A Short Interview w/ Adam Petty
"Bonus material" for Petty's short story, "The Good News Caboose," published on Tuesday, 3/12.
A few quick notes:
Submissions are open right now, for the rest of the month of March.
The first “That Was Awesome” short story club, where a bunch of us (30? 40?) hopped on Zoom and just hung out and chatted about one of my favorite stories, Denis Johnson’s “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden,” was a success and so going to keep it going, maybe make it a monthly thing! Toward that end:
“That Was Awesome” Short Story Club #2
Ted Chiang’s “Tower of Babylon”
Tomorrow! Wednesday, Mar. 20, 8pm ET.
Interested? Message me here or DM me on Twitter or IG or wherever you want and can find me!
Short Story, Long features long short stories, each paired with original art, published every other week. In between stories, we feature some kind of “bonus material” for each — an interview with the author, outtakes or trivia about the story, etc. The stories are always going to be available for all, for free, with the “bonus material” saved for subscribers only. Paid subscriptions help pay writers and artists.
Read “The Good News Caboose” now if you haven’t already!
Aaron Burch: I'm kinda always curious where stories came from and what the seeds of idea were. Can you tell me a little about the genesis for this story?
The genesis of this story is almost embarrassingly literal. There was, off the midway of the county fair in my hometown, a trailer that screened Christian message films for curious and/or bored teenagers. It was even called the Good News Caboose—that detail was so perfect, I had to lift it wholesale. I visited it several times with my friends from church youth group.
The process of turning that real-life setting into fiction is rather more circuitous, and I still don’t fully understand it, honestly. It arguably started as a thought experiment: how to turn such experiences as these, which are fairly common if you grew up in evangelical settings like I did, into a narrative—into Art, if I may be so bold—that would resonate with readers who may not be familiar with such trappings? The answer that I landed on was to write about that setting and those experiences in the register of horror. I think of this story as a horror story, and viewing it in those genre terms made the whole thing snap into focus. Earlier efforts at writing about those aspects of my background were rather aimless, but this hit the ground running from the moment I started writing it.
I love an “almost embarrassingly literal” genesis for a story! One of the things I so love about short stories is starting with a germ of something from real life as a jumping off or in point, and then seeing where fiction goes from there.
I love, too, that you think of this as a horror story. I didn’t totally read it that way, but see that now that you say it. Something I love, on the creation end, about thinking about something through the lens of genre is the way it can sometimes open up possibilities? I’m working on a novel right now set at a youth group lock-in in the 90s (so, shocking I so love your story!) and at some point (kind of embarrassingly late) I realized it is basically a “locked room” mystery (single location, single night, large cast of characters, a kind of “what happened” mystery element) albeit without a murder. But thinking about it in those terms really unlocked something for me. Was there anything about thinking about this specifically as a “horror story” that helped you when writing this story? Either with regard to leaning into, or pushing against, genre expectations? Or anything else?
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