Fears, Hopes, and Elvis Presley

VOID: Short stories seem like an increasingly hard sell, both to the public and in the industry. Why do you think that is?

Scott: I suppose it's because people like to lose themselves in fiction, they like to be transported by it, and at first glance, a short story collection must seem like it'd be less likely to achieve that effect, if only because of the length of the stories themselves – the idea being that by the time you actually get into a story, it's over. Bu the thing with a really good collection is that it does the same thing. The stories are all of one sensibility, one vision. They explore certain themes, certain fears and fantasies, ideas… Collections like Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son or Tobias Wolff's The Night In Question or Owen King's We're All In This Together, for all their surprises, they're coherent; they transport the reader into the singular world of their author's mind, his imagination.

VOID: Did you experience any resistance to "Voodoo Heart" because it was a collection of stories and not a novel?

Scott: I was really lucky when I went out with the collection. I'd had a few of the stories published in literary magazines like Zoetrope and One-Story and that seemed to help a lot. It wasn't a hard process. Again, I was really lucky.

VOID: Other than just producing a great collection, how does one get Stephen King to shower his/her book with praise in a jacket blurb ("VoodooHeart just blew me away")? And what was your initial response to that?

Scott: With Stephen King, I only had access to him through a bit of good fortune. I'm friends with someone close to him, and one day this person suggested sending over the collection. That said, I didn't expect Mr. King to actually read Voodoo Heart, let alone blurb it. I mean he's STEPHEN KING! Just getting the book to him was a thrill in itself – a way of saying thanks for all the great reading over the years. I'm a huge Stephen King fan, after all. His work has been (and continues to be) a giant influence. So when he contacted me saying he'd read the book and liked it, I was elated. It basically made my whole year. Nothing means more than praise from your idols.

VOID: Most, if not all, of the stories in Voodoo Heart are about relationships. And almost all of the men seem somehow broken, and many of them are at fault for their story's undoing. Why is this such a prevalent theme throughout Voodoo?

Scott: I think it just has to do with the way I build a story. Something catches my eye – a fat farm or a wrecking yard, a guy who's almost been killed on two separate occasions—and I try to figure out why it's interesting to me. Usually, it's interesting because it touches on a particular fear or fantasy. The fear or losing someone, the sort of contrasting fantasy of being impervious to love…Then I try to create a character or storyline that teases out that emotional thread. Also, throughout the process of writing the book, I was busy falling for someone--the girl who's now my wife. So I had relationships on the brain. In some ways, the whole collection is about the wonder and terror of love.

VOID: Another theme that we encounter is flight, both in the sense of flying and fleeing. We have bi-planes and blimps, escapist fiancés and men who ponder, "What if all you'll ever be able to do is leave?" Do you find it hard to keep your characters grounded?

Scott: I think flight fascinates me because it seems to defy all the rules of physics. This heavy machine is suddenly lifting off, climbing away from the earth. It's so surreal –it especially was back in the day, when planes were basically like box-kites with propellers. I tend to think of flying as escaping the inevitable, if only for a moment…Eventually the earth is going to get you. You will end up as part of it. But none of that seems true when you're in the air. You can break all the rules.

VOID: And I just have to ask: do you have something against happy endings?

Scott: I think that most of the endings are happy. In almost all of the stories the characters find some sort of peace at the end. They find what they were looking for, even if what they get isn't what they expected to get. Like in "Happy Fish," LJ is better for being on his own. Same with "Dumpster Tuesday" and in "Blue Yodel," Pres is much better for having taken the journey…You can't always get what you want, but sometimes if you try, you get what you need, right?

VOID: You live in teach in New York, but only once do you really talk about the city in the collection (and fleetingly at that). Why did you choose such remote settings for your tales (like Florida, the "rank, swampy bottom of the country")?

Scott: I like rural settings because they let me make a landscape that's largely psychological. One of the things I like doing –or rather it's the only way I know how to write, for better or worse—is to create stories that are like these psychological projections of all the characters' fears and hopes. I like taking the stuff that's supposed to be subtle and beneath the surface and making it the actual, physical landscape of the story. So rural settings give me greater freedom. (Florida I like because I lived there for a year after college – I worked at Disney World in Orlando as a janitor and character—and it has no short supply of oddities).

VOID: There are some internal references in your stories, too: in the title story, the narrator listens to a country song "about a man whose wife flew away in a huge silver blimp" -- which just happened to be the crux of Blue Yodel, the opening story of the collection. Is this a way of rewarding your readers for keeping up, or did the idea within the story come first, then the new story spawned from it?

Scott: I always planned on having some internal references. My favorite collections aren't necessarily linked, but they do often have thematic or imagistic threads running through them. The internal references and the drawings are more like little reminders that the book was conceived as a singular project. It really is meant to be an album rather than a series of singles. Dial was great about this, even with the cover art.

VOID: Why did you choose Voodoo Heart, the title of one of the stories, as the title for the collection? Is it your favorite among the stories, or the most indicative of the book? Or is it your "single," like promoting the best track on a record?

Scott: It is my favorite story in the collection – it and "Blue Yodel" are sort of tied. For me, "Voodoo Heart" spans the other stories in some ways. It's got pieces of them: it has an element of the historical, the dark, the romantic. Also, it just felt like the centerpiece of the collection. Like its heart.

VOID: On the topic of music, folk and country are important themes in your stories; one might even say your stories are written in the same folkie, dustbowl, Americana style that bluegrass and country songs are based on. How does music influence your writing?

Scott: Music's a huge influence. Some types of music just conjure these images and feelings for me –old country and blues, Jimmie Rodgers and Robert Johnson, the Carter Family. They evoke this world where musical styles were all blending together, cross-pollinating, making these weird new American forms. The imagery of a lot of that music reflects this, too. From minstrel stuff like Emmett Miller to gospel, the songs are filled with trains and lonely crossroads. It just touches a nerve for me. Especially knowing that all the singers are long gone…

VOID: I've also heard that you perform your stories to live music. With whom do you perform and how did that come about? Other than Elvis, what other music do you listen to -- and do you listen to anything when you write?

Scott: I love trying out new things for readings. I don't get a chance too often, but last month, a band I really like called Joemca and the Poets, they called and said they'd love to write some original music inspired by one of the stories if that was OK with me. I was thrilled. Joemca wrote music to "Wreck," which was incredibly good, and I invited the band to play in the background while I read at a bar on the lower east side. It was one of the most fun readings I've ever done.

VOID: Should I even ask about the photo of you dressed as Elvis that's circulating around MySpace?

Scott: I made that jumpsuit myself back in 1997, to wear to the Elvis Week 20 (the 20th anniversary of Elvis's death). I can still almost fit into it, proud to say.

VOID: If you could only own one Elvis record, what would it be?

Scott: As for a single, I'd own "One Night With You," as it was the song that really turned me on to Elvis, back when I was a teenager. There's so much longing in his voice and the song is all about If-I-could-only-have-one-night-with –you-you'd-see-that-I'm-you're-man, and that's a very powerful sentiment to a geeky teenage guy who'd had no real luck with girls yet. That song is now mine and my wife's song. We danced to it at our wedding.

As for an album, I'd have to say either Tiger Man, a stripped down version of Elvis's 1968 Comeback Special (it's just him and a few others playing acoustic, like an unplugged session). Or the Sun Sessions, Elvis's first recordings, done at Sun Studios in 1954, back when he was just 19, before he was "Elvis," before he was anyone, really. One of the greatest albums ever recorded.

VOID: Also: you're working on a new novel for Dial Press; how's it coming along? Any news on a publication date?

Scott: I'm working on a novel about early aviation -- it's coming along well I think. No pub date yet, but I hope to have a draft in about a year.

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Chris Steib is the Editor in Chief of Void Magazine. He lives in New York City and loves New Jersey from a distance.