Davíð Sigurður
asked
Sarah Langan:
The keeper series is in my opion one of the best written horror in years, and I was wondering how did you come up with the incredibly bleak and dark setting? I mean, is it something you based on personal experience or did it just come to you? :)
Sarah Langan
Dear David,
Thanks for writing!
I wrote The Keeper when I was still in my twenties. In fact, I started it when I was 21 and finished it at 29. I bring this up because those are intense years. It reminds me of this quote from Lawrence of Arabia:
“Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men. Courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace. And the vices of peace are the vices of old men. Mistrust and caution. It must be so.”
I was basically a hot head, waging war against an inherently unfair world. The town of Bedford loosely resembles Waterville, where I went to college, and also Old Town, just outside Bangor. Both are in Maine. Paper mills are the focal points of a town because of their giant smoke stacks. Even when they’re closed down, you can’t take your eye off them.
My characters were invented. One of my grad school teachers could never remember that Susan wasn’t based on someone real. She called me “Susan” instead of Sarah. Another teacher was sure I’d had an affair with a professor in high school. Nope. But I let him believe I had because he was so pleased that he’d had the insight.
On the other hand, my characters in many ways are very true, but they’re not based on other people. Like most writers, they’re aspects of me. Susan is an embodiment of all the rage I had back in those days, for reasons both phantom and tangible. Poor Liz was my low self-esteem. Paul was the narcissist every writer needs to be. Georgia had a head on her shoulders, mostly.
I think, ultimately, Keeper is as bleak as it is because I was so young. An older, wiser person might see the light at the end of the tunnel. An older, bitter person wouldn’t be able to tell the story at all. I could never write that story again, but I’m so glad that I did. It speaks to people. Maybe it calls to that hot-head kid we all used to be, and still are. It’s the hot-heads who act. Everybody else stays on schedule.
The Missing had a different impetus. I was having fun. How cool to start a vampire-zombie origin story. I loved writing that—it was hard, of course, but most of it just flowed. Fenstad and Meg were such a fun couple, and their daughter Maddie was so funny. I fact, I found the whole thing funny. It was a comment on current events, particularly the war in Iraq, but it was also pretty gleeful. Or at least, I thought it was gleeful. Then again, Kafka thought Metamorphosis was so funny he couldn’t read it without bursting in laughter. So, to each his own!
Thanks for writing!
I wrote The Keeper when I was still in my twenties. In fact, I started it when I was 21 and finished it at 29. I bring this up because those are intense years. It reminds me of this quote from Lawrence of Arabia:
“Young men make wars, and the virtues of war are the virtues of young men. Courage and hope for the future. Then old men make the peace. And the vices of peace are the vices of old men. Mistrust and caution. It must be so.”
I was basically a hot head, waging war against an inherently unfair world. The town of Bedford loosely resembles Waterville, where I went to college, and also Old Town, just outside Bangor. Both are in Maine. Paper mills are the focal points of a town because of their giant smoke stacks. Even when they’re closed down, you can’t take your eye off them.
My characters were invented. One of my grad school teachers could never remember that Susan wasn’t based on someone real. She called me “Susan” instead of Sarah. Another teacher was sure I’d had an affair with a professor in high school. Nope. But I let him believe I had because he was so pleased that he’d had the insight.
On the other hand, my characters in many ways are very true, but they’re not based on other people. Like most writers, they’re aspects of me. Susan is an embodiment of all the rage I had back in those days, for reasons both phantom and tangible. Poor Liz was my low self-esteem. Paul was the narcissist every writer needs to be. Georgia had a head on her shoulders, mostly.
I think, ultimately, Keeper is as bleak as it is because I was so young. An older, wiser person might see the light at the end of the tunnel. An older, bitter person wouldn’t be able to tell the story at all. I could never write that story again, but I’m so glad that I did. It speaks to people. Maybe it calls to that hot-head kid we all used to be, and still are. It’s the hot-heads who act. Everybody else stays on schedule.
The Missing had a different impetus. I was having fun. How cool to start a vampire-zombie origin story. I loved writing that—it was hard, of course, but most of it just flowed. Fenstad and Meg were such a fun couple, and their daughter Maddie was so funny. I fact, I found the whole thing funny. It was a comment on current events, particularly the war in Iraq, but it was also pretty gleeful. Or at least, I thought it was gleeful. Then again, Kafka thought Metamorphosis was so funny he couldn’t read it without bursting in laughter. So, to each his own!
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