TOD 070 David Surface: Finding Hope in Terrible Things

In this podcast Anya Martin interviews David Surface about his debut collection Terrible Things (Black Shuck Books). The interview was recorded on Tuesday May 5, 2020.

Show Notes

In this podcast Anya Martin interviews David Surface about his debut collection Terrible Things (Black Shuck Books) beginning with his quarantine experience and then shifting to the origins and evolution of Terrible Things, including a key role played by Lynda E. Rucker whose horror writing blows David’s mind and ultimately would write the book’s intro, the pleasure of working with editor/publisher Steve J. Shaw, how he chose which stories to include, David’s talent for the Weird ending, domestic horror and a different perspective on hope, and author Mary Rickert (M. Rickert) who wrote the only two horror stories that made him cry. The conversation then delves deep into the stories in the collection, carefully trying to avoid major spoilers. Topics covered include working with editor Michael Kelly to nail the end of the title story which originally appeared in Shadows and Tall Trees, capturing the relationship between a good teacher and students via a ‘ghost story’, the traumatizing effect of landscape, the short distance between art scene and crime scene in Lower East Side NYC, his proclivity to pen stories about ‘people driving at night and weird stuff happens’, the Weirdness of 16mm documentary film, memories than haunt, why sometimes you need to just write ‘a story where you can really see the monsters’, Halloween, his first stab at a novelette, the ‘wrong kind of nothing’, and more. David reads from his story ‘Writings Found in a Red Notebook’ (0:57:53) and concludes with what’s next in his writing including a new novel collaboration with his wife Julia Rust, his ‘One Good Story’ column in Black Static Magazine, and his recommended contemporary Weird authors Christopher Barzak, Patricia Eakins, Laura Mauro, and Gary McMahon.

The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird is the only annual conference centered around contemporary Weird fiction. Health-safety allowing, the fourth annual symposium will be held August 14-15, 2020 at Silver Scream FX Lab and Hotel Indigo-College Park. Find out more at TheOuterDark.org.