An Interview with Joe Vaz

An eerie glow has crept across South Africa’s bookshelves with the publication of a quarterly short fiction magazine specialising in horror and science fiction—the first of its kind in South Africa.

I try never to judge a book by its cover. I really do. But the editor of Something Wicked walked straight past me when we first met for an interview. I was still suspiciously eyeing the skinny guy in black at the corner table when my interviewee spotted the awesome artwork on the cover of his own publication (strategically placed next to my coffee) and doubled back. Much like the publication itself, Joe Vaz was not what I was expecting. He started in by telling me he was terrified of journalists ’till he became one (this from the publisher of a horror magazine). The actor-turned-director-turned-fearless-publisher is a funny guy—just your not-so-average Joe.

How did you become a publisher?

By mistake. I have that dangerous kind of brain that seeks challenges whenever it’s not busy. If I sit around for week without being busy, I start looking to try something I’ve never done before. About two years ago I found myself getting restless. I think I became the editor of Something Wicked the same way most editors of independent short fiction magazines get the job—I started the magazine.

What prompted you to start a science fiction and horror magazine?

There are so many different reasons but at its core I felt the South African market was missing out on a century-old tradition of short story magazines, (dating back to the late 1800s with The Strand Magazine, I think it was). Short story mags have always been the seedbeds of future alternative genre authors and I felt South Africa deserved to have its own.

I was lucky enough to have grown up on short stories, whether it was Roald Dahl, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, or a random issue of Interzone, Asimov’s, or Analog found by accident in some out of the way secondhand bookstore, and I felt that the current generation of South African writers didn’t have this. None of these great mags are distributed down here—you can pick them up online or by having a subscription, but you’re not going to accidentally come across them in a bookstore.

So I was reading through an old Interzone magazine that I’d purchased in London a couple of years earlier, and as I was going through it, I was reminded of how frustrating it was when I was a kid that we didn’t have a similar mag in South Africa. In true 3 am fashion, I thought to myself, “hey… why don’t I start a magazine?”

So you became a publisher?

So I became a publisher, armed with six-year-old hand-me-down design software and four or five issues of Absolute Magnitude, Interzone, Cemetery Dance, and Analog as a reference.

Kind of a steep learning curve…

It was practically vertical. You have to understand that I am a full-time actor—it is pretty much the only job I’ve actually been trained to do. I’ve been doing it for 15 years and so to suddenly become a publisher/editor was a helluva ride, especially coupled with a rather badly timed gig that sent me to Namibia for three weeks one month before going to print on our first issue, (a tradition which seems to continue to this day—as I always seem to get rather good gigs just before deadline).

How did you cope with your lack of experience as an editor?

Like anything, a lot depends on getting the right people together to support the project. What I brought to Something Wicked was the concept, the drive, and the initial finances. What I have is a lifelong love affair with horror literature and film, a relatively good vocabulary, and a driving passion to nurture and expose undiscovered South African talent. (Over the years I have found it infuriating how many brilliant South African creatives have entire careers that appear and disappear within a couple of years and knowledge of them never leaves our borders.)

My managing editor has a BA in English and five years’ experience as a freelance journo on publications as varied as a TV rag, a film industry trade sheet, and the occasional high-profile cover pieces for some of the bigger magazines in the country.

What that gave me was the confidence to screw up. It’s easier to face unchartered waters with a trained skipper at your side.

Was the magazine originally intended for the South African market?

It was in the first couple of issues. I’m not embarrassed to say that I wanted to give South African writers an unfair advantage, if only to counter the distinct disadvantage we had faced for so many years through sheer geographical isolation. Obviously, it is not possible to maintain a professional publication without opening up the submissions to the rest of the world sooner or later though.

It’s also important both for the writers and for the magazine itself to be judged on a level playing field with the rest of the world. It’s like being told by your grandma that you have a lovely singing voice, but until some complete stranger comes up to you and tells you can sing the hell out of Louis Armstrong, you really have no objective scale by which to measure your product.

So we’ve been very excited about getting the mag distributed in the U.S. and Canada (through ubiquitymags.com and worldwide through fictionwise.com) and having the last couple of issues reviewed in The Fix.

You need that outside perspective because it is very difficult to create in a bubble.

How have you found the response?

It’s been phenomenal. The second we got listed on Duotrope and Ralan, our submissions went through the roof. We literally quadrupled our total once the international floodgates were opened.

We’ve also been thrilled by the emails we receive from subscribers and international authors who have been consistently blown away by the artwork and general look of the magazine. We’re exceptionally proud of our artwork and with good reason—I really believe we’ve lucked out with the astounding artists who’ve come on board. We’ve even had a few authors buy the originals from the artists.

In his review of Something Wicked #6, David Hebblethwaite commented that South Africa was one of the areas on his personal map of fantastic fiction marked, “here be dragons,” because he didn’t know what else to put there. Where would you say South Africa is placed in the horror/SF literary world?

To the best of my knowledge, other than a few fantasy titles and one or two crime thrillers, I don’t think there has ever been a prominent English, South African voice in science fiction and/or horror. When I started Something Wicked I was genuinely concerned that we wouldn’t get any submissions. We started out with just South African writers and I knew I’d need at least six or seven stories per issue, and I was worried about whether I’d get that. That first issue, we received a nice batch of 40-odd stories in the first three weeks. It was a nice number but I still had no idea whether we could sustain that. Obviously, two years down the line, the answer is yes. It felt like Something Wicked suddenly gave people permission to write in this genre because for the first time there was a tangible outlet in South Africa. It’s like there was a secret underground community of writers who had been writing purely for themselves or to scare their brothers and sisters, and they were suddenly allowed to show someone their stories.

Over the last seven issues I’ve come across some excellent South African writers. The numbers aren’t huge, but hopefully with some nurturing and a few lucky breaks, South African authors can start making their way onto that map.

There has recently been an increase in local crime/thriller fiction and fantasy as well, which is also encouraging.

What is your definition of Horror?

The unexplained, the darkness beneath your bed and the eyes staring back at you from the cupboard. Horror is the power failure that comes ten minutes after the radio has announced the escape of a mental patient. It’s the thing that skitters over your foot when you go to the bathroom in the middle or the night. It is the latest single by Britney Spears. It is a telephone ringing at 4 am, because it is never good news. It is the gunshot heard three blocks away, and the peal of thunder on a sunny afternoon. It is the loss of a loved one and the fear of loss; it is anything that scares you.

What are your favourite horror influences?

I am a huge fan of books and will read anything that sits still long enough for me to attack it, but on the horror front, I would have to go with the obvious—Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Neil Gaiman. I’ve always liked intelligent, suspenseful, character-based stories, peppered with tongue-in-cheek humour. John Carpenter’s The Thing and King’s IT are examples of horror at its best, but so is The Green Mile.

I like mystery stories, anything from classic b-grade horror, alien invasions, werewolves and zombies to more sophisticated stuff, such Peter Straub’s Ghost Story.

I love classic monster movies and parodies thereof such as Planet Terror, Hot Fuzz, and Slither, and I’m also a huge fan of classic horror comics like Tales from The Crypt, Swamp Thing, and of course Sandman. It’s all horror. I particular enjoy tales of the supernatural and the unknown, but first and foremost I look for character-driven pieces. I’m a firm believer that you can put strong characters in any situation and they’ll give you a good story.

How do you think the horror genre has been affected by the reality of terrorism, wars, criminal violence, etc.? Has what scares people changed in the last 100 years?

Yes and no. At its primal root, no. We are all still scared of death, pain, loss, and a whole slew of phobias; these are primal, genetically hardwired fears. But in terms of what gets produced cinematically, there are movies released with a PG rating today that would have been rated R 20 years ago, or even banned. There are more visually grotesque images on the evening news than in the horror I grew up with. Mainstream media keeps pushing that envelope further and further. It’s no longer enough to see someone hacked to death with a chainsaw. At the same time, plot and content are often sacrificed in favour of gore. Unfortunately, a lot of that seems to be spilling over into the literary world where authors on a high after having seen SAW 16: My Neighbour Ate My Cat rush home to emulate the visceral sensory overload and tack it together with two-dimensional paper-thin characters. The visual mediums have an excuse—they are aimed at the mass-market so they often cater for the lowest common denominator. I think literature ought to take advantage of the fact that its audience is more selective and imaginative, and I really feel it’s important to protect that.

Why does short fiction matter?

It’s a good place to start. One of the most daunting things any writer faces is finishing a story. A target of two to three thousand words is more manageable than a novel. It’s a good training ground. Short fiction is a very important literary form because it trains an author to be succinct and get their point across with an economy of words. It is a lot harder to create believable characters and situations in a few thousand words than over 400 pages.

It’s also important from a point of view of starting out in the business. For someone working 9-to-5 as a banker or schoolteacher and dreaming of becoming a writer, it’s very hard to invest four years of your life in a single product when you have no idea if it will find a readership. So many great authors have started out with short fiction. It’s where they honed their craft. It’s a good place to start building a fan base and find the bite-sized confidence boost to go further, which is so important for new writers.

Do you have any advice for new writers?

Study your market. Don’t submit an erotic vampire story to a science fiction magazine. Try to get an idea of what a magazine is publishing before you submit.

You’ve heard it before, but with good reason—write what you know! That doesn’t mean if you’re a plumber you should write stories about plumbing, but it does mean that if you’re going to write a horror story, you’ll make your job a lot easier by making the protagonist a plumber. Why do you think there are so many stories about writers out there? Stephen King has practically made a career of writing about writers, The Shining, Lisey’s Story, The Tommyknockers, Salem’s Lot, Bag of Bones…do I need to go on? Implausible dialogue and factual errors can easily pull the reader out of what might otherwise be a great story; writing what you know is the easiest way to avoid that. If you think being a plumber is boring and you want to write about something else, know that you will have to do your research. Strong believable characters + good dialogue = great story. Most importantly, keep writing and support your favourite magazines—they could be your future market.