ALL Review: For someone who hasn't been to DeKalb and hasn't read your book (yet!), how would you describe it? What made you want to write about it? Did you have literary models in mind as you approached the subject?
Scott Mitchel May: DeKalb is weird. For one thing, the town has a logo because DeKalb Seed Corn was founded there so the symbol for that company and the town is a flying ear of corn, which is about as midwestern as it gets. But to fully understand why DeKalb is weird it’s important to know that it has a college, NIU, but is also kind of out in the sticks and just absolutely surrounded by miles and miles and miles of corn, but is also just an hour from Chicago and forty-five minutes from Rockford. So, you have a large college-age demographic, a mind-bendingly boring setting, and access to two cities that have all the drugs anyone could hope to try. It’s not a coincidence the Illinois State Police North Central Narcotics Task Force was based out of Dekalb when I was young.
For the teenagers in that town, there was literally nothing that couldn’t be obtained when you knew the right person.
The title story of this collection is DeKalb, Illinois is a Paradise What Eats its Own for a couple of reasons. For one, I started thinking about some of the “literary” drug books of like the 80s and 90s and there was this thing with writers writing about drug experiences through this lens of like “Well, yes, this character is a total burn-out and is partying hard, but they come from a rich family, went to college, still a savant/genius, etc.” and I just sort of thought to myself, well that’s not what I saw. What I saw was more anarchistic, feral, and wilder. Not just self-destructive in a “Gee I’m rich and smart and capable, but gosh-darn if I’m still not fulfilled and happy and must numb myself” type of way, but self-destructive because, for a certain kind of kid in a certain kind of place, it’s the only thing to do that feels worthwhile.
Northern Illinois, to me, has always kind of vibrated with an anxiety that is hard to explain. Like the towns out in the corn are just stuck in their place and time and if you stay there, you can have a life that is stuck in place and time too. It’s weird, but when I talk to friends I grew up with and who also left, it’s like we always come around to the idea that we don’t really want to go back to visit because we know exactly what we would do, exactly who we’d see at Lord Stanley’s or The Annex, and we know it would be fun, wild even, and then that energy would fade and what would be left is the feeling of stagnation. The anxiety.
AR: Your short stories are full of unique characters. Do you have a specific process for character creation? Do you find that the characters evolve with your writing?
SMM: I’m ADHD AF (which is my preferred nomenclature, ADHDer sounds like something I would punch someone for calling me) so I can really only engage with and complete projects if I’m getting some sort of dopamine hit from them. Luckily, reading and writing have always been something I consider fun, something I could just sort of do without having to worry I’m doing it wrong or not exactly to spec as there is no spec and however you want to interact with the medium is, on some level, valid. It never felt like work to me.
Outlining, character bio, planning, etc., these things don’t feel fun to me so I just don’t do them. For me, building a character as I write and flushing them out as the story unfolds and dictates is what gets me going. It’s flying without a circus net. It’s just the right side of scary when I am lucky enough to have something published and I have to worry that someone will read it and find an inconsistency with something stated before. Something I missed. Something I wasn’t paying attention to. What I find most fascinating about character creation in the moment of typing is inhabiting mindsets and perspectives that are not my own in real-time. Not having to look at my character sheet and say “Well, in 1982 his mother said his behavior is ugly so I must work that into some neurotic thing in 2017,” but more like thinking in the moment as a debt collector, or a touring comedian, or a broken AI, or a guy with a port wine birthmark in the shape of a penis on his face would think.
The thing with the lack of planning of any kind except for a vague idea of the concept or feeling I want to write about is that my characters do evolve from beginning to end and from draft to draft, and I have to pay close attention in revision to make sure that it all is still making sense.
AR: What was the process of publishing the book like for you?
SMM: It was great. Once it was accepted for publication, I got the edits back from the editor and was able to recut anything I wanted to. I spent probably a couple of weeks tweaking and making sure it was all represented the way I wanted it to be. The great thing was that parts of some of the longer short stories were cut out and previously published as flash and I could restore them to their proper context within the whole. The last 1000 words of “Adjusted for Inflation” were published in Stone of Madness as “A Totally Rational Thought Process Blues.” Both the flash carve-out and the longer piece tell the story of a person processing mental illness and neurodiversity, but the longer piece that appears in the collection gives the proper context to how the character got to where he was in the flash piece. With the small presses that are out there now, there is a real opportunity to sort of fly by the seat of your pants and make it up as you go along, and I find that extremely exciting.
Then there was seeking blurbs, which I’d heard is intimidating for people. What I did, and I whole-heartedly endorse this method, is I drank some really nice Irish whiskey (Red Breast 12) and I wrote emails to five writers I admired and took the three that came in first. I found that everyone was gracious with their time and energy and it worked out well.
AR: Who are some writers or artists that you are enjoying right now?
SMM: I think for writers coming from bigger publishing houses Lauren Hough is doing it about as good as anyone has ever done it. Her style is that perfect mixture of funny, sad, honest, and like just so forthright. Of course, her essays are great and Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing is amazing and you should buy that book and study it, but her substack is a fucking gem and delivers week in and week out. She also just happens to be one of the most gracious writers I’ve ever had the opportunity to interact with. She’s kind when she doesn’t have to be and supportive when there is no reason to be. In other words, she’s a good person, and someone I’d hope I’d be like if I were ever in her shoes.
From the indie scene, Stuart Buck is not only an infuriatingly good writer, he is also more inventive than, well, you or me or most others trying at this thing. The thing I love so much about Stuart is that he will straight up tell you the thing you are about to read will be off-putting on some level, possibly gross, or possibly just unnerving, and yet it never feels in service of itself or its conceit. It’s never just for its own sake, there is something always there to be mined. (Seriously, read his piece up on Last Estate where he reviews every single Mary-Kat and Ashley movie.) It’s the difference between Stiff Little Fingers and The Sex Pistols. They are both playing the same genre and era of music, roughly, but one was born out of reaction to The Troubles and had something deeper to say than fuck you for fuck you’s sake, and the other, well, didn’t. Plus, if you write weird lit-fic, you should seek out his magazine Bear Creek Gazette.
AR: What is some advice you would give to young writers?
SMM: Look, and here’s the thing, anyone trying to give you advice on how you should write, or get published, or practice your craft, are all just speaking from a perspective that is not colored by the experiences you’ve had or the stuff you’ve done and gone through. I can tell you from my experience, steeped in all my BS, that there are a lot of writers who have worn the identity of writer for so long they can’t envision a world where they are, possibly, not that thing.
I was lucky, the only thing I could do from a young age without extreme effort and concentration, to the point that trying to teach me anything else is just painful for both parties involved, was read. So, that’s all I ever did. I read when I skipped all my classes in high school. I read when everyone else was watching TV. I read after I came home from pulling doubles as a line cook. And, eventually, I was able to get a literature degree, which basically meant I went to college to just sit and read. So, I am not a writer, I am a reader. I didn’t start writing until I was thirty-one and only then because I’d finally accepted that I was smart enough to do so (long story). The point being is I don’t believe saddling yourself with the identity of capital W writer is good for your writing because if you are a writer, and that’s what you hang your hat on, then you have to produce and publish, and if you don’t publish you can begin to feel you are doing it wrong and will begin to think you have to change the way you do it, the way that feels fun.
So, my only advice is to write for yourself alone. Write because it makes you happy to do so. Write because not doing so would make you unhappy. I’ve found that by doing that, publishing credits come, one way or the other.
