 | Kaaron Warren is an Australian writer of dark fiction currently based in Fiji. Her short fiction has been published in Year's Best Horror and Fantasy and Fantasy Magazine, amongst others. Her first horror novel, Slights, has just been published by Angry Robot Books in the UK, who also intend to publish her next two: Mistification and Walking the Tree. Prior to the publicaton of Slights, Warren spoke to Robert Hood: |
RB: As you see it, who or what has inspired your writing, thematically and stylistically?KW: I take inspiration from everywhere! Singing Karaoke the other night, as I am wont to do, I chose "Hotel California". As I reached the end, I thought, "This song is a perfect short story, and ends in exactly the right place." I've listened to that song over a lot of years, and I've always known this. It ends in exactly the right place. "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." I love that. Leaves a lot to the imagination, but puts you on the path to where they want you to go. What happens next is up to the listener. To the reader. This inspires me to end my stories in the right place!
Thematically, I'm inspired by the news, by the stories I hear, by the things I see. You never know when an idea will pop up. I recently read Magog by Andrew Sinclair. Written in 1972, it's a story of London, really, written in a vicious tone I loved. Throughout, I made notes, inspired by a sentence or a comment he made. Things like; he talked about three hundred dogs dumped on a bare rock in the Bosphorus. How you can see this island, with 299 skeletons chewed, one showing no signs of being eaten at all? This is something I could build a story around.
Stylistically, I'm inspired by writers like Raymond Carver, whose sparse fiction is so evocative it breathes. By William Golding, who writes diverse, deep fiction in his own clear voice. By Harlan Ellison, for his wild imagination he turns into real stories.
Really, I'm inspired by everything I read, good and bad. The bad helps me avoid the bad, the good spurs me to better work.
