Q&A with Christa Carmen

 

 

 

Christa Carmen is the author of the new novel How to Fake a Haunting. Her other books include Beneath the Poet's House. She lives in Rhode Island.

 

Q: What inspired you to write How to Fake a Haunting, and how did you create your character Lainey?

 

A: There was a very specific moment of inception for this book. My husband and I have been married for nine years this October, and like many couples (or maybe just many people once they reach a certain age), we tend to occasionally (ahem, often) spend so much time choosing a movie to watch, that by the time we turn it on, one or both of us falls asleep.

 

On this particular evening, my husband swore he wasn’t tired; we chose a movie, and not five minutes later, he was asleep. 

 

Annoyed, I decided to head in and get ready for bed. But before I could, an idea hit me like a horror movie jump scare. I grabbed his cell phone, and took a picture of him sleeping on the couch. I think maybe I was planning to show him the picture in the morning, like, “I told you you’d be the one to fall asleep!”

 

Instead, I texted the picture to myself, walked into the kitchen, and then stormed back into the living room loud enough to wake him. “Why did you just text me a picture of yourself sleeping?” I asked. Disoriented, he replied, “What? Why would I text you a picture of myself sleeping?”

 

But I doubled down, narrowed my eyes, and said, really cryptically, “You mean, you didn’t just text me this picture of you sleeping from your phone?” Needless to say, he was suitably freaked out, and eventually, I caved and admitted to the prank.

 

When the time came to get working on a new novel, I thought of the playfulness of scaring your spouse, and how the idea of faking a haunting could be really fun, which morphed into questions of why someone would want to commit to a fake haunting, and things took off from there! 

 

Q: The writer Tracy Sierra said of the novel, “How to Fake a Haunting is a poignant, frightening, and utterly original story about the ghosts that haunt families and the homes they create.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I’m so grateful to the lovely, incredibly talented authors who read How to Fake a Haunting early (Tracy, Christopher Golden, Kate Maruyama, Cassandra Khaw, Lindy Ryan, Sarah Langan, Clay McLeod Chapman, Nat Cassidy) and provided blurbs for the book.

 

Tracy’s quote was a delight, and I’m tickled that she found the novel both scary and unique. That’s all a writer can really hope for when they put a new book out into the world… that it taps into readers’ emotional responses and feels like something that hasn’t been done before! 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had a vague idea for how the novel would end when I started writing it, a desire for how things would resolve themselves in the most abstract of ways. Specifics only came when I reached that climax, and they were further cemented on the second draft, once all the plot points, character motivations, and thematic elements were locked in.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?

 

A: First, a little backstory: From 2010 to 2014, I worked at a methadone clinic, and during that time, I was always struck by the idea that if a patient began methadone treatment, there existed the potential for tremendous repercussions down the line.

 

Despite it being a very appropriate treatment for many, and an effective harm reduction strategy, using methadone to recover from opioid addiction was a decision that could echo throughout one’s life.

 

In a lot of ways, methadone is a treatment that seems lifesaving in the beginning, and like liquid handcuffs by the end. Methadone patients can build outrageously successful lives in recovery, then discover, in trying to get off methadone, that those lives have been built on a foundation of cards.

 

As their mental health counselor, watching these patients grapple with the consequences of a decision to get on this treatment two, five, 10 years previously felt like witnessing a fragmentation of their very selves, like they were at this specific junction because of a single medication, a single decision, and they would have been at an entirely different junction if not for that single decision made in desperation, in the space of a single shaky breath.

 

Rarely can we pinpoint the moment in which the Butterfly Effect is set in motion, but in these instances, I felt like we were looking back along a very clear path, and seeing in startling clarity, the initial shuddering of the monarch’s wings. 

 

I mention this because the experience of working at that clinic, and of my own journey into and out of substance abuse, was very much a catalyst for How to Fake a Haunting.

 

Lainey Taylor isn't in any sort of mental health treatment or recovery, but she did believe, unequivocally, that she was the best person to care for her daughter, the one who’d help her daughter forge the brightest future, only to discover that a single decision could set things on a path where that might not be the case.

 

I love the idea of exploring choices and analyzing how those choices echo throughout the next two, five, 10 years of our lives. Terrifying? Potentially, yes. But also eye-opening and riveting and enlightening. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: My short story “The Clearing” is part of Lindy Ryan and Stephanie M. Wytovich’s HOWL: An Anthology of Werewolves from Women-in-Horror, out Nov. 4. I also have a story, “Comeback Kid,” in The Rack II: More Stories Inspired by Vintage Horror Paperbacks, edited by Tom Deady, out Oct. 14, and several other stories in anthologies, as well as an editing project, that I can’t announce just yet.  

 

I’m also hard at work finishing up my fourth novel and putting a second short story collection together. Anyone interested in updates can find me online, at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/christaqua/), Instagram (@christaqua), and Bluesky (‪@christaqua.bsky.social), as well as on my website, www.christacarmen.com.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Hmmm… here’s a fun little tidbit: I’m the worst kind of horror writer… one who doesn’t believe in ghosts! I guess I shouldn’t say I don’t believe, I’ve just never experienced anything supernatural. I’m open to being proven wrong, however, and not just open but willing!

 

Suffice it to say, a Ouija board to me is little more than a cool conversation starter or fun piece of home decor. There are others in my house who don’t share my opinion on Ouija boards, so my spirit board ownership is limited to a Ouija cheese board. It’s quite adorable, if I do say so myself, and none of the cheese has ever levitated and flown off, so I suppose it can’t be too haunted. 

 

I love the idea of ghosts representing things: secrets, the past, regrets, future selves, past selves. I also love the idea of hauntings going in both directions: Can your future self haunt your current self? Can your past self haunt your future self? Can your current self haunt your past?

 

I think all these directions of self-hauntings are possible, so maybe a Ouija board is incidental, and the most haunted object one can own is… a mirror. Certainly the characters in How to Fake a Haunting would agree. 

 

Thanks so much, Deborah!!!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Christa Carmen.