David Simmons lives in Baltimore with his wife and daughter. He is the author of the Ghosts of Baltimore Duology (Broken River Books) where the supernatural and strange grapple with the ever-present past of East and West Baltimore. He is a regular contributor to Books to Prisoners, a Seattle-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster a love of reading behind bars, encourage the pursuit of knowledge and self-empowerment, and break the cycle of recidivism.
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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, “Food is Poison”, please.
Thousands of sisters live in a factory where time is the only currency and the juice that keeps them going is the only thing that matters. One woman holds the key to endless juice while the rest of her sisters scrape for scraps. Kakfa's The Trial meets Requiem for a Dream.
What does your writing routine 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? Are you one of those true modern Weirdos who write your entire novel on your phone?
I write my shit on my phone in one hand while holding my toddler in the other.
The tally of Weird Phone Writers stands at 1.
What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences/influences helped sculpt this definition for you in your creative journey?
Weird to me is a discomfort that can't be classified. Like, you can't put it in a box or a genre or any of that. Some shit just makes you uncomfortable. Something out of place. I live in Baltimore so I experience weirdness regularly. In a good way. Keeps me on my toes and shit. As far as writers go, I've learned a lot from Brian Evenson and J. David Osborne. Certain music is weird to me, and the visuals associated with it. After you read this interview, go on YouTube and look up this rapper from Baltimore named Soduh. He has a song called "Crime Pays" and I think most of my writing is like that song and music video.
On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask folks to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist (Citizen Kane x Metallica, f’rinstance). It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.
Mandy x King Von.
What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?
I used to know a guy in prison who utilized roaches to pass kites (little paper notes) and other contraband from cell to cell in Ad Seg. Ad Seg is Administrative Segregation where you are in the hole basically. You can hear everybody but you can't see anybody because there is no cell across from you. He would create these contraptions and tie them around the thorax of the roach, it was like a carrot at the end of the stick type-thing, with an elastic harness (I'm not quite sure what it was exactly because the roaches always ran by so fast) and he put them on the roaches so that they would run straight forward to try to get to the food. He would tie strings around their bodies and tie the other end of the string to the note, baggie, or whatever he was trying to transport to another cell. He would set them out through the holes in the metal cell caging and they would go running down the tier, little packages trailing behind them, until they reached the cell of the person who the shit was intended for, and the person would reach through the space in the metal and grab the roach and the package.
The bar for Weirdest Personal Anecdote has officially been set high.
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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.
