Interview with Suzy Eynon

the desert, settling into a place, Malarkey

You’ve seen Suzy Eynon’s work in places like Roanoke Review, The Dodge, and Passages North, and it’s notable for its emotional power and poetic language. Now she’s releasing Terrestrial, a novella with Malarkey Books that is absolutely full of power and poetry. It’s a startling and quiet story about Daisy, a girl trying to survive the hellishness of high school in the setting of a barren desert suburb. I loved this novella!

Many thanks to Suzy for this interview:

You’re from Arizona, and you’ve written this great novella about Arizona. What’s it like to explore this landscape you know so well through fiction? I haven’t spent much time in any desert area, but it all felt very vivid to me. What’s your relationship with the desert now?

Writing about the desert, where I grew up and lived for 25 years, allows me to revisit it with enough distance that I now find it comforting as a place. Fictionalizing it, I have the benefit of being Daisy, who is young and only knows the desert. It’s funny because growing up I wanted to move away, to California which I saw as this idealized place. I wanted to leave and I made a personality out of disliking the desert. In my 20s, I had friends move to Phoenix and then move away, and it felt like such a transient place, even though I wasn’t born there. (Plot twist, I’m from the Midwest.) Now, having lived away for years, I miss it. The desert and Phoenix feel comfortable to me even though I ran from it for so long. High school me would laugh in current me’s face as I buy countless Arizona souvenirs in an unironic way. Writing about the landscape of the desert allowed me to feel close to it again but in a safe way, like examining the leaf of a plant in my palm.

I loved how unique this book was in its flow and structure. It felt like poetry in many ways, but concrete rather than abstract poetry. Can you tell us about some authors who inspired you to write this?

Thank you! I like to read poetry though I rarely write it. Every time I set out to write poetry, it morphs into prose. But this sort of atmosphere-building appeals to me. All my stories or work started in my mind from an image, which was what my early writing teachers told me not to do, but this is what inspires me to write, the way the light looks coming through a window in midafternoon, or an image of a place that haunts me. I love reading books light on plot, love to think about characters existing in a place and time, to feel the space around them. I learned that I should try to insert a form into this imagined world, to build in some plot to provide support otherwise people wouldn’t want to read it. Some favorite writers are Madeleine Watts, Ayşegül Savaş, and Kevin Wilson, and I think they write the types of stories and books I enjoy reading the most, where the reader is allowed to settle into a place and poke around. To feel close to the character, in their head, in their room. I mean what a power, that the author can make me feel like I’m there. That’s what engages me, versus a strong plot.

Can you link us to a few of your stories published online? Can you let us in on the spark for each one?

“Terrible Tilly” at The Dodge: https://thedodgemagarchive.com/suzyeynon1

The spark for “Terrible Tilly” was seeing morbid things at the beach in Oregon, and the contrast of these things: beautiful water, dead birds, remnants of a creepy alter in the sand, the Tillamook lighthouse looming with its light. I had fun writing this one and looking up history on the lighthouse to weave into the story.

“Gerbil Girl” at surely: issue 26 archive

I kept thinking about how I was really into gerbils as a kid, checking out library books on gerbils and obsessing over their dwellings. I think I had like 10 gerbils at one point which, why? I wanted to write about gerbil girls because I thought it was funny. Some of my stories just explore things that are funny to me.

“There Has Been an Emergency” at The Account: https://theaccountmagazine.com/article/eynon-25/

I was at a museum once when the alarm kept going off and I thought it was a situation for a story. I enjoyed thinking about what it could mean for the character to be trapped in there or what it meant to be viewing, to be inside vs outside.

“Parrot Dream” at somewords: https://somewords.boards.net/thread/25/suzy-eynon

I have vivid dreams and had a dream about seeing a beautiful bird and feeling utterly at peace, but I know nobody wants to hear my weird dreams so I wrote a story in which a character does share her dream, chases her dream.

(For the record, I love to hear about weird dreams.) Now, do you believe in anything or anyone existing outside of the terrestrial?

This is a good one! I think I do, yes. I want to believe! I think there are things that can’t be explained, that life is weird and there is an order to things I cannot grasp, and that there must be something out there which we simply can’t see or understand.

You thank the online writing community in your acknowledgements. What have you gained from this community over the years?

I’ve been writing since childhood, but I didn’t share or submit my work until I was in my 30s. I’m a shy person, and while I have taken some in-person classes and joined a writing group, I don’t think that I’d be a published author without online lit. I was just writing on my lunch break at work. I’ve found so many wonderful indie presses and writers, connected online with other writers by just reading their work and liking it then reaching out, which I would not have done in real life. I found journals and volunteered for them, and got to read so many writers’ work, which went a long way toward knowing what’s out there, knowing what’s being written and published. I wouldn’t have found Malarkey or any of the writers I’ve met through there. Online lit has given me access to a community, especially as someone who was a nontraditional college student.

Have you enjoyed the process of putting this book together and promoting it, or has it been stressful? What’s it been like to work with Malarkey Books?

I’ve been delighted by some of the markers of having a book published which I’d dreamed of since childhood: having an artist design a cover (based on my words! Incredible!) and seeing my words become a real book, a physical object. Promoting it can be stressful, to know if I’m promoting it too much or not enough. I didn’t know that it would be so hard to find a place to do a book launch reading. The response from people I know in real life has been unexpected, sometimes in a strange way but other times in a touching, supportive way. Alan at Malarkey is amazing to work with, supportive and has been a great supporter of my writing since I submitted a story to him for King Ludd’s Rag years ago.

There is a disconnect between Daisy, the protagonist of Terrestrial, and everyone around her. Why do you think that gap exists? Do you think we can all do a better job somehow of noticing and connecting with other people?

I think Daisy feels unheard, and thinks she wants to remain invisible but does want to connect. Maybe we can all listen a little more, notice more. Maybe I feel this disconnect as a person with a brain that processes things a little differently, this contradiction in personality of wanting to be invisible, to go unseen, but also deeply wanting to connect.

Could you talk a little more about wanting to remain invisible while also connecting? I relate to what you’re saying!

Maybe I want to be a ghost? Just kidding, I’m terrified of dying. Maybe it’s a desire to be heard but not seen, and that’s where the drive to write comes from, this hope that someone will connect with me through words instead of through the physical “me.”

What would you like to be asked? Please answer!

About cats! I have 3 now, a pair of bonded sisters who are 6 years old, and a young cat who wandered into my backyard a few months ago and who I adopted. They don’t get along so they are all in different rooms and I mix and match them with each other. They are a huge part of my life and find their way into my writing. I promised myself I would stop writing about my late cat. Strangely, there are no cats in Terrestrial.