When Manny approached me about “doing an interview” for Donald Goines I was clear with him that I was only interested in interviewing him about Goines. “But, I mean, you wrote it,” Manuel said and I said, “Yes. But you agreed to publish it.”
Manuel relented and agreed to an interview that met my own idiot guidelines. I asked that he join me on Discord where we could just talk about my book and I could ask him questions and he could maybe ask me questions and we could “see where it goes.”
MM) Why did you choose to name your characters Kendall Jenner and Lil Peep?
OKS: It’s the other way around: the novella began with Kendall. I’ve never watched the Kardashians, and don’t care what she’s like as a person, but I was obsessed with her images. Her face is so banal that it suggests nothing; its beauty is like a void. You can’t “read” into it.
MM) We both crossed paths at wildly different times in our lives. How did you find expat? Where have you lived and where are you living now?
AO: When I was still on Facebook, I became friends with Kevin Rutmanis of Cows, hepa.Titus, Lords and Lady Kevin, etc. He turned me on to Amphetamine Sulphate after recommending Christopher Zeischegg’s The Magician, and through AS I found kiddiepunk,
MM) Sent to the Silkworm House transcends genre – the macabre, thriller and suspense, pulp, and then, gender. One could say your narrator’s voice is at once feminine and masculine. Are you mindful of the dichotomy while writing? Or is this incidental? It seldom occurs to me while reading fiction, but you tap into some deepthroated octaves, and the speaker is quite the enigma. Could you talk about the speaker in this novella?