Keith Rosson is the author of the novels Fever House, Smoke City, Road Seven, and The Mercy of the Tide as well as the Shirley Jackson Award–winning story collection Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons. He is also a legally blind illustrator and graphic designer for clients that include Green Day, Against Me!, and Warner Bros. His forthcoming novel, The Devil by Name, will be published by Random House in the summer of 2024. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his partner and their two children.

Thank you for agreeing to do this interview! For those readers who might not yet be familiar with you, would you mind introducing yourself?

Hmmmm, starting with the vague stuff, huh? I’m a writer of stuff that sits firmly in that “mixed genre” category, meaning it’s a little bit of this, little bit of that. Little weird, little grimy, little spooky. Writing that’s usually run through the colander of what folks consider “literary fiction,” which to me generally means fiction where character is as important as plot.

We’re conducting this interview just days before your new novel Fever House comes out from Random House on August 15th, although this will run later. Ostensibly, we’re here to talk about that (ostensibly . . .), so give us your pitch!

Gaaah, the dreaded “pitch!” How to distill a 450-page, multi-POV book into a radio jingle? Okay, here we go. Two leg-breakers roll up to a Portland apartment to collect a debt for their boss. Rather than cash, they find a severed hand in a freezer, and it turns out proximity to the hand induces madness and a strident desire to commit violence. And it also turns out there are a great number of folks looking for the hand, not least of which is a brutal black-ops government agency named ARC that traffics in such things. One thing leads to another—turns out there are a number of powerful objects out there, not just a hand—and within a few hours, Portland is wracked in flames and the shit has truly hit the fan; the world stands on the precipice of disaster. Like I said, it’s tough to do a short pitch on a kaleidoscopic, sprawling, multi-POV novel, but that’s the quick rundown.

One thing that struck me about Fever House was how mobile it is. There’s a constant sense of movement and physical action that feels like a shift from other novels you’ve written. While they’ve all been expansive in their unique ways, this one hits the ground running and doesn’t stop. Was that a conscious change—did you set out to write something with a different momentum—or is it just the way that this story grew and developed?

It really happened organically. The first fifty pages or so—with tough guys Tim Reed and Hutch Holtz doing their rounds, collecting money—that’s taken nearly word for word from another novel I couldn’t get off the ground. That one was straight crime, nothing supernatural about it, and as a result, it felt flat. I struggle with not putting the weird stuff in. But once I was able to get Hutch and Tim in proximity to this hand in Fever House, things took off pretty naturally. After a certain point, I recognized I was enmeshing readers in this wild mishmash of spy/horror/crime storylines, and none of those are particularly renowned for navel-gazing. I knew I needed to keep it as propulsive as possible. I greatly admire folks who can write genre stuff—and I include literary fiction in that—without putting a ghost or a monster or Joan of Arc’s reincarnated executioner in their stuff. I’m just not one of them.

Speaking of developing stories, can you walk us through your novel writing process? Some authors construct very detailed outlines to follow while others just dive in, finding the story and then shaping it up through multiple drafts. Which, if either, are you?

Never been a plotter, but if a book’s going well, the next few chapters or ideas kind of reveal themselves as I go. So I’ll be writing and then just make quick notes about what happens next as it comes to me. There are writers who write, like, a draft, slowly and patiently, and then just need to do a quick run-through and boom, their story’s done. I do not write like that. I write fast but I also probably take six to ten complete drafts, from the first word to the last page, before I’m remotely confident in showing a novel to anyone, and there’s usually a lot of missteps and cut material in between those drafts. But it’s also why I’d urge writers to keep their stuff and not toss it—you never know when something you’ve shelved for years will click and wind up turning into something. Hang onto that stuff.

While you’ve published several excellent novels and a Shirley Jackson Award-winning collection of short fiction with independent publishers like Meerkat Press, this is your first book with one of the giant publishers. How was it working with them in the lead up to the book’s release and how are you feeling right now on the cusp?

It is so different. Working with Tricia Reeks, who runs Meerkat, was way intimate. Just the two of us brainstorming, working stuff out. We’ve done four books together and there’s a tremendous amount of trust there, and we both hustled to get stuff done. Small and indie presses simply don’t have the same resources as a Big Five publisher, or even a bigger indie press, where jobs like marketing and editing can at least be divided between a few people. Those earlier books, it was just her and I, and Tricia works tirelessly for her writers and is always trying new ways to get their books out there. So going to a Big Five, where there is an entire team dedicated exclusively to getting your book into the world and handling blurbs and promotional materials and there’s a legal team and on and on—it’s way different. There’s a profound sense of gratitude and this notion like, “Are you sure this is okay? We’re going to send all these ARCs out to people, and if I come up with more ideas about where to send them, we can do it? You know ARCs cost a shit-ton of money, right?!?”

Like your prior novels, Fever House is structured around multiple point of view characters and we switch off between them as the plot moves forward. What is it about this form that draws you to it? Do you remember when you first became aware of it and what it has to offer?

I actually consider writing exclusively in multi-POV a bit of shortcoming. I have no problem sustaining a single POV over a short story, but over the length of a novel? Tough. Something about a single character navigating a world, acting and reacting to events, all the minutiae necessary of an emotional arc, that’s such a challenge. Multi-POV just feels organic and natural, and, honestly, easier. Writing a single-POV novel at some point is definitely on my bucket list, though.

Still thinking about the multiple POV approach, on a technical level, how do you handle writing the different characters as they weave through the plot? Do you write long sections of one character at a time, then divide and rearrange it into chapters while editing? Or do you hop from character to character as you write?

Definitely hop. Like I mentioned earlier, if things are cruising, the next plot-point will be revealed. Though sometimes I do have to consult a list of chapters and characters and be like, “Oh, Eddie the Man with Spaghetti for Arms hasn’t had a chapter in a while, he needs some airtime soon.” So then I try and tailor the next plot-point through EtMwSfA’s point of view. That’s just one of the knives balancing in the air when it comes to plotting a big novel. It’s such a balancing act, and such an act of sustained will, I love the hell out of it.

I’m sure you’ve seen people refer to your work as “literary,” so I wonder if you also think of it that way? Whether you agree or not, what’s the part of it that you think compels people to put it into that bucket? (No peeking at my answer in the next question!)

I love literary fiction and think there’s a strong element of it housed within my stuff, for sure. I also think a lot of writers and readers tend to look at fiction in a hierarchal way, with literary fiction kind of being upper-tier and more “serious” than genre fiction. I hate that distinction, personally. All this shit’s on the same level, the sorrowful treatise on a dissolving marriage and a horror novel about were-Chihuahuas. That said, I think people tag my stuff with the “literary” marker because while there are numerous indicators of horror or the fantastic in my stuff, it’s also very much rooted in that sense of character development, of playfulness and care regarding language.

For me, the “literary” nature of your work is strongest in that no matter how wild the plots get—and Fever House is probably the wildest—the focus is always on the characters and how they experience the world, rather than on just the events. There’s a real empathy for each of those POV characters, and your books tend not to have “villains,” although they do have plenty of people who are deeply, deeply flawed and have sometimes done terrible things. Even with the worst of them, however, you take the time to dig into them to find some relatable bit of humanity.

It feels like you have a great affection for your characters, even—maybe especially—for the broken ones. That said, were there any of the POV characters in Fever House or other books that you found particularly hard to write and find that humanity?

Ah, thanks, Gordon! And I didn’t peek. I really appreciate all that—I don’t really know how to write characters otherwise. Honestly, I find it significantly easier to write alcoholics and leg-breakers than I do, say, female characters, or children. Writing female-identifying characters is exponentially harder—it’s out of my wheelhouse. And with kids, it’s tough to sustain that highwire act of astute observation coupled with a thought process that might not be as finely tuned or quick as an adult’s. So when I do write those characters, I spend a lot of time getting it right. A guy who gets paid fifty bucks to shatter someone’s shin with a hammer, I could write that guy all day. Write that guy in my sleep. Katherine Moriarty in Fever House was really hard to write; due to previous trauma she’d experienced, she’s essentially become agoraphobic, only leaving her apartment in short increments, in short distances, and even that is terrifying for her. That character was hard. Again, something outside of my lived experience. I treated Katherine and her arc with a lot of care. I hope I got it right.

Of all your books, only two absolute villains come to mind—David Lundy in Fever House and Vaughn Keller in Road Seven. Neither are POV characters, but both are men in high-ranking yet invisible government positions, unconstrained by morality, laws, or sometimes even “reality.” I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the really, really bad guys are government stooges, right?

I really do think there’s only ten or maybe fifteen themes or ideas to communicate that can be distilled across all literature. Seriously. And one of those themes is that power corrupts. Both of those characters you mentioned think they’re in the right, and will be absolutely unrelenting in doing what they need to do in order to get what they want. They don’t think they’re bad guys! Yet they’re in positions of power and they brazenly abuse the hell out of that power. Hell, that’s a distilled review of half my work right there: Power Corrupts.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that the richness of your stories isn’t just in the deep insight into the characters, but the staggering wealth of concrete details, vivid descriptions, and fully developed histories of people and places. Your books are positively humming with life. How do you develop so much detail, how do you keep track of it, and, more importantly, how do you string it all together without getting overwhelmed?

Hell, I ought to ask you that, Gordon. Gordon of the upcoming collection, Gordon B. White Is Creating Haunting Weird Horror(s); I think your work has that same richness to it. But the cruddy part is, I don’t really know. That stuff you’re talking about comes from the deep part of me that’s tough to figure out internally, tough to even discern, much less decipher and put into words. We’re getting into gut-level stuff, stuff that’s borne from just writing for so long, putting so many words down so consistently over a matter of years. Writing, and writing a little well and a little automatically, just comes naturally after a while. The truth is, as a reader, I love those details, those side journeys, those fixations. But it just comes with writing a lot, you know? And then recognizing when the passages or the story itself begins to get too bogged down.

Along those lines, I’m very curious—how vivid is your visual imagination? For example, do you see the characters in full-color and in their scenes like a movie, then write down what you see? Or do you have to go detail by detail, picturing one thing before you can get to the next?

Again, this is why I would struggle teaching fiction over any sustained amount of time—I have like three interesting things to say as far as my process, and the rest I got no clue. I think there are certain key things that I internally focus on, that come to me innately. Little details. A face, a stain on a cuff, a sharp odor. Other times you read through it, and it reads thin, so you go back and pepper some extra details in.

Going back to your characters, you have a knack for coming up with great names. In Fever House my favorites are Hutch Holtz—hired muscle who is every bit as ungainly and hard hitting as he sounds—and Nick Coffin—a resourceful kid who’s always just about one step away from finding himself in his namesake. How do you come up with the names? Do the names come early or late in the writing process, and does having the name change how you write (or re-write) the character?

Man, Hutch Holtz has haunted me for yeeeeaaars. That guy was a character in at least one-and-a-half other failed novels, both of them crime novels. Honestly, I’ll do something like scroll through social media and look at names and then wait for something to click. Same with Nick, having a last name like Coffin felt like such a bold move that I felt a responsibility to put the kid through the wringer, you know? Names generally come first, or in the first draft, and can actually inform a lot of what happens in the story. If Nick Coffin gets punched in the mouth, it means something different than if Preston Goodsworth III gets punched in the mouth. Names can inform.

We talked earlier about formative influences on your style, but who are some of the authors working today that you enjoy reading? What are some recent books that have struck your fancy?

In crime fiction: Nick Harkaway’s Titanium Noir, Jordan Harper’s She Rides Shotgun and Everybody Knows, Patrick Hoffman’s Every Man A Menace, Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies, Percival Everett’s Trees, Tod Goldberg’s Gangsterland trilogy, and The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner, which I suppose isn’t technically a crime novel, though it’s set in prison and is centered around a murder and is enthralling from page one. For horror/weird shit: Andy Marino’s It Rides a Pale Horse, anything that Andy Davidson ever decides to do, Brian Evenson’s Last Days, Nathan Ballingrud’s stories, C.J. Tudor’s Burning Girls, Kelly Link forever. You, Gordon. Lucy Snyder and Hailey Piper write some beautifully twisted shit. Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black remains the best, bleakest ghost story I’ve ever read.

In addition to being an author, you’ve also taught classes and workshops on writing, including ones on working with “magical realism” in fiction. Has teaching or guiding others changed how you understand or think about your craft?

Honestly, it’s shown me how little I know, or at least how much internalized knowledge I can dredge up and verbalize. Like I said, a lot of this stuff is just a matter of sitting down and pecking things out; it’s hard to distill that innate, personal experience into a lesson, you know? It’s just something that becomes more natural the more you do it. I got enough key points to relay for a class a couple weeks long, I figure. But those teachers who can make stuff last over a semester or more, that’s wild to me, way out of my wheelhouse. So much of this just comes down to: “This page isn’t working. Why? Where did I lose the thread?” And just innately understanding that I can find it again, that I just have to backtrack and trust myself.

Speaking of craft, you have five novels out (by the time this runs) but only one short story collection, the Shirley Jackson Award-winning Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons. Between novels and short stories, do you find one mode easier to work in than the other? Do you notice a difference in the kind of ideas that you develop into novels versus short stories?

I think truly outlandish stuff—like “Baby Jill,” where the tooth fairy questions her immortality, or “The Lesser Horsemen,” where three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse get sent on a team-building cruise by God as a way of boosting their frayed morale—work in short, sustained bursts. Voice can sustain you a lot more in stories. It’s like a sugar-burst, you’re in, you’re along for the ride. But riding just on voice over a novel, that’d be tough. So I don’t know. The genesis for my novel Road Seven came from a pair of prompts in an old writing group. (“Unicorn poop” and “sex in a pumpkin patch,” if you were wondering.) A whole book, just from that! And I guess a severed hand that drives people insane is a pretty weird idea in and of itself. But right now, I’ve written novels almost exclusively for the past few years, and I miss writing short stories quite a bit. It’s been so long, I’m a little flinchy as to whether or not I can actually get them down anymore. I have another story collection that’s pretty much ready to go, but it all depends on what the best move is as far as—gasp!—my career. Right now, folks are leaning into novels, and that’s what my editor’s leaning towards, so that’s probably what I’ll keep moving toward with.

I have to ask—do you have any interest in writing novellas? Or are you strictly an author of extremes?

I’ve got one that’s been shopped around a bit—a cat burglar who inadvertently befriends the devil—but no takers so far. I generally seem to be inclined toward short stories or big books.

We mentioned the level of visual detail in your work, and so maybe it’s no surprise you’re also an awesome graphic designer. You’ve worked with a number of cool bands and have serious cred, including that you designed your own covers for your books with Meerkat Press. When you did both the writing and designing with Meerkat, did the covers come early or late in the process? Was it hard giving up that total control when working with a bigger publisher for Fever House?

Oh, covers were about the last thing we did, maybe even after flap copy. It was such a fun deal, coming up with those covers. The illustration of the crying executioner on the front of Smoke City was actually the initial thumbnail sketch, just enlarged, blown up. Fun little things like that, and the fact that since there is a deaf character in The Mercy of the Tide, the word “MERCY” is spelled out in American Sign Language in the little glyphs on the cover. Letting go of the cover design was tough, but also a relief. I didn’t have to worry about it. And Ella Laytham, the Fever House cover designer, has done so much amazing work, I knew the book would be in capable hands. I think she came up with one of the most striking, vibrant, iconic covers I’ve seen in a long time.

Speaking of the differences between working with big and small press, what were some of the other differences you encountered? Do the differences bleed down into your day-to-day writing, or has that process stayed more or less the same?

I went over that a little bit, but I think it’s mostly the difference in resources. Infrastructure. Connections. Distribution. There are marketing folks. And publicity folks. Which are two different things, it turns out! There are editors and copy editors. There are cover designers and then graphics teams, who make promotional stuff. They’re all really good at their jobs, but that’s the big difference. Just the vast breadth of people working in service to your book is way different, and it makes me really honor small and indie presses, because most times it’s one, maybe two or three people “on staff” doing all of that. My writing process also looks a little different now because I’m aiming to publish a book a year. So now I’m in front of my computer a lot more, Monday through Friday, getting to fall into the morass of all this weird stuff I write. It’s become a job, which I’m tremendously grateful for and treating very seriously. Getting to write for a living, to raise a family off of it, is a tremendous gift, and I don’t want to blow it. But I still have to do ten damn edits on anything I write, so that hasn’t changed.

Going back to the stories, your books have all taken place in something close to the “real world”—there’s an America, a Portland, it’s the late twentieth/early twenty-first century—however, they seem to take place in different realities because big, world-level events in one novel don’t appear in another. Fever House is different, though, because it has a few winks towards characters and events in your last novel, Road Seven. Are these just Easter Eggs, or are you starting to build a more cohesive universe in your fiction? Are you looking at . . . sequels?

Well, here’s the thing—all my books are so insular, and the endings so world-affecting, that they can’t really cross-pollinate with each other. The Mercy of the Tide ends in a very specific way in the mid-1980s, a way that affects that entire world. Smoke City, there’s ghosts. Road Seven is the only self-contained novel of mine where crazy shit happens, but it’s relatively insular crazy shit. I love when authors slip those things in, it’s such a treasure when you can recognize little breadcrumbs from an author—a character from another story, an event that happened in another book that reverberates in this one. I’d love to write some stories that feature waaaay secondary characters from other novels or mine—the voice actor for the lasagna puppet in Road Seven getting rolled for money. Casper from Smoke City getting his show cancelled. Vaugh Keller sweating out a scotch hangover in front of a House Judiciary Committee hearing. I love that interconnectedness. And also, as I mentioned, the sequel to Fever House, titled The Devil by Name, will be published by Random House in summer of 2024. Like I said, lucky as hell.

Finally, what’s coming up next for you? In addition to those projects already scheduled, is there anything new that you’re working on and can share with our readers?

As I mentioned, I’ve got The Devil by Name coming out next year. I’ve got a 1970s vampire novel that’s done, a current WIP that I’m tapping away at in between edits, which is a project I don’t even want to talk about for fear of jinxing myself, and then a new story collection pretty much ready to go, with a nice mix of published and unreleased stuff. I’ll fulfill my contract with Random House with this second Fever House book and then we’ll see what way the wind blows. Hopefully, they’ll want to keep working with me because this is an absolute blast.