RL Summerling interviews Ivy G about Grime Time

Ivy has kindly allowed me to step in to ask her some questions for the release of Grime Time, her collection now out with Tales From Between. It sounds trite to say that Ivy’s voice is unique, but it’s true; she’s one of the few authors I would be able to recognise straight away if I read one of her stories blind. Her work is surreal, absurd, full of dream logic and fairy tale characters that come alive using deceptively simple prose. Ivy paints such strangely beautiful images that stay with you long after you read them. I was particularly delighted to see this collection contains one of my favourite stories “Hitchcock”, which is so gauzy and nightmarish, I think about it often. She has even been described by one eminent critic as "The greatest living Grimes" and who could possibly disagree?

One of the great features of these collections from Tales From Between is that they contain author’s notes and interviews, so you can read Ivy’s thoughts and inspirations in her own words there. I’ve tried to avoid duplication, so make sure you check out those Q&A’s to learn more.

How does Virginia, the people, culture, landscape etc, influence your work?

I’ve spent a good chunk of my 30s in Virginia, but the rest of my life was spent in Alabama. I live in a part of Virginia now that feels "standard US" to me, and not really Southern. Let me also take this opportunity to point out that while I had a Southern accent as a kid, I lost it by high school. I'm guessing because I wanted to talk like the people on TV.

Anyway, Alabama is the real South, and I love it while also feeling angry with it. White Southerners are often very defensive, but many of the criticisms received are obviously utterly valid. Slavery, Jim Crow, the legacy of lying about white supremacy to justify abuse. It's all there. You get the feeling it's cursed the land in many ways. Though there's always hope for the future.

Also, for all Southerners, we have to deal with outsiders' beliefs that we're poor, ignorant, and unsophisticated. Maybe we are! But we have a good time since we aren't in such a rush, and we take things less seriously. I think that sense of play, joking around and being lazy, is present in my writing, even when I'm talking about something dark. One branch of my family was nicknamed "the porch sitters," and I think I take after them. When I write, I feel like I'm inviting you to sit around on the porch with me for a few hours while we talk about our existential fears. And I'll give you a mug of cheap white wine with some ice cubes in it.

OH, and there's the matter of growing up in the Bible belt. That's been a huge influence, though that's a very long story!

I like the question about the landscape, too. I'd like for the landscape to affect my work more, so I need to think about that.

Do you write to music?

No, I don’t write with TV or music in the background. I should try again, though, because it probably helps establish the mood. I just get distracted too easily. Wait, do you write to music?

I listen to music when I'm thinking and often associate particular songs with certain stories. Not when I'm actually writing, though, as I struggle to concentrate as well!

You mention that dreams are a point of inspiration for your work. Do you always remember your dreams? How do you go about capturing something so ephemeral on the page?

Some dreams feel so meaningful in a way you can't quite explain. In Grime Time, "The Arcade" mostly came from a dream about a beach house and an arcade full of sand and two girls, one with pink hair and one with blue. Usually, the setting of dreams feels very real to me. It's easy for me to picture certain scenes and how I felt in them.

I wish I always remembered my dreams. It's the other life, and the waking life makes more sense by comparing the two. They’re are easier to remember if I write them down immediately when I wake up from one, which I need to get back in the habit of doing.

Did you pitch the collection as a whole to Matthew at Tales From the Between or did you work together to decide which stories would be included? What did the process look like?

I'd submitted to the magazine, so I was already on good terms with Matthew, and he asked if I wanted to do the collection. It was a great opportunity for me.

I think people worry too much about pro-rate and semi-pro and token payment venues. Whatever the money is, it's not enough to live on these days. And I think the most important thing about publishing is to find people you really connect with. You never know which connections will end up enriching your life. Just as knowing you and reading your work has been so rewarding, Rebecca (RL)!

Matthew Stott is a writer (whose stories I really enjoy!) as well as an editor. One great thing about indie publishing is that editors are often writers themselves, so they sympathize with the process. He let me work through the process of gathering the stories without being imposing. He'd already designed the structure of the Tales From Between Presents collection, which made the process much easier. I recommend reading all of the Tales From Between books, which so far include Ai Jiang, Elin Olausson, and Samantha Kolesnik. I've enjoyed them all quite a bit.

A lot of your work is influenced by fairy and folk tales. What do you think we can learn today from them?  

I have so much to say in response to this! I’ll try to keep it short. For one thing, these are the stories people told at home around the fire. They were passed from neighbor to neighbor, from generation to generation, by people who often didn't read or write. So for us common people, they show us the hearts of our ancestors. They show us their fears, hopes, sense of wonder, ideas about right and wrong. Stories are twisted and tweaked with every generation, and yet it’s remarkable what remains the same. However much we advance technologically, we continue to feel pursued by magical enemies and taught by helpful animals, and we face the same dilemmas about whether to fight back or show mercy.

Also, it's fun to treat old tales like the standards in jazz. Using an old template as a very loose basis for the plot helps me think of stories I couldn't have otherwise. I love to see how very different writers go in wildly different directions with the same templates.

I loved reading about the symbolism of glass in your work, the idea of it being an invisible boundary. In your opinion (and indeed in your work if you have written about it yet), what is antithetical to glass? 

Great question! I'd say flesh. (Coincidentally, please see RL Summerling's collection Fleshpots.) 

Really, glass has been a way to explore my feelings and impressions about the spirit. 

If you could edit an anthology, what would be the theme?

I'd have a hard time doing this, as I'm always on a soapbox about the writing world is infected by the idea that publications and such mean you're a good writer, and that the lack is an indication that you aren't. I could only edit an anthology if I could establish that it's 100% subjective, that rejections are often given carelessly and mean nothing, and that it shouldn't be taken seriously.

Plus, I'm really bad at choosing. You'd hate to be behind me in line for ice cream.

Having said all that, maybe the theme could be...stories without climaxes. I love to read stories that creep around and don’t build to any big moment, and it's hard to find them.