Chewing the Page: The Mourning Goats Interviews - Softcover

Phil Jourdan And The Goat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178099589X ISBN 13: 9781780995892

Verlag: JOHN HUNT PUB, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

This is the first collection of creative writing-related interviews originally posted on Mourning Goats, a website founded by the mysterious Mr Goat. Over a year of mostly anonymous work, the Goat managed to interview some of the most exciting English-language authors around. Edited by Phil Jourdan and the Goat himself, and featuring expanded interviews not available online, Chewing the Page offers a series of weird and hilarious glimpses at the world of writing. Includes interviews with Stephen Graham Jones, Craig Clevenger, Paul Tremblay, Donald Ray Pollock, Stephen Elliott, Chad Kultgen, Chelsea Cain, Rick Moody, Christopher Moore and Nick Hornby, and others.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Phil Jourdan is an author and musician from Portugal, living in the UK. The Goat is a literary goat.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chewing the Page

The Mourning Goats Interviews

By Phil Jourdan

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2012 Phil Jourdan
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78099-589-2

Contents

Editor's Introduction......................................................
1
Introduction: Confessions of The Goat......................................
2
Stephen Graham Jones.......................................................
4
Vincent Louis Carrella.....................................................
23
Craig Clevenger............................................................
46
Michael Kun................................................................
59
5 Questions about Author Promotion with Caleb J. Ross......................
74
Rob Roberge................................................................
77
Paul Tremblay..............................................................
95
John Langan................................................................
105
Donald Ray Pollock.........................................................
119
Stephen Elliott............................................................
127
Chad Kultgen...............................................................
134
Chelsea Cain...............................................................
142
Rick Moody.................................................................
150
Joey Goebel................................................................
157
S. G. Browne...............................................................
169
Christopher Moore..........................................................
177
Nick Hornby................................................................
184

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Stephen Graham Jones

What comes to mind when you hear "Mourning Goats?"

Mourning Doves, the 'goats of morning,' which is, I don'tknow — regret? Morning Glories too, a plant that's alwaysconfused me. Or, in this novel I just wrote, The Gospel of Z,there's these goats in it, which could definitely be said to bemourning. Saddest goats ever. Don't even want to be thinkingabout them. Except I love them, also. And then I guess I somehowspider over to that old strange short film, "Adonis XIV," maybe itwas called? Exterminating Angel kind of stuff. With this ram.Probably one of the more influential things I've seen, now that Iactually think about it. Have never shaken that movie off. Notsure I want to.

It Came from Del Rio came out on the 23rd of October andThe Ones That Got Away came out the 16th of November, thesame year. While teaching full-time, how do you find the timeto write?

Man, for me it's more like, how do I find the time to stay sane.Which is to say that writing, for me, it's just trying to make theworld make sense. Be that with bunny-headed zombies orinsurance office politics or whatever. Writing for me's makingthis plastic world up, thinking I can play in it, do whatever Iwant, have some fun maybe, except then, before I can help it,there's all this real stuff happening, I'm stuck back in a corner,and all I have to get out of this place anymore's a pen. I keepthinking I'm going to 'graduate' as a novelist someday, and havethis arm-length distance between me and the stuff on the page,where I can just move it around like chess pieces, analyze thisevent, that angle, be all objective and longseeing. Have a monocleand cane too, while I'm at it, yeah. But no, no such luck on thatkind of distance so far. It's why I write fast, really, because thesestories, they always get that bad kind of real to me, where I'mdreaming them, where I'm losing the lines between them andnot-them, and so I type faster and faster, trying every door. Andthen, when I finally get out, I feel great for a week, maybe eventwo weeks, I'm happy, the world's divided up as it should bebetween things that happen and things that I know can't behappening, but then, yeah, then I'm sitting on some bad-ideabench in a worse place I only meant to walk through, and I'mwriting down ... not a premise for a story, those are easy, but avoice that wants to tell a story. If I listen to it too long, too, thenI'm back inside another book, going as fast as I can. Wash rinserepeat.

However, I don't mean to be all romantic about writing either,don't want to set it up as 'the lonely, tortured novelist battles xamount of demons, reaches into the fire to pull this story out,'any of that. I mean, I see people everyday doing real work. Itmakes me completely aware that writing, it's hardly real work.It's fun work, I just always fall too deep into it. Or jump, yeah.With never any idea how deep this is going to get this time.

I loved your short story book, Bleed into Me, so I'm reallylooking forward to The Ones That Got Away, also, thedescription of It Came From Del Rio sounds amazing, what canyou tell us about the two?

In that order, The Ones That Got Away, it's all horror stories.Stuff that really and truly scares me. I'm always telling mystudents that you can render no emotional landscape youhaven't, to some degree at least, experienced. It's how you knowthose contours, the slope and sway of the land, can make it realfor your reader. But that's not to say that you've got to go onsome murder spree in order to write like Chelsea Cain, either.However, we have all — 'to some degree' — destroyed anotherperson, yes? Effectively, figuratively at least, 'killed' them. Be ityour mom, disappointed you stole the earrings her first, realhusband gave her (and her never outing you), or a dog youaccidentally caught with your bumper, whose five-year-oldowner you could see standing in their lawn in your rear viewmirror. I mean, that, that's horror to me, and I guess that's thevein I was tapping in The Ones That Got Away. The scary things,finally, they're not the slobbering toothed beasties in theshadows, they're the decisions we make, and then have to livewith. Or try to live with. But this isn't at all to say that there aren'tOld West zombies and Near Dark vampires and ghosts andworse in Ones. There are, and more. But there's also rabbits andgas pumps and high schools. There's our world, this world, theplace we live, wrapped around this terrible, terrible stuff. Andpeople trying to make it through to the other side. And, if I hadto cite any influences for this collection, it'd have to be a comboof King and Ketchum, maybe. Or, when I think horror, the stuffthat's formative for me, that I'm trying to do each time I have ablank page before me, I'm back in The Girl Next Door, as much asI'd never want to be. I'm back in "The Jaunt," my hair turningwhite in the space of that crossing.

For It Came From Del Rio, though, man, I think I'd just foundJoe R. Lansdale when I wrote that. Mike Shea at Texas Monthlyhad told me I should really look some of his stuff up. So thankfulfor that rec. Lansdale's stuff, the confidence and ease with whichhe tells his stories, it's — I wanted to say infectious, but, really,like with Vonnegut, it's intimidating. But if you can get over that,you can maybe write a novel set down on the Texas border, witha dad come back from the dead, a dad whose own head kind...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: JOHN HUNT PUB
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 178099589X
• ISBN 13: 9781780995892
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 197
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar