FIVE MINUTES WITH AUTHOR ​TERENCE HANNUM

FIVE MINUTES WITH AUTHOR TERENCE HANNUM

4/6/2018

Terence Hannum is a Baltimore based visual artist, musician, and writer. His death-metal coming of age novella Beneath the Remains was published in 2016 and his recent novella All Internal is available this April from Dynatox Ministries. His stories have appeared in Terraform (Motherboard/Vice), Lamplight, Turn to Ash, and the Sci-Phi Journal. (www.terencehannum.com)

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

My name is Terence Hannum and I am a visual artist, musician and writer. I play in the bands Locrian, on Relapse Records, and The Holy Circle. I make minimal art that uses obsolescent cassette tapes and I write weird, speculative and horror fiction.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

I make music and visual art, so I always have projects going or collaborations.. I also DJ horror soundtracks on the radio show Dead Air, and write a column of the same name for the newsletter of the Horror Writers Association that features a different soundtrack every month that I write about. Other than that I spend a lot of time with my family.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?

A lot of science-fiction like JG Ballard, Samuel Delaney, William Gibson but also writers in the New Narrative tradition like Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker and Kevin Killian.

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 think as a genre it’s an interesting time, I think the audience is there, there’s a lot of horror and better horror. What I think helps break past these assumptions is perhaps when horror retains its ability to use itself as a genre to assert larger issues. People accept certain things when they read genre fiction, and can maybe think about something they would not have before.

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?

I think what is brilliant about the genre is that it allows a suspension of reality, and within that framework writers can insert content that can address issues that maybe an audience hearing a politician drone on would not be so open to. I think the horror I am most interested in is going to deal with environmental issues, racial disparity and class. There’s probably a nexus in there too between all of it.

What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author?

Books are kind of all over the place JG Ballard’s “The Crystal World”, Dennis Cooper “My Loose Thread”, Don DeLillo’s “White Noise”, Samuel Delaney’s “Dhalgren”, Shirley Jackson “The Haunting of Hill House”, Jeremias Gotthelf’s “The Black Spider”, Margaret Atwood “Oryx and Crake”, I could go on. As far as films Dawn of the Dead, Stalker, The Descent, The Last House on Dead End Street, Forbidden World, The Innocents, The Vanishing, Gummo, Shivers. I could go on, I like things a bit off the beaten path that are more concerned with atmosphere.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?

I really liked Jason Willamson of the Sleaford Mods book he did for Amphetamine Sulphate. Paul Curran, Kathryn Born, her “The Blue Kind” was really potent. Also Jeremy Bushnell has two great books you should grab that are totally weird.

How would you describe your writing style?

I owe a lot to the surrealists, so strange juxtapositions, dreams, time slippages, they all are a part of what I write. I spend a lot of time describing things.

Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you?

Sure. My favorite is from the Baltimore City Paper when they reviewed my novella “Beneath the Remains” and compared it to Carl Hiassen and Gummo. I enjoyed that.

What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?

Trying to get it published. It’s the worst.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

No, it all depends on the story. I tend to find things I would never be personally interested in or involved in exciting. I like being a tourist sometimes.

How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning?

Names change a lot, I try and not let it get to obvious and avoid easy symbolism. I often start with a character name and change it maybe two or three times.

Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

Research and outlining, I realize it helps to plan a lot more.

What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers?

A notebook. I started carrying one for years, just something that fits in my pocket and I can write in with notes, outlines, and ideas. It’s helpful to go back to what the original kernel of the idea was sometimes, or see it evolve.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?

To read, to read a lot, to read things that aren’t what you normally write. Get away from genres. It helps a lot.

Getting your worked noticed is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve, how have you tried to approach this subject?

For me there can be some cross over with music, it has given me a small audience and a way that someone who interviewed me for music may be interested and have a venue for a literary thing. It helps. I also just think of how to find other angles to your work, rather than just literary areas. Sometimes you’ll be surprised who may be into what you pitch them. Oh and have good pitches, I learned a lot from being in a band and watching press kits get made. It makes sense.

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 liked writing Galen in “Beneath the Remains”, he was the main character whose death-metal obsessed brother goes missing. It was fun to go back to the 1990s and place a teenager there. However, I really struggled with the character Anita in “All Internal” when this alien consciousness takes over her mind, I wanted to balance the entities cruelty against the violence, and disdain – to make sure it meant something, and wasn’t just gratuitous.

What piece of your own work are you most proud of?

Probably “All Internal”, I feel a sense of clarity with it.

And are there any that you would like to forget about?

Not really. Most of the pieces get kind of edited and honed into shape over time before they get published.

For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why?

Well probably my most recent novella “All Internal” that uses certain tropes of body horror and manipulates point of view and timeline.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?

From All Internal - “I do not know how it happened, but I know it happened. I know I woke up, I emerged into the morning fully aware as if nothing had happened. Not stunned into this submerged existence. But awake, really awake. Fully. I can move, so I move, first my hand and then my arm.
I jump out of the bed. Ignore the smell of the decaying apartment and quickly toss on the dirty clothes piled on the floor. A pair of old jeans, a pink t-shirt from Gap. Whatever. I can feel my insides heave. I pull on my sneakers. I can feel the repulsion inside of me. I crack open the door and stare inside the apartment hallway now contorted into some organic cave or hive. Hive - that is it - insect like.

I run. I grab my keys and phone and I run. I run through the hallway, past the form of a standing man.
Get the fuck out of my house!”

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

“All Internal” is the recent novella that is coming out on Dynatox Ministries and is about the mind-body problem as told through a parasitic entity that inhabits a cam girl dragging her body through the amateur porn industry, replicating the male stars.

My next novel is “Lower Heaven” and it is about religion and surveillance in the suburbs and follows a small family surrounded by security cameras, car alarms, the father runs a Quality Assurance, the mother is a debt collector, is it’s about the false security and privilege, guns and a sentient surveillance blimp that the father grows spiritually attached to.

If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

Other people’s monsters. I just don’t get why there are whole replications of other creatures and characters in different contexts – not to say it can’t work. I just feel like a lot of the heavy lifting got done for you.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?

I just finished “I” by Wolfgang Hilbig and it really blew me away, it was so paranoid, and dark. It felt almost Kafka-esque but in Communist-East Germany. It’s brilliant. I really thought there was a lot of potential with Keegan Goodman’s “The Tennessee Highway Death Chant” but it would really repeat, and start over, and it got a bit monotonous as a formatting decision.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer?

Why the novella?

Because I like it. It’s the perfect length to say something and it is relatively easy for a reader to digest.

Be sure to check in tomorrow for our review of All Internal