frida kahlo | Book In The Bag

WRITER WEDNESDAY

1. Tell us who you are and a little bit about what you write.

I grew up in rural Maine, and though I’ve been into horror and fantasy novels all my life, I spent my early years mostly writing song lyrics and poetry.

2. What is something that your fans would be surprised to know about you?

Some folks find my brand of horror to be on the extreme side, but I am as into symbols as I am thrills. I won a poetry scholarship to the Stonecoast writers conference my senior year of college for a surreal poem about a Frida Kahlo painting.

3. What made you become a writer?

I spent afternoons in a school library waiting from my father to get out of work. He was a high school teacher and there was about an hour after school that he’d stay late and I would just pluck books off the shelf and read. I remember picking out versions of The Odyssey, The Bible, The Arabian Nights, and stories from Arthurian and Greek mythology. I think it was the mythologies that really got me going.

4. Are you a plotter or a pantser?

More like a concepter—profiles the characters and the situation—like my latest—hunters versus werewolves—get them drawn and see where they take me.

5. What is the biggest mistake that you’ve learned not to make while writing?

I kept Hemingway’s bullshit detector on full strength.

6. What is the last book you finished reading? What did you think?

Aside from those I’m reviewing for my interview series, Author’s Own Words, I recently read The Saga of Grettir the Strong (Scudder translation). Amazing read, medieval prose that reads like a contemporary novel.

7. Would you like to pimp a specific project?

My novella, Slash of Crimson, which appears in my collection Slash of Crimson and Other Tales, published by Seventh Star Press is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Slash-Crimson-Other-Tales-Moore-ebook/dp/B0712293QP/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518902924&sr=8-1&keywords=slash+of+crimson+and+other+tales

8. Is there a URL or social media account you’d like to share?

All the latest can be found at www.carlrmoore.com

Slash of Crimson

When someone asks me to describe Slash of Crimson, I always start with the characters, Drew Aldrin, the young heavy metal guitarist making his way in a small seaside city, along with Sondra Deeps, the mysterious red-haired beauty who saves him from drowning in the novel’s opening.

But I can’t talk more about the story without emphasizing the importance of its setting. It takes place in a stylized version of Portland, Maine, containing some of the city’s recognizable features, and other features that are less so. The conflicts of interest among the characters, the deranged preacher, the rough-around-the-edges hard rock musicians, can be seen reflected in their surroundings. The rotting wharves and narrow streets around the dockyards, for example, do exist in the real city, though there are fewer than described in the book. I wanted to describe a certain perceptual reality—the sense one gets of a labyrinth of commerce, ideas, and lifestyles, not all considered legitimate in our culture. I wanted to show how these characters blend in among the bars and dockyards of a North Atlantic working waterfront.

When it comes to world-building, we can make an interesting distinction between building fully, or near-fully, fantastical worlds such as Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Martin’s Westeros, and that of real worlds that mix-in fantasy elements, such as Neil Gaiman’s London in Neverwhere, or arguably William Gibson’s “Sprawl” in Neuromancer. Slash of Crimson, and all of my Crimes of Heaven and Hell stories, including the collection’s second novella Torn from the Devil’s Chest, fall into the latter category. I find the mix of the real and fantastic to be an interesting combination, and invite readers to experience it for themselves when reading my collection.