Jeffery Thomas on Writing Freddy Krueger, the Appeal of Weird Fiction, and Vietnamese Culture
© Dark Regions Books - I AM THE ABYSS
YOU SHARE THE DISTINCTION WITH ANOTHER OF OUR CONTRIBUTORS OF HAVING WRITTEN FOR THE NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET FRANCHISE, FOR WHICH YOU'D SEEM AN UNLIKELY, IF INSPIRED CHOICE. HOW DID YOU END UP DOING A FREDDY NOVEL, AND HOW DID THAT EXPERIENCE DEVIATE FROM YOUR ORIGINAL WORK?
I was approached to write an original novel based on one of the New Line franchises, to help launch Black Flame –an imprint of Games Workshop. My first reaction was like, “What? I write my own stories...I don’t write about other people’s creations!” That attack of pomposity lasted all of a few seconds, when I realized this was my chance to reach a wider audience. I first pitched an idea for a Jason X novel, because I could do that horror-meets-SF fusion I do in Punktown (and in fact, in my mind my story would be taking place in the Punktown universe), but though the publisher liked my proposal they had a few too many Jason X projects already in the pipeline. Hence, I moved on to ANOES, a series I preferred anyway. My editor at that time, author Mark Charan Newton, coaxed me by suggesting I set my novel in the near future and incorporate Punktown-like technology and themes. This I did, and the project was given the green light. I did my best to give the novel little personal touches, to keep myself fully invested, and in the end it was a lot of fun and a rewarding challenge, because I pride myself on being adaptable and flexible. It was a wise decision doing the book, since on the heels of it I was signed to write two Punktown novels (Deadstock and Blue War) for another imprint of Games Workshop, Solaris Books.
SERIOUSLY. TAKE US TO PUNKTOWN.
‘Fleck saw that the swimming pigs’ heads had floated off the VT’s screen and were circling the waiting area near the ceiling, even though the commercial had ended and a game show had come back on. They no longer sang, but smiled anthropomorphically. One of the heads drifted down toward a jittery man too nervous to be seated Fleck guessed that he was overdosed on buttons or even purple vortex. The man’s eyes went wide and he scrambled backwards, bumping into people, turned to flee from the grinning head as it continued to follow him, swooping down very close. A gang kid clutching a scorched ray wound to his shoulder pushed at the addict angrily for bumping into him, and the man fell to the floor, yelping and babbling, “Meat! Meat! Meat!” as the disembodied head bobbed only inches from him. A nurse elbowed through the throng, and used a spray can to mist the man’s body. The spell was broken and the head rose like a released balloon. Another staff member pointed the VT’s remote and touched an ad-banishing button. All of the porcine holographic heads vanished.’
AS THE GUY "RESPONSIBLE FOR" NECROPOLITAN PRESS, YOU SOUGHT TO BRING TO MARKET UNCLASSIFIABLE BOOKS. ARE MARKETS AND AUDIENCES FOR THIS KIND OF WORK GROWING, OR EVOLVING, AND DO YOU THINK THESE KINDS OF WORKS CAN FLOURISH WITHOUT A HARD AND FAST GENRE LABEL?
I would say the markets have been growing, becoming more receptive to work that defies easy classification, illustrated by the fact that one of the projects I published through Necropolitan Press was an early chapbook from Jeff VanderMeer–and he’s done quite well since those days! But I don’t expect a vast wave of mass market weird fiction books, any more than I’d expect the film of VanderMeer’s Annihilation to inspire a wave of high-profile, highly-weird movies. Idiosyncratic, strange and daring and hard to classify books, movies, and TV shows will hopefully continue to appear and in larger numbers, based on past successes, but for every Twin Peaks: The Return there will always be countless new superhero movies. Maybe that’s for the best. It makes these freaky mutant things more special makes me love them all the more.
YOUR FASCINATION WITH ASIAN, AND PARTICULARLY VIETNAMESE CULTURE, IS A DISTINCT AND PREVALENT FLAVOR IN YOUR WORK. TELL US A BIT ABOUT HOW VIETNAMESE AESTHETICS AND ODDITIES HOLD SWAY IN YOUR IMAGINATION, AND YOUR CONCEPTION OF THE WEIRD?
Firstly, I’m sure people would wonder how that even came about. In 2003 I entered into a very intense relationship with a Vietnamese woman here in the USA. It didn’t work out, in the long run, but it inspired a fascination in me for Vietnamese culture. I subsequently married a woman I met in Viet Nam (I’ve journeyed there 10 times as of this writing), and though we’ve since divorced we created a wonderful child together. My time in Viet Nam has afforded me radically different perceptions that I’ve tried to utilize in my fiction. I love when an author has these different perspectives to share, based on their experiences or upbringing, like David Mitchell in Ghostwritten or Nadia Bulkin, whose father is Indonesian, in her collection She Said Destroy. It transports me, and I hope to achieve something like that based on my own rather unique experiences. But as a foreigner, I realize the more I experience the less I know, and as my nonindigenous perspective isn’t authentic, more often than not in my work I’ve warped Viet Nam into fictional settings, such as the world of Sinan in my novel Blue War or the country of Somewhere in a series of stories I call Tales from Somewhere. I remember driving around once with a girlfriend in Viet Nam and seeing a lot of intriguing things that I had no context for. I thought, if I can’t understand the context, I’ll invent the context, and that’s where those Somewhere stories came from. Maybe I can be a latter day Lafcadio Hearn, however controversial that may prove to be.
WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON? WHAT'S OUT NOW OR COMING OUT SOON, THAT WE SHOULD SEARCH OUT?
My most recent short story collections are The Endless Fall (Lovecraft eZine Press) and Haunted Worlds (Hippocampus Press). Beyond that, right now I’m writing short stories for various anthologies I’ve been invited to. I have a number of novels (including one set in Viet Nam) that for several years now have been stalled at about the halfway point – I hope to live long enough to complete those, but I haven’t wrapped up a novel in years. I’m hoping to place that Tales From Somewhere collection, as I think it represents the best work I can do, and I’ve talked with a publisher about releasing a collection of stories set in another fictional city of mine called Gosston. Also, forthcoming is a three-volume omnibus of my Punktown stories to be published by Centipede Press. More stuff, very exciting stuff that might take my work to another medium, is being discussed but I don’t want to Vaguebook, here. So for now, the above will have to do!
