AUTHOR INTERVIEW: FIVE MINUTES WITH CHUCK CARUSO

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?


My name is Chuck Caruso. I’m a lifelong reader and writer of dark fiction.
 
By academic training, I’m a professor of 19th-century American literature, specifically the American Gothic. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on uncanny doubles in the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
 
This fall, Cloud Lodge is publishing a collection of my short fiction entitled THE MEANING OF BLOOD AND OTHER TALES OF PERVERSITY. I love that title. It allows readers to be self-selecting. When you hear that title, you immediately know if the book is for you. There are several crime stories and some western noir stories, but the prevailing theme of the collection is horror. If you like Poe, I think you’ll like my stuff.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?
 
I play a fair bit of guitar and write my own songs. They’re more overtly comedic than my stories, which certainly have a dark humor but aren’t entirely funny. Playing at being a singer-songwriter provides an outlet for my sillier side.
 
I’m also a board game geek. I love Euro-style strategy games like Through the Ages and Feast for Odin. I’ve got an entire bookshelf full of games. A few buddies and I game every Tuesday night. We even have a trophy that the week’s winner takes home at the end of the evening. I don’t win every time, but I’m happy to report that the trophy spends a fair amount of time on the mantel in my home.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?
 
The type of horror I write really runs the spectrum from dark, disturbing westerns and gritty crime stories to what now gets called speculative fiction but what used to be thought of as a subcategory of science fiction and fantasy. For early influences, I’m thinking of work by Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Harlan Ellison, and Ursula Le Guin. Even Patricia Highsmith wrote some really weird and disturbing stories too. I’ve always been most excited and inspired by that imaginative, odd stuff that almost can’t be categorized. Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling were important to my early development too.


The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations.  What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions?
 
I agree about those assumptions, but I do think the barriers are increasingly breaking down. Horror as a genre used to be viewed as sort of “shit lit.” The people who applied that label clearly didn’t read horror but they judged it harshly based on their mistrust of its popularity with the unwashed masses. Those old lurid covers probably didn’t help either, but the genre was viewed as poorly written, salacious garbage that succeeded by appealing to readers’ basest instincts. That attitude has been around a long time. At least since Poe, horror has been too easily dismissed as disgusting, sensationalist fiction that goes for cheap thrills and doesn’t really have anything serious to add to the literary conversation. But that view is simplistic at best, and at worst it’s completely wrong because it misses the point. When it’s written well and read sensitively, horror actually provides far deeper psychological and sociological insights and commentary than just about any other literary genre. That’s why we still read Beowulf and Gawain and the Green Knight. From a genre perspective, those classics would be classified as “horror.” Even Milton and Shakespeare use a lot of horror elements in their work.

A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years?
 
Well, I certainly think part of the recent resurgence of “horror” as a genre owes a lot to our current, troubled socio/political climate. Horror hasn’t been this “mainstream” since the 70s, which were also a time of great anxiety. As a genre, horror helps us understand and address our fears through powerful, often larger-than-life metaphors. I think right now we’re afraid of incomprehensible hordes of “the other,” which is why zombies have been dominant for the last decade or so. But notice how horror has more recently started to look at the zombie experience from a first-person perspective. We never used to see that before. Now becoming one of “them” is a real problem. First-person zombies are partly an attempt to deconstruct the idea of an absolute “other” but they’re also rooted in the fear of becoming “other.”
 
The flip side of that same coin proves my point here. A lot of the very best and most exciting horror right now is being created by women and by people of color. The genre is growing and developing as it becomes more inclusive and cosmopolitan. If you want to see where horror is headed, you just need to watch films like Get Out, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Raw. Horror isn’t just about the fears of white, middle-class males any more.

What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author?
 
The tales of Poe were definitely a strong early influence. So were the stories of Ray Bradbury. I grew up watching Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. The Trilogy of Terror is one of the first horror shows that made a huge impression on me. My teenaged uncles were babysitting me and let me stay up to watch that with them. I loved it, but it gave me nightmares for weeks.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?
 
There’s so much great horror being written right now, and I’m thrilled that short fiction has remained so vital to advancing the genre. I absolutely love the short stories of Carmen Maria Machado, Jeremy Robert Johnson, and Mariana Enriquez.

How would you describe your writing style?
 
I try to write insightful, interesting prose that doesn’t call too much attention to itself. Part of the job of any artist is to stay out of the way and let the reader experience the work without thinking too much about how clever the author must be.
 
I write character-driven horror where hell is other people but where the real monster almost always turns out to be the self. I go to some very dark places but I also try to balance things out with humor. I like to make my readers to laugh but then also to question why they’re laughing at such horrible things.

Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you?
 
I do read reviews of my work. I try to glean what I can and enjoy the praise when it comes. The few negative reviews I’ve gotten have made me feel like the reviewer didn’t quite “get” what I was doing. With the positive reviews, it’s always flattering to be compared to writers you admire. I’ve gotten some comparisons to Poe with this collection and that sort of goes to your head, but comparisons only get you so far. I must say that I like that readers can see the influence of people like Poe and Ray Bradbury and Elmore Leonard on my work. But my absolute favorite thing is when reviewers find my work compelling and disturbing. I love making people lose sleep.

What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?
 
Like a lot of creative people, I can be pretty scattered at times. I have a lot of interests and the ideas never stop coming at me. Probably the hardest thing for me is to stay narrowly focused on any single project long enough to really see it through from inception to a completed draft. Instead, I find myself working piecemeal, shifting from one thing to another. My creative process is messy and scattered. I shudder to think how many partial works I have in the hopper at any given time. Fortunately, there are deadlines. A hard stopping point always helps me wrap things up.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?
 
The short answer is no. If you’ve read my work, you know I don’t put limits on my creativity. In fact, I sort of pride myself on being willing to “go there” more than a lot of writers. We’re lucky that virtually nothing is off limits these days. One of my guiding principles for THE LAWN JOB was to write a classic noir novel that does what James M. Cain and Jim Thompson couldn’t. I wanted to write about topics that they would have explored if they’d been writing in the 21st century – legal weed, scary militias living in the woods, a transgender femme fatale.
 
In my horror tales, I don’t hold back. I expect readers will struggle with a few of these stories. The collection starts off with “The Confession of Jeremiah Heath,” a tale about a man wrestling with his religious faith. Ultimately, it’s undeniably a horror story but it arrives at its horrors honestly. Both the story itself and the problem it presents for the reader are rooted in the narrator’s spiritual struggles. That philosophical problem isn’t just window dressing. And where the story takes us is troubling but it’s not simply meant for shock value. That would be too easy and too forgettable. This tale sticks with you because it’s an honest inquiry into a problem without an easy solution. That’s why I never shy away from confronting subjects. You can’t.

How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning?
 
Naming characters is one of the most difficult things for me. I have to like both the sound and the meaning. I also want names to resonate and be memorable to the reader. A lot of times I find myself using placeholder names while writing an early draft because I could literally sit all day trying to name characters. Fortunately, sometimes names will just come to me. Usually that happens when the name doesn’t even seem like it could be a real name at all, but just an odd nickname. Those are the best.


Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?
 
No, writing is certainly not a static process. I think I’ve become a much better writer over the years, but only because I’ve written so much. I try to write at least a thousand words every day. I have to. When I miss a day or two, I have a hard time getting going when I come back to it. You have to practice endlessly to keep the words flowing and to develop your craft.
 
Natural talent is great but it doesn’t necessarily get you very far. I’ve known lots of very gifted writers who didn’t progress because they didn’t stick with it. I definitely subscribe to that theory about how expertise comes from spending 10,000 hours doing something. Anybody can do anything. You just have to put in your reps.

What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?
 
Commitment and dedication are the most essential things for any artist. You have to do your work. You can’t just want to “be a writer.” You actually have to write. That’s not the glamorous part. It’s the sweat and toil part, but it’s what separates the dreamers from the writers. 
 
Another important tool for writers is learning how to shut off the internal editor. Nobody writes a perfect draft the first time. You need to write anyway. Even if you think what you’re writing it crap, you have to get it written down. If you write it, you can fix it later. If you don’t have that shitty first draft, you have nothing.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?
 
Ray Bradbury told me, “Vomit in the morning and clean up at noon.”
 
When I was younger and living in Los Angeles, I was blessed to spend an entire afternoon with Bradbury. He’d long been a hero of mine, so I soaked up every bit of wisdom he could offer. He told me that when he started his writing career he made a commitment to write a new story every week. He reasoned that if he wrote fifty-two stories a year, even if most of them were bad, at least a few of them would be good. And gradually more and more of them would be good. That works. I’ve followed that same method myself. Write as much as you can and some of it will be good.
 
Bradbury kept a sign over his desk that said, “Don’t think.” I think that’s exactly right because it serves double duty. It gets you to a draft you can revise, but it also reminds you that you need to get out of your own way and let you subconscious bubble out with all the crazy stuff you won’t find if you’re constantly editing and censoring yourself.

Getting your work noticed is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve, how have you tried to approach this subject?
 
Yeah, getting attention is hard. Social media seems like it would help but it really just amplifies the problem. Everybody has a megaphone now. I just try to do the best work I can do and put myself out there in places where I’ve personally discovered other new writers. If you can make appearances on websites and podcasts that your tribe frequents – places like Ginger Nuts of Horror – you’ll start to be noticed more. But it all comes back to doing the work in the first place. You need to master your craft so that you’ve got quality material. It’s all well and good to catch momentary attention, but at the end of the day you want readers to crave more and more. That comes from doing consistently good work.

To many writers, the characters they write become like children, who is your favourite child, and who is your least favourite to write for and why?
 
I really like my idiot children. There’s something very gratifying about writing a good dumb character, or a character who’s entirely motivated by lust or greed or addiction. Of course readers tend to prefer the clever ones, but those are more difficult to write. The characters that know too much can start to cause trouble for you as a writer because you can’t just make them fall in line and behave properly and according to plan. I strongly believe that the best writing gives full and fair human motivation to every character, which makes plotting a real challenge. That said, when you nail it, you’ve really got something.

What piece of your own work are you most proud of?
 
I’m always most proud of the last thing I’ve written because each new thing represents another challenge that I’ve conquered. So, in my new collection, I’m probably most proud of “The Fucking Robot” because that was the story I wrote last. I love reading science fiction but I’ve never felt like I could write it. That story crosses the line into near-future speculation. Barely, but I’ll count it. The story also addresses a moral question that I had been wondering about for a while: does having sex with a robot count as cheating on your human partner? I like when I manage to write something that explores an issue that’s been nagging at me.

And are there any that you would like to forget about?
 
Of course, I’ve had plenty of false starts and seemingly brilliant ideas that absolutely fell apart as I tried to write them. Happily, those tales are collecting digital dust somewhere in the recesses of my laptop.

For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why?
 
I think this new collection THE MEANING OF BLOOD AND OTHER TALES OF PERVERSITY gives a very good sense of my work because it shows the wide range of things I do while amply demonstrating my dark turn of mind.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?
 
I slaughter my darlings as much as possible. Readers aren’t necessarily as impressed by an author’s cleverness as the author himself tends to be.
 
That said, I really like the following sentence about a couple freshly dead pimps from one of my western tales: “They lay together in an obscene heap, oozing thick blood onto the wooden floor and twitching in a morbid parody of the carnal act they had spent their lives selling.”
 
I also take a great deal of joy from finding opportunities to wink at clichés and bits of purple prose from my favorite pulp writers. In my pirate horror tale “Adrift on a Sea of Hunger,” I use the word “quoth” instead of “said” and I get to put a bunch of hungry zombies in a life raft. In my pit fighter story “Savage Smile” I managed to use the phrase “naked but for a loincloth” which is something straight out of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard.  Similarly, the blood in my tale “Hatchet Job” is called “ichor.”

Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?


My last book was my debut crime novel, a neo-noir called THE LAWN JOB came out last summer from London-based indie press Cloud Lodge Books. In addition to some very nice reviews, the novel won an Independent Publishers bronze medal, an IPPY, for best regional fiction. As I mentioned earlier, that novel puts new, 21st-century flesh on the old bones of noir crime fiction from the 30s, 40s, and 50s.
 
With my new project, I’m working on introducing a series character. That’s something I’ve resisted in the past because it can really box you in as a writer, but I’ve found that readers who like my characters want to know more about them. Part of that comes from a technique I use where I have my characters gesture outside the current plot toward the larger world they inhabit. They’ll make unexplained reference to things that happened before or are going on off-stage as it were. That richens the reader’s experience and makes readers curious. So, I’m venturing into some uncharted territory now. I love to keep challenging myself.
 
If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?
 
I think I’d erase the cliché of the diabolical mastermind who just enjoys tormenting people for no particular reason. This has given rise to a lot of torture porn and kind of empty stories where a group of strangers find themselves trapped in a puzzle house where they’re picked off one by one. I find that stuff sort of boring because it can tend to empty out all the characters. I like my horror to have a more philosophical edge to it. I like characters who grapple with legitimate issues that lead them into troubling territory. I want my horror to be more like Greek drama or Shakespearean tragedy.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?
 
Oh, there’s so many great books coming out all the time that I can barely keep up with them. I’m reading Alma Katsu’s novel The Hunger right now and it’s a brilliant retelling of the Donner Party story. I dug Jonathan Janz’s Children of the Night. Christopher Golden’s Ararat was awesome. Laura Lippman’s neo-noir Sunburn was wonderful. I already mentioned those collections of stories by Machado and Johnson and Enriquez.
 
Books disappoint me all the time too, but I’m pretty quick to set things aside these days. I don’t have time to read all the great stuff, so I’m not going to waste much effort on something that doesn’t grab me. If I’m not hooked by the first 30 to 50 pages, I’m done. Usually it’s because the characters are flat and there’s nothing at stake but sometimes its because the prose is clumsy and distracting.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?
 
Nobody ever asks me why I write. Maybe that seems too obvious, but I suspect we don’t ask authors why because it’s too scary of a question. But the answer is that I write to face down my own demons. I write to make sense of things that I can’t otherwise begin to understand, like the problems of evil, and man’s inhumanity to man, and why we desire the very things that destroy us.