Welcome to Fantasy Magazine! We’re so pleased to bring your story “What Passes for Eyes in Dreams and Death” to our readers. Can you tell us how this story came to be?
I’m thrilled to have the story in Fantasy Magazine! This story was written for a Halloween contest, a friendly contest among crit partners, not directly for any kind of publication. It doesn’t really have a Halloween vibe—I quickly abandoned any attempt to make it feel very Halloween-ish—but it came from the prompts another writer suggested to me. A snippet of an Emily Dickinson poem, a creepy image, and a question.
What was the most difficult part of writing this story, and what came easiest?
The story has a dream-like sequence, back and forth between two slightly different points of view. One of those is essentially bodiless, a roving consciousness that doesn’t interact with people or the setting, only observes. That’s often a hard sell for a story, to make an observer still engaging. But then creating a fabulist world within the funeral home—that side of the story had its own challenges at times, but was a lot of fun to create. Really the story came together, in a very similar form to its final draft, quite smoothly and well within the contest deadlines—something about it seemed to flow.
What authors or stories have most influenced your work?
I think the influence of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi probably stands out here. In general, Italo Calvino has had a huge influence, as has Ursula LeGuin. Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris novels. Catherynne Valente’s Orphan Tales. And anything and everything by Patricia McKillip.
Are there themes or character archetypes that you find yourself returning to in your writing?
Immigrants and exiles. Transformations, especially caused by environmental factors. Magic as something strange and poorly understood. Stories, words, and music as magic.
Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about this story?
“Across six caskets and over seven coffins . . . ” as a storytelling device makes me smile. I like to discover (or invent!) allusive alternatives to “Once upon a time,” and there are some great ones from other languages that sound so cool when translated into English. This invented one plays with an English one, though—from Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, of all things.
What are you working on now, and what can our readers look forward to seeing from you in the future?
My third and final book in The Arcist Chronicles should be coming out sometime—it’s with my publisher and just waiting for the right publication slot. I think it’s a powerful conclusion to the series. I’m self-publishing this month a chapbook of micro-fictions that are very Calvino-esque, about a magical, open-air market and the goods that one might find there. Otherwise I’ll soon be diving back into editing a (McKillip-esque?) novel about magical plants and wildfires and fungal transformations. Hopefully a final revision pass before I start looking to find it a good agent and/or publisher.