Good morning! Please welcome guest author James Dorr. Though I will be away for part of the day, please feel free to leave comments for James and I will post them as soon as I return. Thank you!
~Kate
When you’re brainstorming for a new story, what usually comes first for you, the plot or the characters?
Actually it depends, but it’s often neither. Rather I’ll “see” a setting or a situation, a world that is not and possibly could never be (I do write dark fantasy and horror, or sometimes science fiction), but that is interesting. At that point I’ll look for characters to populate it and, from which, hopefully a plot will develop.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
Both or neither — I’m actually not sure there’s that much difference. I usually have some notion of a story’s ending before I start it, but while, when I was first starting writing, I might have made elaborate outlines for plots, now at the most I might jot down an occasional description or other non-plot related reminder of something I think might fit in. But are these approaches different, or is it just that, with experience, more pre-planning goes on in my head without my overtly thinking about it? Similarly the idea of characters being “in control” may just mean I’ve planned my characters better from the start. That, in that sense, I “know” them better and, hence, know what they’ll do.
What is one of your favorite ways to learn about your characters?
So this relates directly to the above. What I must do is get within a character’s head, to see things through that character’s eyes, hear through its ears, taste with its tongue, and, most of all, to feel with its feelings. This comes from my imagining what I might do in a circumstance similar to what I’ve put that character in — or maybe what a friend or a lover or ex-lover might do, someone I’ve been close to in the past. This is vital for major characters — minor ones may be sketched in more lightly — and while in some stories I might write with a deliberately more distanced point of view than in others (in which, at an extreme, a character may represent “Everyman” or “Everywoman,” as in Medieval allegories), I still must know who those characters are.
Where do you find inspiration for your stories?
I wish I knew. The “muse” and I have a bad relationship, I have to wrestle her to get ideas. Sometimes it’s from “prompts” — brief sentences or situations another person will suggest, or newspaper headlines or an image I see on TV. But often I think it can come from research, perhaps left over from some other story, but often new. I like to read books about curious places and strange beliefs, of other cultures and their myths and legends which then lead me to try to place them into our own time or, in contrast, to place myself within the exotic. I like reference books. Books about vampires or ghosts or folklore — that might just suggest some little known fact that can make my story different from others on the same subject. Also, while sometimes research can be done on the internet — Wikipedia can be handy (though often in my case I’ll use it for overviews of artistic movements, suggesting approaches more than ideas) — I find the internet is most useful for quick looking up of some specific fact or verification of some detail.
Would you tell us about your latest release?
I am a short story writer and poet, so my latest book, THE TEARS OF ISIS (released this May from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing — http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/), is a collection, as are my previous books from Dark Regions Press, STRANGE MISTRESSES: TALES OF WONDER AND ROMANCE and DARKER LOVES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND REGRET, and my all-poetry VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE) from Sam’s Dot/White Cat. In this case, what I’ve tried to do is not just round up 65.000 words or so of favorite stories, but to present them in an order and context to make them amount to something more. To tell, in some way, a larger story. In this case, I start with a sort of introductory poem about Medusa, but as a sculptress carving men from stone — or is it the other way around? — and, seventeen tales later, to end with the title story about another sculptress whose art always seems to lead to the destruction of those most close to it, who ultimately discovers herself within the myth of the “Weeping Isis,” the Egyptian goddess who was both a protector and creator of life, but was also depicted with vulture wings as a totem of death.
The point is, you can’t have life without death, from which in turn will spring new life. But also art involves its own kind of destruction if only in the artist/writer/poet’s need to objectify his or her subjects, thus stepping back from them and out of their lives — symbolically freezing them into a kind of immobility — but, at the same time, preserving them for (one may hope) eternity. Two of the earlier stories in THE TEARS OF ISIS are vampire stories, for instance, while vampires are creatures that bring immortality but only though their victims’ deaths; while the story preceding these is about a man who is already dead. Yes, some of these stories are horror, but others work with fantasy tropes and, in one of two instances, even fairy tales. But all, I hope, will bring a feeling of interrelatedness, some element of each being reflected (at least a little) in the tales that precede and follow it, like links in a chain, and in all, I hope, there will be some sense of beauty or love or creation within their variety — as well as its contrast, in terms of a real or implied destruction.
Or, failing all that, I hope they’ll be enjoyable just as stories.
What are you working on now?
I’ve been working on a series of stories for several years that, somewhat like the late Ray Bradbury’s THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES or Amy Tan’s THE JOY LUCK CLUB, add up to a sort of quasi-novel. Set in the “Tombs,” a huge necropolis and its environs on a far-future, dying Earth, sixteen of these have been published already in various places, including three (two reprints, “Mara’s Room” and “River Red,” and one, “The Ice Maiden,” for the first time) in THE TEARS OF ISIS, and another published earlier this year, “Ghost Ship,” in TECHNO-GOTH CTHULHU from Red Skies Press. While current economic conditions are more encouraging for me to continue to treat these as separate items, writing and marketing them as stand-alone stories, I may eventually start to look into a book publication for these as well, possibly with a larger publisher.
And there’s poetry too. I mentioned above that I have a book of poetry, VAMPS (A RETROSPECTIVE), released in 2011 by Sam’s Dot Publishing (now part of White Cat Publications). As the title may suggest, it’s mostly poems about vampires and vampirism. So perhaps in another year or two it will be time to come out with a new volume, maybe called something like VAMPS (AND FRIENDS), to bring in some poems about zombies and werewolves and demons as well?
Do you have an excerpt from your latest release you would like to share?
(This is from the title story, “The Tears of Isis,” in which the sculptress, Copper, on a quest for inspiration for her latest project finds herself confronting her own past.)
She bought a pistol before she left Michelle. A Beretta, small enough to fit in her purse, where she transferred it from her luggage after she landed at Logan Airport. She had to see Anthony. But, as Michelle warned, even after so many years he might not have forgiven her.
Nevertheless, he was the next key. Of that she was certain. The final key to the Birth of Horus, the sculpture that she was equally certain would be the greatest of her creations.
She kept an eye out for weeping women, ready to welcome the visions now since they were a key too. She made a point of not taking drugs, of being cold sober, even refusing cocktail service on the long flight from the Midwest to Boston, but was disappointed. At least for the moment. The process, she thought, the artistic process was always marked by a certain perverseness, and then she giggled. She felt high on clean air. A certain perverseness, she thought, just as she was — a certain sadness, perhaps, left behind her. A Ramon. A Wilhelm. But, always, she went forth to new creation.
A Johnnie. A Lisette — a French girl she’d met one night in Cambridge, at a party she’d gone to at Radcliffe. A Donna and Marty, twin brother and sister. The memories came back as she rode the taxi, first to the Fenway where she stopped at the Museum of Fine Arts. She got an address there — her brother was listed on the staff as a freelance consultant — and then to the backside of Beacon Hill and a narrow alley that twisted off Charles Street.
She paid the cabbie and carried her bags herself up the steps of a crumbling brick building. A Michelle. A Tony. She thought of Michelle and the week she’d just spent in her still eager arms as she climbed the stairs inside, three flights up to the tenement’s top floor. She thought: The Grave Lover. Ramon and Frederico. The Vampire. The Lust of War, one of her earlier pieces in which she’d used parts of Consuela.
The Birth of Horus. She saw the Woman now, shadowy, indistinct, on the top landing. Drifting to — through — a door. Leaving a trail of tears.
Knowing, she followed — that Anthony was the key. Probably the last key. Putting her suitcase down on the hall floor, she clutched her purse to her, checking to make sure the pistol was still inside, then knocked on the peeling, white-painted door.
She heard no answer. She rattled the knob and found it was unlocked.
She thought about models, young boy-like models, as she eased it open. And found, confronting her, a painting.
She gripped her purse harder, and gazed at the painting, huge and primitive, depicting a vulture-winged woman, a savage woman, her face smeared in blood. Her breasts, bare, blood-smeared too.
She exhaled loudly — the wings of her sculpture! Then heard a soft cough from an arched doorway to her right.
“Tony?” she whispered.
Would you give us a sneak peek at one of your upcoming releases?
(I had mentioned my series of short stories set in the “Tombs.” This is a passage from what will be my most recent, “Raising the Dead,” scheduled to appear this fall in AIRSHIPS & AUTOMATONS from White Cat Publications.)
“… he had ghouls under his command build a keel, as if to make a boat. But on this keel he had built a great framework, of hoops and circles, from the wing-bones of huge birds, both lightweight and strong and stiff. These he had bound with wires, twisted, thin metal to form a netting, within which he placed skin bags — huge, too, and air-tight.
“Ballonnets, he called them, speaking the formal French. Trapped thus within the wires.
“With river-reeds, dried and tough, he had his ghouls weave baskets, two of them, each large enough to hold a man. Or, rather, one for a man and a woman — this to be in the front, containing Rhodrar and me. While in back, one with him, from which hung ropes to a device above the keel which he would steer with.
“Below this one, also, he had constructed a clockwork machine, but with screw-blades instead of hands. This to give power, to move through the air with. Or so he explained to me. And, between the baskets — connecting them, as it were — a kind of catwalk with a weight attached to it, that could be slid back and forth. For ‘trim control,’ he said.
“I did not know these words. Even in French: Direger? Équilibrage? Not the way he used them — although I would, later.
“As, on that night you cite — two nights ago, you say? I have lost track of time. Anyway, on that night, one of oppressive heat, of still, heavy air but with rumblings to north and east, he ordered his ghoul-helpers to bring up great pipes to these frame-enclosed air-tight sacks. He had me place Rhodrar’s corpse in the fore-basket, and climb in myself with it.
“He had corpse-gas pumped into these ballonnets, or so he called out to me, himself in the back-basket.
“The frame strained above us, bone-hooped and coppery. While ghouls, below us now, clutched ropes to keep us down. Unhooking, now, the pipes —
“I nearly lost my soul!
“The ghouls had released us…”
Would you tell us about yourself?
As I’ve mentioned above, I’m a short story writer and poet with several collections under my belt. My work falls primarily into dark fantasy and horror, although I also write some science fiction and mystery, as well as occasional lighter fantasy and even, perhaps, a spot of romance now and then. I’ve lived in several locations in the eastern part of the United States, currently in Indiana; have been married; and have worked as a technical writer and editor, an editor on a regional magazine, a full time freelancer, and an office flunkey in an optometry clinic. In all, I have probably nearly 400 individual stories or poems in publication in one place or another, ranging from magazines like ABORIGINAL SCIENCE FICTION and ALFRED HITCHCOCK’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE to XENOPHILIA and YELLOW BAT REVIEW, as well as a number of anthologies.
What are your favorite genres to read and write?
The above, of course, but in terms of my own reading I’m also interested in history and biography and, not so much travel as such, but books on other cultures and lifestyles. Some of this I’ve touched on already under “inspiration” — and factual reading is vital for that too — but this can be reading for pleasure as well while, ironically, some of my fiction reading is more for business, finding out, for instance, the kinds of stories a particular editor may prefer. Then there’s fiction and poetry outside of my “favorite” genres, such as Greek tragedy (though I’ll argue that that’s actually the first literary horror), Elizabethan poetry and plays, nineteenth-century “Blackwoods” fiction (though again relating to horror), mid-twentieth century “theatre of the absurd,” even James Bond novels at one time although I think I’ve grown out of them by now (I liked the gadgets, though). And, as for possibly more direct influences on my own writing, I’ll often cite Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, Allen Ginsberg, and Bertolt Brecht.
Where can we visit you online?
Let me invite readers to my blog, http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com. This consists mostly of news about me and my current activities, including new sales and publications — links to the publishers of my books can be found there too — along with occasional “lagniappes,” samples of poems or links to free stories, and even an extra once and awhile like a movie review. There’s also bibliographic information in the “Pages” section (divided in three parts, fiction, poetry, and “salmagundi,” a sort of miscellany) along with a couple of essays on poetry and one or two other things. Comments, also, are always welcome.
Also I can be reached on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/james.dorr.9 (or search for “James Dorr” — it’ll be the one with the flying crow icon) which has feeds from the blog as well as comments from other writers, etc.; news of new books; sometimes a bit of more personal stuff; and occasional pictures that strike me as cool from such sites as The Bram Stoker Estate, Victorian Vampire Society UK, The Gothic Vault, and others. Also there may be an occasional political comment, but these can be ignored.
When you’re not writing, what do you like to do?
I like to take walks, to some extent from necessity — I’ve chosen not to own a car and my doctor likes me to walk anyway — but it’s also a quiet form of recreation. In fact, I often get ideas for poems while walking to or from the library or the supermarket. I also play a tenor recorder and lead a consort that plays period Renaissance music, sometimes in conjunction with Society for Creative Anachronism events, and, while we’re at best at a semi-professional level, people can dance to it and it’s fun. Then, in the evening, I like to watch horror and science fiction movies and have what I like to think is a decent VHS and DVD collection, including some fairly rare titles (I learned early on that having a player that can handle multiple formats as well as regions is much to be desired). As a matter of fact, I recently submitted a story to an editor who mentioned a particular director in his guidelines as a clue to the kind of treatment he liked — I just happened to have….
What is your favorite season?
I like them all, actually. What I like is the variety, in a temperate region, that the seasons can bring, so I’m perhaps a little disappointed that we’ve had a relatively mild summer where I am thus far (only a week or two in the low nineties, and this week as I write this, in late July, in the low eighties at most), as was last winter too for the most part — although we had that magnificent blizzard the night after Christmas! We did have more heat and a drought last summer, though, and while I may like the extremes myself, they can bring problems. Fall, of course, for its bright colors as well as connections to the supernatural — the winding down to the year’s “death,” and Halloween — is always a favorite, and spring for its rebirth and muted, quiet quality is a joy too. But I wouldn’t want any of these for the whole year!
Do you have any pets?
The “cave cat” Wednesday (named after Wednesday Addams in the original 1960s TV version of THE ADDAMS FAMILY), for more on whom check out her webpage, “Wednesday,” under “Pages” on my blog.
Link for THE TEARS OF ISIS: http://perpetualpublishing.com/the-tears-of-isis/
(There’s an email address included below the other information on the page for reviewers to ask for a free electronic copy.)
Blog: http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/james.dorr.9
Social
Kate, thanks, this looks very nice! I notice my Facebook link at the bottom isn’t “live” (did I make a mistake when I sent it to you? That’s always possible) but no real problem. For anyone interested, just go to Facebook, search for “James Dorr,” and click on the icon of the flying crow.
Meanwhile I’ll check in again myself from time to time especially during the evening (perhaps somewhat late, though, my musical group has a rehearsal tonight) so anyone with questions or comments please feel free to send them to Kate.
Hi James! I think your facebook link is fixed now. Sorry about that!
Thank you for being a guest!
Kate
Hi Kate, all is okay now. It’s a really great interview–thanks!