TOD A06 Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Never Touch the Record

In this archival podcast Scott Nicolay interviews Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of Certain Dark Things and Signal to Noise. It originally aired on July 27, 2015. This broadcast also includes Bonus New Content featuring a follow-up interview with Silvia and Gabino Iglesias (LitReactor, Zero Saints) reviews Certain Dark Things.

Please join us in Atlanta on March 25 for The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird. And again we welcome our first show sponsor, Tanis Podcast (0:0:36 and 1:42:30). Thank you, Bob Pastorella!

Show Notes

(0:01:05) Silvia Moreno-Garcia discusses her transition from short fiction to her novel Signal to Noise, the appeal of the short standalone novel, how growing up in Mexico City has influenced her writing and the importance of place, setting, and neighborhood in developing her narrative. The conversation also includes her then-upcoming second novel Certain Dark Things, an urban fantasy about Mexican drug-dealing narco vampires (an expansion of her short story “Puddle of Blood”) which she characterizes as “the least romantic vampire romance” and a love letter to the Novela Negra, a form of crime noir in Spanish speaking countries. Silvia also talks about how spec-lit is different in Spanish-speaking countries including its social power as a literary mode to take on political issues (similar to Russian SF&F, Orwell, or Huxley), optimistic vs pessimistic/realist spec-lit and the disturbing futures of Mexico and Canada, why you should never touch the record that she’s playing, growing up in radio stations, the importance of the name Vincent, her master’s thesis on women and eugenics in H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction, Erskine Caldwell and “The Dunwich Horror,” C.L. Moore and her mastery of the Weird tale, female protagonists, her other projects including first all-women Lovecraft-inspired anthology She Walks in Shadows, her work as editor/publisher of Innsmouth Free Press, the importance of the spec-lit small press, why people should read more women writers including Livia Llewellyn, Angela Slatter, Molly Tanzer and Carmen Maria Machado, and her then-upcoming guest of honor plans at NecronomiCon August 20-23, 2015 in Providence, RI.

Bonus New Content: Silvia Moreno-Garcia Returns & Gabino Iglesias Reviews Certain Dark Things

(0:59:46) In an exclusive new segment, Silvia Moreno-Garcia returns to talk about Certain Dark Things (released in October 2016) and preview her next two novels including The Beautiful Ones (upcoming October 2017), which she describes as “a novel of manners with fantasy elements,” and a 1920s urban fantasy where Mayan gods are real which is currently with her agent. She also talks about completing her master’s thesis and the need for more scholarship on Weird writers, the positive critical response to She Walks in Shadows which won the 2016 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, the strange ideas some people have about women writing Weird fiction, her recent gig co-editing The Dark magazine and the excitement of finding new voices such as Suyi Davies Okungbowa and Sara Saab, co-editing the Jewish Mexican Literary Review, current Weird times, Weird Canadian places, and more.

(1:31:39)This week’s episode closes with a review of Certain Dark Things by Gabino Iglesias (LitReactor, Zero Saints).