SmokeLong Quarterly

In many of your flash pieces, there’s an element of the absurd seamlessly incorporated into the story, but it always serves the emotions the characters are facing. What’s the secret to keeping the surreal elements from overshadowing the emotion in a story?

That happens more through revision. Story ideas typically arrive as images or strange little things that make me laugh. Then I must turn that into a story that someone will actually invest in. The surreal element comes to me first, is what I’m trying to say. And with “Cadillacs on the Moon,” it was such a lonely image, these cars racing on the moon. My mind slowly zoomed out, and the protagonist and Katie took their places; it became a story about his loneliness, his yearning, and his heartache. The trick is to keep everything tonally subtle, let the weird go unacknowledged, which is kind of a given in the surreal, but I want a world where these things happen all the time, and the characters would never say, “That’s crazy!”

We learn the protagonist failed to become an astronaut but supported Captain Katie to achieve her dream. What is it about her success he’s unable to reconcile?

That’s a tricky part of the story, because I want him to be heartbroken, not angry. Trying to answer this question, I see I can overthink it. It’s obviously the least sympathetic quality of the character. He’s insecure and behaving pathetically. In his mind, Captain Katie chose her career over him. He perceives her as smarter and more capable than he is. He deluded himself into thinking that because he was happy while they were together, they were both happy, and everything was going to work out. He admires her, and he’s jealous of her. He feels inferior to her, but he knows better, and this embarrasses him. I think part of this is based on my personal issues with insecurity and jealousy. I don’t want it to come off as possessiveness. And the humor in the story might partly mask the fact that that kind of thinking is toxic. But I also think it’s natural to be bitter over a breakup and jealous when someone succeeds where you fail. Or to compare yourself to others in terms of life goals. I think that’s a theme in some of my stories.

There’s an element of competition and jealousy in the protagonist’s relationship with Captain Katie. The racing Cadillacs appear to be symbolic of their relationship. What can the reader take away from the blue Cadillac taking the lead over the pink Cadillac in the penultimate paragraph?

Look, I’m going to be dead honest here—that was an accident. The image of the racing Cadillacs came to me first, and then the loneliness of it blossomed into this story, but the symbolic aspect of the blue and pink Cadillacs definitely wasn’t planned. I’m going to hope there was something subconscious there. Maybe I should just lie and say I thought it through. I think any good flash (or fiction in general) has layers—the more the better—but that’s a happy accident. And I literally just realized that “Sea of Tranquility” has a figurative quality, too (haha). I didn’t pick that because it sounded cool; I totally did it on purpose. So, his car reaches the Sea of Tranquility, and maybe he finds peace. Layers are fun.

Our protagonist is stuck on Earth while Captain Katie is in space. What would this story look like if their physical positions were reversed?

That, to me, feels like the basis for a more familiar story. If our protagonist were in space, the obvious route is a “missing his gal back home” kind of story, where the easiest route to conflict/stakes is some kind of Odyssey situation, where he’s stranded or trying to get home. And that feels more speculative to me, if it becomes an adventure story—at least if he’s physically overcoming and battling obstacles; there are obviously near infinite ways of handling it, or a war story. The physical space between the characters was my idea for the story, but I wanted her in a place where she’d want to remain, and him in a place where he’d feel stuck, trapped, or diminished. Although space is lonely—lonelier than Florida—there is, in my mind, a sort of adventurous or exciting quality to it in fiction. If Katie were on Earth, I don’t think it would bother her so much that he was in space. She’s more secure and focused on adult things. She would miss him but carry on. Or find a way to get to him if she needed to.

Staying with the surreal, is there a flash or novel or any story with wild elements that inspires you to push the boundaries of your writing?

I’m reading Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, and I love the way it uses pulp fiction, speculative elements, and war story tropes while being so heavily character based. I’d like to enrich my characters or make them seem complex. Maybe expand the cast a bit. Kraus’s protagonist, Bagger, is amazing—he’s a young gambler, kind of sleazy. He’s always been selfish—and cowardly—but is now tasked with protecting people. The villains are less complex, but they’re still compelling. The other aspect of that novel that inspires me is its now-famous structure: It’s a three-hundred-page sentence. I would love to try something so challenging in terms of style and craft. Erin Vachon has given me notes on a flash I’m working on where the syntax might, with revision, mimic riding a bicycle. So, something like that. Also, I’d like to sit down and finish my novel, but that’s a whole other issue.