{"id":16067,"date":"2021-10-11T07:00:04","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/?p=16067"},"modified":"2021-10-04T15:18:34","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T19:18:34","slug":"interview-stephen-graham-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/interview-stephen-graham-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cemetery Dance Interview: Stephen Graham Jones’s Heart is a Chainsaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Stephen Graham Jones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stephen Graham Jones is to slashers what peanut butter is to jelly. Separately they are still awesome, but together they are perfection. With the popularity of the genre on the rise again due to movies such as <\/span>Fear Street<\/span><\/i> and the new <\/span>Halloween Kills<\/span><\/i>, and books from powerhouses such as Grady Hendrix, I got to sit down to chat with Stephen about his own latest release, My <\/span>Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

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(Interview conducted by Janine Pipe<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/em> has been described by some as “The Horror Novel of the Year”\u00a0<\/strong>but also a Slasher History 101. So, getting back to the very basics, why a slasher story and why in this particular format?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"coverThe slasher never goes out of style. Just, like in the late eighties, sometimes it gets kind of tired, has to lie down for a while, let someone like Hannibal Lecter wear the mask for a few years. But it always comes back. That\u2019s kind of why we love them. And, right now, 2021, the slasher is showing zero signs of fatigue. <\/span>Halloween<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Candyman<\/span><\/i> are back, <\/span>Fear Street<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Freaky<\/span><\/i> are lighting the world up, we\u2019ve got <\/span>Chucky<\/span><\/i> coming to television, and <\/span>Slasher<\/span><\/i>\u2019s already there . . . it\u2019s a good time to be a slasher fan. And not just at the cineplex, or streaming. The bookshelf is hopping, too. From Grady Hendrix\u2019s <\/span>The Final Girl Support Group, <\/span><\/i>Gina Wohlsdorf\u2019s <\/span>Security<\/span><\/i>, and Adam Cesare\u2019s <\/span>Clown in a Cornfield<\/span><\/i> from the big five to, at the indie end, Ivy Tholen\u2019s <\/span>Tastes Like Candy<\/span><\/i> and Hailey Piper\u2019s <\/span>Benny Rose the Cannibal King<\/span><\/i>, there\u2019s so many slashers to page through, many of them taking big, necessary chances — Paul Michael Anderson\u2019s <\/span>Standalone<\/span><\/i>, say, or Jessica Guess\u2019s <\/span>Cirque Berserk<\/span><\/i>. And don\u2019t forget comic books: <\/span>Hack\/Slash<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Nailbiter<\/span><\/i>. We\u2019ve come a long way since Carol Clover\u2019s <\/span>Men, Women, and Chainsaws<\/span><\/i>, and there\u2019s still a lot more future to carve through, too. And we\u2019ve got just the machete, just the right — ahem — chainsaw.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for why <\/span>I<\/span><\/i> did a slasher, with <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>, the easy answer is that you write what you want to read, right? Slashers are my happy place. They warm my heart. I\u2019m really drawn to their brutally fair world, where every wrong is punished, with interest. And, really, I think that\u2019s why this is kind of a slasher moment we\u2019re in. For a few years now, we\u2019ve been seeing people on the news and out in the world doing terrible stuff and then just shrugging, staring us down about it, and walking away, unpunished. Seeing that day after day on the twenty-four hours news cycle we\u2019re all swirling in, it\u2019s only natural that we might start to have certain justice fantasies of our own. Just for a couple hours, please, or a few hundred pages. It feels good to move through a world where wrongs are righted, and on the end of a machete. I mean, in <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>, I guess it\u2019s no accident that it\u2019s some of those entitled, Teflon people who are moving into Proofrock, Idaho, and maybe starting a whole new slasher cycle. It\u2019s been quiet there for fifty years now. But, it\u2019ll soon be quiet no more.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As for the format of <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw — <\/span><\/i>those \u201cSlasher 101\u201d extra-credit papers Jade, the main character, writes to try to pass her high school history class . . . I felt like we needed to look inside her head, see her thinking, hear her voice uninflected by conversational pressure and norms. We needed Jade, undiluted. Not that she\u2019s ever<\/span> that<\/span><\/i> diluted, don\u2019t get me wrong. Jade\u2019s the kind of pure that we all maybe wish we were. Except, of course, that purity is maybe more a response — if she keeps looking straight ahead and only ahead, tightly focused on the slasher and all its wonderful trivia, then she doesn\u2019t have to look to either side. Where she might catch a reflection of herself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your writing has been labeled as “conversational,” with some people finding this puts them at ease, whilst others, used to a more traditional voice, claim to struggle. Was this style planned or does it just come naturally?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah, I hear people say this a lot, and I guess that I don\u2019t understand it, that must mean that it just comes naturally to me? It\u2019s the only way I know to write. And, it\u2019s not intentional, either. I just . . . I mean — it\u2019s a trick to explain, right? So, to me, writing fiction isn\u2019t about moving chess pieces around a storyboard. I\u2019m not above it like that. I\u2019m <\/span>in<\/span><\/i> it. I hear about actors employing method-acting techniques to get their character right, and I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s how I write, too. When I\u2019m writing Jade in <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>, I\u2019m not saying \u201cWhat should she do next?\u201d, I\u2019m in her actual combat boots in my head, and what I\u2019m asking is, \u201cWhat will <\/span>I<\/span><\/i> do next?\u201d This is different from \u201cWhat <\/span>would<\/span><\/i> I do, if I were her?\u201d That subjunctive isn\u2019t there, for me. Which isn\u2019t comfortable, or convenient. Inhabiting a character burns you up. Or, it burns me up, anyway. I lose the line between story and not-story. People always ask why I write fast, and my best answer to that is that I\u2019m racing to get back to a place I know is real. Maybe if I wrote romance, then I could enjoy being in that story space more, right? But I write horror. I go to the dark places, where the rules don\u2019t hold, where the darkness is clacking with teeth. And, man, I do not want to have to fall asleep there. So I race, race, race, always running for that light at the end of that story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Too, though, with the \u201cconversational\u201d tone, voice, delivery . . . maybe it has something to do with coordinating conjunctions? I suspect that\u2019s a part of it. There\u2019s a rhythm to them that you can employ, or lean on, that can make the prose kind of like a slip \u2019n slide, which is great fun if you run and jump and give yourself to it, but can throw you if you try to walk it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, whatever or however, I\u2019m of course thrilled that people call it \u201cconversational.\u201d Because, I mean, that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing — I\u2019m speaking to them, I\u2019m sitting across the campfire just mumbling on and on, and probably quieter and quieter, so they have to draw closer and closer to hear. And, when you draw close, that\u2019s when I can maybe do a proper scare. Or, we can be scared together, anyway — that\u2019s usually how it goes, I think. The same way I can\u2019t tell jokes, because I always start laughing, I also get fundamentally scared each time I\u2019m writing horror.<\/span><\/p>\n

Slashers for me, in both book and movie form, are riddled with nostalgia whether set\/made in the ’80s or brand new. There is something just comfortable and cozy about their blatant use of tropes and formulaic structure. But you didn\u2019t do that with Chainsaw<\/em> — why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The trick with the slasher audience is that it\u2019s extremely savvy. A die-hard slasher fan can pick the surprise-killer out in the first few beats. Watching so many slashers has turned us all into Vladimir Propp, who broke the Russian folktale — and sort of all fairy tales — down such that, if X and Y are present in the opening, then . . . it must be <\/span>this<\/span><\/i> kind of story, where Y is going to happen at the end. It\u2019s really elegant stuff. But, with the slasher, it\u2019s not about delivering the audience the comfortable story they already know and love, it\u2019s about delivering that known and loved story in a way that\u2019s surprising, a way the audience not only wasn\u2019t expecting, but kind of couldn\u2019t have expected — and all without breaking any story rules, all without losing the audience\u2019s trust. Which is a tall, tall order.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, with <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>, the order I gave myself was the same as I get from <\/span>Scream<\/span><\/i>: do it, but do it slant. Surprise the audience, break no rules, but still deliver the goods. Which, again: this is not easy. The slasher audience is smart. And, what you\u2019ve always got to be remembering while writing a slasher is that they\u2019re smarter than <\/span>you<\/span><\/i>. What this means is that you\u2019ve got to pull some three-card monte action, and show them the \u201ctruth,\u201d but then slide it all around until they lose track, invest in another shell . . . and that\u2019s when you\u2019ve got them, at least momentarily. Or, that\u2019s what I tried to do, at least.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But, too, in kind of a larger sense, what people are expecting from a slasher story is the blood and guts, right? The jumpscares, the skinny-dipping. What this means is that they\u2019re not expecting a character-driven story. They\u2019re maybe not expecting some real emotional content.<\/span><\/p>\n

Really, now that you\u2019ve got me thinking about it, in the slasher there\u2019s the big reveal, yes, the big unmasking. But what if that mask is just the outer layer of the onion? What if you just keep peeling mask after mask off? That\u2019s kind of what I want, with <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next generation of slasher fans have hopefully been created after the recent Fear Street<\/i> series on Netflix and the books\u2019 rerelease. Do you think Chainsaw<\/em> will appeal to these newer converts to the genre or more so to those of us who grew up on the original Halloween<\/i> franchise and Scream<\/i>?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hope so, yeah. Slashers are coming at us from all sides, lately — videogames and board games, too. Whatever your medium, there\u2019s a slasher for you. Talking <\/span>Fear Street<\/span><\/i> on Netflix, I guess what I want is for the audience who was there for that to be into it enough that they go back to see Wes Craven in Leigh Janiek\u2019s opening sequence of <\/span>1994<\/span><\/i>, and then from \u201cDon\u2019t Fear the Reaper\u201d in <\/span>Scream<\/span><\/i>, they go back to Laurie Strode and her friends listening to that in <\/span>Halloween — <\/span><\/i>1978, the year of the second <\/span>Fear Street — <\/span><\/i>and, via Jamie Lee Curtis, they go back to her mom in <\/span>Psycho<\/span><\/i>, and see Norman Bates wielding that knife, scarring a generation. We all live in that scar tissue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Or? Maybe that audience doesn\u2019t want that deep dive. You can be a slasher fan starting now, with only the new stuff. You don\u2019t have to be a slasher historian to enjoy the genre, I mean. There\u2019s nothing worse than, say, somebody first discovering comic books, and being so excited about them . . . until they run into someone who disillusions them, who tells them they\u2019re not a real fan unless they\u2019ve been there since the Silver Age. You don\u2019t have to go verse and chapter in a genre just to enjoy it. Yeah, Jade does, that\u2019s where she lives and breathes, slashers are both her insulation against the cold of her loneliness <\/span>and<\/span><\/i> the goggles she uses to make sense of the world, but I truly believe that she would sit in the back of a garage while a gaggle of junior high kids are piled on a couch watching Jason and Freddy for the first time, and she wouldn\u2019t say a word. She would just press her lips together in a sort of grin, and hold her hand over heart, which is revving so high.<\/span><\/p>\n

Who would ultimately win in a battle — Michael or Jason?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I guess I\u2019d come down on Jason\u2019s side. He\u2019s taken more damage than Michael, and gotten up each time. Or, after the sixth installment, when the lightning Frankensteins him back to life, then . . . all bets are off, right? I feel like with Michael, as Loomis says, there\u2019s a big emptiness inside him, driving him, or maybe it\u2019s an evil — or a cult — but Jason, finally, is more justified in all he does. So he\u2019s got that powering him. Jason\u2019s got a legitimate beef with all camp counselors. And that hockey mask obscures his vision enough that, to him, anyone young and at Crystal Lake, they\u2019re either camp counselors, or they\u2019re future camp counselors. Or, they\u2019re close enough. Jason doesn\u2019t want to take any chances, right? You never know when one of those kids might reach into their bag, come out with a yellow camp counselor shirt . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Who is your favorite Final Girl? (Mine is Sidney Prescott)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Kind of depends if we\u2019re locking the Final Girl into the slasher or not. Me, I think the Final Girl is the silver bullet to the slasher-as-werewolf, if that makes sense. She\u2019s the antidote, the cap on this cycle of violence. She\u2019s the slasher\u2019s natural opposite. If the slasher is a cobra, she\u2019s the mongoose — scrappy, overmatched, but, man, if she gets her teeth in you . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

So, if the Final Girl can exist outside of the slasher? Then Ellen Ripley, she\u2019s bad-ass enough for six Final Girls. And Erin from <\/span>You\u2019re Next<\/span><\/i>, man. She\u2019s Slim in Jim Croce\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Mess Around with Jim\u201d song. She\u2019ll cut every part of you up except the soles of your feet. And she\u2019ll maybe use a blender to do it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But, keeping it strictly to slashers — which is what I kind of prefer — yeah, the <\/span>Scream<\/span><\/i> franchise\u2019s Sidney Prescott is where I usually land. But, man, Jess Bradford, from <\/span>Black Christmas<\/span><\/i>? Her and Laurie Strode are the model for all the Final Girls to come, including Connie from <\/span>Just Before Dawn — <\/span><\/i>Jade\u2019s favorite. And Connie is so, so bad, so cool. Connie <\/span>becomes<\/span><\/i> the weapon. It\u2019s the most magical transformation. But, finally? I think my vote goes to Nancy from <\/span>A Nightmare in Elm Street<\/span><\/i>. What I like about Nancy is how vigilant she is, how resourceful, and how she uses her mind to beat Freddy, not her muscles. And that\u2019s how you really beat a slasher. It\u2019s all about fighting through the nightmare, insisting on your own life, and then, like Jade, reaching up for the light.<\/span><\/p>\n

You are now getting blurbs from major publications, such as TIME Magazine<\/em>, and big-time players like Brian Keene, Christopher Golden and Alma Katsu. How does that feel and who would be the ultimate name to see on the front of one of your books?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, man. Yeah, it\u2019s so amazing, getting support from all my heroes. Don\u2019t know how I\u2019ve gotten so lucky. It\u2019s like I\u2019m falling through a dream. One more hero, for me — which would feel like a circle, closing — would be Kevin Williamson. He doesn\u2019t even have to say anything nice. Really, it could just be a screenshot of the email confirmation he got from ordering <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>. With his address and particulars fuzzed out, of course. Because he needs his own time. How else are we going to get more slashers from him, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

Can you tell us what\u2019s next for you? Any news, planned releases etc.?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"coverNot sure what I can say, but . . . I\u2019m in edits for the sequel to <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>, out next summer. Or, this summer. \u201cSummer 2022\u201d — I never know how to navigate the next\/this thing. And I think I\u2019ve got a haunted house novel out before then, maybe? And — not sure when this interview is coming out — nine days from when I\u2019m writing this, my graphic novel <\/span>Memorial Ride<\/span><\/i> is out. (Editor’s Note: Per Amazon.com, Memorial Ride<\/em><\/a> comes out on October 15.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Where can people find you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Search up my whole name, the engine\u2019ll spit me back up. But, my site: demontheory.net<\/a>. Over on Twitter, I\u2019m @SGJ72<\/a>. Or, the best place to find me? Your local bookstore. Thanks. <\/span><\/p>\n

Great talking with you, and <\/span>Cemetery Dance<\/span><\/i>. This is where my first horror story was published<\/a>, did you know? 2006, I think it was. And, that horror story, \u201cRaphael,\u201d is right at the center of <\/span>My Heart is a Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>. Without that story, there\u2019s never any <\/span>Chainsaw<\/span><\/i>. So, thanks <\/span>Cemetery Dance<\/span><\/i>. You\u2019ve been here since my beginning. And? You\u2019ve been here since a lot of our beginnings, really.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trading in a police badge and then classroom, Janine Pipe is a full-time Splatterpunk Award-nominated writer, whilst also being an awesome mum, wife and Disney addict. Influenced by the works of King from a young age, she likes to shock readers with violence and scare them with monsters \u2014 both mythical and man-made. When she\u2019s not killing people off, she likes to chew the fat with other authors, reviewing books for Scream Magazine, Cemetery Dance and Horror DNA, and conducting interviews on booktube. You\u2019ll likely find her devouring work by Glenn Rolfe, Hunter Shea and Tim Meyer. Her biggest fan, beta reader, editor and financier is her loving husband.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Graham Jones is to slashers what peanut butter is to jelly. Separately they are still awesome, but together they are perfection. With the popularity of the genre on the rise again due to movies such as Fear Street and the new Halloween Kills, and books from powerhouses such as Grady Hendrix, I got to … Continue Reading! “The Cemetery Dance Interview: Stephen Graham Jones’s Heart is a Chainsaw”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[307,2395,2339,692],"class_list":["post-16067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interviews","tag-interviews","tag-janine-pipe","tag-my-heart-is-a-chainsaw","tag-stephen-graham-jones"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Cemetery Dance Interview: Stephen Graham Jones's Heart is a Chainsaw - 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