Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: Eirik Gumeny

Eirik Gumeny is the editor of Atomic Carnival Books and the author of Infernal Organs and the Exponential Apocalypse series. His short fiction has appeared in, among others, Kaleidotrope, Andromeda Spaceways, and Escalators to Hell (From Beyond Press). His nonfiction has been published by Cracked, Wired, and The New York Times. In 2014 he received a double lung transplant and technically died a little. He got better.

His story, “A Balanced Breakfast”, was originally published in Soul Jar by Forest Avenue Press, and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume Two, available to preorder now.

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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

A young woman summons an interdimensional cereal mascot, dooming the world to a slow and mildly complicated oblivion, but, also, she makes a new friend.

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’ve got an office and a desk, and every morning, like clockwork, I sit down with a cup of coffee and fire up the laptop. Everything after that’s a crapshoot, though. Sometimes I get eight hours of good writing in and sometimes I stare at the screen for a few minutes, give up, and go play Baldur’s Gate 3 for the rest of the day.

The way I write is pretty mercurial, too. I used to start at the start and work my way to the end, editing as I went, so that when I typed the last words I was done. Then I implemented a three draft system: rough, rewrite, polish. Lately, though, I’ve been jotting down sentences and paragraphs on scrap paper and in texts to myself and then building out a completed story from there, starting in the middle or at the end or from a snippet of dialogue three-quarters of the way through.

The only real constant to my writing habits is that I seem to be most prolific when I’m supposed to be doing something else. I wrote my first two novels while on-shift at a pair of office jobs. Even now, if I have a week with no obligations, the proverbial time enough to write at last, I will struggle and get very little done. (I will kill a bunch of shadow-cursed miscreants, however.) But give me three deadlines and a bunch of errands and an electrician coming over after lunch and I’ll knock out most of a story in a day.

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?

Honestly, I’m not the most well-read person out there, and I don’t have a great head for different philosophies, but I’ve been reading a lot of Robert Aickman lately, and I really like the way his stories don’t explain anything. There’s no big horror. He has a tendency to subvert the notion of what should be scary and upsetting.

I think about “Meeting Mr. Millar” a lot: there’s this guy, and he’s a little off, and being around him is incredibly upsetting for reasons no one can explain, and maybe there’s a ghost, but don’t worry about that, it’s this lonely guy and his army of accountants not actually doing anything wrong that’s the real problem. I love how much suspense Aickman wrings out of that scenario, out of nothing really happening.

That’s maybe the only thing he and I have in common, the only direct influence on my own writing: sometimes shit’s just strange, and you have to roll with it.

In the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone 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.

Attack of the Crab Monsters x Donovan.

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

I feel like this isn’t going to be a surprise to a lot of people, but my lung transplant is easily the Weirdest thing that’s happened to me. Not the surgery necessarily—I mean, it was a lot and I technically died a little, but it was all Very Medical in terms of strangeness—but everything after.

The farther I get away from the procedure, the more having a dead guy’s lungs breathing inside of me is the status quo, the more I accept everything and get past the trauma and the body horror, the more surreal the whole thing feels. Obviously, there’s a ton of science and reason at play, and I’ve got scars and memories, however fuzzy, but I’ve internalized all that. Forgot, almost.

But then I’m at the grocery store and it all hits out of nowhere and I kind of lose myself a little, I’m back in the past and don’t recognize my own body, and suddenly I’m Frankenstein buying bananas. It’s fucking weird. 

I wanted to ask about this after reading your bio, but there wasn’t really a good “in” with it. Thank you for filling us in unprompted.

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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: K.S. Walker

K.S. Walker writes speculative fiction from a city in the Midwest with a river winding through it. This river may or may not be an ancient power that makes seductive bargains. Their work often explores themes of transformation, longing, and belonging and has been published in many venues. Their work has appeared in FIYAH, The Deadlands, Baffling Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among others.

Their story, “River Bargain Baby”, was originally published in Apex and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume Two, available to preorder now.

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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

River Bargain Baby is sort of like if The Parent Trap (1998) was marshier. Or more paranormal at the very least.

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?

Routine? I don't know her. I have two young and feral children. The hamster in my head in charge of executive function skills is overworked and underpaid. It's a miracle, quite frankly, we've gotten this far into an interview.

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?

My understanding of "Weird" comes almost entirely from reading other Weird works. Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach Trilogy was where I was pointed to most often when I began to explore the genre. I recently read and adored Organ Meats by K-Ming Chang and while I don't know that she would call it Weird, it hit all the Weird buttons for me. Short story-wise I think of Kelly Link's The Specialists Hat and Alexia Antoniou's There Are Only Two Chairs, And the Skin is Draped Over the Other. These stories/novels share genre mashup, a dreamlike sense of uncanniness. I think I'm drawn to Weird from a child's point of view specifically because children are still learning the rules of our world; their ideas of what's possible is elastic, therefore they seem willing to accept far more strangeness before their unease sets in.

On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone 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.

Queen of the Damned x Fall Out Boy

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

I avoid all things Weird in real life with a wide berth. I don't have Main Character Energy for real.

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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: Chris Kuriata

Chris Kuriata lives in and often writes about the Niagara region of Canada. His dark fantasy and horror stories have appeared in publications in Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, and Japan. His debut novel Sacrifice of the Sisters Lot is published by Palimpsest Press.

His story, “Family Not Going To Heaven”, was originally published in Cosmorama, and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume Two, available to preorder now.

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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

The human body's similarities to a jet airplane covered in cigarette smoke will prevent the passage to paradise after death, but a simple dietary cleanse can cure damnation. Try the soup.

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?

Like the way my cat has half a dozen favorite sleeping spots around the house, I write outside, or at the library, or at a favorite bar...Whatever venue I choose is usually determined by the weather. I write nearly everything longhand first, in a nice notebook. I've experienced the horror of digital files getting corrupted or just disappearing, so I like the comfort of knowing I have a hardcopy backup, even if it's filled with first draft errors.

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 means discovering the illogical and the physically impossible are not only true, but so natural and familiar to most inhabitants of the world that they consider these "extraordinary" things mundane. The collision of these two different perspectives can be beautiful as often as they are horrifying.

The opening passages of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House showed me a story was capable of communicating ideas I would have thought impossible. Roberto Bolano's 2666 and Herman Melville's Moby Dick showed me how much Weirdness there is to be found in the real world.

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

I once stayed at the (now demolished) Plains Hotel in Regina, Saskatchewan. One night, the door to my room opened, by whom I presumed to be another guest. He was dressed for bed, in a white undershirt and underwear. I waited for him to realize, "Oops, wrong room," but instead he came prancing inside, moving his legs like a boxer entering the ring, and went into the bathroom. I followed behind him, to say, "Dude, you gotta get out of my room now," but the bathroom was empty. No sign of my visitor.

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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: Perfect Kiss Strickoll

perfect kiss strickoll (he/she) is a writer and film student currently located in sunny California. He likes to write about sad queers with bizarre interpersonal hang-ups, as informed by his lifelong love and study of the horror genre.

His story, “punctum (o baked alaska for you i am a former american)”, was originally published in Body Fluids, and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird

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Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

In Weimar Berlin, a rapidly unspooling film editor commemorates the greatest actor to ever grace the silver screen.

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?

Being a full-time graduate student, all of my writing happens in my very small studio apartment before 8 AM or after 9 PM. I have a lot of trouble with keeping up motivation, so I've learned little tricks to keep myself on track; I like to do timed writing sprints with others, and I write exclusively in Word rather than something like Google Docs where I can be tempted by other tabs. If I'm really struggling, I'll disconnect from my WiFi until I hit my goal for the day! If I'm working on something longer or more involved, I'll also usually make a 'radio' playlist—a broad sweep of music I think my characters would listen to in their world/time period—and throw that on while I write to get fully immersed.

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?

To me, "Weird" is both about the content of the stories I tell and the way I tell them. I write the same way that I think, and being neurodivergent, that way of thinking has been described as 'weird' both pejoratively and positively throughout my life. Weird is a space for dream logic, free association, and the erosion of boundaries—living versus dead, past versus present, and taboo versus social more to name a few of my favorites. I cut my teeth early on Stephen King and Anne Rice, and all these years later I see those threads in just about everything I write (for better and for worse). I'm also in Film Studies, so schlocky exploitation movies from the 70s and 80s have been a HUGE influence on my fiction writing: my dream is to one day write the book equivalent of a Frank Henenlotter film. Finally, I grew up in a very Weird place, and I wouldn't be writing at all without the other writers and creatives I met there—sammy oster and Josephine Whittock, for those whose work is out there online.

I just rewatched the Basket Case trilogy back-to-back-to-back last month and they hold up, so I wholeheartedly endorse your Henenlotter ambition. Make it happen.

On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone 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.

Return of the Living Dead x Depeche Mode.

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

My senior year of high school, I got lost in the city with my best friend coming back from Pride late at night; we were so invested in our conversation that we blew right past our train station and walked straight ahead for almost an hour. We only noticed when we got to a block that was suddenly packed full of people, milling about in the street, all vaguely concerned about something. All at once the crowd on the sidewalk parted and a man on a motorcycle started coming toward us, on the sidewalk—we had to jump out of the way to not get hit. When we looked behind us he was gone and we walked back to our station.

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BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.