From The Library: Cherie Priest
Posted by ElizabethGenco on Thursday, August 31 2006 at 12:03 am
Welcome to this week’s FROM THE LIBRARY. Last week’s latest round of SCHEHERAZADE pages can be found here.
Cherie Priest’s outstanding debut novel, FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS, is a sharp, sweet cocktail of old school
Southern gothic and modern supernatural pop fiction. It also, I confess, made me insanely jealous, then slightly depressed. And then I wanted another. You know, like any good drink.
Cherie, on the other hand, inspires me. With one successful book down and two more on the way plus a solid Internet presence and a cachet of loyal fans, she’s not doing half bad for a “new” novelist (see that first question). Also? She’s a dish. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) And charming as hell, as you’ll see. Read on…
I hear you’ve been writing for a long time. Tell me about some of the novels you wrote before FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS.
I read somewhere that you have to write a million words of pure shit before you come up with anything worth reading - and I surely exceeded that count, but at least I got started young. The first novel I ever finished was called WHO BURIED THE GRAVEDIGGER?, and I wrapped that baby up when I was about fifteen. It was a trashy southern gothic, but so eyeball-bleedingly bad that it defies further description.
That’s, like, the best title ever in the history of anything. Who did bury the gravedigger?
Honestly? I forget. It was a southern gothic murder mystery where a ghost ends up having to solve his own murder. He was accused of killing his entire family (thus earning him the nickname “the gravedigger” but he died the night before his trial was supposed to start … or something …
Then came several half-projects never completed, and then by college I was scribbling novellas. There was one called PIPER that eventually turned into a short story, and one called THE PENTAGONAL - that one was an epic fantasy that topped out around 60,000 words. So it turned out, I’m not any good at epic fantasy. I think there was also one called WHILOM.
I don’t know what was up with all those Ps and Ws, though.
What does your workspace look like? (I love this question.)
At the moment, I really hate my apartment (we’re moving shortly, thank God) - so I do most of my work at a coffeeshop in Seattle called “Aurafice.” It’s ostensibly a goth/industrial themed sort of place, I think - with faux gears hanging from the ceiling, red/black mottled walls, and local artist installations all over the place. I like it because (a). free internet, (b). it’s close to my evil apartment, and (c). the people who work here are all pretty friendly - or at least, they aren’t openly hostile … which is not always a guarantee around these-here parts.
A goth/industrial coffee house? Isn’t that kind of an oxymoron?
Naw - it’s a swank little place. A little bit dirty, a little bit friendly. All black and red, with a near-constant stream of good music playing. It’s great!
Name five things you’ve done for money.
1. Laid down in front of cars so they’d have to stop and buy lemonade from our stand
2. Worked drive-through at McDonald’s
3. Got pummeled with wet sheets at a hospital laundry
4. Petitioned to legalize gambling to raise money so I could attend a private Christian school
5. Taught freshman comp
That wet sheets thing sounds… unfun.
I worked at a hospital laundry for one whole day. In that day, I stood under a machine that swung big bundles of wet sheets out over my head, at which point the bundles would be unfurled - sending giant heaps of wet sheets raining down upon me. Hypothetically, I was supposed to unwind the wet sheets and hang them up by their corners in this machine that would dry, press, and fold them. In reality, I spent a whole lot of time doing duck-and-cover.
Villains or heros?
All of the above. One’s no fun without the other, after all.
I’m a fangirl for many things - that’s no secret - but probably my oldest fandom is X-Men. I first started reading the comics when I was about fifteen; I’d get them for a dime apiece at the library thrift store in the Orlando Public Library - where they sold off excess stock to the public. Why they had comic books there, I have no idea … but I loved it.
When the X-Men cartoon first appeared back in the early 90s, it played on Saturday mornings. I used to feign illness so I could stay home from church and watch it.
Got any role models?
That’s a hard question to answer; there are a lot of people whose work I admire - but who I don’t necessarily seek to emulate on a personal level. It’s much easier to talk about influences; for example, right now I’m a little besotted with M. Night Shyamalan - I like the way he’s not afraid to try different things, even at the risk of leaving slower audience members behind. I’m also experiencing an Alan Moore revivial, because no one else does Victoriana quite the way he does. I also love - and strive in vain to be as good as - Alfred Hitchcock, George Romero, Dash Hammett, and many others. I’m a consumer slut for a good storyteller, especially a storyteller who can break new ground or take on the market on his or her own terms.
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