MASHED Monday Author Interview: J. Donnait
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J. Donnait writes the story, “A Woman’s Corn” in our upcoming anthology, Mashed: The Culinary Delights of Twisted Erotic Horror. “A Woman’s Corn” is the tale of two secret lovers sharing a final meal in an abandoned shack.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself?
I was born and raised in Toronto and went to York University where I weaseled my way to a Bachelor of English degree. That was over six years ago (womp womp). I’ve worked in retail since I was sixteen, and once I hit thirty, I couldn’t take it anymore. The only thing that’s ever made sense is writing, which I discovered in high school but did nothing with until well after university. I love music, I think The Beatles are the greatest band of all time, and if I’m not listening to them, I’m probably singing along to Emmylou Harris and pretending that I can play the banjo beside Bill Monroe and all the other grinnin’ and pickin’ folkies.
When not writing, what do you enjoy doing?
I love hockey, both playing and watching it, and I enjoy a good RPG video game. I try and watch/read every horror thing I can get my hands on, but I’m not the traditional horror fan: I don’t scour for the obscure/foreign films; I can’t even tell you the last time I saw the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Blasphemy, I know. If I got paid for taking naps, I’d be one rich little boy. Whether I’m by myself or with friends, I’m usually saying inappropriate things in singsong.
What attracted you to submitting your story to MASHED: The Culinary Delights of Twisted Erotic Horror?
I receive an email monthly from Dark Markets, which collects anthologies, zines, etc., that are looking for speculative fiction stories. MASHED was one of the anthologies listed. Once I read what they were looking for, I had to submit. I mean, sex and horror and food? That’s a recipe for a fun story.
For your story “A Woman’s Corn” what was your inspiration?
It was one of those stories that I just started, not really sure of where it was going to go. The witch/devil angle wasn’t premeditated; they were a happy accident. The first draft was just Tessa and Lester arguing. After a few rewrites, I had this lover’s spat, focused on a final meal of sorts.
Influences:
When did you first discover that you wanted to be a writer?
I was in grade 12.1 (I took a victory lap because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life post-high school), and took writer’s craft. I had never really written anything before, and now I was in a position where my marks relied on it. My teacher’s feedback was extremely positive, and at the end of the semester, she pulled me aside and said, “Pursue this.” So I took English in university, graduated on the Dean’s list, and heard things like “You have a gift; don’t give up.” Encouraged, it would still take me four years following university before I started writing at least an hour a day.
Did you have any writing mentors?
There’s a local Toronto author, James Grainger, who was kind enough to meet with me for a few beers because I wanted to ask him questions about becoming an author. I was done working in customer service and didn’t want to do anything other than write. He told me how things happened for him, suggested that I just write and submit and hope that things work out. He was kind enough to read the first short story I ever wrote, and his feedback was very positive. He’s read some of my other stories, and he’s not afraid to tell me about both the good and the bad. I love him for that. Now he’s a friend and we meet up monthly to talk about horror, Rock & Roll, and anxiety.
Who are your favorite authors? What are your favorite books?
Stephen King. There are two things I can talk about for hours: King and The Beatles. As a novice reader, King was excellent because his prose was never challenging, and I never found myself praying that the chapter would be over because I was getting bored. Nobody writes people better than King. Nobody has normalized the absurd and the terrifying, as if the strange happenings in Castle Rock and Derry are somehow normal, albeit scary. His sentences flow effortlessly from paragraph to paragraph, and you absorb so much information about characters and places and plot without realizing it. Next thing you know, the book is over, and you’re uncomfortable.
My favorite book/story has to be William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist. The movie was one of the first films I saw that scared the living shit out of me, and not just because of the scary scenes, but how it made me feel afterward. I was convinced that I was going to be possessed, because God was real, which meant the Devil was, and if people can be possessed, why couldn’t I? The novel is one that I have to put down after sunset. It’s a multi-level story: pure horror, theological skepticism, mental health debate and the power of faith, both as the afflicted and the spectator. What’s scarier: being possessed, or convinced that you’re possessed when you’re actually just mentally ill?
Outside of Horror, what other genres do you write in?
I like dark fantasy, toying with people and things that aren’t from the living world. I was raised on movies like The Neverending Story and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, so I’ve always loved worlds that weren’t like ours. Creating new places with different rules, and mixing it with horror—there’s nothing more fun.
Is there anything else that has influenced you as a writer?
Imagination. As a kid, and even as a young teen, I’d spend hours playing with figurines and toy cars. I had my select movies that I watched, but I was never glued to a screen. I’d create all of these characters and conflicts, resolve them, and then start over again and head in a different direction. I think that helped immensely with creating the same things in literature.
On Writing:
How do you describe your writing style?
I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. If there’s something to say, I don’t want to spend too much time avoiding it. I like a mix of to-the-point prose, some sarcasm, and a touch of the flowery. I’m a big fan of letting what characters have to say dictate the plot and the pace.
What advice would you give to new writers just getting started?
Write. Even if you can only get thirty minutes in after a long shift at work, do it. Writing takes a lot of discipline, and that strictness takes time to build up. You’re going to make embarrassing mistakes, you’re going to get rejected if/when you submit, so make sure you’re listening to criticism, and never give up. I submitted a dozen times before my story was accepted, and I’m sure I’ll get rejected again and again before I sell another story.
Be an honest writer. Have you ever read something and thought, “Shut up?” There’s nothing worse than knowing that the author is trying too hard to sound different. There’s a reason King’s voice is constant in almost every story. Same as H.P. Lovecraft. If I tried to write like Cormac McCarthy, my skin would crawl when I edited. You have a style—hone it. Do what’s comfortable, because paragraphs will fill out naturally as a result.
What part of writing do you find the most difficult?
Editing. My brain automatically sees things as it wants to, which is often not how it was written. Beyond grammar and punctuation, I find it tough to see the big picture, especially objectively. What works? What doesn’t? Your story is your baby, so it’s really hard to admit that something doesn’t belong, or could be improved.
What story are you most proud of?
My first short story, which ended up being a little over 20,000 words. It’s a story about a guy—huge Stephen King fan—who finds a one-of-a-kind Stephen King manuscript back when King was in high school. King finds out that the protagonist has it and is willing to do whatever it takes to get it back. It’s a slow roast story that takes some time to get to the conflict, focusing on the protagonist and his thoughts and life and ending with this really bizarre interaction with The Author.
James, my author friend, told me something once and it stuck immediately: establish normalcy. Scary is scarier when it’s pitted against the average, the normal. I have a habit of thrusting characters, and subsequently the reader, right into a crazy situation or world. I feel like sometimes it works, and sometimes it’s not necessary. My Stephen King short story established normalcy, which does make the conflict that much more insane. Another happy accident (it was my first story—what did I know other than to start it and end it?).
What do you hope your readers take away from your stories?
I just want them to have fun. If I can scare you or make you uncomfortable—awesome. If you laugh—awesome. I try and write stories that entertain. I’m not going for subtext or commentary or deeper meaning—at least not in short stories. My favorite stories are the ones that make me giggle, make my skin crawl, and don’t leave me confused.
What is your next big writing project fans should be on the lookout for?
I’ve been working on my first novel, a post-apocalyptic dark fantasy, but if and when that sees the light of day, I couldn’t tell you. It doesn’t involve contagions or spores, so I’m hoping that it’ll be a bit of a fresh angle on a common theme. I will be submitting various short stories as often as possible, so (hopefully) you’ll see another story elsewhere.
Where else on the internet can you be found?
Twitter and Instagram
Where can readers find more of your stories?
This is my first published story!
And now, here’s a special preview of J’s story in MASHED!
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A Woman’s Corn
“We can’t do this anymore, babe,” Lester said.
Tessa paused for a moment, then kept tearing the skin from the cornhusks. She was standing at the counter with her back to Lester, who was sitting at the kitchen table with his legs crossed and his hands casually hugging his knee. Tessa knew how he was sitting—Mr. Cool, one of the many reasons she had fallen hard and fast for him—and couldn’t bare seeing him so relaxed. Not after what he had just finished saying. As far as she was concerned, when someone drops a heavy like that before dinner, they should be sobbing and, at the very least, looking you in the eye.
The chair was damp beneath Lester’s ass. He looked up and through a hole in the roof. A soft grey light fell into the kitchen, but it didn’t do much to brighten the atmosphere. Most of the cupboard doors were missing; half the counter had crumbled with rot and the floor close to the stove was a fat man away from giving in. There was also the distraught woman. She cast her own pall over the room.
“I have to go back home,” Lester continued.
She scoffed and shook her head. “I knew it,” she spat.
“How did you know?”
“Call it a woman’s intuition. I could see it in your body language, the way you’ve been sitting, slouched and relaxed. It’s the posture of a man content with breaking a woman’s heart.” She rubbed her nose and sniffed. “Or maybe I can read your fucking mind.” She turned back toward the cutting board and stood motionless.
Lester got up and walked toward her, certain that each step would send him through the floor and into the depths of hell.
“Don’t even bother, Les. Don’t you dare try and Band-Aid this by wrapping your skinny little arms around my waist.” But she was lying to herself. His arms were firm and chiseled, just like the rest of him. Tessa knew damn well that she wanted nothing else but to be held by him. She wanted to feel him behind her, pulling her into him, his chin rubbing against the side of her head, the bristles of his scruffy beard tickling her cheek. She would spend hours daydreaming about the way he carried himself—the way his hands moved when he talked; his smile; the way that she could tell how funny what she said was from the pitch of his laugh: the higher, the funnier.
There was also something otherworldly about the way he plowed her. Sometimes she thought the foundation of the shack shook with each thrust. She could have sworn that the floorboards in the front hall downstairs had split when he came in her the last time. They had, but obviously he couldn’t have caused it, it was clearly bad wood, warped by warm weather, maybe. Lester didn’t just hit all the right spots, either; he poked and prodded them perfectly, chasing the moving hot zones inside her, smacking her ass when she thought of it, pulling her hair when she needed it, sending her to climax more times than she could count.
If this was to be their last dinner together—their last time together—she knew it was silly to waste precious time by arguing and saying things you didn’t mean. There were better things they could be doing. She had spoken before she thought, though, so to hell with everything if she was going to recant. Tessa was a lot of things, and stubborn was one of them.
Lester traced his two steps back to the chair and resumed his comfortable grip on his knee. He studied her and thought about the curves of her body, which were obscured beneath the silk robe she always wore after sex. He thought she was so sexy in that thing and watching her cook dinner wearing the flimsy sheet pumped blood from his heart to his hard-on. It also made saying goodbye harder because guys thought with two heads—a big one and a small one—and the one between the legs always had a more compelling and logical case.
The knife in her hand knocked rhythmically against the chopping board, slicing up an onion, as he studied her exquisite features. She felt him watching her, then took both hands and pressed them on her backside, running her palms down the length of her rear thighs, wiping her hands on her blouse, giving him a little taste, an hors-d’oeuvre before the meal. Her hands went back to the counter and the knife blade and Lester looked at her quizzically as he wondered whether he’d heard the chopping stop while she wiped herself down. He was certain he hadn’t, that it had pounded on as he pictured himself pounding her while the headrest of their bed banged against the wall. No matter, he thought. Must have been the droning of hypnosis.
Thanks for joining us for #MASHEDMONDAYS, Find the rest of J. Donnait’s story and more sensually sinister tales inside MASHED: The Culinary Delights of Twisted Erotic Horror
Find more #MASHEDMONDAY Author Interviews here!
