Introduction
Science fiction and fantasy short story writer Richard Bowes has been quietly carving out a reputation as one of the finest writers in the industry. His World Fantasy Award winning novella “Streetcar Dreams” became the heart of his 1999 novel-in-short-stories Minions of the Moon, which won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy novel. His next book, 2005’s novel-in-short-stories From the Files of the Time Rangers was nominated for the Nebula, as were two of the collected novelettes. Since then, he has been at work on a third sequence of short stories to be called Dust Devil: My Life in Speculative Fiction, which I wrote about last month.
Afterward Bowes himself was kind enough to get in e-mail contact. He also re-blogged my post on his blog, saying “It’s an amazing summary of what I’m working on” before filling in the gaps of what I missed in the post [I’d been listing all of the stories that he’d announced for Dust Devil]. He ended it “Otherwise this is so complete a record and so astute a summary of what I’m doing that I’ll use it for reference myself.”
Since I had been reading so much of his fiction lately, I had a number of questions that I wanted to ask him. I asked if he’d be willing to be interviewed by me. He agreed.
Dancing the Dance: An Interview with Richard Bowes
You’ve written personal stories in the past, but the Dust Devil stories are much more autobiographical fantasy and horror stories, enough that Richard Larson’s description of this sequence as “speculative memoir” seems completely apt. Why do you think you keep going back to your life as a source for your fiction?
Maybe it’s laziness. I already know the plot and have some understanding of the narrator so a lot of the work on a personal story is already done when I start writing it.
Fifteen stories (all published) became part of Dust Devil: My Life in Speculative Fiction. Each has personal elements. Some are closer to memoir than others. But none is absolute memoir - the whole truth to the best of my recollection.
In fact I have trouble accepting the memoir form, don’t entirely believe in an author able to tell her or his story without imagination intruding in some way.
The supernatural elements, obviously, are fantasy which I think of as metaphor, super-charged truth. Ghosts, for instance, are a way of writing about memory. A doppelganger is a way of showing that each of us has more than one aspect.
With Dust Devil three of the most personal stories have attracted the most attention.
“There’s a Hole in the City” is largely based my memories of Greenwich Village in the days just after 9/11.
“If Angels Fight” has a fictional central character, Marky Bannon, but is very true to the Irish American neighborhood in Boston where I grew up where politics was the local sport. The adventures the narrator and Marky have - from seeing Jack Kennedy to the rescue of a small kid from an icy river - are all first hand.
“I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said,” is my story of being a patient in that Greenwich Village legend St. Vincent’s Hospital. It’s the closest to memoir. About 90% is as true as I could make it.
Among them these stories were on eight award short lists - all were Nebula Award finalists. They won a World Fantasy, International Horror Guild and the non-genre Million Writers Awards, have been anthologized ten times and translated into German, Japanese and Italian.
Given how personal some of these stories are, were any of the Dust Devil stories particularly difficult to write?
“The King of the Big Night Hours” centers around the suicides at New York University’s Bobst Library where I worked for many years. Remembering was hard going but I found the story to be a kind of companion piece to “There’s a Hole in the City”. The first suicide took place the day after the second anniversary of 9/11.
“Circle Dance,” is the story of my brother Gerry and me. It was written shortly after his death and was my way of mourning.
“Pining to be Human,” is one of the last stories I wrote for the Dust Devil sequence. I intended it as filler material to link other stories together. But, as happens with fiction, the story took off and led me through some rocky parts of my past.
At some point as you were writing these stories, you must have realized that you were creating a novel-in-short-stories. Was that moment early on, or later in the process? What was that moment like?
I’d been thinking of writing about spec fiction writers in New York City. I also intended to make 9/11 and what followed part of the background.
Spring 2005 was, apparently, far enough away from that event that I could deal with it clearly (lots of 9/11 related memoirs and fiction appeared shortly after that). I wrote “There’s a Hole in the City,” and realized I’d found the voice with which I could discuss Manhattan past and present.
“Circle Dance,” was already written and I decided that should be part of the series.
The story that cemented the series, defined the place, milieu and time period (Downtown Manhattan people in the arts from the mid-1960’s to about now) and, in fact, gave the project its name was “Dust Devil on a Quiet Street”. That name is the title of an episode of the old NAKED CITY TV series that was filmed on the streets of New York in the late ‘50’s, early ‘60’s. I watched it as a kid in Boston before I knew the city.
Did the realization that you were writing a novel affect the writing of the stories? Were any stories written deliberately to complement or contrast or be juxtaposed with stories that you had already written?
The first 9 or 10 stories I wrote were semi-stand-alone. They shared a narrator, some characters and a locale but came to me separately - stuff that happened to me like being hospitalized in “I Needs Must Part,” or subjects like the adult children of artists and the hard life of the arts scene in “Dust Devil,” or the way the East Village changed from the mid’60’s to the early ‘70’s in “AKA St. Marks Place”.
The last 5 or 6 I wrote to provide linkage or fill in background, give closure etc.
In the acknowledgments to Minions of the Moon, you mention the impact that your editors had on that book. Do you think that the editors you’ve been working with on Dust Devil have had a similar impact?
Peter Crowther at Postscripts/PS, Nick Mamatas at Clarkesworld and Matt Cheney at The Mumpsimus each requested a piece (Mamatas and Cheney thought they were getting non-fiction - silly boys!). Ellen Datlow at Sci Fiction and in her anthologies published seven stories, (Terri Windling was her co-editor on two of those books, Nick Mamatas on one) Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF published five.
I’m very grateful to all of them for keeping my name out there over the years. If a publisher is interested in the finished product then there will be another editor and I look forward to working with her or him.
As you are writing each story, do you already have sense of where it will be published? For instance, was “I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said” always intended for Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine?
Ellen Datlow works in anthologies these days and they’re by invitation. So if I got invited I was writing the story for her (and sometimes Windling or Mamatas). Usually these are themed. Sometimes the theme is non-specific: the Special Issue of Subterranean had a general horror theme, Salon Fantastique required a certain kind of elegant/decadent fantasy. Other times it’s more specific. Like the The Beastly Bride where she and Terri Windling wanted Animal/Human interaction.
I owe a lot to Gordon and F&SF. For that market there’s no theme. But the magazine’s been around for a long time and there are stories that simply are F&SF and ones that aren’t. And, no, I don’t know for sure which is which. Over the last twenty years F&SF has published eighteen of my stories and a Curiosities column. Both of my World Fantasy Award wins were with F&SF stories. But F&SF has bounced a bunch too.
Have all of the stories for Dust Devil been written, or are there more to come?
The stories have all been written and published.
Dust Devil, like your Lambda-winning Minions of the Moon and From the Files of the Time Rangers, is a mosaic/fix-up novel, consisting of previously-published stories that fit together to make a coherent novel. What draws you to this format?
The first three books I published were through-written novels. But in the last twenty-plus years I’ve written fifty-one stories. It’s the form I’m easiest with. Of those all but a dozen are parts of various series/suites /sequences.
To work in the short forms is to dance a dance with obscurity.
But for me to write a novel would take a long time and I might well get forgotten. By getting the stories published, having them in anthologies and on awards list I remind people that I’m around and working on a project.
Has your experience with Minions of the Moon and From the Files of the Time Rangers been making it easier to turn Dust Devil into a novel?
Nope. It was still a complete shock when I had to do it.
After all of the Dust Devil stories have been published, what steps do you have to take to turn them into a novel? Is it just a matter of positioning them in order, or is there some level of re-writing (and new writing) that also will happen?
The order is a big deal, especially with something involving as much memory of the past as my stuff does. But there’s also rewriting (interpolating themes, weaving characters from one story into another) and new writing (In the novel version the narrator’s younger life is described a bit more; the final chapter is mostly stuff that hasn’t appeared in print).
How far along in the process of turning Dust Devil into a novel are you, would you say?
It will probably be finished by the end of the month. A couple of editors have expressed interest. We shall see what happens.
Are you working on any other projects now, or do you have any in mind to start once Dust Devil is finished?
Since my last collection of short fiction, Streetcar Dreams and Other Midnight Fancies came out I’ve done nine stand-alone stories (about 40,000 words). Three of these were written and sold last year. I’d like to have enough more for another short story collection.
I’ve also written a group of stories that combine Fairies, telepathy, intrigue and love in the demi-monde that lies between The Kingdom Under the Hill and (of course) New York. The first of these appeared in Steve Berman’s Gay themed Fairy anthology So Fey a few years ago. One will be out later this year in Datlow’s Supernatural Noir. Another will be in the Datlow/Windling Post-apocalypse YA anthology After.
