This book is one giant homage to the legendary fiction writer, Robert Aickman. His style of writing, and of weird fiction, is a huge influence on the structure of the stories, the way they work and what they are. In a sense, they are all ghost stories. Some of them have ghosts, most of them do not. But each story is haunted. They are haunted by other stories, by other books.
I wanted them to have that same dizzying feeling I get when I read an Aikman story. I want that same dislocation, that same distancing of self from reality. Another huge influence on this collection was Flannery O’Conner. If you don’t know who she is, you need to stop and grab a collection of her stories. Her stories are also haunted by a strange southern gothic feeling of foreboding. I wanted that question of reality, that foreboding that hung over everything. In a way, the reality the characters experience in these stories is like a dream like negative of the reality in Flannery O’Conner.
Other influences? Indie comic books. David Lynch. All sorts of wild and interesting stuff. The writing had to be visual and challenging. Some of it (a lot of it) made me uncomfortable to write. It was frightening, and disturbing, but I felt necessary.
So yes, there is me rambling on for a bit on Glass Coffin Girls. There are a lot of references to other stories, to other places and things. A lot of puzzles for the careful reader to unfurl and find. Pick up a copy here
