Jeffrey Thomas has taken a brief trip out of Punktown to answer a few questions for us. His much-anticipated novel, Deadstock, is published next month. It has already been selected by the huge bookstore chain Waterstone’s to be their SF/Fantasy Book of the Month.
We’re in the bar at a convention buying you a drink—what’s it to be?
Thanks! Most likely a Corona (it’s light but not watery) if the weather is hot, or a Sam Adams (darker and rich) if it’s chilly. But I’m also fond of martinis. Cheers!
Tell us in one sentence what your book is about.
Meat—not so much that which we eat, but of which we are composed, and how it will be when we can grow that meat like we assemble factory machines, and what we are to think then of the relationship to meat of the goblin we call identity.
Why should we buy your book over all the other books out there?
Besides it being better in every conceivable way—enough like some things you’ve enjoyed before but different and quirky enough to reinvigorate the taste buds of your mind—your dollars and pounds will help support my worrisome coffee addiction.
Which of the characters in the book are you most like and why?
Well, I think it’s always going to be the main character, so in this case it’s Jeremy Stake, Deadstock’s chameleon-like private detective. Due to his often uncontrollable mutant ability, plus a tough life as a child and a harrowing stint in the so-called Blue War, Stake is a man driven with insecurities, prone to self-analysis and self-reproach, moral and ethical dilemmas, yet whose inclination to care too much doesn’t get in the way of the job at hand but in fact makes him pursue it more diligently. He feels for the underdog, despises corruption, is cynical and bitter but loyal and determined. I think there’s a lot of me in all that.
What would you like people to get from your novels?
I want them to be engrossed by my plots, intrigued by my characters, and stimulated by images and ideas they may not have encountered before—at least, not as filtered through my own particular style and idiosyncrasies.
Was there a specific message you were trying to convey in your novel?
I want to convey to the reader that it’s a shame they took so long to discover my work, and that they should be sure not to let their attention lapse in the future; I will of course do my best to reward them for any such effort.
How did you get your start?
In small press horror and science fiction magazines, where I became a kind of fixture from the late 80's on. As advances in technology allowed for these types of publishers to produce beautiful books and not just side-stapled fanzines with dot matrix print, I began to be approached to provide collections and novels, based on the reputation I had made by appearing in magazines and the occasional anthology.
Do you ever draw inspiration from current events?
Yes, frequently. Either I’m fascinated by some true-to-life occurrence, place, etc., or else I’m so enraged by one of life’s atrocities that I feel like I have to sic the attack dogs of my muse after it.
Do you have any writing superstitions?
I don’t know if this is superstition or just prudence, but if a trip to Viet Nam (which I’ve been visiting about every six months) is coming up, and I have a writing project to complete, I like to hurry up and get it wrapped up in case, say, the plane crashes or I get bird flu over there or something. I don’t want any posthumous collaborators!
What, or who, inspires you to write?
The voices in my head. Really, I don’t know that any one thing inspires me; life inspires me, everything I see and hear and think can inspire me. It’s like asking what inspires me to eat or breathe. I just have to.
What non-literary influences can be seen in your work?
Ah, many—in the forms of films I love, artists I admire, music that sets a certain mood. Even video games can inspire me, as they’re influenced by cinema and the work of imaginative artists like H. R. Giger, themselves. For example, I can be inspired by the tone, images, or narratives of films as diverse as the stop motion shorts of the Brothers Quay to Japanese horror to Taxi Driver to Eraserhead.
Who would you most aspire to be able to write like, and why?
Well, I’m a huge fan of H. P. Lovecraft and Thomas Hardy, and I would love to write with their respective abilities—Lovecraft’s gifts at conveying a cosmic scale of horror and the inconsequentiality of humans, and Hardy’s poetical eye, psychological insights, and aching humanity—though of course their prose styles wouldn’t be something to be too influenced by in this day. I’d love to have Thomas Harris’s sense of pacing, his method of burning the pages at my heels to keep me racing ahead. A writer whose work I’ve really been admiring, after a long time away, is Martin Cruz Smith. Having written about my own detective hero lately has made me want to rediscover his, and I’ve been reminded what a wonderful voice he has. He’s humane, witty, melancholy, with a fine eye for detail and sense of place, and blends an entertaining story with an unforced literary quality.
What made you choose SF/F over any other form?
My love of monsters and all things fantastical began in my childhood, but I don’t know why they should take such a hold on me and my brother Scott, and leave my sister Wendy and brother Craig largely unscathed. My parents were both poets in their youth, and my father a talented artist, so at least I can trace back the creative urge genetically. My son Colin has definitely carried along not only the creative gene but my tastes in science fiction and horror.
You are granted five minutes with an author of your choice (living or dead). Who would you choose and what would you ask them?
Abdul Alhazred, author of the Necronomicon, and I would ask him what he saw in the three-lobed burning eye of the Crawling Chaos that gibbers and foams at the center of infinity. Either that, or I’d ask Emily Post what the best serving-per-guest formula is for a holiday dinner.
What is your opinion on the state of publishing today?
Exciting and full of options, open more than ever before to every conceivable voice and style. Sure, the creative resources of computers and the easy availability of printing technology (such as POD) lead a lot of trees to an even more ignominious fate than those destined to become toilet paper, but quirky authors with daring ideas who might not otherwise have had a shot now have the opportunity to be heard, for better or worse. In my case, that opportunity gave me a chance to attract a small following, and thus bring me to the attention of mass-market publishers. That might not have happened had the indie presses not afforded me exposure.
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing?
It would have to be arts related in some way. I’d be a musician if I was musical, but I’m not. Ideally I’d be a movie director, but that’s not likely either. I guess I’d pursue painting/illustration; I can do that, at least.
What's your preferred way to relax after a long day of writing?
I love to take long walks to the local bookstore with my son, then sit down in their cafe with a book or magazine to browse. I’m also a big movie fan, and love to take in a good Asian horror film, for instance, something a little quirky. I prefer to play them on my computer’s DVD drive so I’m right up close to the experience.
When was the last time you didn’t finish reading a book, and why?
I always like to finish even a book I’m hating; I just can’t give up on any book, even though I know it’s a waste of time in which I could be reading something better. Sometimes a book will grow on me (but frequently, a book I like at first will end up turning me off). Maybe I’m just anal that way. I will often leave a book and come back to it later, but only because I get caught up in another. I read a number of books simultaneously. A bad habit, I know. Unfortunately, I am also a terribly slow reader of fiction because I like to savor it so much.
What books have had an effect on you—for better or worse?
Oliver Twist, which I read as a young boy, still resonates with me to this day, I think, with its fascinating characters and its powerful sense of place. Tess of the d’Urbervilles, read in the 80's, for the same reasons, and for Hardy’s gloomily poetic spirit. The Exorcist, for its classiness and I Am Legend for its oppressiveness, both read in my teens. The Martian Chronicles for being a collection of gorgeous stories that are individual but related by setting (as in my Punktown). 1984, again for its sense of place and the way its characters interact with that world. The relationship of people to their environments is big with me, as I believe my own stories would indicate.
Do you think there’s anything truly original left to say in the genre, or has it all been said?
We’re saying quite a lot of the same things that were said decades ago, but people are still buying us, right? With science fiction, technological advances will always bring new ideas to play with, but what makes a story fresh for me is not so much that but the individual mind that’s putting it together. My mental warts and scars and nervous tics are all in different places than those of other writers, I should hope, and that’s what’s going to give my work its own fingerprint—in theory, anyway.
What is your favorite non-writing job you’ve held?
You must mean the one I hated least. Probably my job stamping out canvas boot linings back around 1980. It was easy, I was working with some cool friends, and I could catch up so much on my work in advance that I could take a lot of days off in which to write and bum around. (This was before I had a mortgage to pay, of course.) It was at this company that I wrote nearly all of my first (unpublished) Punktown novel, in longhand right on the premises, with the noise of factory machines all around me.
What was your most unusual job?
Hard to compete with writing, but maybe working the graveyard shift for a major pharmaceutical manufacturer, loading thousands of glass ampules or vials or syringes into tunnels to be cooked and sanitized before being filled with such tasty concoctions as morphine sulfate. No, never smuggled any out, but it’s been done by others.
What do you do when not working?
I’m a great movie fan, though I have limited time to watch them; I try to see one DVD a week, and I do informal reviews of them at my blog site, accessed through www.jeffreyethomas.com. I also love to take long walks with my son at least once a week, generally to someplace where I can sit with a coffee and read while he reads or plays a portable video game or sketches.
What subject did you like most at school?
Biology, I suppose, science classes. Despite my love of reading I often didn’t finish the books assigned to me, got by on my tests through listening to the classroom discussions or by having seen a movie based on the book! I was once given a book containing two plays, one of which I was to read. I didn’t, but I did read the other one. Guess I like to choose my own reading.
Tell us your most embarrassing moment.
There are just so many, but the first thing that comes to mind is when I tried to impress my ex-wife’s Sicilian step-grandmother by observing that one of the items for dinner tasted like anus. I meant to say anise. She kind of gaped at me for a moment, perhaps wondering who I knew that had such a savory nether region.
When did you discover you wanted to write?
When as a child I realized that, though I was a pretty good artist, my drawings weren’t quite the equal of my imagination or the stories I wanted to tell. Thus, the little comic books I used to draw and script morphed gradually into wholly written tales. It gave my imagination full freedom, where any given story was like my own movie to direct, with an unlimited budget.
Happy or depressing endings, and why?
It depends on where that story wants to go. Sometimes a story can have both happy and sad aspects to its ending. I’ve written a lot of horror short stories, and in reading those of other contemporary writers, found that it was almost a given that they’d end unhappily, so I’ve made an effort not to fall into that. I don’t want to become predictable, limited. But again, not all my endings are sunny, either. As fantastical as my stories are, I also like to give them a sense of being grounded in reality, and in the real world there are no neat endings.
What was your first published work?
A humorous poem called Yoo-hoo, Cthulhu, in the small press publication 2AM. My first published short story was The White Bat, in the publication Dead of Night.
What are some of your most loved song lyrics?
I love Elvis Costello, but it would be hard to say which of his many brilliant song lyrics I’d cite as my favorite. Maybe “Beyond Belief” from Imperial Bedroom? As for what I’ve been listening to this week, it’s been a collection of The Pretenders’ singles. What a great bunch of songs. Greatest hits compilations, like the one I have of Todd Rundgren’s singles, can really drive home what a great body of work one artist can produce over time.
Tell us about some of your hobbies?
Most people would probably consider my writing and illustrating work to be hobbies, since they supplement rather than provide my income. I see writing as my real job, though, and working my “day” job is just my hobby. In which case, I need a new hobby!
What’s your preferred vacation spot?
Viet Nam. As of this writing, I’ve been there five times since 2004, because it’s where I met my wife and it’s just this wonderful, fascinating, exotic, beautiful, alien place filled with great food, great coffee and beautiful women.
Do you have any pets?
I have a beautiful pinto Akita named Tia, white with black patches and a black mask. Drivers have literally stopped in the middle of the street to compliment me on her or ask about her breed. But it’s a stubborn breed, very dominant and challenging. Though she’s generally extremely sweet, you have to watch her when it comes to food—she’s sent two people to the hospital—and around other animals, because Akitas were trained as fighting dogs in Japan; she sent another dog to the hospital as well. Really, though, she is quite affectionate by nature; she’ll get so excited if a friend or relative calls that she might lose control of her bladder and pee on the spot. I had a girlfriend who used to cook meals just for Tia and bring them to the house. One day I had Tia shut in her kennel and so she wasn’t expecting it when my girlfriend walked into the room. Tia got so excited that she howled, “Mam-aaaa!” My girlfriend and I looked at each other with chills. The word was so clear! I have no doubt at all that Tia was saying, “Mama,” which is what my girlfriend called herself when addressing her.
Married, single, not telling?
I like to say I’m married but available, but I don’t like to say it around my wife. I’ve been married twice; once to Rose, the mother of my son, and now to Hong, whose name in Vietnamese also means Rose. We were married in a Buddhist ceremony in her father’s house in July of 2005, but plan on marrying in the bureaucratic sense, on paper, in the near future.
What advice would you give a writer starting out today?
If my advice were worth listening to I’d have made it a lot sooner than this! I guess the usual things: keep plugging away, don’t give up, but don’t quit your day job. We all start out with unrealistic dreams of glory. Not that we shouldn’t strive to realize them! Just, don’t let your world crumble if you have to settle for less than the New York Times bestseller list. Write for yourself first, not for any publisher, editor, or reader. Even most professional writers aren’t exactly bathing in champagne, if you catch my meaning, so why compromise yourself by writing something just for the sake of being published, instead of writing something shaped from the clay of your soul?
