A Brief EMail Interview With Richard Chwedyk
October at Twilight Tales has always been something special. This year we’re trying something exciting: a featured reader paired with a themed open mic for each week from now until Halloween!
Richard Chwedyk is a lifelong resident of the Chicago area whose short stories and poems have appeared in several anthologies, as well as in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. His short story “Bronte’s Egg” received the Nebula award in 2004 in addition to picking up both Hugo and Sturgeon nominations that year. Richard has been a guest of Twilight Tales several times over the years, and always manages to at least delight us if not flat-out amaze.
Following are Richard’s answers to our interview questions.
Let’s start with the basics, what’s your story called? If you can, please tell us briefly about it.
Richard: I’m frantically working to complete a piece called “The Man Who Put the Bomp.” It is a saur story. I don’t know what it’s “about,” a good story always being about the “something else” that the story contains. What happens in the story is that the saurs meet their “maker” — a man who contributed the significant pieces of the genetic sequence that made the saurs possible. And Axel’s first question to him when he arrives, not knowing who he is or what he’s done, is, “Are you a bad guy or a good guy?”
What inspired your story, or what inspires you to write?
Richard: What inspires me at this moment is raw panic and desperation to meet the deadline — and an overwhelming desire not to disappoint the audience.
Each week in October features a specific genre, tell us what draws you to the genre featured your particular week (Oct. 13, Science Fiction and Fantasy).
Richard: Fantasy stories affect me most when characters discover the world as something greater than they first conceived — when they find the door that leads to another world, or look at the street and for the first time see that there’s a whole other world hiding within the quotidian. There are more parts than the sum of the whole. I think that’s what drives my interest in any literature: anything and anyone that suggests that there’s more to the picture than the picture.
For science fiction, I tend to look for the stories that focus not upon what “the future” will bring, but how we will live with it. Perhaps all literature takes on the topic, directly or indirectly, of what makes us human, but recent science fiction takes a unique approach of posing that question by expanding our technology, our territory and our knowledge, seeing if we can still recognize human beings in the milieu. If one can summarize (at great risk) the work of a Samuel Beckett by saying that he keeps taking things away from humanity to see what remains recognizably human there, science fiction has been adding things to a character while looking for what humanity persists. And of course I’m fascinated by the questions of what makes us human as reflected by beings other than humans.
What sorts of books do you find yourself seeking out when walking the aisles of bookstores and libraries?
Richard: All sorts of books — new and used. Right now I’m waiting for 7 Stories Press to finally (finally!) get out their reprint of two Nelson Algren books in one: “Who Lost an American?” and “Notes From a Sea Diary.” I’ve been an eclectic reader since before I knew how to spell eclectic. It’s very difficult for me to pin down what I’m looking for. I’m looking for the books that reveal the secret threads that hold the universe together. One book brings me to another, which leads to another, and another.
Any advice you’ve been given as a writer that’s either very good, or very out there that you would like to share with us?
Richard: 1. (from me) Never work for a newspaper. 2. (from City News Bureau) Never do a bad job well. 3. (from Ray Bradbury) Don’t think — write. 4. (from Jeff Ford) Just tell the f—ing story! 5. (from me) Trust the story. Stories are smarter than their authors — listen and follow.
Anything else you’d like to share about your writing or upcoming publications/events?
Richard: I’ve been frustratingly unproductive of recent. So much to write and the time shrinks away. Keep poking me with sticks and keep sending that guy with scythe over to knock on my door and I’ll finish some of this stuff. Recent stories are listed on my Web page http://www.sfwa.org/members/chwedyk/” I hope to be updating it soon.
We hope you’ll join us on Monday October 13th at Mystic Celt (3443 N. Southport) to hear Richard’s fiction (along with open mic fiction in a Science Fiction and Fantasy theme), and perhaps more discussion!
