescue organization as a filmmaker/translator but even while surrounded by 24 lions, she took the time to answer our questions. As always, in the presence of the bizarre, she shines through. Please read the fantastic interview below and learn about a great author as well as a great person. 

1. What comes to mind when you hear, “Mourning Goats?”

I think it’s pretty obvious. You’re referring to the famous Sanskrit parable in which Shiva leaves his goats unattended all night and later comes to regret it, the moral being that it’s not worth crying over lost goat’s milk.

2. I hear Internet connectivity is less than common in Bolivia, where are you connecting from today?

Ah, but there’s where you’re wrong. People tend to think that Bolivia is a backward country stuck back in the adobe age. First thing you should know: I have a pet cat, not a llama. Besides, Bolivians have really embraced new technology. Within a block of my house, there are three cafes offering high-speed Internet connection for less than fifty cents an hour. Not to mention that nearly all of my Bolivian friends have a FaceBook page. Around here, it’s even pretty common to see women in traditional dress (bowler hat and all) reach into the rainbow shawls on their backs and pull out a cell phone. Granted, they usually answer in their native tongue Aymara.

Though in all honesty, I’ve been here for five years now—and I still don’t know what an iPhone is.

3. Which do you prefer, fiction or non-fiction, in both reading and writing?

I will always love fiction. Even in writing non-fiction, I always rely on novel-writing techniques. Maybe it’s true that reality is stranger than what lies in any author’s imagination, but I still think it takes fiction to truly explain our world to us.

4. If I remember correctly, you are the reason fellow Mourning Goats interviewee, Craig Clevenger, got his book The Contortionist’s Handbook, in the hands of Chuck Palahniuk, how did this come to be?

It’s a long story that began when I came across a three-paragraph excerpt of The Contortionist’s Handbook on Amazon and knew I had to have the novel. I got to the last page and was simply blown away.

I’d never written to an author before and I had a lot of false illusions about the kind of life they led. I imagined Craig to be wealthy and famous, figured he was probably dating a supermodel. But when he emailed me back, it turned out he worked at Borders. I’ll never forget his comment: “There’s nothing worse than watching a person pick up your book, look it over, and then put it back on the shelf.” He added, “Writers are the only people who get royalty statements and eviction notices on the same day.”

This was devastating news, especially since my own book was slated to be published in a matter of weeks. At the time, George Bush was just starting to launch his war on Iraq and I felt helpless to do anything about what I felt to be a grave injustice. So I set out to right another wrong: the fact that a genius author could barely afford his own rent—his indie publisher hadn’t even given him an advance. And if I recall correctly, his first print run was just 2,000 copies. Or maybe it was 4,000.

It occurred to me that the only difference between Chuck Palahniuk and Craig Clevenger was that Chuck had lucked into a movie deal and had gotten tons of exposure for his book. While Chuck was busy brushing shoulders with Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter, Craig spent his evenings working in a bar. My idea was this: If I could tap into Chuck’s audience, letting them know about The Contortionist’s Handbook, maybe Craig’s luck would change.

It was a crazy idea. Still, I needed to go through with it, partly because Craig and I had begun to correspond via email, but mostly out of a need to believe that it truly was possible to achieve some sort of fairness in this world.

I sent Craig’s book to the guy who ran Chuck’s website, and nothing happened for months. When I bugged him about this, he brushed me off with a comment about receiving lots of books and being all-so-busy at the moment.

Four months later, I got an email from Craig. He had included a link and a single line of text: “I could kiss you right now.”

There wasn’t any hidden sexual message there — Craig and I have never been more than good friends. But when I clicked on the link, I was led to an audio file, Chuck Palahniuk himself talking about Craig’s book, something along the lines of “This is the best fucking book I have read in five, no make that ten years.”

The rest is history, as they say. To be totally honest, I’ve never been prouder of anything else I’ve achieved. That was the day I felt I actually did something truly noteworthy.

To end this long story, let me just add that Craig and I have remained incredibly close over the past seven years. In fact, last March he visited me in Bolivia, crashing for three months at my place as he worked on his latest novel.

5. Where have your siblings and parents ended up? With everything I’ve read in your book and on your site, I can only guess everyone is scattered all over the world. 

I come from a family of nomads. It’s always been complicated explaining to friends about my travel plans for the holidays. When I get asked where home is, I usually respond, , “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to ask my parents.”

Ten years ago, when my parents were figuring out where to go next, fate stepped in — in the form of a travel guidebook. My mother came across the line “the city of the eternal spring” and uprooted the family to Cochabamba, Bolivia — without even having visited the place first.

This probably gives you the wrong impression of who they are. My mother loves floral print dresses and my dad buys his sneakers at Wal-Mart. In fact, they recently moved to a suburb of Albuquerque where my mother is a reservations agent for Southwest and my dad runs a home business, selling mineral samples over the internet. His site is www.dalerocks.com, which I love — my dad really does rock.

As for my siblings: Catherine runs a nursery school in Manhattan, Richard is a prison guard in Arizona, and Heather lives in Abu Dhabi — to be honest, I still haven’t quite figured out what she’s doing there. I imagine she must have gotten her hands on a guidebook.

6. You wrote employee newsletters for an aerospace company for a while, what was that like and how did you get into it?

I learned about the position from a posting on the job board at UCLA (I was in college at the time). My only writing experience up to that point was editing a student newsmagazine, but I bluffed my way through an interview.

I hated the job, but I was just twenty years old, was earning good money, and got to think of myself as a “professional writer,” even if the majority of my day consisted of informing employees what they could expect for lunch that day in the cafeteria.

7. You are an emmy nominated writer for The New Adventures of Mother Goose, do you think you’ll do anything like this again? 

Do you mean write about Mother Goose again? To be honest, I don’t have any plans to do so in the immediate future. Though I do work on film scripts from time to time.

8. You currently live in Bolivia, what do you like most about living there, least?

Cochabamba is a city of a million people with breathtaking colonial architecture, a near-perfect climate, and tons of great places to eat. I live in a two-story house with 30-foot-high ceilings, exposed brick walls, and wood floors — and my monthly rent is less than what many people in the States spend on a gourmet, five-course meal.

If I had one complaint, it would be that I still don’t know what an iPhone is.

9. Your agent for Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals was Stephanie Lee, is she also your agent for fiction? What’s it been like working with her?

Stephanie has been a friend, mentor, and therapist to me. Plus, how cool is it to have an agent with tattoos and pink hair? She has represented all of my works thus far. Sadly, she left the business a year ago. I haven’t yet looked for her replacement, mostly because I haven’t yet finished the proposal for my newest book.

10. Are you going to be focusing on fiction now, or do you think you’ll ever go back to another travel book? 

I don’t know that I’ll write about my travels again. But my latest project is a memoir, the story of seven years I spent living in a Mexican barrio in Los Angeles, titled American Wetback: An Immigrant in My Own Country.

11. Your book, Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals, was laugh out loud funny to me, especially the way you portray your Mother, with lines like, "Your father has become a jalapeno-chili-pepper farmer in Honduras." Is she as funny as your portray her or is it more of a situational humor?

I wish I could take credit for great writing when it comes to describing my mother, but the truth is that I simply followed her around with a notebook, jotting down everything she said. I was born to strange parents, something I hated as a child, but a fact that has turned out to be a huge plus for my writing career. I still remember an early comment from an editor after reading Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals: “That family is a goldmine.”

12. Can you tell us about your memoir classes on mediabistro.com? Do you think you’ll be doing more?

This year I tried my hand at teaching for the first time, and it’s been amazing watching other writers advance in their work. I really believe in writers helping out other writers — especially in an era in which publishers are more and more reluctant to publish books without an obvious commercial angle.

However, teaching has also been a huge drain on my time. Just today, I swore I’d never do it again — until I opened up my email in-box to find that my students had pitched in to send me an Amazon gift certificate for $180. That really got to me.

13. On your facebook page you mentioned that you voted this year in Bolivia, what was that like? 

It was kind of fun, actually. I think the poll workers assumed I was lost at first — I was the only blue-eyed girl in the place. (Here I’m also considered blonde, even though any red-blooded American would label me a brunette.) What followed doesn’t exactly make for a gripping story: I picked up a ballot, marked a few X’s, and deposited my slip into the appropriate box.

I voted for Evo Morales, who is making history as Bolivia’s first indigenous president — a man surrounded by controversy. I liken what is happening here to the Civil Rights movement in the States, but in a way the evolution in Bolivia is even more profound. This is a country that has been defined by centuries by a strict class system like nothing most Americans can even conceive of, and it’s exciting to watch the process of change, history taking place right in front of me.

14. I’m guessing that voting there means you are a full-fledged Bolivian citizen now, yes? Any thoughts on coming back to the states? Anywhere else?

I’m not a citizen, just a permanent resident. I’ve lived here for almost five years and while I’ve ventured outside the country — I spent three months in Argentina, took a quick trip to Chile, and lived in the Peruvian jungle for two months — I haven’t been back to the States.

When it comes to figuring out my future, I refer you to a quote from my first book: “For a brief while, I considered the possibility of becoming a ‘planner’ instead of (what would the opposite be? Oh yes...) a ‘fun person.’ ” In other words, I have no idea what comes next.

15. What did you think of film school in Cochabamba? What was it like writing and directing?

I know it sounds weird—I lived in L.A. for eighteen years and didn’t even think of studying film until I arrived in Bolivia. What I like most is that all film is independent here—and there is also a lot of talent.

Though there are a few perils. My first photography teacher spent most of our class time warning us of the dangers of having our cameras stolen. He constantly insisted that the most important skill a director of photography could possess was martial arts training—and forced us to spend hours doing push-ups on our fists.

16. If you got one piece of advice before you started writing Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals as well as your new fiction novels, what would it be?

I refer you to what Craig Clevenger said to me during our first correspondence, the comment about receiving royalty statements and eviction notices at the same time.

However, I’ll add something else, what I always try and drill into my own writing students: The path is filled with rejection—but it’s not impossible. The number-one reason that agents reject proposals is that a book simply isn’t good enough. I’ve met a lot of talented writers who submitted their works without truly polishing them first. You may have sparkling prose and a compelling idea, but if you don’t fully understand the concept of structure, you have no business trying to publish your book.

17. You’ve had a few interesting experiences with prisons, what’s one of your favorite stories? Did I hear that you were in last year for being an, “undocumented foreigner?” 

That sure put a damper on my Friday night! I had forgotten to bring along my I.D. and got picked up at a bar in a raid designed to round up illegal foreigners.

In a very strange twist of fate, at the immigration office, I later ran into a friend (a long-haired tattooed musician I never imagined to be working for the government). But he helped me out with all my legal hassles and introduced me around the office. A few weeks later, I’d become buddies with nearly everyone there, and many of my subsequent Saturday nights were spent over cocktails at my house in the company of immigration officials.

18. If I had the money, I would do the Bolivia tour you offer on your website, has anyone taken you up on it yet? What was it like? 

On a lark, I decided to offer a tour of Bolivia, but in the end, I never found the time to go through with it. I really need to update my sorely out-of-date website. Though Craig Clevenger did get my unofficial tour. I guess you should ask him what it’s like hanging out with me in Bolivia.

19. On your facebook page, I see that almost all of your family is on facebook, even Grandma Barbara, what do you think of the way that communication is going with social media?

For a nomad like myself, I love how easy it’s become to stay in touch with my friends in out-of-the-way places. Then again, there are a lot of ex-prisoners I’d love to avoid—would you believe it? Even they have a FaceBook page.

That reminds me: When I was hanging out with my immigration buddies, one of them told me about rounding up a Colombian suspected of drug trafficking. The guy’s friends had already been arrested, but he claimed to have no idea who they were. Then my immigration official friend pulled up the Colombian’s FaceBook page, a picture of them all drinking beers together.

20. You have a lot of things on the burner right now, what do you see happening in the next five years for Wendy Dale?

A while back when a friend was struggling over the decision to get married, I told her that it wasn’t such a big deal, that if it didn’t work out, she could always get divorced. “In fact, I’m thinking of getting married too, just so that I can say I’ve had the experience.” I didn’t have a boyfriend then, but I haven’t given up hope. If you know of any viable candidates, let me know.

Thank you!

Goat