Hi Nick. Thanks for joining us.
You’ve often been classed as ‘a horror writer’, but your talents range much further. I know you as a multi- Award nominated editor, reviewer and commentator on the genre. If you had to choose one of your many roles (author, editor, commentator) which one would you prefer to be known for, in particular? What goes on your passport?
Writer.
Let’s move on, then, to writing: In your writing career, what are you particularly proud of?
It’s hard to say. Looking back on old material—which I rarely do—I see only the infelicities, the missed opportunities, and the mistakes. It’s part of why I keep writing. Every story or article is another chance to get it right. Then there are the things over which I had little to no control, so sometimes whatever pride I could feel in a piece might be damaged by the vagaries of publishing.
So no specific works, but I am proud of having published in genre publications, and slick magazines, and literary journals. I’m proud to have written the first piece of fiction Spex, a German music magazine along the lines of Spin, ever ran. I’m proud of compelling John Scalzi publish my work on his blog when the story I co-wrote and submitted didn’t quite fit the theme of the magazine issue he was editing. He loved the story enough that he bought it anyway and paid for it out of his own pocket. I’m proud of having worked with Ellen Datlow as a co-editor, given that my early reading of Omni back when I was eleven was a major influence on my own stories. I keep score of the off-beat venues in which I’ve managed to place work. That’s the sort of writer I like being.
What I’m proud of now is that book that just came out. My third novel Sensation (PM Press) I’m anxious to have people read. It’s about the limits of human agency and the influence of parasitic nematodes on revolutionary consciousness, and it also deals with an Anonymous-type movement. I also liked writing it because I designed the book to let me write a bunch of different things. It’s not quite a mosaic novel, but it includes everything from articles written in the house styles of Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and The New York Post, police interrogations and self-therapy sessions, texting and YouTube videos, nasty letters from lawyers and blog posts by hipsters, etc. I had fun sewing it together. In six months, I won’t want to talk about Sensation at all, if past behavior is any measure of future performance.
What was your reasoning for releasing Move Under Ground under a Creative Commons Licence in 2007? What are your thoughts on the matter of ‘free e-books’? Was it a successful experiment?
There were two major reasons. I was in graduate school and needed a project to do with technology, so it came to mind. The second was that the paperback of Move Under Ground, published in 2006, was brought out with the expectation that Borders was going to make a major buy for its horror section. The buyer for the section ended up placing a buy of exactly zero copies, as he believed that the book was “too sophisticated” for that section. Apparently you can go bankrupt underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer after all. Borders is a flaming wreck now, and people are still talking about my book. Sophistication sells, if you let it.
Anyway, the idea was that a free CC download would fuel some hardcopy sales to make up for the lack of chain penetration, and it did, but not as many as I’d daydreamed it would. However, not a week goes by where someone doesn’t mention the book. I’ve found Tweets in Portuguese and Swedish—two languages into which the book has not been translated—championing the novel. One said, “Read this before you die.” The CC download got it in many more hands than it would have otherwise. It also helped me sell the book in Greece, which was a special thrill since I am Greek. My cousins will have something to buy (or shoplift from a flaming bookstore) now. I just answered a few questions for the Greek publisher, Jemma Press, this morning actually—the book goes to press next week.
Also, the CC version made the Kindle version easy to generate. Despite being free on the web, quite a few people have ponied up $2.99 for the Kindle edition. You can too!
And as for that ‘Lovecraftian Beat’ thing in Move Under Ground… was that fun to write?
It’s actually hard for me to remember—it was ten years ago! I wrote it in 2002, and it was originally published in 2004. Parts of it were fun. I was an early adopter of the annoying habit of blogging about daily wordcounts (Dear Internet, I apologize), and a few of the chapters just spilled out of me. Those were fun. There was also a stalled-out period where I’d open the file, look at the last sentence I’d written, and just spend an hour or two hyperventilating and screaming at myself. It took about three weeks for me to write the next sentence. That wasn’t any fun.
I remember finishing the book on Thanksgiving morning, then, after dinner, rushing back to add another chapter I realized what utterly necessary, which has enthralled, upset, and annoyed readers for years. So that was cool.
You’re known for your interest in things Lovecraftian. Lovecraft seems to be having a bit of a renaissance these days, with Gollancz collected editions here in the UK and his stories selected for a Library of America edition, not to mention his 120th birthday last year! Is that really true, or has he never really been away?
There’s always a Lovecraftian undercurrent, but now that his work is solidly in the public domain and with a generation of fans and writers raised on the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game, the renaissance is surely on. I’ve done a bunch of Lovecraftian stuff recently—with Brian Keene I wrote The Damned Highway, which puts a certain gonzo journalist on the campaign trail in 1972…he makes a wrong turn while travelling to cover the New Hampshire Presidential primary and ends up in Arkham.
I also have a story called “Dead Media” forthcoming in Black Wings II (S.T. Joshi, ed.) and “Wuji” in Shotguns vs. Cthulhu (Robin D. Laws, ed.). I had fun with both of those. “Dead Media” looks at the Miskatonic audio-visual department and also is a reminiscence about my time living in Brattleboro, Vermont, and “Wuji” is about the gongfu scene here in the East Bay during the era when Bruce Lee was cool. Actually, I nearly named the story “When Bruce Lee Was Cool.” I took advantage of my study of Chen style taijiquan for that story, and enjoyed writing it more than I do many of my stories.
Lovecraft will always be with us.
You’ve been on both sides of the fence here, as a writer and an editor. In your opinion, what makes a good review? Or a good story/book, for that matter!
A good review is utterly unconcerned with a) the author of the book or story or b) other reviews of the book/story or reputation of the writer, and c) focuses only on discussing the book’s strengths and weaknesses with potential readers. Which readers, of course, depends on the venue in which the review appears. I like reviews that give the plot a bit of a shake, and that attempts to determine how well the author accomplishes what he or she appears to have been trying to do.
Too many reviews in Genreland engage in fannish handicapping—why does the cover look the way it does, what were the editors thinking when they acquired Story A by Writer X, is the work part of a movement or subgenre and is the author trying to be “cool” or “current” by allying with (or opposing) whatever the current topic of conversation is. This sort of thing is different than discussing a presumed auctorial goal because most often the issues brought up by handicappers are primarily of concern to the reviewer, and clearly not at all a concern of the author.
Worse still are reviews that are primarily taxonomical: what kind of SF is this, or is it fantasy? Where is the line between the two? When does horror become thriller? Would normal people like to read this? Is this literary author trying to take our jobs with their fancy sentences and well-worn science fiction plot? How dare they! To arms!
As well as writing, you’re an editor for Viz Media’s Haikasoru line of Japanese science fiction, fantasy, and horror in translation. It sounds like an interesting way to spend your time! What attracted you to that?
It’s a full-time job with benefits, and I landed it in the teeth of what my friend Ann calls the Even Better Depression. That was an attraction, of course. More seriously, there are very few opportunities to head up a science fiction imprint out there, and this one was basically just handed to me. The other method of getting to run an imprint involves starting out at the bottom of New York publishing, climbing the ladder for a decade, and then waiting for your supervisor to drop dead of old age.
I love my books. I’m actually a great fan of hard science fiction, though I don’t write much of it myself. I remember being a kid and reading juvenile fiction about space or generation ships and seething when a magical being would show up. Once when I was ill in bed, I read all of Dragon’s Egg in one day. Loved it, except for the part when the cheela got their own version of the Crucifixion. Even as an eight-year-old I found that sort of historical parallelism dubious, and I was disappointed that the “hardness” of the book was damaged by such an obviously “soft” plot beat. The “hard SF attitude” in the West which has been identified as essentially a “hard-nosed Ayn Rand” sort of libertarianism has turned me off. Japanese hard SF has an utterly different attitude, and I’m thrilled to bring out an alternative form of hard SF that has different cultural and political baggage.
Haikasoru titles surprise me. As I read The Stories of Ibis, which is about the rise of AIs and essentially “female” robots, I was happy that one of the sub-themes of the book is “No sexbots.” Who’d dare that in the West these days? Otsuichi’s thrillers break every rule of “fair play” of twentieth-century mysteries, and thus read as entirely fresh and new. Japanese SF is heavily influenced by US stuff, but takes it in different directions. Reading and editing it is like seeding a planet and coming back billion years later to see what organisms are thriving, and how much they look like you.
You’ve been doing what you do on the Internet for over a decade now – a long time, longer than many, in these days of instant trends, LiveJournal, flashmob events and Twittering: what keeps you interested?
I’ve been doing what I do on the Internet for over twenty years now—I was on some first- and second-generation TinyMUDs in 1989 and 1990. I was seventeen at the time. I guess you can say I grew up online before most people had the opportunity to do so, so I’m pretty used to broadcasting bits and pieces of my life to an audience of sullen, hostile strangers. I’m interested because the people I talk to keep me interested, by being interesting.
To your latest. Starve Better is a book about your life as a writer in the trade. What do you hope readers will gain from the book?
Lots of writing books are focused on novel-length work. Starve Better is focused on short subjects—both fiction and non-fiction—with an eye toward developing a side income on selling short material that can be written on the quick. I hope that readers can read my book, contemplate some of its message, and then do something like quickly sell an article or immediately fix and submit and story, and get that extra $100-$500 that can mean not having to choose between the phone bill and the power, or a dentist visit or Christmas presents. I lived on the edge for a long time, and it’s very hard. All advice is ultimately autobiographical; I can’t tell anyone how to invest in the futures market or how to land a job at a Fortune 500 company, but I can tell you how to turn typing into cash.
Also, writing books tend to fall into two groups—the utterly mercenary and the idealistic artistic. I wanted to talk to both sides with Starve Better. I tried to give some advice that goes beyond the basics: the chapter “Don’t Throw the Hook” looks critically at the old canard that a writer has to “hook” the reader from the very first sentence. The idea of “hooking” has led to a large number of very bad first sentences. One has to go beyond that basic idea to actually tantalize a reader into continuing. “Hook the reader!” is mercenary advice, but I wanted to push past it, to discuss the notion of art a bit while still giving professional as opposed to merely aesthetic advice.
I’m happy to say that “Don’t Throw the Hook” will be republished in a forthcoming issue of The Writer, a how-to/hobby magazine I used to read in the local library when I was in high school and college.
Was ‘Starve Better’ a book you had to write? Or is it something you felt you needed to write?
I’ve been interested in writing a how-to for a long while. I’ve published a bunch of essays and blogposts, so the book came together very easily. I like to think about writing a lot—it’s easier than actually writing, and I love reading and thinking about how stories are read. Some writers become “too busy” to read, or find it burdensome, but I don’t.
Recently, Catherynne Valente was interviewed and she mentioned that one of her early breaks in the business had to do with her leaving a comment on my blog—I offered to read her work, and then I passed it on to an editor I knew, which led to the publication of her first novel. Jim Hines, who conducted the interview, ended it with a note reading, “If I hear that someone has e-mailed Nick saying ‘Hey, I saw on Jim’s journal that you looked at Catherynne Valente’s novel, so will you read mine?’ I’ll feed you to the goblins.” I appreciated the gesture, but I’d still be happy to look at anything anyone wanted me to, because I find reading endlessly interesting. I’ll still read any crazy old thing someone puts in front of me—at Norweson, I read bits of someone’s porn novel off the screen of her smartphone in the middle of a party. I don’t get too many people asking me to read their stuff though. I suspect they might be nervous about the sort of feedback I’d offer.
Have the current changes in the genre (both in content and in ‘the business’) affected the way you write, or even what you write?
Nope. Of course, I’ve always been on the fringes of the genre—and that’s for any genre I write in. I published my first story in 2000. My first story in one of the so-called “Big Three” magazines was published earlier this year: “North Shore Friday” in Asimov’s. (www.asimovs.com/2011_04-05/images/NorthShoreMamatas.pdf) A fair amount of the feedback I got was, “What the hell was this doing in my favorite magazine? It doesn’t even make any sense.”
Same with horror. I have four Bram Stoker nominee certificates on my mantle, and when I attend a horror convention, people ask me what I’m doing there. I still get the occasional “This isn’t horror!” email or online remark about my work.
I’m a big believer in the independent press. The only thing with my name on it from a Big Six conglomerate publisher is Haunted Legends (Tor) and that because Ellen Datlow has a relationship with that publisher. Everything else is indie: Soft Skull, Night Shade, Prime, Disinformation, Cemetery Dance, Lethe, Akashic Books, Dark Horse, Ben Bella Books, Quirk Books, PM Press, Apex Publications. Even VIZ Media—where I work now—is an independent press. I wave to the CEO when he’s on his smoke break as I step out to lunch. This is purposeful, and political. I am wary of mass culture as produced by large corporations. Half the reason I have the agent I have is because I didn’t want one who’d send me back notes on making my work “more commercial.” Because of that, I haven’t had to change how I write, or my name, or do anything I don’t want to do. I’m still that greasy kid sending in little essays to the zine the guys down at my local comic book shop put out, even if I’ve published stories and essays in over seventy books, and have done three novels and two collections and three anthologies.
I have noticed a lot of my friends changing how and what they write based on commercial demands, and I often find their novels disappointing as compared to their short fiction, which of course suffers from fewer commercial constraints.
And with such longevity, being an ‘elder statesman’ of the blogosphere, what do you know now that you wished you knew when you started?
There are two people I would have been nicer to, because I miss talking to them.
What’s the downside of the globalised celebrity-fest that authors seem to live in these days?
The main downside is watching how happily people are to transform themselves from person into brand. Being a microcelebrity is a lot of fun, actually. Being a microconsumable is dehumanizing and horrifying.
Would you ever suggest these days that writers should just do that – write – and NOT spend their time blogging, tweeting, poking and putting it out there? Or is that now just ‘part of the deal’, in your opinion?
China Miéville didn’t start blogging until about a year ago, and most of his early posts were context-free scans of funny little pictures. Indeed, most of his blog posts still are weird little pictures, and he doesn’t seem to be hurting just because we can’t type into our phones “Oh hi @ChinaMieville U R tehdreamy” or “@ChinaMieville U SUK U COMMI!” and get a quick answer. I don’t think people need to be on Twitter or Facebook, and I think that most people can smell mercenary desperation from the people who use social networks just to flog their books. (Not that I don’t flog my books! I’m doing it now!) There are great benefits to be had from social networking, as self-published Kindle authors are proving, but that’s not a reason to do it.
In these days of changing media and communication, with publishing seeming to go through major changes at the moment, where do you think we’re going? Should authors (and/or publishers!) be worried? How can they/should they adapt and evolve?
Some authors should be worried. The “good hands” who can write novels to order in a few weeks for mid-list advances and who don’t mind juggling pseudonyms and cranking out dreck should be terrified. The Kindle people can do the same work faster, and for sufficiently cheaper that it doesn’t matter if the end result is any good. So they’ll either die off or get on Kindle themselves. Writers who are happily ensconced in some little town, typing up one book a year and sending it off to an agent who sends back a check via return mail will also have some troubles, I think.
Writers like me don’t have to worry overmuch, because the independent presses are used to publishing with only minimal interest from the chains. Bestsellers don’t have to worry, because name recognition will be ever more important in a world with a million books published a year. Emerging writers will have worries aplenty, but what else is new?
Lastly: One I couldn’t resist – Are you still, or have you ever been, a nihilistic kid? (Nick’s blog site is http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/ )
As I mentioned, I first got online in 1989. I was told to pick a name. I had just come across the name “Nihilistic Kid” in an issue of Normalman. He was a member of the Legion of Superfluous Heroes, who were notable for their never-ending roll call. Anyway, I picked it because I was seventeen and thus still a kid. “Nihilistic” seemed to fit because the online world was a virtual environment. Also, the obvious diminutive was NK, which sounded a lot like my real first name, Nick.
Of course, who knew in 1989 that the Internet would be a big deal twenty-two years later…
Many thanks, Nick.
