This week Twilight Tales brings you a pair of returning favorites: Wayne Allen Sallee and Larry Santoro. Both authors have been published multiple times. Most recently the two have been touring the state promoting their publications and the new Annihilation Press anthology Hell in the Heartland. Its an anthology of dark stories set throughout the State of Illinois, a worthwhile read for anyone looking for a summer book.
Larry Santoro is also the author of the recently published novel Just North of Nowhere. He has a long history in the theater as well as writing. Just read along and you’ll see Larry explains himself quite well.
Wayne Allen Sallee’s life experiences have made him a master of dark stories with a hint of comedy tossed in when you least expect it. He’s been published in everything from anthologies and e-zines to full novels. A new book titled The Holy Terror published by Midnight Library, is due out this fall. Wayne is “pinch-hitting” for the previously scheduled Mort Castle. Unfortunately, Mort had to cancel but will reschedule as soon as he can.

Following are their answers to our interview questions.

TT: Let’s start with the basics, what’s your piece called? If you aren’t sure which of your stories you’ll be reading, give us an idea of your preferred genre.

Wayne: I plan on reading my novella “Lover Doll,” which will appear in the next collection of my work that Annihilation Press will publish. My preferred genre is street level crime fiction, but this story is psychological horror. It is also a favorite of mine as it is set in the Humboldt Park area of Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s and I draw on many true life childhood occurrences.

Larry: Mike, I wish to hell I knew what I was reading. It’s probably going to be a piece of my second novel, “Wallton,” but I don’t know. If it is, “Walton” - and that name? It’s just a place-holder, the name of the file in my computer! — “Walton” is a slip-streamy kind of thing set in the real, day-to-day world of post-war (that’s World War II to us old guys) America, and in a never-was imaginary place out of fairy tales, 50s B-movies, kid-fired nightmares and comic books — like the ones the Comics Code Authority tried to flush out of our systems. It’s got a little horror, a lot of contemporary and quasi-epic fantasy all wrapped with mainstream fiction.
An editor’s nightmare.
I might also be reading from a pair of novellas I did a couple years ago. They were written to order for two themed anthologies. Both have been accepted, both are pending publication. Or so the editor says! “Wind Shadows” is my first - and probably only - zombie story. It’s set in the trenches of the First World War and deals with a pair of British sappers digging toward the German lines. The other: “Drink for the Thirst to Come” was written as part of a shared-world post-apocalyptic world war 3 anthology-to-come. It’s set about three years after a nuclear (that’s nyüü-klee-ur in case Mr. Bush is reading this) exchange has f***’d [ed.] up… well, it’s f***’d [ed.] up everything, everywhere but in the story WE are in Chicago in a little fiefdom west of the Loop and we deal with a skittery lesser thug, the kind usually played by Huntz Hall or Frankie Darro, who goes on a mission to the Inner City.

TT: What inspired this particular story, or what inspires you to write?

Wayne: I created the character of Celandine Tomei for my novel, THE HOLY TERROR, and felt I could expand on her life, which also included me to describe my life, through Celandine’s childhood friend, during several decades. This is also the longest story I have written that is not set in Chicago in its entirety.

Larry: I’m still waiting to find out what inspired “Walton.” The day-to-day parts are certainly set in and around my own kidhood in a smallish town on the East Coast. The rest…fairy tales, B-movies, nightmares and lousy comic books. And bugs! Fear of bugs. Big, shiny black water bugs that creep along like tanks in wet basements! Also part of my kidhood.
The zombie thing? That was an assignment. Why the world war and trenches? I was wandering around the University of Chicago and stopped into a bookstore and found a book on the remaindered table. It was a replica of a diary kept by a soldier of “the Great War.” Text and sketches. Lots of mud and dead people, gas and stench and parts of dead people. Who needs more than that?
The 3rd World War thing? Another assignment. The specifics? A guy I worked with at City Hall (I’m a writer for the City of Chicago) was assigned to our emergency communications center in the West Loop. I visited. The place, the neighborhood - near OpraLand or Harpoville or whatever - jolted something in me and I started thinking about having to make it back to the Loop on foot and across the expressway through a blasted cityscape. Then I started thinking about who would be left after even a modest atomic war, what sort of social structure would endure, what sort might evolve. The rest fell into place.
And! The blasted landscape of the story came out of one of my favorite childhood places, a square mile of urban ruin in Chester, Pennsylvania my cousins used to call “the Field.” It had been an area of slum housing that was torn down in the late 40s and allowed to fester and steep through several long summers. What was left looked like post-war Europe as seen in newsreels and Look Magazine. Despite parents demands, warnings and threats, the cousins and I spend days in there exploring exposed and water filled basements, looking for bunnies and rats in the weeds, finding busted treasures and doing basic 20th Century American archeology. Great fun.
By the way, above I say “atomic war” advisedly. In my head and heart, the nuclear aspect of this shared-world war was always one initiated by terrorists who have managed to lay hands on or tinker together some sort of crude nuclear device. Let’s face it: any exchange using State-of-the-Big-Bang Art, is going to turn Naperville into Lakefront Property.

TT: You recently went on a sort of book tour together, anything interesting or odd happen along the way?

Wayne: The tour was nostalgic for me, as I had not seen southern Illinois in almost a decade. With all due respect and thanks to Rita Porter at the Borders in Peoria, I relished the invites by the independent booksellers, Julie & Stewart Hamm at Illinois Prairie Booksellers in Pekin and Mary Beth Nabel of I Know You Like A Book in Peoria Heights. The most interesting moment I brought back with me, and which stays with me, was meeting a man named David in the Peoria Heights store. He had many questions about how any of us could write stories and try and forget them in our memory and I gave him the anology of my father having been a cop. Most policemen, firemen, and EMTS are not writers, I explained, so I have the luxury, if you can call it that, of washing clean from my mind most of the real events I draw my writing from. David bought a copy of HELL IN THE HEARTLAND and then gave our group $20.00 towards dinner that night.

Larry: Interesting? Odd? Travels with Wayne? No idea what you could mean. Well, okay, I now know more about Streator than I ever thought I might.
No, no…it was great fun. Sylvia Schults, she who put it all together, is a gas, a constant series of amazements! Revelations on the hour! A writer-librarian-biker with a house filled with cycle bits, dogs, cats and other wonders. The stores were great fun, the people friendly and warm. And people bought books! At Borders two guys came up to our collective tables - five writers with a dozen or so titles among us - and said, “Give me one of everything” – something I’ve always wanted to say in places like Tango Sur or Perkins Pancake House.
Okay!

TT: You have both been published multiple times, is there a trick to getting editors to notice you?

Wayne: The late Karl Edward Wagner wrote in FANTASY REVIEW way back in 1985 that he did not really like my first published story, “Rapid Transit,” but he could not get the imagery out of his head. He decided to reprint the story in YEAR’S BEST HORROR:XIV and later said that, by saying those words about not liking the story, he was really encouraging me to keep writing as he knew I’d get better. Kind of like a literary rendition of “A Boy Named Sue.” So I’d go with imagery and location. Make the editor know where you are writing about and why you choose to write about the place.

Larry: Stand around and look pitiful.
No, I’ve been lucky to have had a few things published through Twilight Tales that got noticed. Since then, I’ve been asked to submit more times than I’ve submitted.
Let me say: My experience is NOT a suggestion to anyone. Fact is, I don’t care about getting published. I write because of the need to do it. I like when people read my work but it’s not something that’s part of the need. I don’t make fictive tales for a living. Well, okay, the City pays me reasonably well to craft various fantasies for it AND has pretty decent benefits to boot. But I like writing fiction. I like exploring parts and pieces of me. Its personal archeology I guess, so, I don’t feel like I have to write what someone else wants to publish, or build something just because it’ll sell.

TT: Both of you have been Twilight Tales regulars since its early days, any words of encouragement for those who haven’t yet made the trip to one of the new venues?

Wayne: I was the first reader back in 1993, when the readings were at Le Creperie. You find your rhythm as a writer, your pacing, once you read out loud. Obviously, you see what your audience reacts to and what they do not. I wrote a story called “Because He Can” that had what I thought was a throwaway line and the crowd would not stop laughing and I had to actually stop reading. That surprised me. So I always learn from reading to an audience. My words of encouragement are to find out exactly what I did over the years. Look at Eric Cherry and Mike Penkas and David Munger. Their first readings sometimes were only fragments of stories and perhaps reading to the group gave them the added momentum to keep going.

Larry: What’s to say? Come! Listen! Be outraged! Yes, you CAN write better than that!
Personally? I came to Twilight Tales during a period in which I was not writing. I came to support an old friend who told me she was reading and would I come please, please? She was good. I met other people who were also good. Fantastic in fact. At that meeting, I helped stamp, fold and prep a mass mailing. I came back and kept coming back. I began writing again. I started reading there. Etcettera.
Haven’t stopped since. Something happens when you read a thing, something you don’t realize will happen when you’re writing it. You begin to hear it, see it, in other people’s eyes. It’s something I noticed when I was directing (as a side note, I spent most of my life as a director in theater, film and teevee). You can assemble a show, direct it, dissect it, talk about it, rehearse and reshape it. Suddenly, an audient sees it — maybe just one person, someone you invited to have look before you open — and before the lights come up, you suddenly, magically begin to experience the thing in a different way, through the eyes of the watcher.
That’s what reading aloud - at Twilight Tales or elsewhere – does for me: gives me new ears.
And, of course, there’s that matter of hearing what other people are doing, not just the ones who have “made it” and are now turning out what every editor/publisher wants to see. You get to hear the edge of the form, the weird folk, the off-beat stuff that people write when they think no one’s looking.

TT: Have you ever been surprised by readers’ or listeners’ reactions to any of your stories?

Wayne: See above, regarding “Because He Can.” I’ve also had a few people say they felt nostalgia when I mention certain businesses from both the North and South sides that are no longer around.

Larry: There are things I’ve written that I like and there are things I just do not, things in which I think I’ve missed my own point and things which I think are just crummy. What has surprised me is how frequently people have loved some of that stuff. I’d tell you about a piece of mine that was nominated for a major award that I thought was…
But I won’t.
A story I tell in the afterword to “Just North of Nowhere:” I once had a note from someone who had heard a podcast of my story, “Little Girl Down the Way” (now published in HELL IN THE HEARTLAND, from Annihilation Press, 2008). He liked the tale and said, as a father, he was deeply moved by it. For his pains, I offered him a bit of my time and wrote back, thanking him and giving him some background to the story, which had been inspired by the discovery of the body of a child just down the way from my apartment in Chicago. “Little Girl” is a kind of ghost tale which poses the not very original idea that heaven and hell could be the same place depending on who you are.
He wrote back. To paraphrase, he said, I’m sorry I know that. I thought you made it up.
I didn’t pursue it. Okay. Maybe he meant he was sorry to know that a child was abused and murdered. Maybe he meant he was sorry to know that fiction doesn’t spring full-made out of the aether. In any event, maybe I ought to just keep my mouth shut about the fetchin’s of any of my stuff.

TT: Finally, any advice you’ve been given by another author that helped you and that you would like to pass on to our readers?

Wayne: I always go back to a line Peggy Nadramia, the editor of GRUE, a New York magazine, told me. She rejected a story of mine, even though she liked most of it, with the analogy that “I hopped on a train to see how far it would take me.” This was back in the 80s, and ever since, I write anything without knowing what the last scene is, even if I’m not certain how it will play out.
Thanks, Mike, and all those who took the time to read the ramblings of an old goof (that would be me).

Larry: To be general: keep writing, keep reading, keep friggin’ LIVING! Keep your senses open.
Stop trying to think your way out of holes in your story. Let your fingers do the cogitating. You’d be surprised what’s lurking in your muscles.
To be specific. This is from John Barth, author and teacher, via David Morrell: Most writers write through their eyes, only. Go for a ‘triangulation of the senses’ in your writing. Engage multiple senses: how does this moment smell, what are its tastes, what do you hear?
Finally, stay weird. But if you’ve read this far…

We hope you’ll join us on Monday July 14th at Mystic Celt (3443 N. Southport) to hear Wayne and Larry’s fiction and perhaps more discussion!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:33 am and is filed under Interviews, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.