Later this year, Claude Lalumière’s debut collection, Objects of Worship, will be released featuring twelve strange, eerie, sensual stories of monstrous gods, disturbing faiths, and urgent desires.
Lucius Shepard has said that “Claude Lalumière’s stories are dark, mordant, precisely formed. His first collection is extraordinarily accomplished in its craft and subversive intent.”
You have only written one mystery/crime story but you did so brilliantly. What made you decide to tackle a crime of omission rather then a more overt one?
Rather, only one of my published stories was published as crime (more on that below). “She Watches Him Swim” came about in two ways. First, I’d been reading some Joyce Carol Oates crime stories — and she tends to write crime fiction from unusual vantage points, with both the protagonist and the crime not occupying the same function as in typical genre stories. Her work, approach, and style were rolling around in my mind quite a bit. (Not that I aped her way of doing it, but reflecting on her idiosyncrasies led me to explore my own way of handling a noir/crime.) The second source, water being important to the story, was that I was passing through Nice, sitting on a bench facing the Mediterranean, watching the sunset. I just let all that open water — the smell, the view, the atmosphere — seep right into to me, and the story came to me in a proverbial flash. Once I’d worked it all out, I walked to my hotel (less than five minutes away) and typed it up on my laptop.
Any plans for more mystery/crime stories?
In fact, I have one earlier story that’s something of a darkly erotic noir piece — “Secretly Wishing for Rain”; it’s been reprinted a few times, but always in erotica venues. And a (very dark) crime story of mine was scheduled to appear in the anthology Hardboiled Horror, edited by James Van Pelt, which was to have been published last year, but the publisher vanished into thin air after the editor put the book together, and the book never materialized. I’ve only recently started trying to find a new home for the story. I don’t tend to plan future stories in advance. But I’m always striving to write something different from what I’ve done before, so I suspect I’ll explore other dark alleys of crime in future — probably when I least expect it.
What issues or ideas about fiction have been foremost in your mind of late?
How I should never, ever discuss any detail, in any way, under any circumstance, a writing project before I’ve finished a first draft. Or else it slips through my fingers. Once it leaves the hermetic environment of my imagination, it’s very hard for me to re-enter the world of that story. On the other hand, once I have a full draft of a story, I can workshop the hell out of it, take in comments from advance readers, rewrite as much as necessary., even add scenes, delete characters, etc. But I need to full draft before I can let any detail slip out.
Who is the best short story writer that people haven’t gotten hip to yet?
Even though he’s been writing for a few decades, I feel that Garry Kilworth’s short fiction has not gotten a fraction of the recognition it deserves. Among his several collections, I’d give special nods to The Songbirds of Pain and Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales — although all of his collections are exceptionally fantastic. His stories refuse easy categorization; they’re gorgeously written, heartbreakingly poignant, multiculturally savvy, sharp and smart, and always strange and surprising. Can you tell I’m a fan?
Where are you, right now, as you’re writing these answers?
In my home office, at my desktop computer.
What’s your favorite story written by someone else?
That’s a tough one, apt to change from day to day. But I’ll go with “You Can’t Go Back” by R.A. Lafferty, for its ineffable and ethereal beauty and strangeness and for its tender poignancy.
What do you like most about short fiction?
That it leaves room for readers to imagine. To participate. To engage in creation. I dislike drowning in detail. I want suggestion, evocation, mystery.
When did you start writing short fiction and what prompted you to do so?
I’d been wanting to for years and years — it seems like I’ve always wanted to. Stuck between two languages, it took me a while to settle into which one I’d be writing in. Also, I used to be a bookseller, but running a business was not a good thing for me, neither creatively nor personality-wise. In 1998, I sold the business to, among other things, concentrate on writing.
Of your stories, which is your favorite; the one that showcases best your abilities?
Well … there are two answers to that…
1. Of all the stories I’ve written, by far the one I’m proudest of, the one in which I feel I best accomplish what I’m striving for, is a piece called “Dead”; alas, I have not been able to place it anywhere. It’s been homeless for three years now. It’s breaking my heart, that one. An editor at Penguin who was bouncing around the idea of doing a collection of my stories once told me it was her favorite story of mine, and the reasons she gave jibed with my feelings about it. So I don’t think I’m being completely delusional about this one.
2. Of my published stories, the one I love the most is “The Ethical Treatment of Meat” from the zombie anthology The Book of More Flesh (2002). Partly because it’s so much fun to give readings of it, and partly because it’s been taught in a few high schools, giving me the opportunity to chat with students who have read the story, which is always a fascinating experience.
Do you have any short story publications forthcoming?
-”What to Do with the Dead” is appearing in Shimmer #10, which will probably be out by the time this interview appears.
-”Three Friends” will appear in Clockwork Phoenix 2, edited by Mike Allen. That’ll be out in the summer.
You actually have a collection coming out soon. Give us all of the details.
A couple of years ago Jeff Vandermeer ran a series of blog posts called Conversations With the Bookless. The Conversations with the Bookless series was designed to showcase those writers who are up and coming, who don’t yet have a collection or a novel out, who are making their names known writing short stories. With Jeff’s blessing I will be continuing the series here at BSC over the next couple of weeks, but with a focus mostly on mystery/crime fiction.
From the first generation successes of Anthony Neil Smith, Victor Gischler and Sean Doolittle that came out of Plots With Guns to the later success of zine author/founders Sandra Ruttan and Russel McLean to a lot of others the online zines have, over the years, proved to be a fairly successful and fertile ground for emerging talents to launch a career, highlight their own work and showcase the work of others.
These writers are the next generation and it will be interesting in the next couple of years to see which of them will make it and which will stand out.
Nothing else to say really except to end with a quote from the original series.
The fact is, if you don’t have a book out, it’s harder to get attention and it’s harder for reader attention to crystallize around you. I hope these interviews introduce readers to some of the great talent that, in the coming years, will be amazingly and bountifully bookful. — Jeff Vandermeer
It’s called Objects of Worship. It collects twelve of my stories, including two brand-new never-before-published ones (“The Darkness at the Heart of the World” and “Roman Predator’s Chimeric Odyssey”). It’s being released by ChiZine Press, and the paperback is being launched in August at WorldCon, in my home town of Montreal. That will be preceded by a limited edition hardcover in July. This book is all weird fiction (none of my more realistic noirish pieces here), and every story deals in some way with gods or religion. “The Ethical Treatment of Meat” — which I mentioned above is in this volume. Most exciting is that the book will feature an intro by James Morrow, one of my favorite writers.
