Photo by Colleen Cooper
Peter Clines is the author of the new novel God's Junk Drawer. His other books include The Broken Room. He lives in Southern California.
Q: What inspired you to write God’s Junk Drawer, and how did you create your cast of characters?
A: As far as inspiration, it was a lot of things. I’ve always been a big fan of lost world stories. One of the first movies I ever saw in the theater was The Island at The Top of the World when I was... 4? 5? I slept through a lot of it then, but it’s about people discovering a lost Viking colony in the early 1900s.
And then there was King Kong on Skull Island, the X-Men in the Savage Land, John Carter found a lost world on Mars in the second Barsoom book, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island, Land of the Lost... There were just so many of them that I was basically marinating in all through my childhood.
As for the characters... well, that was also a lot of things. Most of them started out as basic ideas—I need this character to do this within the story, so at that level it’s kind of mechanical. Then they get fleshed out and become more well-rounded. Which then tends to change the story a bit.
F’r example, Billy/Noah is very integral to the book, but in earlier drafts he was just sort of, well, the embodiment of the theme. Which politely meant he was... let’s say “extremely stubborn.” But when I changed him, it meant changing a lot of other aspects of the book—some of the structure, where a few reveals happened, and so on.
Parker went through a lot of changes, too, and so did Sam.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Weirdly enough, it was just a random bit of dialogue I scribbled down very early on. Like, before I even started thinking of titles. It was something Noah’s dad said about the valley.
When I finally sat down to start seriously working on the book and got all my random notes and snippets in order, I came across it and though “oh yeah, that’s the title.” It’s big and cosmic and kind of ominous, but it’s also something where people can read it and get an immediate level of understanding.
Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it?
A: Kind of a tricky question. I pretty much always know how a book is going to end. I don’t always know the exact path that’s going to get me there. Like I mentioned above, it’s not uncommon for me to do revisions and have to tweak someone’s motivations or the structure or more.
It’s kind of like asking did I know how a game of chess was going to end. Sure, it ends when you capture the king. Did I know from the start exactly how I was going to capture the king? Every step planned out? No.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: A healthy fear of dinosaurs.
Well, okay, a healthy fear of dinosaurs and maybe a bit of self-reflection about the things we loved when we were younger. There’s an underlying theme in this book about fandom and that old idea of “you can’t go home again.”
One way or another, everything progresses. Everything moves on. And a lot of life boils down to am I someone who can progress, who can change and move on, or am I someone who’s just going to stay stuck in the past shouting at everyone who challenges my out-of-date view?
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m about to dive into heavy edits on a book that’s coming out in early 2027. It’s probably the closest I’ve done to a straight horror novel, but still with a lot of the dark weirdness I tend to write into everything.
And while that’s going through edits I’m already poking at the next book after that, which I think may circle back to a little tease I made in a story... seven years ago?
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: By its very nature, it’s a book with a hundred easter eggs from movies, TV series, books. If you know where to look, there’s a nod somewhere to almost everything I’ve written.
Also, I was serious about that healthy fear of dinosaurs thing.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment