The 7Q Interview: S.E. Casey
AUTHOR BIO
Not long after celebrating his twenty years of accounting service in a Boston investment firm, S.E. Casey began to write. As an attempt to quell an unspecific desperation and stave off a growing resentment of everything, he found stories buried in the unlikely between-spaces of numbers, balances, and accounting formulae. This expanding collection of existential horror fiction has been published in Hinnom andWeirdbook magazines, as well as online in Molotov Cocktail andFlash Fiction Magazine.
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. The first book I feel I connected with on a deep level was Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show. Looking back, I think what fascinated me is that its foundation built on was sand, everything, even morality, shifting and malleable. Around the same time I read The Stand, which stood in contrast in that it was about a battle between good and evil. In The Great and Secret Show, there was no good and evil, in a world without gods, the characters were forced to make up their own ethics, identity, and morality. While I didn't know it at the time, this preceded my interest in philosophy, as it tackles many of the fundamentals of asking the open ended questions of why and who we are. In Barker's works, the building of worlds extends to everything, allowing a fantastical free will to the characters as opposed to being trapped in a 'good vs. evil' or 'us vs. them' archetypes.
#2. How do you feel about the use of sub-genres in the industry? How do you describe your work overall?
#2. There are maybe two ways to look at this: one as a reader and one as a writer. Genres can serve as a valuable tool for readers who may not be familiar to the author or their work. Ideally, it is truth in advertising, a way to properly match readers and writers in an efficient way. Many one-star reviews that can sink a book are from readers whose negative rating is not from dislike, but from confusion of a book they thought they were getting. I have a short cosmic horror story titled Harlequin Midnight. After publishing, I realized the name would have served as seedy erotica offering given 'harlequin's'specific meaning in the romance genre. To avoid confusion, I made sure to expand the title to be Harlequin Midnight (a horror short story)and liberally branded it as horror in the product description for the benefit of the consumer.
Mostly for my own amusement, I describe my work as existential horror. Admittedly, It's a loose interpretation of existentialism, more of a vague allusion that there is a philosophical base over which I write. Two non-horror books that have influenced my writing are The Stranger by Albert Camus, and The Demon by Hubert Selby, Jr., both deconstructive novels focusing on the individual and the search for meaning.
#3. What about your writing process do you think is unique or quirky? What’s the worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
#3. From what I've gleaned from others, my writing process is frighteningly normal. I sit in a desk in front of a computer where I am distracted by social media, constantly procrastinating, unable to say no to the call of the internet's endless distractions. Then there's a garden variety writer's guilt which leads to self-loathing and self-flagellation.
In terms of bad writing advice, I'm not sure I can recall anything specific, but I would say that anything which is absolute I am suspicious. There are always examples of great works that confound the 'always do this' and 'never do that' type of advice. But there are no victims here, two parties are involved whenever advice is exchanged. It is incumbent on the author to consider everything skeptically and ignore any suggestions when necessary. Whenever I give anyone advice, I make sure to tell them they should feel free to disregard anything I say that doesn't work for them. Not many can figure out how to be an author alone, input and direction from experienced sources are essential, but it is always a two-way street. Keep what works and throw out what doesn't.
#4. How does music and media factor into your writing? Do you feel it plays as much an inspirational role as literature?
#4. I'm not sure I have had any direct inspiration from music. I have tried to write with it, but either I find myself listening instead of writing, or, writing without hearing the music at all. Farthest I'll go is to write with some ambient/soundtrack music in the background, nothing with lyrics. Clint Mansell's Black Mirror soundtrack, for example, is one of my current writing companions.
Growing up, music has served as a refuge from the world for me the same way as books have. I'm pretty snobby about music, preferring things that aren't popular, gravitating to the loud, dark, and lyrically offensive. It has been a guilty pleasure of mine to try and figure out why these musicians would sing about the occult, Armageddon, or morbid nihilism, and why these controversial themes appealed to me so much. One particular musician that has fascinated me for a long time is David E. Williams. Although not stylistically what I was into those many years ago (demented chamber pop? Americana doom?), nonetheless, the songs gripped me in all their lurid, disturbing glory. In the sing-songy "Sandra Lindsey" alone, there are four or five jaw dropping lyrical perversions. Yet, despite this, somehow he always remains on your side. You like him and wish nothing more than to believe he likes you. There's a trust that it's all performance, that he is someone kind and sensitive who is trying to work out his place in the world. That’s the great trick these musicians on the dark underground fringe can pull off. As writers of horror, we can come up with some sadistic and bleak stuff. More than once, I've caught myself worrying about if what I am writing will be misinterpreted, or if I've crossed some imaginary line. I'm an overly agreeable person, so this is an instinct I have to constantly deal with. This is the lesson that I try to take from all those many musicians and bands I have listened to over the years.
#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. This is the tough part of writing for me. According to an online big five personality test, I score in the bottom 2% in openness. I never joined Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. before I started to write. Over the years, I half-heartedly listened to co-worker and family describe their various Facebook dramas—so-and-so got offended because so-and-so didn't like a post quick enough, or someone got blocked over some perceived sleight, all with a terrifying Kafkaesque terminology about walls, tagging, and emoji's. I politely would listen, but didn't understand a bit of it. It seemed like they were voluntarily signing up to join a virtual high school lunchroom mean girl's table. But needing to promote myself as a writer and access the writing community, I signed up to Facebook and Twitter. I admit, I'm still not comfortable posting anything personal, probably given my personality it wouldn't be a good idea. However, I do enjoy reading things about other people. I guess I'm more voyeur than exhibitionist. Despite my reluctance, the interactions I have had on social media inside the horror community have been abundantly positive. I have met many great people who I admire as by sheer force of will, have written a book, started a podcast, or published a magazine. Whether they are well-known or well-read is really irrelevant. They are out there taking the plunge and doing it. And many of these people have been generous with their time and have offered me a helping hand. For all the hate I see elsewhere on social media, the horror community stands out as incredibly helpful and positive.
#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 read an article recently which began by reprinting the first six paragraphs of a Charles Dickens story. Nothing much happened, the paragraphs simply setting the scene of the outside of a stately mansion. Dickens even poured a few adjective laced sentences describing the consistency of the mud of the road leading up to it. I didn't read it all, (especially as I only had fifteen minutes left in my lunch break), and skipped to the body of the article. However, as pointed out by the writer, this was the point. While immensely popular in its day, no one today will read this level of description anymore. There are too many entertainment options available to us and there is a crunch of free time. We have become conditioned, and maybe even physiologically wired, to skim over such tedious background detail. In this way, I think novellas and shorter serials may be the trend of the future. Stories that get down to the point and boil down the meat of what could be a longer novel in an economy of words. Recently, I have even seen some criticism of Stephen King's books for their length and slow building plot and characters. Two exciting and satisfying books I have read in the past few years, Creeping Waves and Gateways of Abominations, both by Mathew Bartlett, attack this problem by alternating chaotic vignettes and flash fiction with more traditional short stories surrounding a fictional, shadowy Massachusetts town of Leeds and its radio station WXXT. There is a novel like progression, but with a steady payoff of different, quickly realized episodes that stack to build a universal narrative and characters in digestible spurts.
I'm not sure what I would like to see in horror. I think everything repeats. Like music where many trends and new sub-genres sprout up overnight, there is always a return to melody. Horror, too, has it's cycles, sometimes it tilts hard toward the social or political zeitgeist, but in the end it is universal themes and archetypes that we relate to on a base level that books return. It is why we still read Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky despite the passage of time or cultural difference.
#7. What can you tell us about any forthcoming projects? What titles would you like to promote now?
#7. I have two short story collections I am building slowly. One is a themed collection based around Christmas/winter. The other is more general, but I think it may be exclusively flash fiction. Flash fiction has been a revelation to me as a writer learning the craft. When first exposed to it looking over submission calls, I dismissed it as being too limiting a form. However, as do most apparent problems, it stuck in my mind as a challenge. My first attempt for a sub-1,000 word story ended up being 2,400 words when finished. But I tried again, gaining an understanding which ideas work as flash fiction and which don't. Flash has also taught me about writing, getting that 1,200 word draft down to the limit has forced me to use words sparingly, know grammar rules, show and don't tell, and how to kill those darlings. Two of my flash fiction stories, Animal Control and Black Stained Glass, won third and second place in two of the Molotov Cocktail Lit Zine's quarterly fiction contests.
A full listing of my writings can be found on my website's 'Published Stories' page. Also I have recent stories that have appeared in Hinnom Magazine (issue #006), Aphotic Realm (Dystopia and Best of the Realm, Vol. 1 issues), and Weirdbook (issue #37). These magazines are a labor of love, the publishers doing yeoman work for the horror community and giving a voice to the author's they promote. I had a great experience in submitting to each, and hope everyone will check out these markets.
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