- CN: First off, tell
me a little about your new book, Silk?
CRK: SILK's about being weird and queer in the South, more than anything else, I guess. It's set in Birmingham, Alabama, and it's got spiders and shamanism and insanity. It's about half William Faulkner and half H.P. Lovecraft. And it's really very hard for me to try and explain the plot. Poppy Brite says it's the weirdest book she's ever read, and Neil Gaiman calls it magical realism. I think people will just have to read it and decide for themselves what Silk's about. I had the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice in mind throughout much of the novel. Anyway, there will be a mass-market edition from Penguin/Roc, and a limited edition from Darkside Press. The limited will be illustrated by Clive Barker and have a Dave McKean cover, with my share of the proceeds from that edition going to an Atlanta gay teen support group.
CN: Wow, Clive Barker...Dave McKean...How did those guys get involved?
CRK: I asked nicely. Well, actually, there was little more to it than that, but not much.
CN: What do you think is the root of the cause of the present sorry state of the horror genre?
CRK: A lot of greed, and very little self-restraint. Low standards, on the part of publishers and authors and readers.
CN: What authors do you hold in high regard?
CRK: Just authors in general? I'm pretty stuck on the modernists, especially James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot. W.B. Yeats has been getting a lot of my reading time lately. William Kennedy, Angela Carter, Harlan Ellison, Patrick McCabe. I read a lot of nonfiction, especially science and mythology, people like Joseph Campbell (a major influence) and Adrian Desmond.
CN: Who do you think are writers (specifically horror writers) who are at the top of thier craft?
CRK: Ray Bradbury (another major influence), Kathe Koja, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Poppy Z. Brite, Thomas Ligotti, Brian Hodge, A.R. Morlan. Anne Rice's first three vampire novels. Shirley Jackson, but she's dead.
CN: I'm quite surprised that you mention Anne Rice. Personally, I've always found most of her books to be nothing more than dime store romance novels with a dash of adolescent sexuality thrown in.
CRK: That's why I specified the first three vampire novels. I think they're really very good and important novels, excellent examples of the vampire as a sexually transgressive literary image, and of the monstrous as heroic. When I first read Interview with the Vampire, about 1989, the only vampire fiction I'd ever read was Dracula and "Carmilla," and it affected me very deeply. I was struggling with a lot of shit at the time, issues of sexuality and gender and death and religion, what it means to be a freak in a very freak unfriendly world, and, well, I'm not going to go on and on. But I think a lot of people turn their noses up at Rice because she's so successful, and yes, she's also produced a lot of lazily-crafted, poorly-written junk. But that doesn't lessen her accomplishment with those three books. Oh, and I also liked A Cry to Heaven.
CN: Have you read The Convulsion Factory and what did you think?
CRK: I really loved The Convulsion Factory. I think Brian's doing some of the best short story work in dark fantasy that's being done right now.
CN: How fully rendered do you make a story outline before you sit down to begin to write?
CRK: I virtually never use traditional outlines. A lot of writer friends think that's strange, but it's just not the way I write. With Silk I did a little bit, very, very, very brief chapter synopses right before I'd start a new chapter. And I made what I guess you'd call a map or diagram sort of thing at one point, based partly on Joseph Campbell's depiction of the hero cycle, just to make sure I'd tied everything together the way it was supposed to be. What I came up with looked kind of like a web woven by a spider on psilocybin, which was pretty cool and entirely appropriate. However, when I started writing for The Dreaming, I was required to do formal story proposals beforehand. That's taken some getting used to. Mostly, I just think everything, no matter how good or bad it might be, sounds stupid summarised.
CN: Why do you think that horror (film and literature) does not get the respect it deserves?
CRK: There are probably a lot of reasons, too many to get into really. But I think part of the blame can be laid on horror and dark fantasy writers and filmmakers themselves. As a group (and that's part of the problem, perceiving ourselves as a group distinct from fiction as a whole) we have a tendency to cater to the lowest common denominator, and so I think a lot of times we have it coming when the critics say, "Hey, that's crap." For every Something Wicked This Way Comes (the book) or Silence of the Lambs (the movie), you have a hundred schlocky vampire novels or slasher films. Of course, that's true of all fiction and all film, but since we've already been segregated from the "mainstream," partly by our own design, it's much easier to dismiss all dark fiction as trash. I think good dark fiction often does get the respect it deserves. It's the genre that gets snubbed, and the genre usually has it coming. A lot of the very best "horror" these days is coming from "mainstream" authors, or at least authors perceived as writing outside the genre, stuff like Caleb Carr's The Alienist, Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, and Andrei Codrescu's The Blood Countess.
CN: I can agree with all of that, but don't you think that a lion's share of the blame lands firmly on the part of the undiscerning readers? I mean, the publishers follow perceived trends and authors write for the market that the publishers set. And since trends are set by the populations buying habits, it is Joe Schmoe out there buying a book because the "cover art is cool" that is doing more of a disservice to both themselves and the authors/publishers they are frequenting.
CRK: Publishing doesn't really work that way. That's probably the general impression most people have, including a lot of writers, but I think publishers tend to invent the trends they supposedly perceive. For instance, The Vampire Lestat spends X number of weeks on the bestseller's lists and publishers conclude that people want vampire novels. So, for a while, they, the publishers, buy a lot of vampire novels, creating an enormous literary marketplace for vampire novels. Never mind whether the books stink or not, because the publishers believe they'll sell, simply because they're stories about vampires. But the reading public usually doesn't want five or six new vampire novels a month by unknown authors, or even mid-list authors they've never heard of -- they want more Anne Rice vampire novels. Eventually, the publishers wind up losing money and stop buying vampire novels. How many bestselling books about vampires have there been in the last fifteen or twenty years, that weren't written by Anne Rice? Writers do tend to pay attention to what publishers want, and, because they have to eat and pay bills just like everyone else, will often write something simply because that's what publishing houses are buying, regardless of whether it's a subject they genuinely give a shit about. It's a cycle that breeds pulp and wastes trees and we have to at least try to have our own motivations as artists, beyond what we think will sell.
CN: Don't you find that it is the publishing houses that segregate horror writers rather than them doing it themselves? I mean, how many times do you hear of a blatant horror writer suddenly calling himself an "imaginative writer who uses aspects of the horror genre to get his point across? Let's call a spade a spade, ok?
CRK: Horror writers are at least as responsible for this segregation as publishers, and I think more so. That's what groups like the Horror Writer's Association are all about. A few years back, one of the major chain bookstores (I can't recall which one) decided to do away with its "horror" section, and you should have heard the commotion from a lot of HWA members. That this company has integrated "horror" with most of the rest of its fiction (they did keep sf and fantasy and mystery, as I recall), was perceived as a threat to people's careers. Maybe it was. That was about the time I think publishers were starting to realize that the public was not quite as horror-hungry as had earlier been suspected.
CN: Do you think it's possible for an author/artist to keep their vision pure and still have commercial success?
CRK: I think it's hard, but I think it's possible. It takes a lot of perseverance and a lot of thick skin and a lot of luck, but it can and does happen. Certainly, there are a good number of dark fantasy authors who've managed to do it with their fiction, people like Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman and Peter Straub.
CN: Do you find that it is harder for a woman to get noticed in the business of writing than it is for a man?
CRK: No. Actually, there was a lot of bitching in the "horror community" a while back, when the Dell/Abyss line was at its peak in the early nineties, about how much easier things were for women than men. Of course, the bitching was being done by men who'd had novels rejected. Anyway, personally, no, I've never found my gender a handicap, but I think things have changed a lot for women writers in the last century, or just in the last thirty years or so.
CN: Do you think that, in horror fiction, there are any taboos left?
CRK: Hhmmm. I think that question's hard to answer, because there are so many outlets for horror fiction today. I mean, no one's going to stop you from writing whatever you want, and if you can't sell to a pro market or a small press or a fanzine or an e-zine, you can always self-publish on the web. So, in a sense, there are only taboos with regard to where certain things can be published. And yes, in that respect, there are still taboos. Usually sexual taboos, especially if you're writing about underage sex or sadomasochism. For example, when Poppy solicited stories for Love in Vein II, she told everyone there were absolutely no restrictions, that she wanted to see really extreme stuff. And she accepted stories based on that, only to have her publisher pull three or four of them over explicit content before the anthology was published.
CN: Are you a film fan? If so, what are some of the films you believe are "must sees"?
CRK: I'm a film nut, actually, the kind of person that tries to see everything, even when I know it's probably gonna stink. Unlike a lot of writers today, I think film's my first love, and my writing's a sort of consolation prize for not getting to do film. But, anyway, "must sees"? God, that list would go on for pages. But recently, back to '92 or so, let's see... The City of Lost Children, Fargo, Lost Highway, The Crying Game, Aliens 3, Michael Collins, Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs, The Piano, Seven, The Ghost and the Darkness, Kids, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Howard's End, Batman Returns, In the Name of the Father, The Nightmare Before Christmas...see what I mean? And there's no point in even trying to list stuff like Apocalypse Now and Citizen Kane. Most recently, I've had an infatuation with Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.
CN: See, I was one of the few people I know that got a kick out of The Fifth Element. Please explain to me what it was about that film that won you over?
CRK: Well, it was wonderful eye-candy, and I adore Gary Oldman, and Milla Jovovich, and just thought it was one of the freshest science fiction films I'd seen lately. I've had some people point out that the storyline is basically Star Wars meets Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Blade Runner, and they're right, mostly. But certainly no more than Star Wars was "just" a combination of old westerns and pirate films and Buck Rodgers, or Blade Runner "just" Sam Spade with androids. I don't think The Fifth Element was as good as those three films, but it was beautiful and the actors seemed to be having such a delightful time...it worked for me. I saw it four times at the theatre, which is a bit excessive, even for me.
CN: I notice that most of the films you mention, even some of the foreign films, are all basically mainstream films. Do you have any interest in Euro-trash, Asian-trash, Euro-Splatter, or Hong Kong action type of films?
CRK: In general, I think it's a good idea to stay away from anything that can be accurately described as "trash." But no, not much interest in those areas, except Hong Kong cinema, which, thanks to Christa Faust, I've recently become acquainted with.
CN: With atrocities being played out on our television screens everyday, do you think that it is more difficult to "scare" an audience?
CRK: Absolutely. But I don't think I'm really trying to "scare" my readers, so for me it's not really an issue. I'm more interested in some of the other emotional components of horror, things like loss and awe and wonder. But, yeah, if you're out there trying to frighten people, sure, it's a lot harder than it would have been a hundred or fifty or even ten years ago.
CN: I understand you used to sing with a rock band. Tell me a little bit about that.
CRK: Music's something I flirt with when I get afraid I'm burning out with my fiction. Most recently, I fronted a band called Death's Little Sister. One reviewer said we sounded like Nick Cave auditioning for Wall of Voodoo, which I could never quite figure out was very good or very bad. We only played locally, Athens and Atlanta. We did a four-song cassette sampler, Three Regrets and a Curse, that sold out, and got some local radio play. I finally found myself having to choose between writing for D.C. and going on with the band. Our shows were starting to draw good crowds and the rest of the band wanted to tour. There was no way I could tour and keep my writing career on track, and I had to be very practical about it in the end. So I left the band after a very wonderful last show at the 40-Watt Club here in Athens, and the others split up right after that. It made me awfully sad, and I miss doing music, but it eats time and energy and money like mad.
CN: Since we're on the subject of music, what kind of stuff do you listen to? Do you listen to different kinds of music when you're writing?
CRK: That's almost as bad as the movie question. Lately, I'm especially into ambient bands like Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Love Spirals Downward, a lot of the other darkwave artists recording with Projeckt. I'm a huge Concrete Blonde fan. I guess my favourite goth band at the moment is probably Switchblade Symphony. But I'm into a lot of nongoth musicians, too, people like Tom Waits, P.J. Harvey, Nick Cave, Sarah McLachlan, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Jane Siberry. Composers like Henryk Gorecki and Danny Elfman. A lot of Celtic stuff, especially Clannad, Enya, and Capercaille. Music is very important to my writing, in helping me set the mood, define the atmosphere of a piece. There's always music playing while I work. So, I usually end up with two or three albums that I can play for someone and say that's what a particular story feels like. For example, with my story "Anamorphosis" (in Ellen Datlow's Lethal Kisses), it was mostly Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral and the first October Project disc. Of course, with Silk, which took almost three years to write, there were about twenty-five or thirty albums.
CN: What disc is in your CD player right now?
CRK: The Changelings' first. They're really amazing.
CN: You are a part of what has been referred to as the "Reform School Riot Grrrls of Horror" with Poppy Z Brite, Christa Faust, Kathe Koja among others. How did you all meet and what is that draws you all together?
CRK: I think that phrase was Dave Schow's revenge for having been repeatedly accused of being the father of "splatterpunk." There's way too much variation in our styles and concerns and sensibilities to really put us all together under one umbrella. Christa and Poppy are very concerned with the erotic, for example, and Kathe with the process of art and the role of the artist in relation to his or her work. And I spend most of my time writing about transformation, in one sense or another. There's common ground, certainly, but more differences than similarities.
CN: Is it safe to say that you and all of these talents women are friends? If so, do you all critique each others work?
CRK: Yeah, we're friends. Poppy and Christa and I are very close friends. We share a website, and we've helped each other a lot as far as offering critiques and such. Poppy was finishing Exquisite Corpse while I was finishing Silk and the manuscripts went back and forth. When I finish a new story, I usually send it to Poppy or Christa or both before it goes to an editor.
CN: You identify yourself as a Goth. What is it about that sub-culture that appeals to you?
CRK: I grew up mostly in a couple of small towns outside Birmingham, and I was just this morbid, freakish kid, you know? I read Edgar Allan Poe and Lovecraft, dressed funny and got harassed a lot. It wasn't until college that I discovered goth as a distinct subculture, really. And then it was like something I'd been looking for a long, long time, maybe without even knowing I'd been searching for something. Goth feels very tribal to me...actually, it's very hard to explain how I feel about goth. But as for its fundamental appeal to me, personally, I think it comes down to decorum and ceremony, propriety, as much as the darkness and particular things, like vampirism and death. Goth seems, to me, like a holdout against a world drowning in a homogenizing sludge of convenience stores and talk shows. A sanctuary from a dead culture run by cynical sheep.
CN: Do you think that Goths are portrayed accurately in the media?
CRK: Hah. That would be a no. Offhand, I can think of only a few examples. Poppy's Losts Souls may have been the first time I actually encountered goth portrayed anywhere near accurately in fiction. Authors and filmmakers tend to perceive no distinction between punk and death metal and goth, and so you get this bizarre hybrid. And now there's a lot of hysteria over cults and vampirism and you have these fourteen-year-olds getting raked over the coals on the fucking talk shows...goths of all ages should avoid talk shows like the plague.
CN: What is your opinion of the deluge of vampire novels on the market?
CRK: That gets back to what I said earlier about horror deserving a lot of the bad rep that it has. In the late eighties and early nineties, publishers wanted to cash in on Anne Rice's success, via imitation, and plenty of authors were more than willing to lend them a hand. So, you had, literally, dozens of books a year coming out, written by people with nothing whatsoever to say about vampires, writing about them simply because it was a subject that was selling, a quick buck. And it was even better if you were writing a series of vampire novels, right? So it was almost all bullshit. There were a handful of exceptions: Lost Souls, Tim Lucas' Throat Sprockets, Codrescu's The Blood Countess, three or four films like The Reflecting Skin and The Hunger and Dance of the Damned. I've said, repeatedly, we need a six or seven year, self-imposed moratorium on vampire stories. Give the archetype a rest, already. Fortunately, I think the big publishers have lost interest and the market's losing interest. It's gotten really hard to sell a vampire novel lately.
CN: What can you tell me about your own unpublished vampire novel, The Five of Cups?
CRK: The Five of Cups gave me an opportunity to practice what I'd been preaching. It was purchased by Transylvania Press in '94, and there was supposed to be an illustrated limited edition of the book released in '96. But the publisher got behind and his contract expired. By that time, I'd finished Silk and I'd developed considerably as a writer since that first effort. Plus, I'd watched Poppy have to struggle with fans who only wanted her to write a sequel to Lost Souls. Plus, I really was fucking sick of vampire novels and meant what I'd been saying to other writers about a self-imposed moratorium on vampire stories. So...when the editor at Transylvania Press offered to renew the contract on The Five of Cups, I declined, opting to let Silk become my "first" novel. It was hard as hell. I spent nine months of my life on that book, and there's probably some good stuff in it, but I think, ultimately, I made the right decision.
CN: I understand that you recently resigned your membership with the Horror Writer's Association. What lead up to that decision?
CRK: A lot of shitty, stupid politics, mostly relating to the HWA's Bram Stoker Award and membership rules and stuff like that. It's probably best if we don't talk about the HWA.
CN: How did you score The Dreaming gig?
CRK: I'd written a short story called "Escape Artist" for Neil Gaiman's prose anthology, The Sandman: Book of Dreams, the story that was sort of my "big break," I guess. Anyway, Neil called me early last summer and said that he and Alisa Kwitney, who edits The Dreaming, had been talking about getting someone to do a Corinthian story arc, and knowing certain of my, um, interests (knives, for instance), Neil thought of me. So, I wrote a three-part story called "Souvenirs" and D.C. liked it a lot and asked me to write another one, and then, finally, Alisa asked if I'd like to do the comic on a more or less permanent basis, sharing it with the very talented Peter Hogan. It all seemed to happen very fast, and it still feels weird. Of course I said yes, immediately. The Sandman is very dear to me. It's a wonderful opportunity.
CN: What direction do you plan on taking The Dreaming?
CRK: Well, I think readers will see it getting somewhat darker, more like The Sandman, at least for the next couple of years.
CN: Now that Silk is almost out and your work on DC's The Dreaming is underway, what else is there in the works for you?
CRK: Evil question! About a week ago, my
agent asked me what the next novel was going to be and I was, like, "You
mean I have to do that again?" I have two or three ideas, but I
haven't settled on any one of them, yet. Right now, most of my time's going
into The Dreaming and some other comics projects. And hopefully
I'll be ready to do a short story collection in another year or two --
I'd much rather be writing short stories than almost anything else.
