Tania Chen is a Chinese-Mexican queer writer whose work tends to encompass themes of identity, horror and death; in other words, themes that land right in the Tenebrous wheelhouse. Tania’s piece for BRAVE NEW WEIRD, “En el Patio de la Casa del Callejón”, is brief, graceful and enigmatic; I got a chance to speak with the author about it and more.
These responses have been edited for clarity.
***
“En el Patio de la Casa del Callejón” is one of the shorter pieces in BNW, but it brims with evocative prose and some truly Weird structural conceits. What informed this piece? (...yes this is a ‘where did you get the idea’ question; sorry ‘bout that).
I love Weird structures, playing with line breaks and odd punctuations, changing POV, and anything else. My first drafts tend to be poetry-prose at times rather than prose-prose, though I have tried to stop doing that. It means less editing on my second pass! Although, now I’m considering just leaning more into it; Baffling Magazine publishing this story and then having the honor of it being picked for BRAVE NEW WEIRD has given me confidence to continue being WEIRD.
“El Patio de la Casa del Callejón” started out as a prose poem and grew from there. I wanted to do mermaids in a different sort of scenario. I kept part of the more poem-like things too because I wanted something different.
For the general story, I remembered that as a child I visited a house with a fountain in the patio, the foliage around it was dense and it was full of dead leaves. It is a very vivid childhood memory because the place frightened me. I was there again recently and it still evoked a lot of anxiety but also awe. It’s a beautiful and eerie place.
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?
Ideally? A coffee shop, although with the pandemic this is a rare occurrence. I wish I had a set time and place but really I’m just kind of chaotic. Although I do try to write once a day, even if it is just a scribbled sentence.
My one other particular habit is that I use notebooks constantly; most of my stories are half-drafted on paper before I type them up. Aside from this, I need a lot of solitude to write but that doesn’t mean being alone. Sometimes it is sitting in a shared space with strangers drinking coffee; at others it is sitting at home on a Zoom call with fellow writers just vibing together.
What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences helped sculpt this definition?
I feel that “Weird” is a very broad definition; for me it is anything I am not expecting from a traditional narrative or style. It doesn’t seem to have a clear pattern but sometimes when I read something I just know it is pinging all my “Weird” buttons.
When I was younger, E.E. Cummings was always interesting to me because of his use of grammar and punctuation. Later on, Annihilation was formative because of the prose lyricism. For unusual formats, House of Leaves made for such an interesting reading challenge. Cassandra Khaw’s Hammer on Bones is weird and beautiful and visceral.
More recently, Joe Koch’s work has been very inspiring, “All the Rapes in the Museum” in the Stories of the Eye anthology haunts me. Also, Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas’ story in Nightmare—“Still Life with Vial of Blood”—has a very weird epistolary style which I love. I’m also a huge fan of Jordan Shively; he does Weird Weird so well, my jaw drops a lot when reading his work!
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.
Alien x Florence and the Machine.
What’s the Weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?
Maybe not too weird but last year I was using one of those apps to record sleep patterns. Some of those tend to record sounds during the night, and well…one of those playback recordings had a voice, a male voice whispering something. Not sure what, I saved the recording somewhere but I haven’t used the app since, whatever is in that room, I am not fucking with it.
Congratulations on your acceptance into fellow Brave New Weirdo Jolie Toomajan’s upcoming anthology, Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic, forthcoming from Cosmic Horror Monthly. What else is on your plate for 2023?
Thank you! That is also another Weird Weird story. I also have something cooking (ehehehe) for early January with Deathcap & Hemlock. Aside from that, I am hoping to revise my novella, and start either a new novella or a poetry collection—I’m putting it out here to hold myself accountable!
Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume One, is out February 6th. Preorder here.