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Sometimes the idea for a story comes out of nothing much more complex than wanting to evoke a feeling. I had been writing lots of rather wild, rather expansive things — big “what if” stories, in which you come up with an absurd take on the world, and then see how far it can be explored. And I remember feeling the urge to write something in contrast that was much more claustrophobic.
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While the twins are the focus of my story, motherhood is the central theme for me. Mothers often love too much, and sacrifice their own health and well-being for their children. Mothers will die for their children, but sometimes it’s too much. So for the story, I just thought about the way motherhood can be both the most pure and corrupted form of love.
My books do have a sort of romantic community at the end — people coming together. But on a more basic level, I always see them as being about power, in the same way that Harry Potter books are pitched to a population of young people who really have no power. Superheroes are also stories about power. My books are always about someone obtaining a power to replace the previous sort of power that they held.
A friend of mine told me about getting a call from an ex-girlfriend asking if he could come get her from a cult, simply because she didn’t have anyone else to ask. He did, it was a little weird but in the end that was it: he was asked to give someone a ride and he did. Then I started thinking about how differently that might have turned out if both of them had been different sorts of people, how odd it might in fact go, and that led to the story.
Comics are what first drew me to art. They were that first peek in to what was possible. When I was younger I was really into superhero comics, but that’s changed a bit over the years. Though I’m still and always will be a fan of work like Batman and Hellboy, I’ve been flipping through stranger stuff lately. A lot of work by French and Italian comic artists from the ’80s, for example. Doesn’t matter if the dialog is in English or not; I can look at those pages for days on end.
I was in middle school when Columbine happened, and I remember very clearly how terror gripped my school and my community. It felt like the news was just saturated with coverage — videos of the kids crawling out of those windows, parents sobbing, the grainy footage from the cafeteria. Then after that was the speculation about the shooters, their parents, the role Marilyn Manson and video games played in their violence, and so on. It felt like it never ended.
In Toronto for several years I ran a reading series. One of the most interesting phenomena I observed was that if anyone began their reading by suggesting they were about to read a horror story, the effect on the audience was immediate. The listeners became defensive, they crossed their arms, leaned back in their chairs, began to frown. Now many of the listeners were themselves horror writers and so this wasn’t outright disapproval for the genre as one might expect. These listeners were defending themselves
I never write a story with a political or social agenda in mind. The elements come out of my own experiences, what is going on around me (in the media, on the subway, things I overhear) and what has happened to me in the past. However I do think that racism of the type practiced in Grand Beach, so prevalent in “genteel” communities, is the most insidious type of all. How can you protest or cry out against someone politely dismissing you?
For all our news, updates, and a run-down of this month’s content, be sure to read the Editorial.
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