Marc Sorondo lives with his wife and children in New York. His interests range from fiction to comic books, physics to history, oceanography to cryptozoology, and just about everything in between. He's a perpetual student and occasional teacher. For more information, go to MarcSorondo.com.
GI: I don’t want to ask a rote “where do you get your ideas?” question right off the
bat… but I will anyway.
Any personal anecdotes buried in this story? A swimming experience you’ve had
in your past that turned into an existential nightmare? Your bio tells me you have an interest in oceanography; some crossover there?
MS: I’m both drawn to and terrified of the ocean. I love it and spend as much time
in, on, or near it as possible; but I’ve also got a healthy respect for how
destructive it can be and how nightmarish the abyss is. The thought of all that
darkness and pressure…of what sorts of things could be down there…it’s pretty
horrific.
The beach in the story isn’t a real one; it’s an amalgamation of the beaches that
have been most important to me in life: my formative childhood experiences were
all at the Jersey Shore, while the island setting of the story comes from an actual island
in the Gulf of Mexico that I visit as often as possible.
I do read a lot about oceanography, maritime history, and related topics. All that time spent
thinking about and being near the water does bleed into my fiction a lot. The water is a
frequent setting and thematic element in my stories. I could probably put together a whole
collection of shorts with that theme.
GI: Well maybe you should!
On a different note: I worship at the altar of larger-than-life Pulp characters who
stumble from one preposterous adventure to another. In many of your works--not
this one, alas--you have Aedan Halloway, who at first blush sounds like Solomon
Kane wandered into The Da Vinci Code. Please correct my description; or, if it’s
accurate, you’re welcome for the elevator pitch synopsis.
Either way, tell me more!
MS: Aedan Halloway is absolutely a larger-than-life Pulp hero. I wanted to distill the
things I love about a certain type of hero into one of my own creation. A
Sherlock Holmes or James Bond type who could be thrown into all of these
situations; but I also knew that my hero would face the supernatural. He’s a
hunter that fights vampires, werewolves, and a host of other demonic and
mythical creatures, but he has no special powers; he’s just incredibly well trained.
I think what’s interesting about the Aedan character is the Ecumenicals: the organization
that secretly battles evil so the rest of the world can thrive. My own religious beliefs are such that
I didn’t want to ground the mythology of that world in any one religion or myth structure; instead,
the Ecumenicals literally represent all beliefs, in that all religions are equally represented and respected
by the organization. There’s an acknowledgement within that group that you’ve got all these systems
trying to know the unknowable and getting some of the details wrong. Catholic priests, shaman, witches,
rabbis, etc. all working together. They’re just as likely to use something blessed with holy water as
something with magic characters etched into it, or to rely on the manipulation of their own chi.
GI: What influences your art and your creative process?
MS: I have five kids; people often ask how I have time to write! The truth is, I do it all
after they’re asleep, but they’re great inspiration. I write stories for them, using
fictionalized versions of them as characters (Aedan Halloway is based largely on
my oldest son). Fatherhood has changed my writing--has definitely slowed it
down--but it’s also made it better.
My influences are all over the place. My reading habits are diverse; a lot of fiction, of course,
but I also read a lot of nonfiction; partly because I find it all interesting, but also [to cultivate]
ideas for fiction. I’ve had so many ideas for details and sometimes for whole stories come from something I’ve read.
While I don’t practice currently, I spent many years training in different martial arts, so they pop up
a lot in my stories. I joke about being a perpetual student, but the truth is, I enjoy school and miss it
after being out for a while. I spent time collecting degrees, and now that I can’t invest that time anymore,
I revisit being a student in my fiction often.
GI: How have you been coping with the 2020 shitstorm?
2020 was…interesting. My day job is teaching, so not only was I dealing with my own anxieties and trying to
keep my kids sane, I was trying to teach through Zoom meetings and emails. It hasn’t been fun, but it’s put a lot
into perspective for me. From the extreme of “Neither I nor any of my family has gotten sick or died” to the
still-pretty-insane “I’m still gainfully employed” to the more mundane “there are a lot of good hiking trails near me”,
I’ve come to appreciate a lot of things about my life and situation. Not that I didn’t appreciate those things before,
but seeing how much people have lost in the last year…it just makes you stop and look at what you have and
appreciate it that much more.
GI: GREEN INFERNO is sub-titled, The World Celebrates Your Demise. How do you
feel your piece relates to this sentiment?
MS: Because of how the natural rules are seemingly bent to ensure said demise.
What should be an exciting thing gets twisted into something horrible, in large part because nature
stops playing by the rules. I expect at least some of the stories in the anthology will be about real world horrors--
predatory animals, storms--and that’s certainly fitting for the subtitle as well, but it feels to me that there’s
something particularly sinister and celebratory in that rule-breaking. Time and space being bent or broken;
things that should not be rearing their ugly heads…it’s like gleeful destruction, like skipping work and
drinking too much for a holiday, except it’s nature shirking its duties. As a result, the characters suffer.