“I do most of my writing sitting outside by the pool whenever possible.” As I sit through another Portland winter, defined by incessant rain, gray skies, and the occasional ice storm, I hate Warren Benedetto thoroughly.
But only for that pool crack, mind; because in all other ways Warren seems like a pretty great guy. And we certainly can’t hate on “Blame”, his BRAVE NEW WEIRD contribution that puts a ghastly spin on workplace dynamics and communications.
I chatted with Warren about it before drowning him in his own pool, the fucker. Write about that, smart guy.
These responses have been edited for clarity.
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“Blame” is told in an epistolary style of interoffice communications, and I gotta say: it’s a little bit too convincing. I’m going out on a limb and guessing you’ve got some experience in this department?
Yeah, I’ve spent most of my non-writing career in various roles at the intersection between entertainment and technology, so I’m very familiar with the culture of tech companies, as well as with technology itself. With “Blame”, I wanted to write a “found footage” story that was more than just obvious stuff like emails and chat logs, so I leaned on my experience as a software developer to pull in things like code snippets, git commits, command line interfaces, and other forms of digital breadcrumbs that might make the story more interesting.
The idea for “Blame” actually came from a software command: git blame. Git is a version control system that tracks code changes, and git blame allows someone to see who modified a specific line of code. That made me wonder: what if you ran git blame and it told you the code was changed by someone who was dead…after they died? The final story ended up being a bit more complicated than that, but the seed of that original idea is still there.
This is speaking out of class a bit, but you and I recently spoke about short story collections; and specifically the theme of Revenge, particularly in your work. Why do you think this is so prevalent in what you write?
I wish I knew. I never even noticed it until I started compiling my collection. I had asked some other writers how they decided which stories to include in their own collections, and they suggested trying to find a common theme across all the stories. That was a distressing answer, because I didn’t think my stories had anything in common. However, when I examined them all together, I realized that many dealt either with the main character getting some kind of revenge, or a person getting some sort of comeuppance for something terrible they had done.
I’m completely retconning this because you asked, but I think it may be because I have a pretty strong sense of right and wrong, and a powerful desire for moral justice. It makes me angry to see someone being treated unfairly or unequally. I hate bullies. I hate hypocrites. I hate liars. I hate bigots. And I really hate when those kinds of people get away with being awful. A lot of the stories I ended up choosing for the collection put power back in the hands of people who are abused, or marginalized, or diminished in some way. Either that, or “the universe” handles it for them, restoring the cosmic balance of right and wrong by making sure the bad people get what’s coming to them. If only real life could be so satisfying…
What does your writing routine/setup look like? Do you have an office? A preferred coffee shop? The back of the bus? Standing under your neighbor’s eaves, avoiding the rain?
Although I do have an office in my house, I’m fortunate enough to live in Southern California, where the weather is basically perfect all year round. Therefore, I do most of my writing sitting outside by the pool whenever possible. I’m nocturnal, so my routine is to work my day job until around 6:30 PM, eat dinner, then take a nap for about an hour. Then I chug a big glass of Diet Mountain Dew and write from 10 PM until 2 AM. On the weekends, I might squeeze in a few extra hours of writing in the afternoon, after a morning of yard work and, of course, a nap.
What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences helped sculpt this definition?
For me, “Weird” means taking an ordinary situation and introducing an element of the unusual, the surprising, the unsettling, or even the absurd. I think what differentiates the Weird from other forms of horror fiction is that the world of a Weird story is just off, without any clear indication as to why. For example, in my story “The Salt Circle”, the main character turns into a slug every morning at 8 AM. Or in “The Man Who Ate the Road”, the main character encounters a man who is literally eating the road. The stories aren’t horror in a traditional sense, but the situations can certainly be horrifying.
On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist. It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.
I think I introduced myself as Rage Against The Machine x The Money Pit.
What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you? You live in (or near?) Los Angeles; you’ve poked your head into a variety of creative industries. I’m sure you have stories.
I lived in Los Angeles for many years; now I live in Orange County, which is just south of L.A. The weirdest thing that ever happened to me happened when we first moved down to Orange County. We had just moved into a new rental house, and it was surprisingly cheap for the size and location. When I asked the real estate agent why, he explained that the previous owner had died in the house. I know, it’s the most cliché setup of all time, but it’s true. It was a peaceful death—the guy had died in his sleep—but it was still a little creepy.
The place was a two-story house, a first for us. My son, who was three at the time, was prone to sleepwalking, so we were nervous that he would sleepwalk in the middle of the night and would fall down the stairs. One night, I had just dozed off when I heard footsteps running down the hall toward our bedroom, followed by someone rattling the handle of our bedroom door. Worried that my son was sleepwalking, I jumped out of bed, ran to the door, and saw…nothing. There was nobody there.
I called his name. No answer. I walked down the hall to his room. The door was fully closed. I quietly opened it and peeked in. He was in bed, under the covers, sound asleep. I called his name and even tried to shake him awake, but he was out cold.
Maybe my daughter had been the one running down the hall? I checked her room. Same thing: door closed, sound asleep. I was starting to get freaked out, so I tip-toed downstairs and checked the rest of the house, inspecting doors and windows as I went. Everything was locked up. All was quiet.
Finally, I went back to bed. I decided that I must have dreamed the footsteps and the rattling door handle. There was no other logical explanation. Just as I rolled over to go back to sleep, the sound happened again. Heavy footsteps ran down the hall toward my bedroom door. This time, the door handle didn’t rattle. Instead, something full-on crashed into the door. It almost gave me a heart attack. I jumped up, sprinted to the door, tore it open, and…nothing.
Despite being a horror writer, I don’t actually believe in the supernatural. But that night I truly started to think there was something otherworldly going on. After all, a guy had died in the house, in the exact room where I was now staying. What other explanation could there be?
I searched the house again, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Finally, I went back to bed and eventually I fell asleep. Nothing like that ever happened again.
Until exactly one year later.
Literally one year to the day after the incident, the exact same thing happened again: heavy footsteps running down the hall, ending with something crashing into the bedroom doors. It happened two or three times over the course of a few minutes, then stopped. The next year, the same thing happened. And the year after that. Always during the middle of August.
Finally, I decided to post about the incident on Facebook to see if anyone knew what the hell could be going on. One of my work colleagues who had grown up in the area responded, “Oh, that’s just the bombing at Camp Pendleton.”
It turns out that every year in August, the Marines do test bombing runs at the military base about 40 miles south of where we lived. The shockwaves from the bombs travel up the coast through the canyons—they can be heard throughout Orange County. What I heard as heavy footsteps was actually the thudding of a series of bombs exploding in quick succession. The crashing into the bedroom doors was caused by the shockwave from the explosions changing the air pressure in the house, which caused the doors to slam in and out. It turned out to be a perfectly normal explanation. Nothing supernatural at all.
Now, if only someone could explain the blood running from the faucets in the bathroom.
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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume One is out February 6th. Preorder it here.