A Short Interview w/ Mike McClelland

"Bonus material" for Mike McClelland's short story, "Not Another Time L∞p!," published on Tuesday, 10/31.

The plan for Short Story, Long is to feature long short stories, each paired with original art. A new story will publish every week, on Tuesdays, and then, in between stories, we are going to 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 “Not Another Time L∞p!,” now if you haven’t already!

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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?

Mike McClelland: Buckle up!

So, this story actually came about very differently for me. Usually an idea for a story will sit in my head for anywhere for a month to a couple of years and I'll kind of write it while I go running and then I'll finally sit down and write it. But this story actually started as a dream. An actual dream - I usually assume people are making it up when they say they dreamed ideas (like the Twilight lady). But yes, I had this dream that I was in this house with very late '80s/early '90s decor and Michael Myers randomly kept appearing and killing me. Now, I was a bit disturbed by this because I don't usually die in my dreams and also I'm a huge fan of the Halloween movies and I seemed to have gotten the Michael Myers from the very bad years (Halloween 4-6). 

A little while later, I took a dream writing class with one of my favorite writers, teachers, and people, Amy Bonnaffons, and we did this exercise where we "journeyed" into a dream. Naturally, I chose this one, as I remembered it so vividly, and what I found were all of these wonderful tidbits from my youth. The house was a house in a cemetery where I'd spent a lot of time growing up, as my family is dear friends with the caretaker and his wife and kids (the characters aren't based on them though, I promise). And the thing that surprised me most when I kind of journeyed into this dream wasn't how scary Michael Myers was but rather how well I knew this other house from my youth. And I thought, how cool to have a time loop story as sort of horror training, where a kind of useless main character turns into a master of his surroundings over time?

I also really wanted to return to this middle class feeling so present in the original Halloween that your babysitter might not know how to cook or clean but you always, unnaturally, illogically (at times), felt safe in their hands. Also also, but I moved to small town Illinois last year so I basically live in Haddonfield now, so that probably had something to do with all of this. 

I love this answer! (And am just generally loving these story interviews, for myself even if no one else is reading them. I'm loving getting these little stories-behind-the-stories!)

Something I've been noticing and thinking about recently is how many stories of the stories I've been loving lately — including probably everything published so far here on SSL! — give me the feeling, while reading, that the author was having FUN while working on it.

Can you talk some about that? About having fun while writing generally and also with this story specifically? Was this even moreso than others or does it feel more par for the course for you? Is this idea of fun while writing and creating something that just happens, is it something you remind or encourage while working?