Kyla Lee Ward is Australia's queen of the weird and macabre, and her début collection of fiction has just been published by Independent Legions Press. To celebrate the release of This Attraction Now Open Till Late, we've asked her to answer a few (hopefully) original and meaningful questions. Are you ready for her answers? Relax...and try to ignore that shadowy form looking over your shoulder.
Hi Kyla, Congratulations on the publication of your first fiction collection, This Attraction Now Open Till Late, and thanks for answering these interview questions, giving my readers insight into your inspiration and creative process.
What immediately strikes the reader is the importance of setting in this collection and the way you shape the physical world into a character in many instances. Within the first four tales, we travel from Venice to New Zealand and from Kazakhstan to Japan. The reader sinks down into still waters or is lost in the bowels of the earth. The fabric between the physical and metaphysical is rent in places. Where does this fascination with the setting and environment come from?
Thank you, Cameron, for asking them! You have certainly made me think.
It’s as you say—the environment or setting is a character, more obviously in “And In Her Eyes The City Drowned” and “The Beautiful House”, but always a presence. The interaction of the protagonist with this presence forms the story, especially in this collection. The protagonist is always intruding upon, challenging, or sometimes courting, the genius loci and its defenders.
I have visited Venice and Prague, which are both like being drenched with a bucket of ice-cold history mingled with a strong euphoric. Likewise, New Zealand’s Waimangu Valley is like nowhere else on earth. I suspect that the stories I derived from each location could take place nowhere else. This is, of course, a highly privileged perspective, but I think that in certain circumstances, you can get away without physically being somewhere. When an image or report of some historical event strikes a chord, when you respond that deeply to a piece of music or an artwork, then that is where the story comes from. And it is always possible to experience your own city with this kind of depth and sense of surprise—in many ways, facilitating this is a writer’s job!
I keep mentioning history because I find that is the key. To write a place, you have to know what happened in a particular spot, how the stones were raised (volcanically, in the case of Waimangu). But there’s a perceptual exercise I’m fond of, in Christopher Penczak’s City Magick (Weiser Books, 2001). He calls it “sidewalking”, a procedure to slide your perceptions sideways and view your surroundings with fresh eyes.
Your fiction brings all the senses into play, including the world of sound. One of my favourite songs, “Other Voices” by The Cure, came to mind as I read “And In Her Eyes The City Drowned”. How does music play a role in your writing, and what significance do you place on voice?
You are kind to say so. And Faith is an underrated album.
Voice is essential! I frequently write in the first person, which is perhaps unfashionable but probably inevitable with my theatrical background—I’m used to monologues! In pieces like “A Whisper from the Death Pit” and “A Nightmare in Burgundy”, it is obvious how much the narrator’s voice shapes the story they tell you. But even in third person, so much of the characters and how they relate to their situation is established by a subtle voice. I think now of Mark in “Should Fire Remember the Fuel?”—how he distinguishes himself from his companions by observing them and reflecting on his choice of words.
I think good prose retains a musicality—most people understand what you mean if you say that poetry needs to be musical, but it is desirable in prose as well. Rhythm, harmony, the repetition of theme—there are definite parallels between writing and music! But as you say, all the senses are powerful tools. Just the right detail, appealing to sight, taste, scent or touch—can bring the whole piece alive for the reader.
Folklore, arcana, archaeology, religion, and alchemy feature heavily in this collection. How did your love of all things forgotten or unknown blossom? Is forbidden knowledge and lost ritual to be feared or is it an integral part of humanity? Does it have a place in today's world?
(hums) “These are a few of my favourite things”
That I’ve already mentioned Penczak may serve as a warning - here we get a little weird. Without trying to set myself up as any kind of authority or claim anything particular in the way of ability, yes, I do seek knowledge and I do have a magical practice based in energy work—I utilise ritual. To me it is integral, but many people do fear it, even when or perhaps because they have no experience or interest in that area themselves. I sometimes think the only “forbidden” knowledge you can possess is something, anything, that your interlocutor does not. My experience with such people is probably why, in my fictional work, seekers after knowledge don’t tend to meet the dreadful fates they do in more conservative horror. So long as they are respectful and honest about their intent, their fates may be dreadful but also fulfilling, liberating, or perversely enjoyable.
It's always seemed obvious to me that the world is much, much larger and stranger than it’s supposed to be. I suspect all writers feel this to an extent, otherwise why try and set your observations down? Folklore, arcana, religion and etc. are all attempts to tackle this vast strangeness one way or another and I have made study of all of them, in varying degrees. A quiet child with a reading age far beyond that of her peers can explore many things—just don’t ask your mother what a concubine is.
Your work will remind readers of weird and strange fiction classics like Robert Aickman, Algernon Blackwood, and Joan Aiken. Which writers do you feel a spiritual bond with, and who are some of your favourite contemporaries?
Blackwood and Aiken! Now you’re just flattering me! And I love Aickman’s "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal"—I read it young and it lodged in my mind thereafter.
As for my own favourites, there are two Lees involved—Vernon and Tanith. And this is more than a little weird, because although our shared name may have caught my attention initially, that doesn’t explain why the work of these two ladies resonates so deeply with me.
Vernon Lee was the pen name of Violet Paget, under which she published in the Decadent journal The Yellow Book. Works such as “Amore Dure” and “A Wicked Voice” are breathtakingly atmospheric, conveying a palpable sense of operations beyond the mundane—even though the author herself contended that “to write is to exorcise” and any attempt to convey the weird sacrifices something of its power. I actually came to Vernon Lee after writing my Venice story, but I feel that she would have understood it.
Tanith Lee is one of the great moderns. In my opinion, she stands beside Leiber, lifting sword and sorcery out of its bloody swathe and giving us true dark fantasy, in works such as Kill the Dead and Night’s Master, and of course the Secret Books of Paradys. I rate her Dark Dance trilogy as high or higher than The Witching Hour in its depiction of semi-immortals and their descendants grappling with the modern world. Her prose is exquisitely beautiful, even when describing the grotesque and the brutal, which paradox I respond to.
There are so many wonderful wordsmiths among my contemporaries, it is hard to single anyone out. Kaaron Warren’s work, such as The Grief Hole and Tide of Stone, is just jaw-dropping in its scope but also its clarity. Lee Murray, Carol Gyzander—all my Sisters of Foreboding! Sarah Read, Zen Cho, Alma Katsu, and I can’t let the opportunity to praise Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb sequence go by—there’s no way to describe those books, you can only read them. Then read them again.
How do you develop your plot and characters?
Now that I’ve gone on and on about beautiful prose and subtle voice, I can tell you none of that’s going to matter if you can’t contrive an ingenious yet water-tight plot! Plotting is where you fling yourself bodily against the story until you stop falling through the holes. It’s where you argue with your characters until they act sensibly, taking into account their back stories and all established knowledge. Your most beautiful scene, the keystone image that inspired you in the first place may be ground to gravel by the process. And don’t get me started on internal consistency. If you want to have that explosion at the climax then the outlanders must be able to create a chemical explosive and yet still be primitive enough for the city dwellers to look down on them—why yes, that is oddly specific. The answer to your question is that I howl and throw tantrums.
What is your kryptonite as a writer?
I know what my addiction is—unusual and evocative words! After my mother’s reaction I started just reading dictionaries. My favourite are the older ones, like my faithful cloth-bound Chambers Twentieth Century or my tattered Rogets Thesaurus. That is where you find words like mortiferous, corbeau and abscissional. That is where you can get lost in the question of whether paper kites are named after the bird of prey or if byss is indeed the proper opposite of abyss…perhaps this is my kryptonite.
Do you play music while you write—and if so, what’s your favourite?
Not so much while writing, but definitely to clear my head and get back into the right mood for a particular story. At the moment, that means a lot of classical music, especially Respighi’s "Church Windows" and "Brazilian Impressions". “Butantan”, the second Impression, is a favourite. Butantan is the facility where the Brazilian government raised snakes for the production of antivenom—the composer visited in 1927 and the result was this incredible piece of snaky music incorporating the "Dies Irae". I mix things up with Bohren and der Club of Gore, usually "Black Earth". So it’s all instrumental right now. With the next project, this will change.
Have pets ever got in the way of your writing?
I would answer this except Nikita has decided she needs me to walk out to the kitchen with her and stand guard while she eats the food that’s already there. Oh, and now we’re in the new house, she has started bringing me half-dead lizards to play with. Which is very generous of her, I must say.
What book (or books) are you currently reading?
The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker (Penguin Classics edition) and Deadly Doses—a writer’s guide to poisons (Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner, Writers Digest Books, 1990).
What do the words “literary success” mean to you? How do you picture it?
I think it means people actually reading my books! You know, people I personally don’t know! Hopefully, they bought them first.
It’s always a thrill to see your name on the cover of a magazine, and to be sought out by an editor who wants you to contribute to an upcoming anthology. But I think that, now the collection is out, literary success means getting those novels published. Just one small hurdle—I have to finish them. Which means a plausible chemical explosive. Argh!
Where can we find you online?
My website is http://www.kylaward.com/
The truly curious are welcome to join me on Goodreads (Kyla Lee Ward) or view the offerings on my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG-Mq0RsSRG4pIWyJghKoAQ These include readings and performances of my work (both by myself and tenebraries such as The Surgical Sideshow), and entertaining moments from past book launches.
Thank you, Kyla. Looking forward to chatting again soon.
