The 7Q Interview: Robert S. Wilson
AUTHOR BIO
Robert S. Wilson is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated editor of Ashes and Entropy and Blood Type: An Anthology of Vampire SF On the Cutting Edge. He is also the author of HEX: A Novel of Cosmic Horror, the Empire of Blood dystopian vampire trilogy, and the Lifeline dark cyberpunk/transhumanistic “Binary” series.
QUESTIONS
#1. Looking back, what’s one fiction book that you feel truly made an impact on your writing? Do you still gravitate towards that author?
#1. All right, I can’t do this without breaking the rules. But oddly enough there’s an interesting side effect of this rule breaking, I think. I’m going to name three. However, each, and not by my initial purpose, fits within a different genre.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling (I shit you not)
The Left Hand of Darkness had a profound influence on the way I see (and want to write) Science Fiction—any fiction really. In one breathtaking novel, Le Guin gently reached out and brushed aside the barriers of gender as if it were a simple feat anyone could have done (in the 60s no less!). With that single amazing book, she showed the world that speculative fiction could be, not only equal to, but socially and intellectually superior to, literary fiction.
More than any other book before or since, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories thrusted me violently into the wonderful world of the weird macabre while simultaneously laying bare my naivety on the subject of prose.
And I would have encountered neither of these if not for reading this book before them. I wrote for five years without a care in the world about craft or grammar. Though I had written poetry and song lyrics for decades, I didn’t actually attempt writing fiction until I was in my early twenties and even then I only approached it out of boredom with no real understanding of the depth of the thing of which I had dipped my toes into. On July 21st2007, when Deathly Hallows was released, as we had with the two previous books before it in the series, my wife and kids and I went to the local midnight Harry Potter release party and bought our copies. And I stayed up all night reading until I had finished the novel. This was just over a year after my mother had passed away and the sheer emotion in one single scene effected me so that, when I finished reading and I lay there decimated and drained, I decided at that moment that I wanted to learn how to rip someone to shreds just as I had been with a work of fiction. And in my years of studying fiction from that time on, I found the other two books indirectly but most certainly because of that choice.
Of those three authors, I still gravitate very much toward both Laird and Le Guin. And though I haven’t read anything other than the Harry Potter series by Rowling, even with its many flaws laid bare to me at this point, I will always champion those books any chance I get.
#2. How do you feel about the use of sub-genres in the industry? How do you describe your work overall?
#2. I think both genre and subgenre are wonderful so long as you don’t let the imaginary lines they attempt to create get in the way of what you will read. I love writers like Caitlin R. Kiernan and Joe Lansdale and Stephen Graham Jones and (of course) Ursula K. Le Guin who each so truly subvert the concept of genres and subgenres that they become a genre of their own. I aspire to accomplish that kind of magic someday. So, that’s how I would like to describe my work. It’s mine. Simple as that.
#3. What about your writing process do you think is unique or quirky? What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
#3. My process is horribly mundane in the grand scheme of things. However, I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about other writers’ processes and it has me taking a second look at my own. Writers like Jeff Vandermeer and Laird Barron who work with a sort of unending patience in ways that the majority of writers could never endure. Vandermeer took nearly a decade to prepare to write his novel Borne and Barron has said that a typical day at his desk can result in fourteen hours of work and if he’s lucky a positive word count because of how much he constantly deletes and starts over. That is a true passion for craft.
The worst advice I’ve ever received… I can think of several and they were each almost certainly only bad for me or people like me. Almost no advice is universally good or bad in the end.
#4. How does music and media factor into your writing? Do you feel it plays as much an inspirational role as literature?
#4. Everything plays a role in inspiration. Any moment in time both awake and unconscious can inspire and anything within those experiences.
#5. As an author, how much do you engage in social media? Do you feel it is more for your own entertainment, or for marketing and networking?
#5. I engage probably too much and largely because—and this answers the second part of your question as well—I don’t see social media as entertainment or a means of promotion though I do also use it for both. Social media has changed my life in largely quantifiable ways both as a writer and possibly even more as an editor and publisher because of the people I have met through it. Social media has built a bridge that wouldn’t have otherwise existed and while there are definitely a lot of terrible consequences of that bridge, there are just as many, if not more, amazing results from it.
#6. Where do you see the future of horror fiction heading? In turn, what changes would you love to see, either socially or technologically?
#6. I think the beauty of horror fiction is that it’s so diverse, so I can’t rightly say I see it heading any one way exclusively. I’d say it is branching outward in all directions and therein lies its depth.
As for your second question, that depends on the context. I’m going to assume you mean within horror as a reader, writer, and editor. I would like to see more demographic diversity in all three of these categories. More diverse readers, writers and editors please. Fiction is so much more interesting when you can learn from different perspectives.
And I think technologically, we’re at a turning point more than ever that can accommodate that.
#7. What can you tell us about any forthcoming projects? What titles would you like to promote now?
#7. As an editor, I’ll have a new cosmic horror/noir/neonoir anthology out from Nightscape Press in December called Ashes and Entropy. Ashes will include stories by Laird Barron, Damien Angelica Walters, Kristi Demeester, Jon Padgett, John Langan, Lucy Snyder, Tim Waggoner, Jessica McHugh, Nate Southard, and many more, and will be fully illustrated by Luke Spooner of Carrion House Illustration. A crowdfunding campaign will go up in August for the book and it will have some truly phenomenal perks including super limited chapbooks of each individual story and some other huge surprises I should probably keep my mouth shut about for now. There will also be an art contest for the cover with a potential payout of $1,000 USD to the winning artist and stretch goals will include the potential for an open submissions call for two slots in the book among other things. You can learn more about the book and its upcoming fundraiser at http://www.nightscapepress.pub/2018/06/its-official.html
As a writer, I have an ongoing serial novel I’m publishing. HEX: A Novel of Cosmic Horror is a six part serial of which the first part has been released in Kindle eBook edition and a chapbook edition also illustrated by Luke Spooner and limited to 100 copies. This novel is my attempt to meld weird fiction, cosmic horror, and hard science fiction though I must admit that the SF is nowhere near as hard as I had initially intended.
You can purchase part 1 for Amazon Kindle at http://mybook.to/hexpart1or the limited edition chapbook which is still on sale at https://robertswilson.bigcartel.com/product/hex-part-i-the-eye-of-the-hexagon-limited-edition-signed-and-illustrated-chapbook-preorderor you can read it for free on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/robertswilson/posts?tag=Hex Part Two will be available in the next month or so.
As a publisher (along with my wonderful wife, Jennifer Wilson, I run Nightscape Press), I would like to give a shout out to Tim Waggoner’s Dark and Distant Voices: A Story Collection which is available now in both Kindle eBook and trade paperback editions (also illustrated by the wonderful Luke Spooner of who I can’t recommend working with enough). Tim’s lovely collection was recently reviewed very positively on both Hellnotes and This is Horror and for damn good reason. It is a fine collection of weird horror. Dark and Distant Voices can be found at http://mybook.to/darkanddistantvoices
I would be completely remiss if I didn’t mention Jon Padgett’s forthcoming exquisite Dunnstown novelette The Broker of Nightmares which Nightscape Press will be publishing as the debut title in our new Charitable Chapbooks line in both a limited edition chapbook and as a Kindle eBook six months later. A pretty sizeable chunk of its net proceeds will go to the ACLU. More about that project and future Charitable Chapbook releases will be unveiled very soon.
You can find Jon’s debut collection (also within his Dunnstown world) The Secret of Ventriloquism at http://mybook.to/secretofventriloquism
AUTHOR PIC
