 Cody T Luff’s forthcoming novel, Ration, will be released by Apex Book Company in 2019. Cody’s stories have appeared in Pilgrimage, Cirque, KYSO Flash, Menda City Review, Swamp Biscuits & Tea, and others. He is fiction winner of the 2016 Montana Book Festival Regional Emerging Writers Contest. He served as editor of an anthology of short fiction with twelve contributors titled Soul’s Road. Cody teaches at Portland Community College and works as a story editor. He completed an intensive MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Cody grew up listening to stories in his grandfather’s barber shop as he shined shoes, stories told to him at bedsides and on front porches, deep in his father’s favorite woods, and in the cabs of pickup trucks on lonely dirt roads. Cody’s work explores those things both small and wondrous that move the soul, whether they be deeply real or strikingly surreal. Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I grew up driving the dirt roads of rural Montana. My family moved a total of fifteen times before settling just outside of Stevensville located in the Bitteroot Valley. Sage brush and summer fires colored my youth in smoke and dry greens. My father would set up one of his two teepees every summer, even after my sisters had grown and fled the nest. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting in my father’s teepee around a fire, listening to stories of his time in the Navy or as a guide in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. These stories weren’t always true but that was allowable in the light of the campfire. All shadows grow a little on a good summer night. When I grew a little older, I found that I was the one telling stories. I was always in love with stories, the portable kind you find in books and the silent kind I would stumble across in the hills behind our house as a child. Whitetail bones and a long tuft of horse tail clinging to a red curl of barb wire rising from the dry remains of a homestead could hold me in place long enough to annoy my father as we spent a little too much time trespassing on someone’s back forty. College gave me access to a wild rush of new ways to tell stories, film, theater, performance art. I tried a little of everything before finding my way back to the page. My campfire has changed shape several times but in the end I find that what I love the most, what I am always drawn back to, is the intimacy of being a storyteller. Of leaning over the fire and inviting a listener to lean with me. What do you like to do when you're not writing? I teach writing at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. My nontraditional background has inundated my classroom, my assignments range from a term-long zombie apocalypse survival simulation and journal to the gamification of students’ personal legacies. I want my classroom to be one part laboratory, one part critical reactor, and one part creative explosion. I am fascinated by folklore and urban legends. I find myself hungry for these kinds of stories, collecting them no matter where I find myself. I lived in the Osaka area in Japan for a year, haunting temples and streets, soaking in as many bits of folklore and urban legends as I could. I recently visited Iceland and spent a great deal of my time there lost in hundreds of years of history. The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavic captured me for an entire afternoon. The legend of the Necropants alone was enough to make me want to return for another go. Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? I think I’m going to step away from literature and lean into music for this answer. Tom Waits has fueled a great many of my short stories, feeding me blue gravel lyrics and the kind of rusted out love that lives in between work days and weekends. More recently Nina Simone and Nick Cave have been feeding my work. My writing has always been inspired by a variety of authors but music has been equally influential in all periods of my writing. Influence and inspiration are deeply linked, music and prose no less so. 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? The word horror evokes monsters. The kind that slip from dark pools or rise from darker pits. Horror reaches into the part of us that wants to shape our fears into something unreal, something we can safely drown in the pool or rebury in the pit once the story has found its close. Our job as horror authors is to create monsters that do not lose their shape once the story nears its ending. Fear is an essential emotion, one that needs to be felt to be understood. Stitching a monster out of understandable tropes doesn’t evoke true fear. Our job is to find the cloth that is adjacent to the skin of our reader, to stitch the fear so closely to the monster that we are unsure if we are wearing the cloth or the monster is wearing us. After all, the truly frightening thing about monsters that are no longer understandable is that they resemble us. Devils must follow rules, humans do not. 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 believe climate-focused horror will lead the way in the next few years. Our monsters are already changing and I think that we can see these monsters rising in unique and disturbing ways. What could be more frightening than how we treat one another in the heart of a terrible drought or the death of small kindnesses in the mouth of famine? Climate horror will break genre boundaries and change our definitions of monster in the next decade. What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author? This is a tough question for me simply because I have too many I want to share. Dunn’s Geek Love, McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness all have changed the landscape of my mind. But if you ask me this question again tomorrow, I’ll have another list and defend it with equal passion. Bladerunner was my first taste of greatness when it comes to film. I return to it far too often, my family fleeing the room when that particular sparkle finds its way into my eye. Kurosawa’s Rashomon and the television series Twin Peaks are among many that continue to resonate with me. How would you describe your writing style? My style is deeply seated in the senses. I want my readers to feel everything my characters feel, smell and taste what they taste. I want every moment of my story to have a body feel, a lingering sensation that will follow my reader long after the story has spun away. Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? I once submitted a short story to a publication which will remain unnamed. I received a prompt acceptance letter full of specific praise. The editor loved my style and wanted to publish my work right away. I was ecstatic, the journal was quite popular and I was a very hungry writer. A week later I received a rejection from the same journal under the name of a different editor. For each and every note of praise written by the previous editor, the new editor gleefully tore my story to kitty litter. The last line was both a question and a statement. It assured me that I was not a poet and that my skill with poetic language failed my story, and did I really think I was a mature enough writer to submit to such a well-known journal? I was … confused. I reached out to the publication and the second editor responded with a terse note that explained that their opinion was the final opinion and that the first editor was no longer employed with the journal. They suggested I pursue other avenues of creativity. I sold the piece a few months later but the sting didn’t quite go away. The idea that my work wasn’t good enough became a ghost that haunted me for some time. But then again, I rather enjoy hauntings so I guess it worked out in the end. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? The most difficult part of a story is separating from my characters. I am sure this sounds corny but I grow very attached to my characters and when I’ve finished a story, I find that I miss them terribly. Even the villains. I am sure a friendly neighborhood therapist could weigh in on this phenomenon but the closer I get to the end of the story the deeper the sensation of loss becomes. Placing these same characters in terrible situations is equally difficult and killing a character has been known to send me on long walks to deal with a bit of guilt or grief. I think it is simply because I follow my characters through their story rather than leading them. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? I have tried to approach my work with the understanding that I will need to write what frightens me if I ever hope to frighten my readers. It is necessary that I feel whatever my reader feels in order for my story to be a living thing, important enough to share. At the same time, I am very willing to admit that there are a great many topics that scare me but I want to hold myself to a very specific promise. I must write about everything, even if it is frightening, perhaps specifically because it is frightening. 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 are always a group effort in my work. My wife has saved my life on a number of occasions, pointing out that four characters all had names starting with J or that one of my character’s names mutated into something entirely different by chapter three. I define my characters so much by what they feel like that their names usually come much later in my writing process. This has annoyed not only my wife but numerous writing groups over the years. Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? Two of the large influences on my development have been travel and the good luck of finding incredible writing groups. This boils down to the influences of other story makers on my own work. Gathering folklore and myths from around the world and working closely with gifted writers has helped me grow as a writer in a myriad of ways. Without the blunt-yet-loving notes of my writing groups or the deep wonder I discover in old temples and dusty dirt roads, I don’t think I could continue to develop in the same way. What tools do you feel are must-haves for writers? Support, a true love of stories, and the ability to listen to critique. These are essential pieces in the puzzle of figuring it all out. The idea that we write alone is false, we need other writers, we need readers and we need them long before we’ve published our life’s work. Writing is a form of insanity, a wonderful form but one that requires others who are in the grip of it to fully understand why you’ve spent the last seven days changing your verb from twitch to pulse when the reader will spend less than a second actually reading it. We also need readers to point out that they didn’t care if it was twitch or pulse to begin with because they weren’t sure what the hell was going on in the first place. And we need to listen to them when they tell us these things, even if they aren’t always right. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? A poet who was once referred to by their students as the Velvet Hammer once told me that it’s never really finished but it will tell you when it’s ready. Getting your worked noticed is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve, how have you tried to approach this subject? The answer to this question is terribly frightening to quite a few writers. We sit at desks and live in worlds that we create. The way to find notice is to leave those worlds and tell others what you have seen there. We have to find others who are equally excited about our work. Other writers, agents, and if we are very lucky, publishers. I have discovered that this happens more often if you step away from your desk, away from your computer and join the conversations that are happening elsewhere. Writing groups, conventions, even writer meet ups are a way to meet others who are in love with stories. There are so many of us now that it is very hard to find notice in a slush pile. It isn’t impossible but it is so much more likely if you are a part of a community of creatives that come together to share their work and spread their talents. To many writers, the characters they write become like children, who is your favorite child, and who is your least favorite to write for and why? My favorite character to write for was a boy born without a heart. His blood circulated through his body by the action of constant and steady breathing. The story itself contained a cow living on a roof in a large metropolitan city, a love affair with a bus driver, and an old superintendent who spoke with his hands. “Empty”, the name of the piece and the character, was strange and sad, the kind of story that I wrote in one fever dream of an evening and spent a year revising. My least favorite character is an anthropomorphic brain tumor that takes the shape of a woman with a duck’s head. She was an impossible character, a liar and a cheat but also simply a manifestation of the main character as he was dying. Writing her gave me chills. What piece of your own work are you most proud of? I am most proud of Ration. I wanted to write a story that would last beyond the final pages, that could keep telling itself even as I stopped writing. And are there any that you would like to forget about? I once wrote a short story about two repo men discussing Meatloaf’s “I‘d Do Anything for Love” as they broke into a dual axle club cab pickup truck in Santa Fe. I still enjoy the characters but I’ll never let that story out into the wild again. 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 both Ration and my short story “Sweat” are the best representations of my work. Ration explores the greater darkness of humanity, of what we might lose and what we might give away. “Sweat” is also a type of horror, the horror of memory and invisibility. Both are ultimately about love and loss, about how thin we can stretch our souls before the silver stuff that holds them to our bodies finally breaks. Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? This is one of my favorite sections from Ration: The building breathes its constant hush, distorted voices, touches of static, the deep belly gurgle of flushing toilets, running taps. It is the dull music of Cynthia’s sleep. It lulls her, and she closes her eyes. So many nights, lying on her thin mattress in the dark. Smelling the sweat of the place, old, harsh soaps, unwashed clothing, even the mattress itself holds the odor of the girls before her. Backs and shoulders carving out the well in the cotton batting she sleeps in. Heels pressing the gentle craters into the seam at the foot. She imagines all of them, all the girls who came before, curled around one another in sleep, holding one another for warmth in the dark and listening to the building whisper its rumors. Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? Ration is about hunger, primarily the hunger of the body but also the hunger of the mind and spirit. The world of Ration is defined by the lack of food, of warmth, safety, and honesty. The characters struggle to determine just how much of themselves they are willing to let go to feed the hollow places inside of them. I am currently working on a novel in which a family, fractured and reknitted after a separation by war, faces the growing discordance of a corrupt local government as the father continues to practice a strange ritual of speaking to the dead by drowning himself over and over again. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? Knowable terrors and understandable monsters. A silver bullet, a sharpened stake, placating the unquiet ghost, all horrors that we can put away safely at the end of the night. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? I have been making my way through Sidney Williams’s novels at the moment. I am addicted to his style. Midnight Eyes is a clever thriller with deep touches of darkness that I enjoy tremendously. I have been spending a lot of time with graphic novels, and I have discovered that I tend to shy away from the characters and stories that tend to treat their readers with a lack of trust. What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer? I have always wanted to be asked Which? The answer, of course, would be both. For more information on Cody and to follow him on social media please click on the links below https://codytluff.com/ Amazon author page Twitter: @codytluff Facebook.com/cody.luff  Preorder today and receive 30% off your book! Be sure to use checkout code RATION30 when you place your order. All trade paperback preorders will include the advance reader edition of RATION and will be delivered immediately to your inbox. Also available for preorder from the following vendors: Amazon (Trade Paperback) |Amazon Kindle | Kobo | iBooks | B&N.com | Google Play Coming August 13th! Set in the far future, Ration is an unflinching take on the ways society can both thrive and go wrong as pressure to survive builds. All the girls who live in the Apartments are forced to weigh their own hunger against the lives of the others living in the building. When Cynthia is wrongly accused of ordering an "A" ration, she punished by the other girls. Eventually, she is forced to leave the Apartments along with Ms. Glennoc, one of the former managers who has tormented and abused her for years. Together, they encounter a world of even more scarcity, but one filled with politics and intrigue. Cynthia struggles to return to the Apartments and help the girls who are still there. Forced to reconcile her role in the destruction of these girls with the greater needs of society to find any sustainable source of calories, Ms. Tuttle makes one bad decision after another while she grapples with a mother who is growing more and more impatient with her mistakes. Ration is a dark and forceful book, written in a surprisingly nuanced and accessible way. It combines the darkness and despair of The Road and The Handmaid's Tale, but has notes of charm like Lauren Oliver's Replica. Cover art by Mikio Murakami ISNB (TPB) 978-1-937009-75-5   Comments are closed.
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