An Interview with Kaaron Warren

Since selling her first story in 1993, Kaaron Warren has had her work appear in a variety of publications, including, Paper Cities, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2007, Fantasy Magazine, Aurealis, and AGOG! She has stories upcoming in Canterbury 2100, Ellen Datlow’s Poe Anthology, and Datlow and Nick Mamatas’s Haunted Legends anthology. Her story, “A Positive,” won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Short Story of 1998. An Australian, she currently lives in the Fiji Islands with her husband and two children.

Do you have a set schedule or do you write when the mood strikes you?

While I’m in Fiji I have a strict schedule. Ever since I had the kids, I’ve trained myself to write when the opportunity presents itself, rather than when inspiration does. It has to be that way or else I’d go crazy. So I write in the mornings, when the kids are at school. They catch the bus just after seven, and my husband leaves for work at eight, so I sit down to work then. I work for three hours, then have a break, then perhaps another couple of hours depending on what I’m working on. I tend to use my laptop out in the family room, because if I log onto the Internet, I don’t have the self-control to ignore emails and blogs!

Ideas and notes I scribble down at any time. Three am or three pm. But the graft I do in the mornings.

Someone recently commented that he wanted to be the kind of writer who sits in a coffee shop when the mood takes him and writes a novel. That won’t work for me! I have to write when I have the free time to do it. It means I don’t get writer’s block, though. If I’m stuck on something, I move on and work on something else.

How would you describe your writing style?

I find it really hard to assess myself. People say I have a particular style; it could be my usage of semicolons they mean! I suppose I write odd stories, and my style is a little odd as well. I will leave words out others may like to put in, and I’m usually sparse on description because I like to use as few words as possible for that.

Do you have a favorite story or one you’d specifically like to talk about?

One story I don’t often talk about is “Bone-Dog.” I sold this story to Cat Sparks, a highly respected Australian writer and editor for her AGOG! series. She picked the story from her slush pile and says she bought the story from the first paragraph:

In the porn industry, models don’t usually get to choose the venue for photo shoots. I guess “Fat Slits” has to be a bit more flexible than other magazines; some of us just can’t get too far from home. They agreed to send the photographer to me, agreed to my price; their attention brought tears to my eyes.

The character was locked in an apartment with her babysister when she was five. Her mother never returned, and what happened to the children, and how this affects the protagonist’s life, is the story.

With many of my stories, I let the subconscious rise. In the moment before sleep, my thoughts become random, odd, but still strangely logical. This is where the elements of a story sometimes pull together. With “Bone-Dog” I had the image of a baby’s skeleton, crawling along the ground.

I researched bones and x-rays for this one. I think it’s one of my most disturbing stories.

I recently read your story, “His Lipstick Minx,” and found it to be quite different. For those who haven’t read it, it’s about male prostitutes on what I assume is a military base, and each man has his own genetically stunted female minx, small enough to sit on his shoulder, to apply his lipstick for the evening. What was the inspiration behind this story?

“His Lipstick Minx” was inspired by a story I read in The Guardian Weekly newspaper, the source of many ideas and snippets. I read about an Indonesian woman who was arrested at a bus stop in Tangerang and charged as a prostitute because she had lipstick in her purse. She spent three days in jail before her husband was contacted. He came with a wedding certificate to prove she was a married woman, then she was released into his custody.

I didn’t want to write her story; leave that to the journalists. I knew the story had to be about constraint, misogyny, and about the demonisation of the sex industry.

Often when I’m writing, different elements come into play.

The image of the Lipstick Minx came to me full-formed. I think it was inspired by film clips I’d seen of Asian prostitutes; petite women with high heels, looking like dolls. Often on the arms of Western men twice their size.

I also stumbled across a forum of men who work on oil rigs. I was fascinated by the intense masculinity of them, their voices, and the way they lived, helped me set the scene. Their daily routines were like that of the armed forces, I thought.

“His Lipstick Minx” is a weird story. Once the image came of men having their lips painted by tiny women, it had to be weird.

I wrote it for an anthology called Worker’s Paradise from Ticonderoga Publications. The editors wanted to put together a response to the Australian Government of the time, who seemed to be moving down a path whereby workers’ rights were slowly eroding. Our Government has changed, but the anthology is still quite relevant, I feel.

I knew I wanted to give readers a physical response. I wanted them to taste the lipstick.

I’ve found your stories to be particularly strong in characterization, so this aspect of storytelling seems important to you. What are your thoughts on this?

I like characters to be believable, regardless of the situation they are in. I like to step into their heads and draw the reader there, too. One of my favourite authors is the English playwright, Allan Bennet. His Talking Heads series is remarkable in that it reveals each character so completely in a 30-minute piece. These people are fully formed, so the stories are moving.

To me, character drives story. When I first started out, I used the screenplay method of creating back story for characters. This helped me figured out which direction a story would go in, and also helped develop consistency and relationships. I do it more instinctively now, but I still think it’s important to have believability and consistency.

What is it about horror fiction that appeals to you most?

Horror fiction can take you anywhere. There are no limits to the stories you can tell. I also find it a good way to comment on the things in society that disturb me.

An independent film of your award-winning short story, “A-Positive,” is being produced in Australia. What can you tell us about that?

BearCage Productions producer Michael Tear read the story in my collection and asked if I’d be interested in seeing it turned into a short film. I helped develop the script, discovering in the process what a different language screenwriting is. A lot of my stories have internal thoughts, which are hard to express on the screen. The story is a nasty one, inspired by news stories I’d read of parents having a second child in order to provide a donor for a sick first child. The casting call has gone out, so we’re getting close!

It’s a long process, though. I won’t be in Canberra for the filming, which is probably a blessing for the film company!

The film has two directors: Serge Ou, whose vision and creativity shows in all his work, and Chris Bamford, who has such a deep understanding and connection to the story that he’s brought many layers to it. I can’t wait to see the result.

You’ve lived in the Fiji Islands for 18 months now. Why did you move there and how has it influenced or affected your fiction?

We’re here for a total of three years, as expats, working with the Australian Government. Life in Fiji is different from life in Australia. It’s a developing nation, so the water and electricity don’t always work. The taxis and buses spew smoke and are very old. We just had a terrible bus accident here. It set on fire and there is no exit at the back of the bus, so people died.

It’s a wonderful experience, apart from those things. Living for three years in a different country allows you to feel part of that country, so much so that at the recent Olympics we barracked for Fiji and Australia. It’s a lush, green place, very different from most of the Australia I know. English is the official language, but most people use it as their second language. The indigenous Fijians speak Bau Fijian plus their own dialects, and the Indo-Fijians speak Hindi.

I write a lot about Fiji on my blog: kaaronwarren.livejournal.com

I’ve been very inspired here. My novel Walking the Tree, which I began in Australia, has more depth because of living on this island. Other stories about Fiji are: “Cooling the Crows,” inspired by a pile of vegetative old cars, which was in “In Bad Dreams,” “Ghost Jail,” inspired by some derelict Government flats, which was in the anthology 2012, and “That Girl,” inspired by the local psychiatric hospital, which, I’m happy to announce, will appear in Haunted Legends, edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas.

What’s ahead for you? Aspirations? Goals?

I’m making the most of my time here. Our situation means that I don’t need to work, so I figure this is my time to write. I’m treating it seriously, like a real job.

Aspirations: sell three novels and another collection of short stories.

Goals: finish new novel, The Washerwomen, and four commissioned short stories.

I also have many more story ideas ticking away. I want to continue to learn from life, meet new people, and enjoy their stories.