Here are things smarter, more good-worded people have said about Meg Tuite\u2019s White Van<\/em> that are far more articulate than I could ever come up with:<\/p>\n – an elbow to the mouth<\/em><\/p>\n – a merciless howl in the face of a world given up on the Disney version of fairytales <\/em><\/p>\n – a poetic-prose vehicle to keep us looking and listening, and feeling unsettled by art<\/em><\/p>\n – a starkly eruptive world of words beyond death, beyond decay <\/em><\/p>\n – an appalling world of solitary pathos<\/em><\/p>\n – foreboding, danger, and violence from cover to cover<\/em><\/p>\n – the brutal energy of a world of serial killers, pedophiles, pornographers, kidnappers, suicides, prostitutes, and loners<\/em><\/p>\n – brutality, misery, and hopelessness<\/em><\/p>\n – gorgeously brutal<\/em><\/p>\n – It will turn you inside out.<\/em><\/p>\n *All taken from here<\/a> and here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n If that all doesn’t make you want to go out and read Meg Tuite’s White Van<\/em> right now, then honestly, I don’t have the time nor the tools teach you how to fix your flawed views on life and art.<\/p>\n But then, on second thought, no, this doesn\u2019t quite do it for me either. All great descriptions, yet by themselves they still can\u2019t fully give you an idea of the reason you need Meg Tuite’s White Van<\/em> in your life.<\/p>\n So here you go. Here are just a handful of the 800 sentences you will underline and star and reread and be jealous of when you read Meg Tuite\u2019s White Van<\/em>:<\/p>\n – Tonight I watch retribution shudder like a slice of panic.<\/em><\/p>\n – Squandered tomorrows stunt into rotted yesterdays.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n – Tolerance has a short fuse.<\/em><\/p>\n – The girl becomes revenge in this geography where only pain exists.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n – The jowls of a man of knowledge are weighed down by a hefty lifetime of facts.<\/em><\/p>\n – He loved the sick and dying. They spoke truths and he listened.<\/em><\/p>\n – A dot of a house on the planet of nobody will ever know had grazed the roiling fog of drowned violence. What a family heirloom. A riot of repressed introspection. A bullet in everyone\u2019s head.<\/em><\/p>\n – Can stories actually rearrange continents if they\u2019re fondled long enough?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n And so, now that I\u2019ve opened myself up to copyright infringement litigation, I\u2019ll shut up and get to the interview…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BD: <\/strong>White Van<\/em> has so many interesting things going on in it\u2014the mixing of genres, the shifting points of view, the recurring white van.<\/p>\n I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the process of it?<\/p>\n Did you always have it in mind that you were going to write a book about creepy, deranged, darkass predator shit?<\/p>\n Or was it more of a thing where you kept coming back to similar themes and you found yourself building a collection out of them?<\/p>\n MT:<\/strong> It started with a small group of kickass writers sending a new piece weekly. Four of us together for over a year, I believe. Once we were in Covid era, Netflix, HBO, Amazon, Hulu were streaming a ton of stuff and we don\u2019t have a TV. I could get anything on my computer, and so I was watching serial killer documentaries. Watched and read about the capture of the Golden State Killer. Took four decades to catch this guy and when they nailed him he was mowing his lawn, an eighty-something old man\/ex-cop with a family living in a suburb.<\/p>\n I also listened to the podcast: My Favorite Murder<\/em> obsessively and it was two women, each with a different serial murderer, twice a week and I listened for at least a year. And I watched Cold Case Files<\/em> and it became apparent that this phenomena plateaued in the 70\u2019s in the US. Hitchhikers and lack of technology kept these creatures in their psycho-game.<\/p>\n DNA has now lowered the pitch, but we still deal with kids and women tortured, raped, and killed. I found a form of warfare each and every time I spoke with friends, family, acquaintances in the city. Every woman had a story. Many men had a story. It keeps most women from walking the streets at night alone. It\u2019s fucked up!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BD:<\/strong> As someone who listens to a lot of fucked-up true crime podcasts as I walk my dogs in the dark at 4 in the morning, I was completely sucked in by this book\u2019s willingness to get to the ugly truths and to not gloss over the parts most people don\u2019t want to really think about (even when they consume true crime).<\/p>\n Was there a time where you questioned if you were going too far? For yourself? For your publisher? Reader? Etc.?<\/p>\n MT:<\/strong> Yes. Definitely questions whether I was too gritty, too brutal, too graphic. Not by my publisher, Jonathan Penton, of Unlikely Books. He took it on shortly after I sent it to him. He\u2019s a warrior.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t want to work with someone who was going to have a problem with the depth of the material! This is not work about trying to scare or push anyway. I\u2019m dedicated to writing through trauma, whether it be on the streets or date rape or family shit! Readers who connected with White Van<\/em> were those I needed to connect with. That\u2019s how I see it. We find the books, the writers, we most relate with, and that\u2019s when the fireworks happen.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BD: <\/strong>How did you decide to draw the lines of how to not to blink but also how to make sure that it didn\u2019t sound sensationalized?<\/p>\n And also: Did you have to take breaks from writing this? Like, did you have to crochet scarfs for your dog(s) in the middle of the night?<\/p>\n MT:<\/strong> HAHAHA! I\u2019m not a crochet-er, but wrap myself in scarfs and cover the dogs and cats in blankets! We have a wood-burning stove that keeps it a feast of firelight, warmth, and the timeless scents of juniper, evergreen, and smoky woods.<\/p>\n If anyone does any research, which can amount to turning on the news any day of the week, there\u2019s no need to sensationalize the depth of violence rampant everywhere and daily. And nothing beats reality when it comes to the shit happening on this planet. It\u2019s a never ending exploration in horror.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BD: <\/strong>I feel like I could teach an entire class based on your syntax. I love sentences that bounce around each other and up against each other\u2014sentences that push and pull, herk and jerk, and make you work as a reader.<\/p>\n The \u201cdownside\u201d is that I think I read every story in here like three times before I could stop underlining and diagraming and actually finish a story.<\/p>\n MT:<\/strong> My decision was to create a musicality and beauty to the language that juxtaposed the content. Poetic prose is a form I love to work in. And so, I hoped that the language choice would allow readers to go further in to the depth of the horrors.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n BD: <\/strong>I know that you write a lot of poetry and prose and of course, this is mixed genre. Do you have a separate \u201cpoetry mode\u201d versus \u201cprose mode\u201d when you are writing? Or is it more just this thing feels more like a story and that thing feels more like a snapshot?<\/p>\n Is there more \u201ccutting\u201d in one versus the other or is this style just the most natural style for you to write in?<\/p>\n MT:<\/strong> If you look back at my collections from ten years ago, I wrote short stories that were up to thirty or more pages. It\u2019s been an interesting movement for me in writing. I did publish many long stories, but the first one I sent out didn\u2019t make the cut. I decided to cut it myself into five separate stories. Within a week of sending them out, they were picked up and published. Who knows? I do know that my inspiration now is mostly poetry. And so that may be the reason for honing pieces in to some core that works for me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BD:<\/strong> I think there are at least three double-underline-star lines in every piece in here. How much do these lines come naturally for you? Are there times where you have to \u201ckill your darlings\u201d? Are there times where you\u2019re like fuck yeah, I\u2019m like the best sentencer ever?<\/p>\n Who are some of the sentencers that you admire most?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-content\/uploads\/white-van-e1677175784353-199x300.jpeg\")
– Does anyone know childhood suffocates as quickly as a bad check?<\/em><\/p>\n