A Conversation with Thomas Tessier (2009)

CDLet’s start with your introduction to writing. You began by writing plays and poetry. What effect did this background have on your fiction writing?

TTI think I learned some valuable lessons from both. About clarity and concision from poetry, and about pace and dialogue from drama. In both forms, every word and every line matters.

CDYour time in Dublin and London obviously has a huge influence on your writing and your life. Now that you’re twenty-odd years removed, how does that time still affect your work? Do you think your time there accelerated certain areas of your writing development? Did it hinder any areas?

TTI lived in Dublin and London for thirteen years in all, and those years were my 20s and early 30s, so of course they are a significant, life-long influence. But it’s such a large tract of experience, I’ve never tried to analyze it, I don’t have anything to compare it to. I definitely think it accelerated my growth as a writer and was in no way a hindrance.

CDWhile in Dublin you met some chap by the name of Peter Straub. Can you tell us what a night out in nineteen-seventies Dublin and London entailed when Tessier and Straub hit the town?

TTA few pubs, a few pints. A lot of talk. We were not rowdy. Well, maybe once or twice. We also met for lunch regularly, went to Ronnie Scott’s jazz club many times and traipsed around London to catch Clint Eastwood westerns and some pretty awful horror movies. Peter and Susie, Alice and I shared some of the holidays too, over those years—Thanksgiving, Easter, the 4th of July, Watergate, etc.

CDWhat influence has your friendship with Mr. Straub had on your writing? Particularly, when you met, neither of you were writing genre fiction and both began to around the same time. Was there ever a conversation saying: “Hey, we should try this creepy stuff?”

TTAn incalculable influence, for me. We gave each other a lot of constructive criticism, encouragement and support, but I learned more about literature and writing from him than he ever did from me. Peter was way ahead of me, he had written and sold both Marriages and Julia before I even attempted a novel—which I did with a lot of his prodding, urging and encouragement. I have been a horror fan since grammar school, but it was the last thing I got around to trying to write, after poetry, theater and journalism. Once I did get into it, I felt like I’d finally arrived at the place where I was supposed to be. At that time, genre fiction had very little literary respectability, but a change was in the works, and we often discussed how to use horror in ways that took it beyond its conventions, as Chandler and Hammett had done with crime fiction, and Dick with SF. But Stephen King was another huge influence for both Peter and me. Steve was the first writer since Shirley Jackson who showed that horror is a deep well you can keep drawing from with fresh, wonderful results—as long as you treat it with respect, bring something to it and don’t just pull on the same old tropes and ropes.

CDBesides treating the work with respect, what do you think is the best advice he ever gave you regarding your writing?

TTGo for it. Peter has told me that a number of times and in a number of ways over the years, and since I have a self-doubting streak in me, it’s always been good advice. On a more technical, writing note, I have learned a great deal from him, and his work, about how language can work in a story or novel, how to try to hear it and use it in the same kind of way that a jazz musician hears and uses sound to create beautiful, entirely new and different songs, even when they draw on old standards and classical forms.

CDDo you see any of your influence in his work ever?

TTNo, not really. Writers can share the same general feelings and thoughts about literature, horror, genre, characters, plot and technique, but everyone has to find his or her own voice and way of seeing a story, and writing it. We are very different writers in many respects.

CDDo you ever tire of being referred to as underrated and underappreciated? And if entities like the Washington Post, Stephen Jones, Tom Monteleone and Ramsey Campbell are saying this, are you really underappreciated?

TTThose are old quotes. It’s kind of silly, and who cares? I don’t feel underappreciated in the least. With Leisure now reissuing my previous novels, I’ve been hearing from a lot of new readers who are enjoying my writing for the first time and looking for more. I hope that people who read my work get something from it and enjoy it any which way they can.

CDMy first exposure to your work was in the 1993 Best New Horror, edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell. The introduction to your piece “In the Desert of Deserts,” states “Thomas Tessier apparently never gives interviews and believes that an author’s published works say all that needs to be said.” In recent years you’ve started a web site, been a mentor at the Borderlands Boot Camp for writers and have granted more interviews. Was there some shift in your thinking about your exposure to the public and your fans?

TTIdeally, the writing does stand by itself. But it’s a different world from 1993, we all try to grow and adjust, and I’m more comfortable now with interviews and talking with readers. I’ve met with some reading groups online and in person, and I’ve mentored a small number of developing writers over the years, all of which I not only enjoyed but also found to be good learning experiences for me as well. I really quite enjoyed my two stints at the Borderlands Boot Camp—apart from the early morning starts!—and it’s very rewarding when you see people go on to sell and publish their own work.

CDWith all these interviews and fan interaction, besides the “Do you know Stephen King?” and “Where do you get your ideas?” what’s the most annoying question that keeps popping up?

TTDoesn’t annoy me at all, but it’s the one that keeps popping up: When is the next book coming out?

CDSo, Mr. Tessier, when’s the next book coming out.

TTMy new collection of short stories is almost ready, though I still haven’t settled on a title for it. And I’m well into a new novel, with the working title of The Banshee. As soon as they’re ready to go, they’ll go, and I post news about all upcoming publications at www.thomastessier.com

CDA lot of your work contains intense sexual relationships and scenes. Do you feel that there’s a natural link between gothic fiction and erotica?

TTSex is an integral part of a character’s makeup, so it seems like something you can’t avoid dealing with in longer stories and novels, and is often a window with a deep view into what drives or at least influences their feelings and actions. I do love stories of seduction, temptation and/or obsession, situations that create great tension and conflict within a character. It’s almost impossible to write about those things without taking into account the sexual element in them.

CDIt seems you often have men who are somewhat manipulated by their intense physical relationships with exotic women. Finishing Touches and Father Panic’s Opera Macabre come to mind. Do these relationships serve as a plot device for you, or is there something deeper there that you are saying?

TTIntense relationships are fascinating to me. It probably goes back to my love of Strindberg’s chamber plays, where everything is in those moments of “thunder and lightning.” Cut to the quick, where the blood pounds. Love and lust can so easily give rise to unbearable emotions and extreme actions. “Exotic” to me just means someone or something a little different from the expected, the everyday. That difference is part of the allure and challenge that draw Tom Sutherland to Lena in Finishing Touches and Neil O’Netty to Marisa in Father Panic’s Opera Macabre.

CDYou also seem to have many characters, both in novels and short stories, who have no family ties—never married/divorced/widowed men with estranged children and parents. What do you find so interesting about these characters that returns you to their kind?

TTTheir aloneness. A person alone in this world is always a story. The obvious thing to think about someone alone is that such a life must be sad, melancholy, unfulfilled. And that would probably be true most of the time, but it can also be very scary. Jeff, in Rapture, is a highly successful businessman who has no personal life that most of us would recognize. He is empty, and his aloneness has catastrophic effects on the lives of others.

CDYou’ve been writing in the genre for parts of four decades. Upon reflection, what do you see as the most significant impacts on horror fiction in that time?

TTThings happening in the everyday world, the pace of change, technology, terrorism, war and its endless ripple effects, the haunting fear that one way or another we could blow this whole thing—civilized human life. The relentless capacity people have both to create and to destroy.

CDRelated to that question, how do you see the health of the genre today, and going forward?

TTI’ve been saying for years now that we’re enjoying a new Golden Age in horror, there are so many very good writers at work. Even when the horror market tanked for a while, the good writers kept writing, it was the bandwagoneers who jumped. Horror will last because it is lasting.

CDDo the trends, the valleys and peaks of the genre’s popularity and validity, affect how you write in any way?

TTNo, I just try to write the story I want to write and that wants to be written by me. The two don’t always agree, but that’s the only way I know how to try.

CDWhere do you see yourself in five years? Are there any projects that you’ve always meant to get to, but haven’t? Is there anything left writing-wise that you want to accomplish?

TTStill alive, here in Connecticut, I hope! Writing-wise, the next novel, the next short story, that’s it. They’re hard enough.

CDSpeaking of “hard enough,” has there been one particular project that you struggled with more than the others? If so, what do you think of the final result of that work?

TTFinishing Touches I wrote Part One, then drew a blank for about 6 months, and I almost gave up on it. I have a lot of false starts. But then, it kicked in and ran away with me and I finished it very quickly. Same kind of thing with Fog Heart, which also suffered a protracted birthing. I think they’re both the novels they were meant to be, and I still feel pretty good about them.

CDWhat actually scares Thomas Tessier? Do your personal fears ever affect your writing?

TTBad things happening to family and loved ones—I have the same ordinary, everyday fears that most people have. I tried to get at them obliquely in Phantom, but I haven’t been drawn to that kind of child-at-risk story again. Besides, other people do those stories much better.

CDSo, is there a personal line for you on the types of horrors you’ll write about? If so, what would be going too far or hitting too close to home?

TTIt’s not a matter of personal lines, going too far or hitting too close to home. I just consider my characters and their stories as they come along, and either I’m pulled into them, their lives and situations, and I start writing about them, or else I set them aside. One thing I will not do is disguise someone I know as a character in a story. I don’t write about people I know.

CDMy opinion is, your greatest strength in writing is you have impeccable timing. You always know the perfect time to throw in the most bizarre twist and keep the reader going. Do you have a specific technique for this, or is it all by feel?

TTIntuitive, almost all by feel. I do jot down a lot of notes—lines or images I don’t want to forget, factual details about a character or a place, a snatch of dialogue. And I usually have a pretty good idea of how a story is going to unfold when I start it. But I am too undisciplined to write to an outline, to work it all out in advance. I had no clue how Finishing Touches was going to end until I wrote the last section. I love it when unplanned, unexpected turns develop in the writing process. I’m not saying that’s the smartest way to write a novel, it almost certainly isn’t. But I enjoy it more that way. I like to feel that I know about half of what is going on when I start, and that it’s up to me to uncover the other half. But you can burn some time when the other half doesn’t pan out.

CDDoes this method ever backfire on you? Have you ever had to completely rewrite an ending or change significant parts of earlier passages to make an ending fit to the point that it changed the original vision you had for the book?

TTYes, it backfires, and you have to live with it and adjust. I’ve thrown away work on stories and novels that seemed good starting out, but I just could never get a grip on—I wish I was smarter and better at this. And to be honest, I don’t actually throw anything away, I just file it away. A year or two later, you may dig out a story and see it in an entirely different way—and if you’re lucky, you see it the way it wants to go, not the way you originally thought it should go.

CDAnother thing I keep reading is how rarely you visit the short story form. Yet you have one collection, Ghost Music and Other Tales, and are planning another. Can you talk about what your short stories have meant to your career? Any insights on what your upcoming collection will be like?

TTI enjoy working on short stories and novellas more than the long form. It’s more challenging in that every word matters. The new collection will be more tales of passion, cruelty and hauntings, a mix of stories that appeared in magazines or anthologies along with several that have not previously been published anywhere.

CDCan you compare the challenge of writing with short story restrictions to the challenges a novel presents for you?

TTEvery word counts in a short story, I can’t say that too many times. You have a little more leeway in a novel, where excess doesn’t necessarily ruin everything that you are trying to create. A wrong word, phrase or sentence can ruin or at least mar a short story.

CDOf your short stories, are there any that still particularly resonate with you, and, if so, why do you still feel more attached to those particular stories?

TT“Blanca,” “I Remember Me” and especially “Nocturne.” Trying to catch a whiff of the master, Robert Aickman.

CDYour story “The Woman in the Club Car” appears in this issue. Could you talk a little about the process of writing this one? Was there a particular goal or theme you were trying to capture?

TTI never have a “goal or theme” in mind when I start writing a story. It’s usually an image, a character, a situation that I want to explore. Years ago, my friend Dennis Ferado gave me an anthology of railroad horror stories. I’ve loved trains since childhood, and in high school I preferred the train to the bus for the 5-mile journey between Naugatuck and Waterbury. So, I wanted to write a train story for some time, it just took me a while to find it.

CDYour most recent original novel, Wicked Things, is your first in several years. What was the writing process like for this particular book, and is there a reason you space out your novels over such lengthy periods?

TTI don’t space them out on purpose! I’m a poor career role model. I’m a chronic self-doubter, I start stories, stop, start others, go back, start over. I wish I was smarter about all of this. Smarter, and more efficient. It was like that with Wicked Things. I set it aside for a long time, but couldn’t let it go. I loved the idea of taking an apparently routine investigation of possible criminal activity and turning it into a confrontation between faith and disbelief. In the back of my head I saw it as a kind of Wicker Man story, where reason, rationality and order are destroyed by those of faith—faith requires no other explanation or resolution than itself, belief. This is still, sadly, very much the world we live in, both at home and abroad.

CDThe newest book contains some religious cult references. The Fates also explored this issue, and cults are hinted at some in Father Panic’s Opera Macabre. What keeps drawing you to write about these entities?

TTGroup mentalities and crowd psychology are fascinating. As in sexual fantasy, there is a line people cross, where they surrender part of themselves in order to realize some other, truer and greater fulfillment, however base or specious it might be. Horror fiction is meant to be out there on the borderline—any borderline.

CDThe ending of Wicked Things is not one of the neat, ties-everything-up-with-a-pretty-bow type of endings. When you made the decision to end it like you did, what was the thinking behind that? Did you have any alternative endings in mind?

TTNo, I never had any alternative endings in mind. I actually thought I had provided almost too much information and explanation about how and why Jack Carlson arrives at the predicament he finds himself in, since he dwells on and ponders all the likely reasons at some considerable length. Life constantly challenges or defies our expectations and sense of rationality and fiction often does exactly the same thing. So, perhaps the ending mirrors the ending, for characters and readers alike.

CDWicked Things, an upcoming novel and several re-releases were issued by the Leisure line. What has your recent relationship with Leisure meant for your career?

TTI’m very happy with Leisure and my editor, Don D’Auria. I’m very glad to have my previous novels back in print, and I like the way they’re presenting and marketing my books.

CDThe most recent re-release was Nightwalker. It contained a companion novella, The Dreams of Dr. Ladybank. While much of your work contains very visceral violence, the novella more consistently depicted violent acts. The scene in chapter one when Tony’s exorcising the Pied Piper is particularly cringe inducing. Was there a conscious effort to push the envelope with this one? On the opposing side, do you ever have to cut back on certain scenes’ tones to fit the particular piece?

TTIt goes with the territory that you will probably offend some people by going too far, and some other people for not going far enough. In Father Panic’s Opera Macabre, I tried very hard to be faithful to history and also the understandable sensitivities of people to the Holocaust and its victims, but I still caught some flak. Again, I don’t think in terms of pushing the envelope, goals or themes. Just, what works, what’s true and right for the characters in this particular setting and situation in a story.

CDYou’ve also had a fair amount of work, both new and reissues, being published by smaller, more specialized presses—Millipede and Cemetery Dance come to mind. What are the advantages and disadvantages of working with mass market publishers versus the specialty presses?

TTMy experience has been that they both can work very well together in bringing your books to readers. In the last twenty years, small presses—not just in the horror genre—have established themselves as a force in the marketplace, a bit like the indies in the music business. For the writer, it is obviously an advantage if you can work both sides of the street at the same time.

CDAbout the current novel you’re working on, what can readers expect from it, and is there a timeline you have for completing it?

TTThe Banshee takes a dear old icon from legend and lore, and tries to see it in a very new way in a contemporary setting—not unlike what I attempted to do with the werewolf in The Nightwalker. It has nothing to do with Ireland, though, and is set here in Connecticut.

CDAre there any other projects in the near future that the Tessier fan can look forward to?

TTThe new novel, the new collection of stories, and who knows what else may turn up in print in the meantime?