Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of The Body Harvest, Anybody Home?, Tekken 5 (Boss Fight Books), and other books. He has written for, among others, Wired, Buzzfeed, Polygon, The Believer, and Publishers Weekly. He teaches at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult, Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference, and Sarah Lawrence College. He is represented by Lane Heymont at The Tobias Literary Agency.

Thanks for taking the time for this interview! Could you introduce yourself and your work for those not familiar with you?

I write mainly psychological horror, almost entirely novels and other novel-length stuff.

Alongside The Body Harvest, you’re also the author of Anybody Home? (2022). Could you pitch us both?

The Body Harvest is about two individuals, Will and Olivia, who form a codependent friendship to cope with their CPTSD. They bond over their fixation on viruses and other related afflictions, which sends them deeper into the world of virus chasing, the act of intentionally seeking illness in hopes of incubation and eventually immunity. Anybody Home? is a about home invasion as performance, designed to be a how-to guide to the systematic casing and pull-off of a successful home invasion.

The Body Harvest is . . . well, it’s an incredible, wild ride, to say the least. What was the initial idea or inspiration for the story?

I’ve had the idea, or at least the inclinations of an idea, involving virus chasers as far back as something like 2015 but never really had enough of it figured out until post-COVID-19 pandemic. Once it clicked into place, the idea of the Source, everything seemingly coalesced on its own, like a virus all its own. Then it was about finding the well to draw from, and I soon found it in my own desire to explore communities, the human desire to belong, and the incompatibilities that prevent people from ever being able to fully connect.

What’s your writing process in general? Did you do a lot of research and outlining? Any rituals you swear by?

The research always varies per project, but I’m a daily writer—2,000 words, no matter what. Been keeping that up for about a decade. I’m also a bit of a fast writer, which isn’t a brag at all; we all have our own process, mine is very much living in the project, sculpting the story and the world, as if I, myself, am trying to survive it. This also means I end up with a full manuscript that I will often scrap, not saving a word, and starting over multiple times, multiple full manuscripts, before I feel like I “captured” what I intended with the project.

In terms of rituals, I used to write to music, needed coffee at my side at all times, maybe smoked a cigar after a particularly good session. Nowadays I have noticed that I dropped most rituals; I write in silence, don’t need a drink at my side, and don’t smoke nearly as much as I once did. Guess it’s just the nature of time and how we evolve as much with our craft as we do ourselves as individuals.

The Body Harvest is, and I definitely don’t mean this as a pun, a sick book. In the last four years we’re still feeling the effects of a debilitating pandemic that changed, well, everything. Covid is mentioned a few times in the novel, but how much of Covid was an influence, or at least a reference, when you were writing this book?

Actually, not much at all. Covid stands as a moment in human history when everything changed; we as a species shifted to a new timeline and so much of what used to feel permanent became temporary, fleeting, on the verge of being something we will soon lose. That alone was the main influence from the pandemic, this feeling of place, as a person on this Earth, and how temporary we are, the unknowingness of tomorrow and how we may think that person, that job, that support network will always be there but in reality, you are not guaranteed a tomorrow. We aren’t even guaranteed today.

Will and Olivia are interesting protagonists. They find each other, stricken with their own failures and, ironically, their obsession with getting sick. Your previous novel Anybody Home? examines the lives of chronic home invaders. What gets you interested in examining these types of characters: with obsessions that are often harmful and dangerous to everyone else?

There is a sense of obsession to many of my characters, huh? That may simply be inherent to what draws me to them. Typically a book for me begins with a concept, the desire being directly an interest in exploring something, be it home invaders or virus chasers. It is only after I have defined the darkness I will step into that I find a vehicle, the character or characters who will be my journey and my guide. In The Body Harvest, Olivia came to me first, Will shortly after. Zaff stepped in as someone who proved that most stories don’t have a “happy ending” and his is a fractured little shard, the burnt-out husk of a vehicle found on the side of the road.

They discover the Source, a secret social media group who are, like Will and Olivia, obsessed with sickness. The Body Harvest is pitched as a “transgressive horror novel for the TikTok Generation,” so I’m wondering how much social media inspires your writing. We certainly turned to it a lot during the pandemic.

I would say that social media and technology itself does inform my writing as much as it does most of us living in this modern world. The Source is highly indicative of online Discords and other close-knit platforms where communities can flourish. I’ve factored social media more directly in some of my other books, including ones that aren’t yet published or haven’t found a publisher. Social media has been a mainstay for so many of us, yet as we have seen recently, in the past year alone, it has quickly changed to become something else. What will it be in another year or two? I don’t know. But it’s something that factors in my writing like background noise, the stuff that is there, and so much an integrated component of the modern world, for better and for worse.

The Body Harvest has some serious body horror overtones to it, and I think the scariest part is that this could actually happen. What do you think prevents something like Will and Olivia’s experiences from actually happening?

Our immune systems, haha. Our sense of normalcy and aversion to getting sick. That body horror element was a necessity for the story, to make their own bodies and psyches the living, breathing story and canvas for their descent. To think that something like this can happen . . . well, it could already be happening. Virus chasers exist. There exist many viruses and other contagions that have the capacity to change everything we know. As the pandemic has proven, we may see another in our lifetime, and there could be just around the corner something that once again reminds humans that we aren’t so impenetrable and invincible to what’s around us. If anything, it should prove to us that we need to be grateful for the time and health we have.

You introduce the chaotic Zaff into the narrative, who seems almost like an “anti-mentor” to Olivia and Will, causing them to go on violent and infectious rampages. Was it difficult to write about any or all of these characters, especially when they’re doing horrific things to themselves and others?

I wrote The Body Harvest in three weeks. It was, to say the least, a lot. Like I mentioned above, I tend to write a full book, and if it isn’t working, it gets scrapped. I recall being so swept up with Will and Olivia that when I got to a point when someone—the character that would become Zaff—needed to shatter the boundaries of their little contained lives, to give them hope, or at least as much as they can be afforded, I felt more than a little shocked. This happens I think sometimes where the story and its characters tell you what they want; The Body Harvest knew what it wanted nearly every step of the way. When Zaff wanted to play a part, it felt all-consuming, his long tirades vomited up onto the page as-is. At times I felt like I was along for the ride, watching this happen, all in the closet of my mind.

In The Body Harvest there’s also this theme of reclamation gone horribly wrong: once you lose something, it’s hard to get it back in the same way, and, even if you were to get it back, it may be worse off than when you had it before. Is that a common theme that comes up in your writing?

It can seem pessimistic, perhaps, but I do tend to dredge up my absurdist beliefs, at least something borderline philosophical to wrestle with on the page. I bet someone could easily trace this across one or more of my books. I guess my answer would be that it is merely a reflection of those chances I take when writing, to examine something and to try to make sense of it, for myself, for my own understanding of the world and this story that, at the time of its writing, desires to one day be a part of it.

You wrote Tekken 5 for Boss Fight Books, and there’s a fascinating scene that takes place in an arcade in The Body Harvest. How did that opportunity come about? How much do video games influence your work?

I’ve been a fan of Boss Fight Books for a long, long time. I’m what you could say a hardcore casual video game fan: I deep dive all things retro and I keep up with modern gaming. Casual only because I couldn’t hold up in a game competition, and I’m not the sort of gamer that tries to unlock all the trophies or achievements, oftentimes I don’t even beat the game. I get my enjoyment and move on. With Tekken 5, I pitched Boss Fight, and am grateful and honored to have been able to write a book that is as much about Tekken as it is about my own teenage years, bullying, et al. In terms of influence, I’d say video games influence me on that subconscious level, you know? The sort of thing that becomes integrated into a person from interacting with and experiencing it. Nothing conscious or direct, though. If anything, video gaming is my sanctuary. It’s where I go when I don’t want to face what’s waiting for me on the page, to get away from the stressors of life, and to just fire up a few matches in Tekken, maybe do another run at Resident Evil, or bask in the nostalgia of playing Dreamcast.

Outside of The Body Harvest, Anybody Home?, and Tekken 5, you have quite the catalog of published work out there, all of them just as strange and enticing as the next (I especially enjoy the pitch for Mother of a Machine Gun). What draws you to this genre? To the horrific and the weird?

Thanks so much. So kind of you to say. I think I’ve always written the horrific and the weird, I just don’t think I knew what I was doing, or rather what I was writing into, until Christoph Paul of CLASH Books quite literally told me, “Dude, you’re a horror writer.” I guess in hindsight I always was, but it never really caught on in my head as what I was doing.

Influence itself comes from my desire to dive into the darkness so that I can find my way out. The journey may seem bleak at times but when I reemerge, the light proves to be that much greater of an embrace, something that reminds me of why I write at all, and why writing is one of the reasons to be alive.

Other than video games, who or what are some of your influences? What got you into writing overall? Is there something that influences you that nobody would expect?

I got into writing by accident. Way back when, I was more interested in getting into music, game development, something creative and artistic, but it wasn’t books. I fell into it by accident, mostly through doing my own crash course in literature by way of buying hundreds of dollars worth of books off Amazon back when they had the super saver shipping option. I started with books like House of Leaves, authors like Italo Calvino and J.G. Ballard, Amy Hempel, etc., and it sort of just drew me completely in. I couldn’t stop reading and somewhere between books I tried writing.

I sucked for a long time. A long time, but I kept writing; it was a way to commune and more deeply consider the works I was reading. My influences come from that same sect, the consumption of culture, particularly films, books, music, and video games. None of that stuff is surprising or unexpected. We all take in the work of others, experiencing and enjoying their creations. Much of the inspiration comes from the very act of writing itself: I use it as therapy, I use it as a means of making sense of what seems to me as senseless; I use it as a way to exorcise the darkness within, all my PTSD and my baggage. We all have demons, and writing is, for me, a ritualized way to help keep them at bay.

Who or what are you reading or enjoying right now?

A recent film that stands out for me is Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, more so for its quiet yet beautiful look at experience, the moment, and how momentary life really is. Hmm. I’m really hoping the new Hellblade will hold up to the original. I’m putting in the hours on Tekken 8, can’t say I’m really any good at it, but I can win a few matches with Law. I’ve been reading Tiger Cult by Briana Morgan; At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca, and I have this stack of books to my left here that keeps calling to me. Are you into metalcore or hardcore at all? I’ve been spinning the latest Knocked Loose, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. I also stumbled upon this awesome duo SKYND, that writes music from the true crime bent; every track is about a crime, a killer, something of the like, and written from the victim’s POV. Basically, I’m always seeking new discoveries; like writing and pretty much anything else that resonates, it reminds a person of what it feels like to be alive.

Do you have anything coming up that you’d like to talk about? What’s next after The Body Harvest?

You mentioned social media earlier. I have a book that I recently finished that explores social media from a macro lens, particularly its societal effects and how it can turn a phenomenon into a perplexing horror. I’m also putting the finishing touches on another novel that I can’t really talk too much about. There’s also another novel that explores publishing in a very bloody and brutal way, but the title and details I also have to keep under wraps. That’s the funny thing about publishing: It works so much slower than writers and readers alike.