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John Shirley is the author of close to thirty novels and collections. He is most well known as the co-screenwriter of the The Crow. But his classic 1990 Horror novel Wetbones is what we are gathered here to discuss.
I first read Wetbones in 2007 after author Cody Goodfellow told me it was John Shirley's horror masterpiece. It was the first novel I read living in the pacific northwest, on bleak rainy nights I was in it deeply from page one. At the time I was already active on author John Shirley's message board. While he was always friendly about it, there seemed to be a hesitation on John's part to talk about Wetbones.
Stephen King had been the same way with one of his horror masterpieces Pet Semetary and if the rumors are true King had not wanted to finish the book at all. A few months back John said he was revising and releasing Wetbones and I saw a unique opportunity. I wanted to talk with John about this fantastic masterpiece of horror fiction 20 years later, with it now fresh in his mind. Thank John for doing this brutally honest interview...
David Agranoff: You have said before that you were using this novel as catharsis, and you were going through a crisis in your life. What can you tell us about that time personally and how influenced the direction of Wetbones?John Shirley: I had been clean from drugs for a long time,then had a relapse, when some harsh stuff happened in my life, and the relapses got more frequent, and it got very bad. I had no dignity in my life. I wasn't living on the streets but nearly got killed and it was very hard on anyone close to me. So the addiction framework of Wetbones, the whole Akishra metaphor, was a cathartic effort to deal with that, to make myself see the fullest, ugliest truths of addiction clearly and straight on and without any rationalization. Also the book, as Robert Palmer (the critic) noted, is a very angry one and it released all kinds of pent up anger in me. It's also about Hollywood--well, I had unpleasant encounters working in the cinematic and television vineyards, under the lash of the overseers, and I vented about that too. So I was able to meld all this together pretty well into one horrific story...
DA: You said when you were editing it you had a hard time re-reading it. What feelings did it bring up for you personally?JS: Since I wrote it at that time in my life, re-editing it brought up memories of the context, in my life, in which it was written. There were feelings of shame and sorrow and anger and horror. I don't think it'll affect a reader that way! I assume the reader will feel some emotional involvement, and a good deal of horror. I hope the reader's pulse will pound...We want to give them that energy...
DA: You have been open about the fact that you were in recovery from addiction. Was Garner's journey in the novel your worst nightmare?Garner was partly me, and partly people I knew. In a way I went on that journey, without all the bloodshed, though I found myself in very intimate circumstances with murderers, with psychopaths. I felt, afterwards, like Dante, a bit...
DA: How hard was it for you to write about a killer like Ephram?JS: VERY hard. He is just one of the horrific aspects of the novel--there are all kinds of horrors in it, but he is a serial killer and I do not write about them easily, I am a person unable to deal with the idea of killing for pleasure, I find it difficult to identify with someone capable of suppressing all empathy for others. I did make a point of showing more than one side of that character, of showing that he is lonely, that he is desperately trying to make some kind of connection, that he is trapped. It's as if he's a ravenous, starved caged beast, and he tricks people into coming into his reach,pulls them into his cage--but someone has put HIM in the cage in the first place and made him what he is...But writing from his point of view--very difficult for me. I tried to leaven it with some morbid humor at his expense..
DA: The re-print comes with a short sequel Sweetbite Point. Can you tell us a little about it?JS: It's a short story I wrote for an obscure anthology soon after Wetbones. The street minister character and his daughter seemed to have life left after the novel was done and wanted to resolve their lives a bit more. So they had to do it through that story. That character, the Street Minister, Garner, is also based on a side of me. I do identify with him--and his relapse.
DA: Now that you have re-lived this novel, that many call your masterpiece, Re-reading did you think about extending the story with a full sequel?JS: No, it was hard enough to go back to it! I was just glad to be able to revise it, somewhat, and do some judicious editing. It's a much stronger book now.
DA: I talked to a friend who compared this novel to Clive Barker's work. Barker indeed blurbed it, but many don't realize you wrote a psycho-sexual horror novel in 1980 called Cellars long before anyone had heard of Barker. He seemed to revisit sexuality and horror often. For you Cellars, Wetbones and maybe Dracula in Love seemed to explore this issue do you see a strong connection between sexuality and extreme horror?JS: There is, I guess--perhaps because I had been molested as a child, perhaps because I had difficulty with my own subsequent sexuality. I never imposed it on anyone in the sense of rape or stalking or something, I just had difficulty with fidelity, a tendency to sexual addictive behavior. . .And to me not being in command of myself is a horrific thing, it makes me feel like being possessed. Also in that whole scene, I often mixed drugs and sex and it got very nightmarish. Additionally I visited some pretty, well, outre underground sexual scenes...I remember meeting some "vampires"--they were not supernatural, just people into sexual "blood play". I didn't participate. I am all for sexual freedom between consenting adults and am not against "wild" sexuality. I just like to be in command of my own sexuality. For myself I have chosen monogamy at this time in my life.
DA: This is a very angry John Shirley, Demons while very funny at times and often tongue in cheek is also an angry book. On the other hand you recently wrote what I consider to be a very hopeful masterpiece the Other End. How much do these emotions drive you as an artist?JS: What is that line from John Lydon and Public Image Ltd, "Anger is an energy". And it is, it stoked my writing, and it has something in common with punk rock, and I was a punk rock singer (http://www.myspace.com/johnnyparanoid) and in that anger and creative energy were almost one unified thing. The Other End (which is being re-released in a newly re-edited-by-the-author form by eReads) was sparked partly by anger at the writers of the Left Behind books and people like Glenn Beck who exploited apocalyptic fantasy. Why should an apocalyptic, judgment day scenario be "owned" by the right-wing? Why should they revise the world according to *their* lights? Made me angry to think about and I saw a chance for a great little allegory...
Interview with spoilers continues in part three...
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