… wrote a wonderful blurb for Count Electric and introduced me to the SF community. Gardner Dozois chose one of the stories, "A Child's Christmas in Florida," for his Year's Best Science Fiction -- even though the story had no SF or fantasy elements. 

I then wrote Résumé With Monsters, a novel that is surrealistic and contains lots of Lovecraft lore. It's a book about poor Philip Kenan's attempts to come to terms with a series of bad jobs and the monsters (bent on enslaving the world) that have destroyed his relationship with his girlfriend. It is also about the writer in a world that sees any form of artistic endeavor as a manifestation of insanity.  

You will usually find that book in the horror section of bookstores, but it is primarily a satire of the workplace. I didn't think, when I was writing it, that the Lovecraftian parody would generate the interest that it did. There are more Lovecraft fanatics out there than I supposed. 

I should pause here, and say something about that word "surreal" that is so often attached to my work. I'm not saying it's a misnomer, but there is a kind of surrealism that is divorced from emotion, that is weirdness for the sake of weirdness, and I've never been drawn to it. The narration of strange dreams or bizarre events can be tedious if nothing is at stake. I try to do the traditional fiction thing -- I try to evoke emotional responses in the reader. I want the reader to care about the characters -- not to feel that the ride is just an exercise in strangeness, something arbitrary, something driven solely by irony and an overwrought imagination. I am always delighted to learn that one of my books has made a reviewer or reader laugh and -- even better -- cry. 

Young writers often dodge any sort of sentiment, fearing that they will slip into sentimentality, look foolish, gullible, gawky. A self-aware irony is the tone of a lot of surreal novels, and that's not at all what I'm shooting for. 

After Résumé With Monsters, I wrote Zod Wallop. The New York Times review began: "Imagine dropping acid with Dr. Seuss." That did capture the tone of the book. It's a comic novel, but dark. It's about an author of children's books who has lost his daughter, so the premise is not a hoot, but it is about redemption, about not turning the world into stone in the wake of personal tragedy. 

Zod Wallop garnered dozens of great reviews. The Japanese bought the book, for about four times what St. Martin's paid, and their edition looks lovely. It's been out in Japan since last December, but I just saw a copy recently. 

After Zod Wallop, I wrote Irrational Fears, a -- here comes that word again -- surreal take on alcoholism, AA, and New Age recovery. It's been getting great reviews too, which is a relief. I thought it might be too arcane for a general readership. 

Crescent Blues: Which novels or short stories do you think were your best?  

Spencer: Like parents who have more than one child, I'm fond of the lot of them, but I do think Zod Wallop is my most artful book. Everything came together in that one. Of my short stories, I'm particularly pleased with "The Ocean and All Its Devices," which Ellen Datlow chose for one of her Year's Best Fantasy and Horror collections. She said that the story was Lovecraftian, and I honestly hadn't thought about any Lovecraft element, but -- egad! -- I gave it another look and, sure enough, there was that Lovecraft guy. 

Crescent Blues: What was it like creating your own covers for your first two novels? 

Spencer: I was terrified of getting a cover I hated, so I decided to do it myself. Fortunately, I had a small press publisher who was willing to let me do that. Lots of times, authors don't have much say about cover art and design.

I would rather write books than create book covers, however, and there are graphic artists and illustrators out there who are a lot better than I am, so I have, with mixed feelings, turned that enterprise over to others. I'm still a little obsessed with control, so I got my friend Denis Tiani to do the cover illustration for the hardback of Zod Wallop, and I got my friend Larry Perlman to do the illustration for the cover of Irrational Fears. If you have a friend doing the cover, you can say, "Hey, wait, could this be changed?" 

I suspect most novelists are control freaks, which is why they often grow disheartened when writing for Hollywood where everyone meddles with your art. 

Crescent Blues: Where do you get the ideas for your stories? 

Spencer: Every writer has certain obsessions. Paul Di Filippo, in his review of Zod Wallop in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, listed some of mine: "...psychotic murderous women; weddings; old photographs; the commingled innocence, vulnerability, and amoral hungers of children." Those are some. I used to think that I should never repeat a theme, but then I realized that the reading public has more books than mine from which to choose, so I stopped worrying about that.  

I am not one for outlining, although I will do it when I am forced to in order to sell a book before it is finished. But the best ideas come when I get into the story and the stew of character, situation and scene conjures up new possibilities. Outlines tend to be external, mechanical things for me. The writing process generates the best ideas. I have often set out to write one sort of story and discovered that a different story was being written, and so turned all my effort to writing that one. I have to listen to the Muse, or she will leave in a huff. "All right," she'll say, "you do it your way. I'm out of here." 

So the specific idea I come up with in order to begin is often irrelevant to what I discover once I have some excuse to begin.  

In answer to the above question: I don't know where the idea comes from, exactly, it just bubbles out of the process. This is the reason authors can rave about something they have written and not necessarily be exercising their egos. They just don't know where the hell a certain sentence came from, and they are very pleased with that sentence. I often feel as though I am admiring someone else's work when I reread mine. 

Crescent Blues: What do you feel is the difference between writing short stories and novels?

Spencer: Novels are looser and more forgiving, I think. I like reading novels more than short stories, and I suspect this is because I can settle in with a cast of characters and elude the real world with less effort than is required when reading a story collection, where I have to shift gears every twenty pages or so.  

Writing short stories is gratifying. You get applause sooner than with a novel. And you can explore an idea that isn't worth an entire novel. But, on a crass pragmatic note, no writer is going to earn a living writing short stories. With novels there is the hope, however tentative, of one day making enough money to chuck the day job. There is certainly more effort involved in writing twenty short stories than in writing one novel. And any editor will tell you that single-author short story collections, even by well-known authors, do not, generally, sell. 

Crescent Blues: There was a three year break between Maybe I'll Call Anna and Zod Wallop. Do you feel your writing has matured during this period? 

Spencer: I think that many writers -- and certainly this was true for me -  

William Browning Spencer - Continued