I’m happy to interview fellow writer and friend Alex Kane on his upcoming Clarion West adventure. I’ve known Alex for a few years now, and he’ a heck of a creative force. Keep an eye on this guy. And better yet, throw a little coin his way so he can focus on what matters at Clarion West, like listening to writers such as Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill.

It’s incredibly hard to get into Clarion West, and that’s underselling it. What was your initial reaction?

I really didn’t expect it, to be honest. I’d applied to both Clarion and Clarion West two or three times each over the past few years, and had been rejected, so despite a few stories being published in the meantime, I had no real reason to anticipate anything but another kind rejection email. Instead, I got the most exciting phone call of my life. Cell phones do this incredible thing, these days, where underneath the number it displays the caller’s location, as well: “Seattle, WA.”

There was this element of wow, what a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I’ll get to study the craft of fiction under writers like Joe Hill, whose novel Horns is probably my biggest literary influence, and Neil Gaiman–what could possibly be more valuable and thrilling? Yet there’s something very scary and intimidating: having to ask for all that time off, and wondering whether you’ll have to quit your job and find another one; worrying you won’t be able to afford it, or what you might have to do to be able to pay for the trip; not to mention the common symptoms of Imposter Syndrome–what Gaiman refers to as the “Fraud Police.” You worry that you’ll be wasting your own time as well as that of your instructors. Doesn’t matter how much fiction you’ve sold, or if you’ve been a finalist in the Writers of the Future contest, or even how excited you are by the craft and all your ideas. The expectations you put on yourself are really pretty paralyzing, sometimes.

What do you need to get to Clarion West, and what do you need to be comfortable there?

I still owe about $1,900 in tuition and related costs, not to mention the matter of living expenses, paying the bills and making loan payments on time–all while taking a month-long, unpaid leave of absence from my full-time day job. Which amounts to roughly $1,400 of income that I’d normally be getting–forfeited in the name of making good art, or trying my damnedest, anyway.

Thankfully, donations and fundraising efforts through eBay have netted me several hundred dollars toward buying my round-trip plane ticket, and toward my membership to the Locus Awards ceremony that takes place during the workshop. So I’m tremendously grateful for the help that I’ve been receiving from generous folks who happened to read my blog, maybe read some of my stories, or just generally believed in my cause. I like to think they’ve made an investment in my dream, and that I’ll feel all the more motivated to do my best work henceforth as a direct result. It’s been very inspiring.

You’ve amassed an impressive bibliography for such a young age, and now with Clarion West, it looks like you could be a real spark in the publishing world. What is the driving force behind your ambition?

That’s tough to say, for sure–I imagine all creative individuals have some underlying anguish they’re trying to exorcise, or a lost loved one they’re trying to keep alive through their art. But the urge to create imaginary worlds and populate them with strange or even scary creatures is something I’ve felt since very early childhood. What started with LEGOs and action figures bled into drawing, and then that all evolved into fiction writing, which I’ve been doing since I was maybe ten years old. I wrote my first novel, a 200-word science fiction story, at the age of thirteen.

Just a few years back, I picked up Stephen King’s On Writing, a dusty paperback that had sat on my shelf for far too long, and felt the creative fire rekindle like never before. I realized I was the same age, roughly, as King had been when he’d sold his first professional work of fiction–and immediately I felt the need to begin sending things out, and testing the publishing waters for myself. Six months later, I received my first acceptance–for a story that will likely never see the light of day. Publishing’s a fragile business. You can’t really plan for anything except to write as best you can and hope for the best. And to be insanely persistent.

All writers have their favorite stories. And you know the cliche, a writer is the worst judge of his or her own work. But in the end, if we don’t please ourselves as artists, what have we really accomplished? If you could choose your favorite short story, which would it be, and where can we read it?

I think it’s hard to pick a favorite, but one that I think really marked a new level of creative achievement for me was one I wrote during Jeremy C. Shipp’s online fiction class: “Prospect of a World I Dream.” It was recently published in the YA anthology Futuredaze, from Underwords Press, which has received kind reviews from Locus Magazine, Piers Anthony, James Patrick Kelly, and Tangent Online.

It’s the story of human adolescents on a colony ship with an “infomorph,” or posthuman, post-Singularity crew. When they discover that their target world has been consumed by its own sun, now an expanding red giant, they’re forced to stop and refuel. In the process, they learn that all has not been revealed about their true purpose or their destinies. I’m not sure if the plot’s science is entirely sound, but I think the human themes I play with are vital to today’s youth, when so many teens are troubled enough to consider taking their own lives.

You do a lot of non-fiction work, too, such as blogging for Amazing Stories. How has monitoring pop culture influenced your fiction?

It continues to pull me in two somewhat opposite directions: On the one hand, it gives me a great deal of confidence about the issue of originality, and the act of creation. Hollywood is proof that while there’s certainly nothing new under the sun, as the expression goes, a literate writer with some sense of his or her own culture can avoid the embarrassing mistakes that so many studio-puppeteered screenwriters seem to be making. But I also feel that film–and comic books, or video games, music, whatever–serves as an example of how honesty and the act of finding metaphor through instinct and inspiration is vastly more important than, say, seeking some pseudo-intellectual standard for greatness. Art is either honest, or it isn’t. And if it communicates something truthful and original, it probably succeeds on at least some level–regardless of how complicated the plot, or how artful the prose.

I don’t know quite what the perfect balance is. I can read a guy like Chad Kultgen, whose work is maybe the literary equivalent of Beavis and Butthead told with a Hemingwayesque sensibility, and appreciate it a lot more than some might be able to. Just as I can look at a book like Leviathan Wakes, by James S. A. Corey, and admire its unpretentious ambition and Hollywood-blockbuster trappings. I don’t judge a book or film’s success on the basis of its content or complexity so much as–what did the author seek to achieve? And to what extent does the work actually get to that place?

I hear you’re working on a novel called Doomster. Can you tell us anything about that?

Yeah, I’ve been working on that project off and on for about eight months. Twenty thousand words into it–what I’d call a rough discovery draft–and I think a lot of them will need to be scrapped after I get back from Clarion West, unfortunately. But it’s this slipstream rural-noir thing I’ve been wanting to write since my last year or so of college, about a functionally possessed young man–life coach to the terminally ill by day, death-metal guitarist by night–who gets drawn into a war between demonic forces.

There are demons good and bad, troubled witches, and a lonely old lady named Madge Maginnis, whose unique imagination allows supernatural entities to bleed over into the white-trashy, Midwestern town she inhabits. It’s called Doomster because of all the cynicism and paranoia that comes with life in a small town, but also because of the apocalyptic outlook my antihero has on his place in the world. He’s a reformed bully burdened by guilt, and he makes matters worse by using his preternatural gifts of perception–thanks to the demon residing in him–to take advantage of the sick and dying. But by falling in love with a powerful young woman, and crossing paths with a strange guy from his past, he finds a kind of redemption. Probably at a great cost–but I’m still working out the ending. Hope to have a finished draft by the beginning of 2014. Think: Donald Ray Pollock’s worldview meets Neil Gaiman’s love of the fantastic, with a dose of dark humor in the vein of someone like George Carlin.

My original one-sentence pitch read something to the effect of, “A heavy metal guitarist hunts for a small-town serial killer, only to find himself caught in a war between ancient forces.” But the work has evolved somewhat since that early seed. For example, I’m not sure if “serial killer” is quite so accurate anymore. That plot idea may get set aside for a potential sequel, or may find itself taking shape as something a bit more complicated, given the presence of ghosts and demonic spirits, which are inspired somewhat by Egyptian mythology.

Thanks for stopping by Alex, and best of luck on your Clarion West adventure.

Alex Kane Fiction
Amazing Stories