Things have been quiet here at As You Were this week, but that’s because I’ve been working on two interviews to bring you, both with writers of new monster tales.
The coolest stuff
Canadians don’t spook the same way Americans do
It’s always interesting to talk to writers about their craft, but it’s just as interesting to talk to editors — who are far less often interviewed about what goes into making a good book. So it was with great pleasure a few years ago that I talked to Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell, who put together the first horror anthology in the venerable Tesseracts series.
Rewriting, revising, it’s-all-going-to-be-crap; or, to be one of the happy few
Revising, like war, is hell.
For those of you stuck in your own Work-In-Progress, or for anyone who wonders why it takes so long to write a novel, I offer up my own (unfinished) experience.
Wendigo as babysitter: keeping your kids safe
There’s always more that comes out during an interview than you can ever get into an article. You try, but sometimes those tangents don’t belong in the story you’re writing, or you have to take a third of a direct quote when you’d just like to let the person speak in his or her own voice for a paragraph or two.
When I had the opportunity to interview storyteller Jeanne Pelletier about her part in this anthology of traditional Métis stories published as a graphic novel anthology to help bring the stories to a new generation, one of the tangents was why stories of monsters are good for children.
For the well-dressed monster geek
It could be said I have an overabundance of t-shirts. This despite the fact I routinely purge them every five to ten years. All those heavy-metal concert shirts from the ’80s? Gone. All my theatre shirts from the ’90s? Gone. Well, hm, wait, a stash of them has been discovered in an old dresser at the lake. Do I toss them out? What a sartorial dilemma. I only have one torso…
In case you were wondering
A pack of wolves, a parliament of owls, a herd of bison… Should you need to refer to groups of paranormal things, though, what do you say? Traditionally, “coven” is used to refer to a group of witches or vampires, but someone has taken up the challenge to assign words for all groups of beasties.
This is a creative if specious list… I do love the “lunacy of werewolves.”
