Interview: Alex Bledsoe

I had the absolute pleasure of getting to interview Alex Bledsoe about his book The Hum and the Shiver. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Interview

Bob: Genre descriptions aren’t really for the author, they’re more for the bookseller and reader. That said, how do you feel about someone describing The Hum and the Shiver as Southern Gothic Fantasy?

Alex: Well, it has a Southern setting, and it is fantasy, but I don’t think of it as “gothic.” There aren’t many Southern Gothic tropes in it. For example, nothing is really grotesque, and there’s no theme of decay or decadence. In the classics of that genre, such as novels by Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Flannery O’Connor, these elements are front and center, along with twisted families and deep secrets. But honestly, I think Cloud County would be a nice place to visit, unlike Yoknapatawpha County.

To me, the best genre description—and keep in mind the author is often the worst person to categorize his own work—is magical realism. I understand the sociopolitical issues around the term, but in this case, “urban fantasy” just won’t cut it, and “rural fantasy” isn’t an established genre. I see these books in the tradition of Charles de Lint’s “Newford” stories, Sharyn McCrumb’s “Ballad” series and Manly Wade Wellman’s “Silver John” novels, so whatever one might call them, I’d be perfectly happy to be in the same genre.

Bob: On paper the South traditionally has been presented as a deeply patriarchal society. But anyone who grew up there knows that more often than not there is a strong matriarchal bent to it, a sort of soft power that really runs things. In making the Tufa matriarchal were you trying to show the reality of how things often are here, or did that just evolve naturally?

Alex: I didn’t set out to do that deliberately, but it evolved organically in the writing, and like you said, it demonstrates a kind of “soft power.” There are villains, and they’re mostly (in this novel) male, but again, that wasn’t deliberate; since my protagonist is a straight women, her former abusive partner would be a straight male, and in rural policing, men are mostly the ones who are on the beat (and lead the corruption).

Bob: Bronwyn is a returning soldier, and I’ve read she was partially inspired by Jessica Lynch. Something that people may not know is that while the South makes up around 33% of the young adult population in the US, it provides 41% of the soldiers. Poverty and limited opportunities are funnels that push a lot of folks to the military. There aren’t a lot of ways for people to escape, and it makes sense that for someone like Bronwyn it would be the only way out. So the South has had to bear an outside load when it comes to dealing with the trauma of war. Was there any message in particular you were trying to impart by going this route, or were you just showing the reality for a lot of people in these poor locations, and the scars that have been left by it?

Alex: Again, I didn’t set out deliberately to transmit a message. I had the idea of the Tufa for years, but no story to go with it. When I read about Jessica Lynch, it occurred to me that if one of the Tufa had gone through a similar experience, it would be very interesting to see what happens when she came back. There was no overarching attempt to say anything about the military and those who join it, and truthfully, I don’t think the book would’ve worked if I’d tried to do so. It’s about a character who has to figure out her life after trauma, which is something that is not limited to the military. Still, as the figures you quote point out, if this element has any resonance it’s because it’s grounded in reality.

Bob: Folks who haven't lived in the backwoods won’t understand just how outsized an effect the limited law enforcement presence can have. It’s one thing to be a criminal in a city of millions, but when you’re the guy everyone knows steals copper or grows weed, then you can rest assured that whatever sheriff’s deputy or state trooper has your area will know you by name. They’ll know your habits, who you run with, all that. And frequently there is little to no real oversight over them. I think you captured that really well with Bob Pafford (why did it have to be Bob?). How did you approach writing that dynamic, where ‘the law’ is less an institution and more a personal relationship?

Alex: Sorry about that, Bob. <g> Pafford is inspired by the officers hired by the small town I grew up in; then as now it’s a notorious speed trap, which is not something a town becomes with honest cops. And you’re absolutely right, especially if these cops are locals, that they will in fact know everyone and everything. There’s also nothing or no one to stop them from doing whatever they want (see the life of another West Tennessee lawman, Buford Pusser, made a hero by the movie Walking Tall, but who was just as corrupt as any lawman could be and may have killed his own wife).

Bob: What is it about old men sitting on porches? In my home town, it was old men hanging out either inside or out in front of the little gas station. How do they know everything going on without ever seeming to leave their rocker?

Alex: They like to sit in places where everyone has to go, which is why I have them on the post office porch. Remember, this book came out 15 years ago, and at the time email had not quite gotten the stranglehold on correspondence that it has now. So snail mail was still viable, and many rural people (like me as a kid) got mail at a PO box instead of home delivery. Also, my mom worked at the post office for years, and so I heard all the gossip she picked up and understood it

Bob: Music is such a huge part of the southern experience (not that we have a monopoly on that of course). You work in the Barn Dance as a major aspect of Tufa culture, which is a tradition that has largely faded from the commonplace rite it once was. Folks might not realize how those have celtic roots, just like the Tufa. Have you ever been to a Barn Dance?

Alex: I have, and it was just as much fun as, I hope, I’ve made them in the books. Writing about music is hard, and writing about music performance is especially difficult. In a way, it’s like writing an action scene: if you simple portray events as they occur, it becomes tedious. What you have to do is try to convey the sense, the feeling, of being at a barn danced hearing the music. I do quote some lyrics, many of which (the bad ones) are my own, but I don’t make it too much. Mainly I want the reader to understand what it felt like in the scene, not to remember any specific musical numbers.

Bob: In rural spaces ‘who your people are’ is the most important element of social standing. Someone who can point to a family that has been there for generations will have a sort of cred that newcomers can’t achieve. But you sort of flip that on its head. The ‘outcasts’ have roots stretching back to before the Europeans showed up. I imagine that was fun to write.

Alex: Yes, it was immensely satisfying when I got the “click” in my head (apologies to Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and realized who the Tufa were. I’d done a lot of research into folklore and history searching for an idea about where my mysterious people could’ve come from, and then one day is just struck me. I think the essential bit was learning that the Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Highlands were actually part of the same mountain chain, formed in Pangea some 480 million years ago.

Of course, even though I had the setting and the background, I still had to wait for a story idea to turn up.

Bob: When people think about magic, they often think of fireballs and summoning creatures. But folk magic is never like that. It’s rarely neat and tidy ‘if you do A, then B.’ The magic of the Tufa feels very different from the magic people are used to. So much of it is so subtle that you can never be fully sure it’s actually at work. Why did you decided to go that route?

Alex: I’ve always felt that if you do or say the same thing every time, and always get the same result, then that’s science, not magic. Magic needs to have an element of uncertainty, because it’s power we have no idea how to really control. We appeal to it, and at best try to aim it, but we can never fully comprehend it, or its effects. I knew a woman who worked a “spell” to find the right partner, and wrote out a list of characteristics she wanted. Alas, she left out the word “human,” so the night after she did the spell, during a thunderstorm, a stray dog showed up at her door who had all those qualities. That is magic.

Bob: I think when a lot of people think of life in Appalachia they stereotype it as ‘simple.’ Which, obviously is a myth. The internal politics of the Tufa are incredibly complex, and in a way echo some of the famous feuds of the region (Hatfields-Mccoys, Bolton-Dickins, etc.), beyond the obvious supernatural parallels. Was part of your goal with the Tufa to dismantle that romanticized outsider view of the 'simple rural Southerner'?

Alex: As a Southerner, I know that “simple” idea for the bullshit it is. And honestly, I didn’t deliberately set out to dispel that. I just wrote the characters the way they came to me. But I’ve never write anything set in the South where the people were “simple.”

Rapid Fire Round

In one sentence (or less!):

How do you order your Waffle House hashbrowns?

Is there another way than scattered, smothered, and covered?

Haunted Holler, Paranormal Pines, Spooky Swamp, or Terrifying Town?

The Haunted Holler in Kentucky? Right on! And we have the Terror at Tyrol here in Wisconsin, which is a haunted house at a ski resort.

Who is an author folks should check out that will appeal to readers of your book?

Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John novels, Sharyn McCrumb’s Ballad novels, almost anything by Charles de Lint (my favorite is Memory and Dream), The Devil’s Dream and Oral History by Lee Smith, Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs.

Rating

When we review books, we don’t ascribe any sort of rating to them, because each reader and reviewer has their own individual tastes. What one person loves another can hate. Instead, we ask our reviewers to assign a percentage of how much they think each book embodies the three major pillars of Southern Gothic Fantasy as we describe them. This way, folks can look for books that emphasize the most important elements to them.

To that end, if you were reviewing your own book, how would you assign the percentages it:

• Southern Gothic: 10%

• Fantasy: 50%

• Horror: 5%

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