Jeff, in lieu of the more commonplace introductions, let me take a moment to thank you for all the help you have given me over the years, and are still evidently quite happy to give. It really does mean a lot!
Bob, I’m just trying to help keep you busy and off the streets at night.
It’s a pleasure to have you here. How the devil are you? Recovered from your Fluff encounter?
It takes 3 to 8 months for a majority of consumed Fluff to completely leave your system, and the residue lasts a lifetime. The lower intestines of cadavers have been cut open in med schools across the U.S. only to reveal wads of accumulated Fluff of varying sizes, some as big as cassava melons. One taste of that white alchemy, though, and you’ll definitely see the Sugar God. Otherwise things are good here in South Jersey. I’m on vacation now, my favorite time of year.
Since first being introduced to your work with The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, and then devouring everything I could get my hands on, you are clearly a writer that quickly gets bored 
with conventions. What do you think it is that keeps you leaping from one genre or style to the next?
That’s the way the stories come to me, and as a writer I want to always try new things. To capture what I see behind my eyes, what I feel in my gut, I sometimes have to write horror stories, at others, fantasies, or science fiction, or mystery. Sometimes the best way to tell the story is more traditionally, sometimes more twisted or shattered. I pay close attention to the stories, “listen” hard to them, and each of them dictates the unique style with which they demand to be told. I recently went through a period where I was writing stories that were somewhat twisted. They wanted to seem a little broken, made of spare parts, tattered in some way, just a little crazy. Stories like “Daltharee,” ”After Moreau,” “The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper,” “The Seventh Expression of the Robot General,” “Daddy Long Legs of the Evening.” For instance, the story “Daltharee” – the basic idea behind the story doesn’t really ad up. It seems to, but if you think about it, it doesn’t make any sense at all. This is not to say I wanted them to be bad stories. It’s a challenge to effect these things in fiction and not just end up writing a story that seems like you don’t know what you’re doing. I make no claims as to my success or failure here. You’ve got to go where the inspiration leads you.
In your works, particularly your short fictions, there is always a sense of wonder, whether it’s in the fantastic or the mundane. What would you say is the root of that?
There’s a certain uncertainty about the world that I’ve always sensed and not been able to shake from childhood, and as I get older it becomes more pronounced. At times I catch such intense flashes of synchronicity, naturally occurring irony, confusion and a profound sense of ambiguity in my life. I want to relate those experiences and the feelings they engender in my fiction. That openness to uncertainty is what “sense of wonder” is about for me. That recognition of both the sentience and the mindless entropy of the universe, that basic paradox expressed on a certain level by something like Chaos theory, I find enchanting.
Do you find that writing short fiction is easier than writing a novel? It often seems that, with short stories, you don’t always necessarily have to flesh them out, and just flow with whatever idea sparked them.
I don’t know if “easier” is the right word. It’s more just different. The stories are more exacting in a way than the novels. I find myself going with the flow, as you say, more readily in writing a novel. I do little planning when I write in general, but probably less with novels as I always want to have a sense of discovery in the writing in hopes the that the reader will experience it as well. I want this in the stories too, but there is more potential for major revision in a story.
What sparked the idea for your latest novel, The Shadow Year?
I was thinking a lot about where and when I grew up, the people I knew, probably because my father’s health was failing and I was returning to my parent’s house, where I grew up, quite often. I thought to myself that I’d like to try to portray that scene, those people, in fiction before they faded from memory. With my father eventually passing on, I had a sense of those memories being very ephemeral, tenuous. When I started concentrating on remembering them for the book, though, they were anything but. Man, I just had to dig below the surface a bit and then they came rushing out in full detail and in technicolor. The more I mined them, the richer and deeper the vein got. At one point it got too intense and I had to take a break from the book. Writing it was an interesting experience. One thing I realized from it was how tightly intertwined memory and imagination are.
Dare I cheekily enquire as to what might be up next from you?
All I can tell you is that I have stories coming out in the relatively near future. They are:
“Weiroot” — Weird Tales Magazine
“The War Between Heaven and Hell Wallpaper” – Interfictions 2 (from Small Beer Press)
“Ganesha” — The Beastly Bride (Viking Juvenile)
“Down Atsion Road” — Haunted Legends (TOR)
“Daddy Long Legs of the Evening” — Naked City: New Tales of Urban Fantasy (St. Martins)
“86 Deathdick Road” — Book of Dreams (Subterranean)
There are a couple of other stories I’ve sold but I can’t mention the projects yet. The story “Daltharee” will appear in the Rich Horton Year’s Best SF/F anthology, the Hartwell/Cramer one, and Best American Fantasy 2. Tony Smith will be producing a podcast reading of the novelette, “The Empire of Ice Cream.” And Tim Pratt is editing a Devil anthology, Sympathy For the Devil (from Nightshade Books), in which he’ll be reprinting, “On the Road to New Egypt.”
What have you been reading lately?
Bloodsport by Robert F. Jones – Michael Swanwick suggested this book to me. Jones was a writer for Field and Stream magazine. The book is from the mid-70’s. It’s really something. The writing is incredible and the imagination is wild. It’s about a guy who takes his teenage son on a “rite of passage” hunting and fishing trip up the Hassayampa River, which ends in upstate New York and has its headwaters in ancient China. A mythical river made real by Jones’s knowledge of the outdoors and the succinct poetic description of the beauty and cruelty of nature. There are Wooly Mammoth along the shores of the Hassayampa, Wyandot Indians, Chinese Bandits, and various other creatures and peoples from different historical and fantastic times. It’s bawdy and at times profound. A very unique novel.
Current listening pleasure?
These days, while I write, I’ve been listening to the Philip Glass composition of Dracula, performed by the Kronos Quartet. It’s good writing music. And in the car CD player, much to my sons’ annoyance, is volume one of Country Classics — a two CD set I bought for $11.00. It’s an embarrassment of riches. “Mama Tried” “Hello Walls” “I Fall to Pieces” “I Walk the Line” and an excellent version of “Chantily Lace” by Jerry Lee Lewis. Kenny Rogers and Freddy Fender are on there too. My kids are ready to have me committed.
I still owe you a drink from a few years back. Care to make it another?
Absolutely.
Thanks for taking the time out for this interview, Jeff.
Thanks.
Jeff again proves generous with his time and thoughts. I met Jeff for coffee here in our small town, where he presented me with a copy of one of his books, but more importantly to me, shared his thoughts. I’d love to buy him that drink in your stead, in case he’s not planning on being in Budapest soon. Jeff is writer who seems incapable of writing an ordinary story, and one who is always worth seeking out. Thanks for the interview.
Mike: Glad you enjoyed the interview. I was very pleased with it myself! Jeff has never been anything less than absolutely genial in any communications I’ve had. As I briefly outlined in one of the rambling aside articles, Jeff has provided a regular helping hand to me over the years. I was very much a noob at all this (and still am) when I thought it a good idea to mail him simply saying I enjoyed his books, and when I got a prompt reply from him, plucked up the courage to ask him if he would be interested in doing an interview for my old site. The fact that he said yes almost immediately to someone with no credentials at all, just a very basic website with an interest in literature, rather astounded me. He has been a big help and regular contact ever since. If I ever make it over to the States again I’d love to be able to get him that drink.