{"id":16381,"date":"2020-09-10T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T09:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bullmensfiction.com\/?p=16381"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:12:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:12:25","slug":"stephen-graham-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/the-bull-interview\/stephen-graham-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Graham Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Graham Jones writes about cars, trucks, cowboys, Indians, slashers, zombies, and werewolves as fluently and fondly as your grandma talks about the intricacies of each of her grandchildren. If you haven\u2019t read his work yet, you\u2019re in luck:\u00a0The Only Good Indians<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(Saga Press $26.99) was released last month, and his next book is due out in September. Atop that, there are twenty-five other books of his out in the world available for purchase.<\/p>\n

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\"\"DT:\u00a0The Only Good Indians<\/em>\u00a0very much falls off the page like Hemingway with a haunting (to boil it down for all readers without spoiling the story). After writing two dozen or so books, how did you arrive at haunted people over haunted houses, and personified karma over a supernatural monster for\u00a0The Only good Indians<\/em>?<\/p>\n

SGJ: My love for the slasher, man. I realized, after Mongrels<\/em>, that a big part of what made it work was that werewolves are so close to my heart. And, slashers are just as close. Before The Only Good Indians<\/em>, I\u2019d done two slasher novels, I guess\u2014Demon Theory<\/em>, The Last Final Girl<\/em>\u2014but I hadn\u2019t said even close to all I wanted to say in and with and around the slasher. So, I committed to the slasher. I wrote this one, then another, and another. But I also wrote a haunted house novel. Oh, and a slasher novella, I guess. And I guess a ghost novella. I just love all the parts of horror, but the slasher, the slasher\u2019s really special for me. I like the sense of justice in it. I like how bad deeds are punished. That\u2019s not the world we live in, but, while reading a slasher, we can pretend for a little bit…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DT: How has COVID changed your writing regimen, prolific as you are, now that leaving the house and office is largely voluntary? How is writing during a plague for an author primarily known for horror?<\/p>\n

SGJ: \u00a0Mostly what it\u2019s meant is that my hands hurt a lot less. In the before-times, I did so much writing on airplanes and in airports and at bus stops and in hotels and hotel lobbies, and just lobbies everywhere. I\u2019m kind of a professional lobby writer, maybe\u2014not coffee shops, though. I can\u2019t really handle the smell of coffee very well. But, hands: all that writing-while-travelling means laptop work, which means a cramped little keyboard instead of my handy-dandy Kinesis Advantage 2, where I can type so fast and so naturally that it feels like telepathy to the screen, really. The reason laptop keyboard hurt my hand, singular I guess, is that I\u2019ve broken my right hand\u2026 either four or five times, it\u2019s hard to remember. Kind of made a career out of it for a while. So the bones in there are all jacked, and from sports, I\u2019ve also got some fried tendons in my fingers. Meaning, man, give me my good keyboard and I can cook. I can also cook on a laptop, on the road, but I have to pay for that. All of which is to say that writing, these last few months, during the pandemic, it hasn\u2019t hurt as much. Physically. But, too, what am I saying? It\u2019s always grueling emotionally and intellectually and probably even socially, but that\u2019s not pain, that\u2019s even trade. Having to wrap my hand in tape to use a spoon, though, and having to brush my hair with my left hand, that\u2019s a different kind of trade.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DT: When I think of West Texas\u2014where you grew up and spent a good bit of your life\u2014I think about mule deer and pronghorn antelope. How much of the elk hunting came from experience, and how much came from research specific for the book?<\/p>\n

SGJ: In the West Texas I grew up in, man, I bet I saw maybe four deer, my first eighteen years? Probably less. They weren\u2019t around. And, I was always out in the pastures, skulking the draws with a rifle, or on a horse, and I was always out early moving irrigation line too, where I\u2019d see mountain lion prints, lots of coyotes, plenty of snakes\u2014snakes all day long\u2014but, deer . . . not so much. There were probably mulies around that I was missing, as they were smart enough to avoid me. And, I hear that, since I\u2019ve left, the deer have moved into West Texas in real numbers, enough to actually hunt. Which is crazy to me. Never any pronghorn, though. Have to go about three, four hours north of Midland to start running into antelope. As for elk, I grew up hunting them. Dressed my first one out at twelve, I guess, and still have a scar on my hand from it. And I\u2019ve mostly only hunted elk on the reservation. Only a couple of times here in Colorado.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DT: I read that Jonathan Thunder\u2019s (a Red Lake Ojibwe artist) sketch on the cover of\u00a0Deer Woman: An Anthology\u00a0<\/em>inspired some of the visuals in\u00a0The Only Good Indians<\/em>. Did you take a measured approach when mixing contemporary Native elements with traditional Blackfeet beliefs in this book, or did you allow the story to evolve on its own? The book seems underpinned with balance righting itself, no matter how horrible the outcome.<\/p>\n

SGJ: \u00a0Yeah, good call, being a slasher, righting itself has to be what it\u2019s about. And, yeah, that beautiful art on Beth\u2019s book has to be part of The Only Good Indians<\/em>, as that was right here by my keyboard for a long time. As for the deer-woman stories, though, gotta say, aside from that Deer Woman<\/em> vignette, the only one I knew going into writing this was probably John Landis\u2019s, from Masters of Horror<\/em>. If they\u2019re Blackfeet, anyway, I don\u2019t know any of those stories.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DT: Your book,\u00a0Not for Nothing<\/em>\u00a0(Dzanc Books $15.95), and\u00a0The Bird is Gone<\/em>\u00a0(FC2 $19.95) will always be your most compelling reads for me. What book(s) of yours would you suggest a new reader pick up after\u00a0The Only Good Indians<\/em>?<\/p>\n

SGJ: \u00a0Probably either Mapping the Interior<\/em>, as there\u2019s a person from it in The Only Good Indians<\/em>, or, for slasher wackiness, Night of the Mannequins<\/em>. For werewolves, though, man, there\u2019s Mongrels<\/em>. My heart\u2019s buried in that book. But, too, I bury my heart in all of them, of course. Can\u2019t seem to help but.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DT: What other writers should fans of your work look forward to in the coming months?<\/p>\n

SGJ: \u00a0You, your memoir, maybe? As You Were<\/em>\u2014can I say you? And Toni Jensen\u2019s new one, too, Carry<\/em>. And Rebecca Roanhorse\u2019s Black Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DT: Is there anything that reviewers and interviewers are getting wrong or missing completely from your intentions when you wrote this book?<\/p>\n

SGJ: \u00a0I\u2019ve done a few events with Percival Everett, and he always has readers come up after, pitch their read of this or that of his to him, then end with a question mark\u2014 \u201cIs that right?\u201d Everett\u2019s answer is always a grin and nod, that, yes, that\u2019s right. And also, the other read it right. They\u2019re all<\/em> right. I take him as my model\u2014for this and for everything, pretty much. But, especially for this. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any wrong takes. If you read it, then whatever you say\u2019s right. And, talking role models as I seem to be, I should also say that, on a panel with Joe R. Lansdale in 2001 or so, in Austin, Texas, an audience member asked him what genre he wrote in? His answer is that he writes in the \u201cJoe R. Lansdale genre.\u201d I aspire to that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

DT: Thank you for your time, Dr. Jones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Graham Jones writes about cars, trucks, cowboys, Indians, slashers, zombies, and werewolves as fluently and fondly as your grandma talks about the intricacies of each of her grandchildren. If you haven\u2019t read his work yet, you\u2019re in luck:\u00a0The Only Good Indians\u00a0(Saga Press $26.99) was released last month, and his next book is due out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":16383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[2473,2466,2462,739,1575,2470,2464,2471,2467,2472,2468,1730,2475,2461,2469,2463,2474,2465],"class_list":["post-16381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bull-interview","tag-as-you-were","tag-deer-woman-an-anthology","tag-demon-theory","tag-hemingway","tag-joe-lansdale","tag-jonathan-thunder","tag-kinesis-advantage-2","tag-mapping-the-interior","tag-masters-of-horror","tag-night-of-the-mannequins","tag-not-for-nothing","tag-percival-everett","tag-rebecca-roanhorse","tag-stephen-graham-jones","tag-the-bird-is-gone","tag-the-last-final-girl","tag-toni-jensen","tag-west-texas","writer-david-tromblay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16381"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16386,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381\/revisions\/16386"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}