A Halloween Treat, Tom Cardamone Interviews Scott Heim

Tom Cardamone: Hi, Scott. In keeping with the holiday, I figured I’d like to ask you what horror films you dug as a kid, were you into the slasher flicks from the 80’s or were you more into the classics?

Scott Heim: All of the above. When I was a little kid, the slasher film wasn't really a genre yet, so I remember the films that scared me the most back then were things I saw on TV, old classic horror movies that my mom allowed my sister and me to stay up late and watch. I remember really freaking out to things like The Spiral Staircase and the Vincent Prince Dr. Phibes films and then, a little later, stuff like Let's Scare Jessica To Death. But then came high school, and all those early 80s slasher films. I was lucky to have a high-school friend whose mom would take her daughter and me to the theater and just drop us off with an "it's OK for these kids to see this movie." We saw so many amazing movies that came out after that initial wake of Halloween, Friday the 13th, Terror Train, He Knows You're Alone, Happy Birthday To Me, House On Sorority Row, The Prowler, My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night, The Burning, Visiting Hours... I could go on and on.

Cardamone: Was Halloween a big deal where you grew up?

Heim: Definitely, as it probably was for anyone growing up in middle America. I lived out in the country, though, near my grandparents' farm, so my parents would take my sister and me into the nearest city (well, a city of about 50,000 people, about 15 minutes away) to do trick-or-treating.

Cardamone: When you trick-or-treated, what were some of your more memorable costumes?

Heim: Looking back, I'm kinda disappointed that my Halloween get-ups weren't more creative. I feel like my parents were probably more creative and forward-thinking than most other parents from my area, but unfortunately we didn't have much money, and sometimes I just had to be satisfied with some kind of handmade costume from whatever we had around the house. I remember when I was 5, my mom bought one of those Simplicity packaged sewing patterns for a lamb costume, and I went as a little white lamb. And the following year I was a vampire, fangs and bloody mouth and black cape and everything, but my head and hair looked odd and too much like a regular kid's, so my mom stuck a ratty woman's wig on my head and I became a female vampire. It's no wonder I turned out gay—how many moms take pride in dressing their sons as lambs or female vampires?

Cardamone: To keep things creepy, you mentioned at a reading for your new book, We Disappear, that you read true crime books, me too! I get a particular thrill from the ones sold at drug stores, somehow that makes them more lurid, but I’d be interested to hear about some of your earlier encounters with this type of non-fiction and how it might have shaped your work.

Get We Disappear by Scott Heim

Heim: When I was a kid, my mom was constantly reading true crime paperbacks. I think maybe I noticed that weird "forbidden thrill" effect from her, and started reading them, too, at a really early age. My parents were very cool like that—as long as I was reading and learning something, they didn't care what the subject matter was. So when I became really interested in the supernatural, and in UFOs, and then in crime and murder and forensic science, they didn't mind at all. Also—I think this is translated into fiction with the characters in We Disappear—my mom worked at a maximum-security prison, and sometimes she got to bring home books and magazines that the prisoners weren't allowed to have—and she would always bring home these lurid "True Detective" type pulp magazines that I would then read.

Cardamone: Did you read any of the Cunanan books?

Heim: Yeah, but to be honest, I thought Cunanan was pretty boring, a rather uncreative murderer who ultimately made for dull reading. I'm much more fascinated in reading about more emotionally complex criminals, trying to figure out what made them tick. People like Dahmer and Bob Berdella and Herbert Baumeister were much more despicable, and also more fascinating, than spree-killer types like Cunanan.

Cardamone: I just finished We Disappear, it was a great read, congrats! And it was a long time coming after your previous book, In Awe. The title struck me, though, I was wondering if the longer process of writing this book meant there were several drafts, different directions, basically I’m curious about the “we.”

Heim: Thanks. It's odd— the book went through many different stages, and kept making these subtle changes again and again over the decade's course of writing it—but the title itself was something that was there from the beginning. In all three of my novels, I've tried for titles that work on more than one level, that can be read in a literal sense as well as a figurative, or metaphorical, sense. We Disappear can be read as a two-word sentence spoken by the actual missing people that sort of move like ghosts throughout of the main story of the novel, but I think it can also refer to the two main characters in the book: the mother, who is disappearing into her illness, disappearing from actual existence on the earth itself, and also her son the narrator, who's disappearing into his drug abuse, into his depression. And finally, the title and this theme of "disappearing" is also a big reason I used my own name as the character's name—since many of the things in the book are very close to my own experience, I wanted the reader to sense the real "Scott Heim" disappearing into the Scott of the novel, so that at some point it's uncertain what is real and what is fiction.

Buy Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim

Cardamone: With the success of Mysterious Skin, and now having a new book out, I wonder if your second novel, In Awe, has become the red-headed stepchild of your work. It’s out-of-print but I know of one prominent author who champions it, so I’d like to shine a little light on this one, could you tell us about this book?

Heim: How hilarious that you ask that, because I have sometimes referred to that book as the bratty child that a parent has tons of trouble with, but secretly loves more than the other children. When In Awe came out, it seemed like I either got excellent reviews or horrible, devastating ones that would send me spiralling into depression. Looking back, I see that it's a problematic book. I kind of wrote it as part literary novel, part horror novel, more surreal than real, sort of influenced more by things like horror films and David Lynch than by reality. It's kind of a slower read than, say, Mysterious Skin, because the descriptions are piled on really thickly and the characters are probably a little harder to warm up to. But I'm still proud of it. I can totally understand when people email me and say "I loved your first book, but I hated In Awe"—but I'm still happy I wrote it.

Cardamone: You should probably get some special award for not writing books that take place in California and New York. Seriously, you do return to Kansas, which might be considered by some as a place gay boys tend to run from, so what’s the draw, artistically?

Heim: My sister still lives in Lawrence, which is home to Kansas University, my alma mater. And I love Lawrence—it's kind of the liberal bastion of the state. So I go back there to see her and to see friends. But I like returning to Kansas, too, because it's home, and there's some indescribable emotion inside me that still longs for that childhood nostalgia and familiarity of place. I suppose it's true that I like to write about darker subject matter, and for me, setting that subject matter within the seemingly "tame" heartland Kansas landscape provides a nice juxtaposition, something maybe unexpected for the reader than, say, if I'd set my novels in a coastal city or something.

Cardamone: Writing seriously about UFOs and childhood abduction and missing time, the mysterious working of memory, must mean some interesting e-mails pop-up in your inbox, and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way, like here come the kooks, but rather some interesting people must reach out to you to share their stories, any of note come to mind?

Heim: I've had quite a few emails and letters like that, especially in the first few years after Mysterious Skin's initial publication (and then the immediate time after the movie version came out). I wouldn't want to upset anyone by revealing too much here, or betray anyone's trust. But there have definitely been a lot of personal stories about child abuse or sexual molestation, and even a surprising amount of stories about possible alien abduction. In some ways, these letters and emails feel like the highest honor—the idea that someone feels moved enough by a piece of writing that he or she wants to confess, to reveal something painful or personal. Ultimately that gives me a huge gratification and validation, just to have written a book that inspires someone else to reveal something so monumental and emotional. Writing usually seems like a frustrating and thankless job, but sometimes it's letters like those that remind me why I do it.

Cardamone: Well thanks for this, Scott, and Happy Halloween!

 

Wanna know more about Scott? www.scottheim.com
Buy his Scott's new novel, We Disappear

Scott Heim is the author of three novels: the recently released We Disappear; In Awe; and Mysterious Skin, which was made into a 2005 film by Gregg Araki. He is originally from Kansas. After over a decade in New York, he now lives in Boston, where he is working on a new novel.

Tom Cardamone is the author of the erotic fantasy novel, The Werewolves of Central Park. His short stories have appeared in several anthologies and publications; some of his work can be read at www.pumpkinteeth.net.