Interview: J.W. Schnarr, author of Things Falling Apart

Spent a little virtual time with J.W. Schnarr last week, querying him about his forthcoming collection of short horror, Things Falling Apart, and the writing dynamic in general.


J.W. Schnarr




Lorina: One might
say the horror you write is very aggressive. Is that a conscious choice?

J.W.: I'd say it
definitely is, to some extent. Part of it is also the stories I've read that
have influenced me the most over the years. Pushing boundaries is something
good writing should do, and I think horror writers especially have an
opportunity to really shake things up for people.

Another reason I think it's been called that is due to my
writing style. I'm a reporter, and I write tight for a living. I bring that to
my fiction. I am also constantly striving to bring reality into my work, and I
think people take it for aggression. I'm simply trying to keep your eyes open
and be brutally honest about what you're seeing.

Here's an example. If someone gets in a car accident, they
may bump their head and fade to black, but the scene doesn't end there. The
emergency workers might be trying not to puke while scraping up this poor
screaming, thrashing person's entrails off the highway. That's where the real
action is, and that's where I want to be.

I don't want to look away. I don't want you to look away. I
want you to see it for what it really is.

Lorina: And why
write horror? Why not dark fantasy or some other genre? What is it about horror
that interests you?

J.W. Well, I
actually do write a little dark fantasy and a little science fiction. It's just
that my primary influences are guys like Stephen King, Poppy Z. Brite, and
Clive Barker. I started reading Robert E. Howard's horror when I was a kid, and
I just kind of never looked back.

There have been a few times in my life when I've been
genuinely moved by the books I've read, and those books just happened to have been
horror stories. Matheson's I am Legend is one. Barker's Books of Blood and some
of King's short stories have done it too.

But reading Brite's Exquisite Corpse was like a revelation.
Everything about that book was strange and dangerous to me. The sex was
different than what I was used to. The violence is almost comical in its
depravity. The characters are all warped and damaged. It's brilliant. When I
read sometimes, I like to see how long an author is willing to keep you
conscious while the really bad stuff is going on. In the 1990s, Barker and
Brite were two writers who were liable to slice your eyelids off so you
wouldn't miss a thing. Recently it's happened again, with Chuck Palahniuk.

Lorina: Why write
the stories you do? Why choose those subjects? Your stories range from classic
subject matter, sometimes drawing on legend, sometimes delving into the human
beast.

J.W.: Like most
writers, I write whatever comes to mind. But there are a few things I strive
for in fiction, and I've kind of skirted around them in my previous answers.
Grounding my work in reality is a big one. I'm often disturbed by people's
reactions in fiction. I think Barbara in Night of the Living Dead is really how
most people would behave in a catastrophic event. The world is going to hell,
and she kind of bounces between catatonia and hysterics.

blamed television for the explanation to an
execution in the movie Boondock Saints , and I think he's right: "Television
is the explanation for this - you see this in bad television...that James Bond
shit never happens in real life!"

That being said, I think man is truly the biggest monster. I
love to write about the kinks that come from having such an intricate thing as
the human brain running the show. Often my stories are a bit of a mashup
between this belief and whatever monstrous topic I think is suited for the
characters. They really do come from everything - I read a lot, watch a lot of
interesting television, and things happen in everyday life that really get your
brain thinking.

Lorina: Tell us a
little about your writing process? Do you write daily, at a certain hour, with
any expectation or discipline?

J.W.: Well, I write everyday...at work. But fiction is one of
those things that I really try to enjoy, without putting too much pressure on
myself. Writing novels, I like to work out the scenes in advance before I write
them, and then see where it all leads. A lot of the short stories I write with
actual goals in mind - rarely do I simply sit down and write them. There might
be an anthology or magazine I want to get in to or a topic I want to
specifically cover, but I almost never just open my head to see what comes out.
Having that goal and a deadline really gives me a chance to laser in on the
subject at hand.

Often stories build up until I can feel them behind my eyes
waiting to be birthed. Then I'll sit down to work and they'll come flooding
out.

Lorina: Is there
a novel waiting to happen in J.W. Schnarr’s future?

There are a few. There's also one in my past. I wrote a novel
called Alice & Dorothy last year, kind of a Thelma and Louise meets The
Wizard of Oz meets Alice in Wonderland. It began as a castoff idea for my Shadows
of the Emerald City anthology and just grew up out of that.

I'm currently working on a novel called Big Pig, about some
people who escape the zombie apocalypse in Calgary only to run up against a
pair of disturbed pig farmers in rural southern Alberta. The research on
raising pigs alone was enough to make me want to give up bacon forever.
Once again I'll be blending raw meat with all kinds of craziness. The flavour
has a tang to it I've really come to enjoy.

Lorina: There are
some who feel writing is a job, like any other. There is another camp that says
being a writer is a sensibility, that even if you earn your living doing
something else, you’re always writing. How do you feel about that question?

J.W. I think
they're both right. I've spoken to a lot of successful writers, and they all
talk about hitting work count goals and being diligent. Fact is, 90% of
"talent" is really just the hard work you don't see, and nobody
throws down a novel without a lot of hard work. I have to tip my hat to anyone
who pulls that off, even if their book never sells more than a handful of
copies.

Writing for a newspaper has taught me a lot of inspired work
and a lot of pressured work comes out as a wash in the end. The only difference
between the two is your mood while you're writing it.

I also believe that writing is a vocation, and a certain
mindset comes with that. People are called to it. They want to reach out to
other people in some way. They want to make connections. They want to
understand profound things about life and the universe and they want other
people to see the fruits of that understanding. Myself, I'm always watching for
something interesting to write about, and I try to never intentionally close
myself off from anything that could be distasteful and disturbing, or
beautiful and life-affirming.

I'm always filing away little jokes and mannerisms and
stories people have to share, if only to put it through the meat grinder in the
back of my mind and see what kind of sausage comes out. Even if I'm the only
one who enjoys it.

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Things Falling Apart

Available August 1, 2012

ISBN 9781927400036

eISBN 9781927400043