Today we talk with Austin Shirey, known for his imaginative speculative stories and emotionally-rich characters. With Madness Heart Press, he’s released a novella about detective Johanna Kolibrik, who faces dangers to explore evil conspiracies in a city full of mysterious fungi. Austin is here to answer some of our questions about this great weird novella and his writing life!
I love detective stories! Your take on this genre was fun, frightening, and thought-provoking. What were some of your detective inspirations for this novella?
First, thanks so much for the kind words about the book - I wanted the book to be all those things you mentioned, so that makes me very happy to hear it hit the mark! I've always been a fan of detective movies, but haven't really read as much detective/crime/mystery fiction believe it or not. It wasn't until I read Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress in grad school that I actually dove headfirst into the genre. Devil in a Blue Dress was definitely a huge influence on City of Spores - Mosley's book showed me how you could weave a gripping and gritty hardboiled noir story together with poignant social commentary, which was something I wanted to do with my book. I also read The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett, Hard-Boiled Wonderland & the End of the World by Haruki Murakami, and the Isaiah Coleridge novels by Laird Barron while working on Spores, and they all very much influenced the book, particularly the structure, prose, and characterization of Kolibrik. Murakami and Barron both were great helps in showing me how to tell a detective story with speculative elements as well.
This book reflects many fears about the state of the world, am I right?
Very much so. Fascism is on the rise everywhere it seems like. Books are being banned. Capitalism is literally destroying the world. There's genocide in Palestine. The super-rich have unchecked power and are hoarding wealth. Women have lost reproductive rights. Russia has invaded Ukraine. People of color and the LGBTQ+ communities are having their rights assailed. Anti-Semitism is rearing its ugly head. It's terrifying. I wanted to write a book that reflected my worries about our current day and age, and to challenge people to wake up, rethink their views on things. Most of all, I wanted to get across this idea that there is power in truth and art and protest and revolution, especially as we're seeing these scary things happen around us. If we want a truly just, equitable, inclusive, and peaceful world, we're going to have to fight for it, whether that be by joining in a protest or writing a story or composing a song or voting or writing senators or signing petitions, but the first, most critical step is changing our minds, being willing to listen and learn. I'm still learning things myself, still figuring out how to put everything I'm learning into action, but writing this book was definitely a part of that journey for me.
What was it like to write a female protagonist as a male author?
Interestingly enough, for the first few versions of the book, Kolibrik was written as a man. I just kinda fell into that, I think, because I'm a dude, and I was like, "Oh, the MC will be a dude." By the time I was finishing up the final draft, something still felt out of place, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Some great feedback I received on the final draft (thanks, Rachel!) made me toy with the idea of changing Kolibrik from a man to a woman, and the more I explored that, the more right it felt. On one hand, I realized that when my daughters grow old enough, they'll hopefully read the book, and I wanted to give them a kick-ass noir heroine to root for. On the other hand, in terms of the story, Kolibrik being a woman really spoke more clearly to the themes of the book, of standing up against a fascist, patriarchal society. So I rewrote Kolibrik as a woman, reworked some things, pulled upon great discussions I've had with my wife and other women in my life and things I've read, and everything clicked into place. All that to say, I really enjoyed writing a female protagonist. In general, I enjoy getting to write from different viewpoints than mine, as I feel it allows me to find things I have in common with someone with very different experiences than my own and gives me a chance to walk in someone else's shoes. And I think that's how you've got to do it - find what you have in common, and ask questions, and be curious, and willing to learn, and above all, be respectful, which I hope comes across in how Kolibrik is written.
Have you always been interested in fungi? Did you do some research for this book? (Also, I got some Jeff VanderMeer vibes from the world-building, and I think fans of his would definitely enjoy this.)
I've gotten more interested in fungi over the last few years, ever since I learned about this zombie fungus that can take over ants and control them (seriously, look it up - it's INSANE!). And this was before I'd even heard of The Last of Us games! It's funny you mention Jeff VanderMeer, because he and his Ambergris trilogy (City of Saints & Madmen; Shriek: An Afterword; Finch) were a primary inspiration and influence on me for City of Spores, and in really igniting my love of fungi. And while his books also feature a really weird city and mushroom people, and deal with some similar themes, I very much wanted to do my own thing, and tell my own story in the way only I could tell it. But his influence is definitely there - I don't think you could write a book about a weird city and mushroom people and not find at least a little bit of VanderMeer's influence. As for research, yes, I did do quite a bit of research online about the fungal world, and it was SO much fun! While obviously the science stuff is stretched a lot in City of Spores - it is a fantasy, after all - it all has a basis in truth. For example, there are some fungi out there that are mimics (they mimic other plants), and it was so cool looking at pictures of that. And a lot of the streets and place names in the city of Madripol are named after real fungi, so it was fun learning about all these different kinds.
How do you find time to write among all your other responsibilities?
I'm very lucky in that I currently work from home as an IT analyst for my day job. Unless it's a particularly busy week or month, I have a lot of down time during the days where I can write, so I try to get most of my writing done during the week during work hours and leave my evenings and weekends for spending time with my family. I also take copious amounts of notes on my phone anytime, anywhere, sometimes writing whole chunks of a project out in the Notes app. It can definitely be tricky, having a full-time job and being a father to two young girls, so I may not get as much done as I like, but I make do with what I can. Really I just try to get it in when and where I can, around whatever else I have going on. So far, that's what has worked!
Do you listen to music while you write? What do you listen to?
I do! I especially love listening to movie soundtracks when I write, but that's not all I'll listen to. It varies from project to project. For City of Spores, I listened to a lot of noir jazz like Bohren & Der Club of Gore, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, and the Dale Cooper Quartet to put myself in that smoky, hardboiled private investigator frame of mind. I also listened to the album World Coming Down by Type O Negative quite a bit, specifically the song "Creepy Green Light." I don't know why, but something about that album, and particularly that song, really captured a vibe I equated with Kolibrik's story.
Feel free to ask yourself a question you'd like to be asked, and to answer it!
I decided to choose this one because I love talking about this and didn't know where else to sneak it in. So here's the question: "What inspired the sporecasts?" Well, two pictures I came across on Twitter, actually. One was of a slime mold fungus reaching out and it looked liked this little green hand; the other was a screen capture of a newspaper story, about police being called to a neighborhood because someone had seen a giant owl on the side of the road, but it turns out, it was just a pile of mushrooms someone had mistaken for an owl. These things, along with what I'd learned about fungi mimicking other plants, gave me the idea for what I decided to call sporecasts.
Thanks so much for having me, Ivy! 😁
Great interview as always Ivy!!