Sarah Langan

Sarah Langan – Author – A Deep Blue Interview

DBJ: Though you have been writing for several years (I note your bibliography starts in 2000, but doesn’t include the “first published story” – “Sick Thing?”) you have produced a very small number of stories. Can you describe the process that brought you from MFA student to published author – meaning, how you set about seeking publication, high points, low points, and your approach to writing in general.

SL: I’ve been writing fiction since 1992, and have produced a lot of stories. My work tends toward Speculative Fiction. Having come from an MFA background, I did what everybody I knew did, and submitted fiction to markets like “Glimmer Train,” “The New Yorker,” the defunct “Story,” etc. But my work never fit into those more traditional narrative molds, and I accrued more rejections than my files could hold. I also should have edited my work more often during those early years. One or two slush readers might have liked my submissions, but have been flabbergasted by their sloppy presentation.

I studied writing at Colby College as an undergrad, and as a master’s student at Columbia University. Genre, at least when I attended, was forbidden at both schools. The students who were considered ‘serious’ wrote first person slice-of-life fiction in which little happens, it’s all pretty believable, and in the end a small epiphany occurs. I did what I could within those confines, while sneaking in dead bodies and magic where I could.

Susan Kenny at Colby agreed to advise my senior year independent study project. I told her I was writing a short novel about a young woman living in New York. Two weeks into reviewing my early work, in which ghosts walked through walls of apartments and people turned to water she asked, “Is this horror?” I confessed that it was, and she agreed to let me continue, despite the department’s rules. She was a very good egg. This happened again at Columbia.

My novel The Keeper, which I started there, was horror, but to keep my professors from crapping themselves, I didn’t have anything supernatural happen until after the first 100 pages. Still, at one particular workshop, my professor stopped the class and asked, by a show of hands, who thought I should take out all the ghosts and write a straight story. Half the class raised their hands, and she announced that I was ruining a perfectly good novel. Their attitude was that I was either selling-out by trying to write popular fiction instead of good fiction, or simply misguided. Having said that, I learned a lot at both programs, and given the option would attend both all over again.

After getting my MFA I joined a writing group with several fellow Columbia MFA alums, all of whom were supportive, talented writers, but around 2000, I realized that my goals were not the same as theirs, and quit the group. The breaking point came when I wrote a parody of Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, only the demon inhabitants of the old Upper-West Side apartment building had a Yale-Harvard rivalry. Wackiness and grisly heart-eating ensued. No one in the group thought it was funny, or had ever read Levin, Straub, or even King. I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out that I needed to strike out on my own. I’d been told for so long that horror was unacceptable that I didn’t even know I was writing it. But the real reason, I think, was that the people in my writing group were not just writers, but friends, and I didn’t want to leave the security of their company.

Around that time I finally researched horror markets, and looked up the HWA. I sent out more stories and got more rejections. I was writing hybrid fiction that was neither horror nor literary. It wasn’t slice-of-life, because I didn’t like slice-of-life, and it wasn’t all-out genre, because I’d always been trying to please my classically trained colleagues. So I studied the selections from the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies, and tried to learn how to write believable supernatural fiction, which requires its own, much overlooked skill set. It was a hard time, and I took the rejections a lot more personally, because my work was coming from a place much closer to the bone. Horror editors tend to be a lot more invested emotionally in the stories they select, which is great, but can also make for some pretty mean rejection letters. I’d taken a pay cut at my job so I could have Fridays off to write, and was eating lots of pasta while looking at the pasta and announcing to my roommates “I hate pasta.” A tragedy, to be sure. The bright spot came in 2001, when my story ‘Taut Red Ribbon” was selected for publication by Chiaroscuro, thanks to Trish Macomber and Brett Savory. Things took off, very slowly, from there.

DBJ: Your first piece for Chizine, “Taut Red Ribbon,” is very bleak. I get the sense of deep emotion between the characters, and yet an absolute disconnect at the same time. The way you cut your protagonist surgically from the universe and ancillary characters, and then allow some of the characters to appear for brief glimpses of understanding is powerful. I have my own theory about living in separate worlds, but the question is this…do you distance your characters from one another to magnify them, or is it an unconscious, stylistic act? I notice a similar style in “The Secrets of the Living.”

SL: If they’re choices, I’m not making them consciously. Both “Taut Red Ribbon” and “Secrets of the Living” came out of my own, very emotional experiences. Writing them was my way of sorting my own feelings. In addition, I had read Kelly Link’s brilliant Stranger Things Happen, and was on a Marquez kick, which I think shows in the work.

DBJ: Your novel, The Keeper, has garnered some serious praise from well-known authors like Peter Straub and Jack Ketchum. I’ve been reading and writing a long time and there is a sense of honest depth in their short comments – something one rarely finds in “blurbs”. Tell me a little about the novel, where it came from and whether it went where you expected. Tell me about Susan Marley.

SL: Kind of you to say. The Keeper went in its own direction and I generally had no choice but to follow. I started it in my early twenties. It’s a very passionate, and at times angry novel that I think represents the loss of innocence. When I revised it, I tried not to edit those parts out, and remain true to that person I was when I started it, who thought the world was supposed to be a fair place, but somebody had gone and screwed it all up. In a lot of ways Susan Marley is the embodiment of all that: bitter and decent in the way that only a twenty-two year old can be. And dangerous, for all those same reasons. Bleeding hearts are powerful things, and I’m both incredibly relieved to have grown up, and sad about it, too. If anything is being praised about the book and Susan, I hope it’s the honesty with which I try to depict my characters, and the worlds in which they inhabit. There’s plenty of walking dead, of course, but less literally, we’ve got walking dead in this world, too. And with luck we’ve all got a specter like Susan Marley following us from place to place, reminding us of the people we promised ourselves we’d be, once upon a time.

DBJ: You have an intensely literate style of prose, lyrical and poetic. What is your take on the current state of literature, on the web and in print. What I mean is, you seem to walk a tightrope between worlds, having published in literary magazines and genre magazines alike, and having a dark fantasy novel due soon, but from a publisher not known for such books. Clearly you have a unique eye for the current scene. What are some things you’ve seen that you admire, some things you abhor, and what do you most want others to get from your work?

SL: Complicated question!

Publishing seems like a crapshoot to me. I shopped my book around for three years, had a lame duck agent sit on it for two years, and then, either the tide turned and publishing companies were more receptive to horror, or I got lucky, or the book got better as I became a better writer, or all three. I’m grateful that Morrow, my editor, and my agents took a chance on The Keeper, and I hope it pays off. I hope the tide is turning in favor of dark fantasy/horror/speculative fiction—whatever you want to call it. Hopefully lots more of us will get lucky.

As for markets, Chizine has published me, so I love them. Kelly Link is amazing. I’m currently a member of a writing group, and all the writers in it (Dan Braum, Nicholas Kaufmann, KZ Perry, Stefan Petrucha, and Lee Thomas) inspire me on a regular basis. Every time we meet, I’m thrilled by their work. Nothing in horror fiction upsets me, so long as it strives for some level of honesty. If I abhor anything, it’s the fact that good writing doesn’t always find a home.

What would I like readers to get from my work? Enjoyment, most importantly. And then, if I’m feeling greedy, I’d like them to inhabit the world I’ve created, and feel that they know my characters well enough to stop and chat with them on the street. Except for the evil characters, that is. The evil characters they should run from.

DBJ: I’m adding in a fifth question and then tacking on my standard question, so you will be the first SIX question interview, but we had to ask. You already have your MFA in Creative Writing…what made you seek a second degree, and why did you choose Environmental Science?

SL: I’m a glutton for punishment. Also, I had some pretty serious respiratory problems that kept me bedridden for a decent portion of my late twenties. While laid-up, I figured I’d take the opportunity to make some changes. I literally had nothing else to do but hatch plans for what I’d eventually do when I was feeling better. Writing didn’t seem like it would ever support me and my day jobs had always been pretty useless. I decided I’d work in a field that would afford me the opportunity to write, but would also be satisfying in itself. I wanted to learn more about my own illness, and if possible prevent others from going through what I’d had to go through, so the environmental health field seemed like a good solution. Around the time that I was accepted into NYU’s program, The Keeper sold. I decided to see if I could pull off both, and incorporate what I’d learned at school into my writing. So far it’s working.

DBJ: This is my one standard question: You have 24 hours to come up with the idea for your next book. You can either spend that time in a library where all the world’s books are at your disposal, in a quiet room with a state-of-the-art stereo and any music you desire, or you have transportation available to anyplace you care to go. Which do you choose for your inspiration, and why?

SL: I think I’d like a crisp fall day. I wouldn’t want transportation other than my feet. I’d go for a long jog through Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and end up at my boyfriend’s apartment, where I‘d throw around a few ideas, and he’d throw some back at me, until something stuck. Ideally, after I got that figured out, we’d watch Dawn of the Dead and drink Bud in bottles. Seriously, it’s the King of Beers.

PREORDER SARAH’S NOVEL NOW!