This past June, I attended StokerCon 2025 in Stamford, Connecticut. As so often happens at these things, I met a lot of great people, had a lot of great conversations (once you get past the innate awkwardness that boils over in a room full of writers), and managed to throw out some interview requests to some great writers.
First up in this year’s StokerCon coverage (only three months after the fact) is Geneve Flynn, someone whose short stories burrow under your skin and stay there.
The first story of Geneve’s I encountered was probably “Little Worm” when it appeared on Pseudopod. A mother-daughter tale about aging and responsibility, it struck a chord with me hard.
Geneve has won the Bram Stoker award (twice), for editing the anthology Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (2020) and for the poetry anthology Tortured Willows: Bent. Bowed. Unbroken. (2021). She has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (again, twice), longlisted for the Locus Award (twice), and has won both the Shirley Jackson and Brave New Weird awards.
I was introduced to Geneve through previous interviewee and fellow Australian Lauren (L.E.) Daniels. At StokerCon, Geneve and I fell into talking about Korean horror film and television, how she and L.E. became two parts of a power-horror trio, and what it’s like trying to transition from fiction to screenwriting.
Our conversation below is just as wide-ranging (and you even get to hear from me about a particularly divisive turtle).
The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Noah Lloyd: What kind of dastardly adventures do you and L.E. Daniels get up to when you’re on a 25-hour flight?
Geneve Flynn: In the throes of the very long flight [to the U.S.], I was watching Parasite for the first time. The entire plane was dark and quiet because it was time for everyone [aboard] to sleep.
I was really into this movie, and I got to the very intense climax where—a bit of a spoiler—there’s blood going everywhere, and all of a sudden Lauren’s face appeared like this far away from mine.
[Geneve shows the distance with her two fingers. Readers, it’s not far.]
And she hissed, “Do you want a tuna sandwich?”
My brain was so scrambled, I yelled, “Why would you ask me that?!” I forgot I had earphones on, so I was super loud. When I went back there [to where the extra snacks were set up] it wasn’t even tuna, it was chicken.
NL: Just Lauren’s face coming out of the darkness.
GF: It was just the perfect timing. That kind of stuff is what happens.
NL: It sounds better than doing that flight on your own, I’m sure.
GF: It is. It’s a lot more fun.
NL: How did you and Lauren meet and become writing friends?
GF: I read her interview with you, [where she mentioned] Stephen King’s letter.
She was giving a talk at the Writer’s Group Convention. And she told the story of how she wrote to Stephen King.
And I thought, “Oh my God, I need to go and speak to that person.” And from there we just kind of started doing a bit of teaching together, working together. But we’re really close friends, and we’re writing buddies. We’re part of the same writing group with another Australian author, Pamela Jeffs.
And that’s kind of how it started. It was Uncle Steve that got us together.
NL: It seems like everything goes back to Uncle Steve.
So what is your writing community like? Obviously, Pamela Jeffs, Lauren Daniels. Are the three of you in a conventional writing group? Are they your beta readers?
GF: We don’t actually write together that much. We’re more support. We do try to sometimes go away on a writing retreat, but inevitably it’s just like, playing dumb games and eating lots of cheese and crackers and stuff.
But they’re my first readers. The ones that I want to elicit that, “Oh, my God,” response from. If I can get that from them, then I know the story is working.
And we will cheer each other on when we’ve had successes, or we’ll commiserate if something didn’t quite turn out. I’ve been through other writing groups, bigger writing groups, but this one feels like the one that fits best I think.
NL: I think that a lot of writers’ groups end up fizzling out. What do you think it is about this particular group that has kept it going?
GF: I think we all write for the same reasons—we’re all driven to tell stories and to try to figure out who we are, where we came from, where we’re going. But we also are able to really laugh at ourselves, and just laugh at the ridiculousness of this career that we’ve chosen.
It is, you know, so difficult to make it, but we can’t help ourselves. It’s something that we’re driven to do. If we didn’t tell stories, then there would be such a big chunk of our lives missing.
So I think that’s a big part of it. Just being able to laugh, but also understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.
NL: What have you learned through some of your teaching with the Brisbane Writers Workshop?
GF: I think that the main thing with teaching and being a writer, where we’re often introverts, being able to do some public speaking and also being able to articulate your thoughts, I think that is something that a lot of writers struggle with.
Lauren said, “Hey, do you want to teach a section for this workshop?” I was like, “Oh my God. Not really.”
But I did it, and it turned out to be something that I really love doing. I love teaching, I love doing workshops and I love learning about writing. I think that that’s one thing that I really love about writing, is that there’s always some new facet to explore. And to go down all these rabbit holes.
I’ve been on kind of an obsession with the Southeast Asian story structure, the four act structure, at the moment, and that’s been really fascinating, looking at narratives that have used it. Why does it work? How can you apply it?
So that’s one thing that I really love about teaching, you also learn as you go along, because you discover more things.
I think one of the best ways to cement it for yourself is to teach someone else.
NL: Have you used this four act structure in any of your own projects?
GF: I have. The most recent story and most recent poem. Actually my story in Silk & Sinew: Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora, edited by Kristy Park Kulski and published by Bad Hand Books in May.
I have a story called “If I Am to Earn My Tether.” [The story structure is] called kishotenketsu. There’s a Chinese version. There’s a Korean version.
It’s a really interesting format to play with, because sometimes stuff doesn’t fit with the more well-known Western storytelling conventions. So you think, “Oh, if I use this, is a reader going to be put off by it?”
I think, “Well, I hope it works.”
Also my poem that will be published with Weird Tales #371, “138 Melon Seeds,” uses the four-act structure.
It’s tricky too, because there is a part of kishotenketsu that I think throws some people off. The three-act structure has symmetry—what you set up in act one goes off and is resolved a lot of the time by act three.
But in kishotenketsu, the first two acts are kind of introduction. These are the characters, and these are the developments. It’s not necessarily conflict driven, where this character has a goal and these are the things that are in their way. And that’s pretty much the [character] arc.
Whereas kishotenketsu is like—here are some people. This is their everyday life. This is what they’re dealing with.
And then the third act is, “And here’s the asteroid.”
The third act shows the characters reacting to this new thing—or this is maybe a different point of view. And then the fourth act ties it all together. It’s like, this is what the story was actually about.
NL: How did you land on this structure? Did you decide, “Okay, I’m going to write something using kishotenketsu now”? Or did you have an idea and later realize that this structure would help you navigate to the end?
GF: Maybe both. I knew that I wanted to use that four-act structure, and I wanted to try and see if I could make it work.
These were both invitations to write for these anthologies, but I did have the ideas for the stories and the poem first, but then I really sat down and looked at all of the different elements of kishotenketsu. So I plotted them out.
And then once I kind of got the structure down, off I went. That sounds so nerdy, but I was so happy when it worked, and just playing around with story, playing around with structure and storytelling styles, things like that. That’s one of my favorite things to do.
NL: Do you tend to be an outliner as opposed to a pantser?
GF: I used to be a pantser, and then I found out that I just got stuck with running so many storylines, and I couldn’t pull them all back and I couldn’t make sense of the story. So now, yeah, I plot pretty extensively, and I find that really helps—to have those milestones in the story where you can write towards.
I think one of the questions you said you were thinking about was revision—
…you just have to move on to the next thing, because you’ll spin if you’re just waiting on one piece.
NL: That’s what I was going to ask next.
GF: Yeah, [in pantsing] a lot of the revision happens towards the end. And I find that really disheartening. “Oh, no. I have all these tangles to untangle.”
And if I’ve plotted, then I find that a lot of the revision happens at the beginning, at the plotting side. And then when I actually start writing, then I don’t have to do as much revision.
NL: I love that a lot of the revision happens at the plotting side. One of my bugbears is, I don’t want to delete something I’ve written, even when I’m sitting there staring at it, knowing that it doesn’t work. It’s just a signifier of work, right? It hurts.
If most revision happens plotting side—what about after you have a first draft?
GF: I’ll try to put the piece aside, but it’s tricky.
I read a quote once—somebody said that they don’t love writing, they love having written. Sometimes I love having written, and I’ll go back and be like Gollum with “my precious,” and I’ll just go over and read it.
But if I can, I’ll put it aside for a little bit so that I will forget about it, and I’ll work on something else. Then I’ll go back and read it through and just make sure everything makes sense.
But there will be things that I’m blind to just because I’m too close to it. And then I’ll send it off to Lauren and Pam[ela Jeffs], and I’ll sit there, and I’ll wait, like, “Tell me, ‘OMG.’ Tell me, ‘oh my God,’ please.”
I’ll go through and address any suggestions or comments they have. And then usually once that’s done, then I’m happy, and I’ll send it off to the editor or submission call out, and then you just have to move on to the next thing, because you’ll spin if you’re just waiting on one piece.
NL: How do you put something aside when you’ve got a deadline of a few short weeks?
GF: I think plotting helps immensely, because for me it saves a whole lot of time if I can figure out the shape of the story, where I want it to go, what I want the reader to leave with. That makes the writing itself much faster.
But yeah, sometimes there isn’t time, and you just have to produce something. It makes me very unsociable, because I will disappear for days on end. I’ll be hunched over with, like, a million tabs open and my poor husband will come in. “Hey, do you want a cup of tea?”
[Monster voice:] “Get away!”
When there’s a deadline, I tend to get lost in the throes of the story, and that can be tricky. It’s like I have to remember that I do have a family and other responsibilities. But it is tricky.
NL: Sticking with themed anthologies, how do you approach them when the theme seems like something from out of left field?
GF: Sometimes an idea or a character will come straight away, particularly for something like Shakespeare Unleashed—also by the same editor and publisher, Classic Monsters Unleashed—and I’ll be inspired.
Or there’ll be a character that I always wanted to write about. For Shakespeare Unleashed, I remembered studying Othello in school. Desdemona’s father was always for me the real villain, because he threw his daughter under the bus straight away.
He’s like, “Hey, if she betrays me, she’s going to betray you.” And that planted the seed of doubt [in Othello]. So sometimes an idea will spark straight away.
The other thing is what I like to call The Rule of 10, which is, if you’re trying to think up a solution to a story idea, or to try and and come up with something new, or a new character, list maybe ten-fifteen answers to your question, and the first couple will be ones that you’ve seen over and over again, because that’s the way your brain works.
But then when you start getting to maybe the seventh or eighth or ninth, that’s when you start coming up with more creative ideas. So sometimes that helps, if you’re stuck for ideas.
NL: I love the rule of 10. That’s really fun.
You mentioned Desdemona’s father, so I wonder if we could shift gears a little bit. Mothers and children certainly seem like subjects that come up a lot for you, from “Lidless Eyes that See” to “Little Worm.”
I guess the question I have here is, when did that motif begin appearing in your writing? And when did you notice it recurring?
GF: The first story was probably “The Pontianak’s Doll,” which was, I think, brought out by KnightWatch Press in Play Things & Past Times. That story is based on a Malaysian myth, the Pontianak is a woman that died in childbirth.
She’s a vampiric spirit that takes vengeance, on men usually. But I thought, what happened to the baby? So I wasn’t consciously writing about mothers and daughters.
But with “Little Worm”—that was in Black Cranes—that was definitely a mother-daughter thing. That one was kind of tricky to write about. It’s a relationship that’s so close, I think.
That’s probably when I realized, “Oh, wow, I keep returning to this story question. I keep examining it and poking and prodding it from different directions.”
NL: And how do you keep recurring motifs like this one fresh? I think there’s often a concern, “Oh, I’m just writing the same story over and over again.”
GF: I think there will be certain things that writers will return to over and over again, because those are the questions that keep them up at night.
Stephen King writes about, if God exists, why do bad things happen? And he writes about addiction.
For me, I think it is one of those questions that kept me up at night. Whether or not I can help it, I probably will keep returning to that question [around mothers and daughters].
But I think if you write honestly, and if it’s a theme that’s a rich field to play in, like mother-daughter relationships—they’re full of complexity and conflict. There’s love. There’s guilt. There’s intergenerational trauma. And there is so much that you can explore in those relationships, but how do you let go of that concern?
I’ve actually asked Lauren and Pam, am I just writing the same story over and over again? And they said no. So having somebody that you can trust—they will be able to tell you, “Yeah, enough of this story already. Write something different.” That really helps.
NL: Would you have advice for someone who feels like they are stuck telling the same story? How would they break out of that rut?
You get inspiration from here and there and all of a sudden you pull together three things that shouldn’t go together, and then all of a sudden you have maybe a story idea.
GF: Just explore some of the other questions that keep you up at night. And also read widely. Read nonfiction. Some of my best story ideas come from nonfiction, I find a weird fact in some historical [resource].
There’s some weirdness that is part of the natural world, and then my brain goes from there. Also, if you are looking at call outs for anthologies, sometimes that can spark you in a different direction, and you can write different stories for that.
But try the rule of ten! There we go. That’s why we have the rule of ten.
NL: You mentioned earlier that there are characters that you’ve wanted to write about for a long time, or that you’ll be reading and you’ll have an idea for a story. How do you capture those ideas?
GF: I have a notebook. I have those yellow sticky notes on my computer. I’ve got files where I’ve got story ideas, and I try to keep those organized. And I’ve got notes on my phone as well.
Sometimes I’ll be fiddling around, and I come across something, like, “Oh, that was a good idea.” I have all of those, but they’re not very organized.
NL: That can be good though, just letting the mind spread out a little bit.
GF: Yeah. And I think that sometimes it helps just to capture it, and then you don’t feel like it’s going to be lost forever. And sometimes they’re really good ideas.
That’s the magic of the writer’s brain. You get inspiration from here and there and all of a sudden you pull together three things that shouldn’t go together, and then all of a sudden you have maybe a story idea.
NL: “Three things that shouldn’t go together.” I mean that just sounds like an Eric Larocca title.
GF: Yes! [laughs] Tell him that’s my title. He can’t have it.
NL: You’ve published a lot, in both short fiction and in poetry. Have you considered taking on something like a novel? Or do you happen to be working on one?
GF: Well, the attraction to short fiction and poetry is that quick turnaround. And I do love short fiction because you’re usually dropped into this moment in somebody’s life, and something happens, and then you’re shot out the other side.
Usually you’re a little bit stunned or shaken. And I love that. And it’s also such a good way, I think, to build your visibility, if you have short fiction and you start getting your name into a lot of collections and anthologies.
But I do have something long form that I’m working on. I’ve been working on this thing for a while, but it’s changed shape quite a few times, and I’ve kind of landed on the right shape for it.
I know [now] where I’m going with this one.
NL: Is there anything that you would feel comfortable divulging at this point?
GF: Well, I am trying again with kishotenketsu. It was originally supposed to be about the Chinese pirate queen, Zheng Yi.
But, if I’m writing horror, her story actually ends on a very positive note. She brought the Qing Empire to its knees, retired, lived a nice long life. And she retired with just about all her treasure and got a pardon for most of the people under her command.
That doesn’t sound horrific. That sounds kind of cool, actually.
But I discovered an empress who did something so transgressive—this was before Zheng Yi’s time—that she was almost wiped from the annals of history. So that’s who I want to write about.
NL: You mentioned that one of the things you like about short fiction is being dropped into a moment in someone’s life. How do you make that moment feel lived in? Your characters all feel very round.
I guess really the question is, what’s your approach to character building?
GF: There’s a lot of stuff that you can do when you’re building your characters—
NL: But what do you do?
GF: What do I do?
NL: I could hear the teacher turning on there.
GF: [laughs] I know I know. Oh, what do I do?
I think of two questions, what do they want and what do they need? Because those two things are usually mutually exclusive. This is from The Story Grid.
Usually a satisfying story ending is where a character either gets what they want or what they need, but not both.
What they need is often some sort of transformation, or lesson learned, and what they want is maybe an external goal.
So you kind of think, “Well, what does this character really need? And do they get it?” If it’s a tragedy, then they don’t get what they need. They don’t learn the lesson, and then they end up the same at the end of that story.
It’s like you can have the surface idea of these characters, but then you think, “What is the wound that they’re carrying?”
And that usually drives all of their actions. Whether or not they’re trying to avoid it, they’re trying to resolve that wound. So that’s the thing that I keep in mind most, with the characters.
What is the lesson that they need to learn, and whether or not they learn it.
NL: When you talk about something like a character’s wound, is that something that you think needs to be explicit on the page?
GF: Usually it is something that is driving everything, but I don’t need to be explicit about it.
But sometimes, particularly if you want to have great suspense and great tension, you have to ask, what is the one thing that the character does not want to do?
And you have to keep pushing and pushing them towards it, because that might be the moment where they’re actually facing down their wound. And you don’t have to be, you know, explicit, saying “this is what happened to them.”
But if you have that understanding, then everything that they’re doing in this story will feel right. It will feel like it fits, and they will feel like a whole person. A real person.
Horror I think is very personal—what’s horrific to one person may not be as horrific to another person, but if it’s very personal…
What is the one thing that they do not want to do? Keep shoving them towards it. Then that I think creates really strong horror.
NL: We’ve been dancing around it the whole conversation. Why horror for you? Why do you find yourself writing it and coming back to it?
GF: I think it’s just the way my brain works.
What is the one thing that they do not want to do? Keep shoving them towards it.
I think horror is a very honest genre. I think it shows the light and the dark, and that can be very comforting, and freeing in a way. Because then you’re allowed to be entire. You don’t have to try and disguise parts of yourself that maybe are not so palatable.
And also it acknowledges that terrible things do happen in the world, and maybe this is a way to think about them. This is a way to survive them.
I do have anxiety, and anxiety is a constant hum in the back of my mind, so having narratives where that’s reflected back to me, where it’s like, “Yeah, the world is frightening sometimes.” That can be, I don’t know if you would call it comforting, but it’s validating.
The other part that I love about horror—and it’s having a real renaissance—is that it’s smart, it’s political, and it says so many things you might not be able to say if you’re writing something straight, like a non-fiction piece or whatever. It can say all these things, but in a narrative form.
NL: Have you had any revelations that led to some kind of breakthrough in your writing?
GF: There will be two answers to that.
The moment where I started really figuring out who I am as a writer was when I started writing about Asian mythology, Asian culture, being a diasporic Asian person.
Before then I didn’t see very many narratives that reflected that. So I thought, nobody wants to read that. “The Pontianak’s Doll” was my first, proper professional sale, and that was the first story that I actually wrote about that experience. It was one of those stories that just kind of poured out of me.
And I thought, “Oh, I haven’t ever written something like this.” But when I [realized that] these are the stories that I want to tell, that I have inside of me, then I started getting a few more acceptances.
That’s probably where a lot of my writing has resonated with readers. I would guess so. That’s the internal moment.
The external is Black Cranes, that anthology.
I met Lee Murray, who is huge in horror. We were at GenreCon, which is the Brisbane, Queensland, speculative fiction convention, and we started talking. We kind of figured out that we’re the black sheep of the literary family. We’re Asian, we’re women, and we write horror.
And we thought, where are stories that reflect our experiences? We should do an anthology of short fiction by Southeast Asian women.
And I said yes—even though it’s terrifying, because this is very early in my editing and writing career. And Lee Murray had already won I-don’t-know-how-many Sir Julius Vogel Awards and that type of thing. But I jumped in. That was my mantra that year. I think I wrote it on the wall beside my desk. “What are you going to say yes to today?”
I was like, ‘Have I just got myself in a lot of trouble?’ But neither of us could have predicted just how much Black Cranes would open doors for us. I mean, that [book] won the Bram Stoker, the Shirley Jackson, and it shortlisted for, I think, the British Fantasy, longlisted for Locus.
It was just incredible. And that has put me in the spotlight. People were taking notice of my writing and what I was doing. And then this whole community has grown up around Black Cranes. We have all of these other Asian women writers, and we’re a community now.
That’s probably the hugest external moment for me, yeah. Black Cranes.
NL: That’s really great, and I think maybe a good pivot into the slight silliness of the lightning round.
Favorite cocktail, mocktail, or other beverage.
GF: Tea. I love tea. A cup of hot tea first thing in the morning. I love that. And if I’ve opened a fresh box of tea, I’ll just like, inhale it.
But Boba tea as well, all of those colorful Southeast Asian drinks that have mung beans and adzuki beans and stuff, I love those as well. I can’t drink alcohol, so anything sweet and colorful. With tea in it.
NL: So first thing in the morning, what’s your go-to?
GF: There is a brand that I like, which is an organic Australian tea, but English Breakfast is probably my favorite.
NL: Alien or Aliens?
GF: All right, this is where I’m going to be controversial, because I’m gonna say Aliens with the S. I know that’s gonna get me like, a downgrade in marks.
NL: I mean, I’ve had a lot of horror writers say Aliens, plural, [and they’re all wrong] but tell me why.
GF: It’s one of those movies that I can watch and rewatch, and my husband and I will quote to each other. As I said before, anxiety is something that bugs me. And if I’m getting too spun out, he’ll just come up to me, “Ripley, you’ve blown the transaxle! You’re just grinding metal!”
It’s the perfect thing that I need to hear when I’m spinning myself up.
But I think, objectively, Aliens is a great movie. It is more of an action thriller, but there are horror elements as well. It’s the mother-daughter story right there. It’s the alien queen and her eggs. It’s Ripley and Newt, and also Ripley’s daughter that passed before she wakes up. So it’s got all the motifs and themes that I love anyway.
And I’m gonna say, I’ve gone through your website and some of your comp titles—there are some big action thriller type things there as well. You’ve got Blade in there, which is again one of my comfort watches .
It’s so campy. Wesley Snipes is so over the top, and he’s acting his heart out, but sometimes that’s what you want to feel when you watch a movie. And I do have a soft spot for B-grade action and horror.
Sometimes I want a movie where somebody says, “Get away from her, you bitch!”
NL: And that’s why I ask the question.
If someone said you had to memorize an entire novel word for word, what book would you pick?
GF: Oh, that’s tricky, because like, do you want a short novel? Because if you have the memory…
I would say Stephen King’s IT, even though it’s a door stopper.
NL: Hell yeah. That’s the kind of answer I want to hear. I’ve gotten a bunch of people who say, “Oh yeah, this is a book I like, and it’s really short.” But no, not for Geneve Flynn.
GF: Yeah. Because again, that was one of the light bulb moments for me.
A friend handed me IT when I was in high school, and she said, “You have to read this.” And she was right. It was like light bulbs going off in my head.
I grew up as probably one of the only Asians in my school—apart from my brother—so that sense of being an outsider, of being one of the losers, the kids that nobody wanted to talk to, but then finding friends who were also losers, and you could band together.
But also recognizing that the world contained horrors. I think that’s what IT is about.
Yes, there’s weirdness there. Yes, there’s the turtle at the end and things like that.
NL: I will defend the turtle. I love the turtle, actually, unironically. But please go on.
GF: There are still scenes and emotions from that book that I read as a teen that still live inside of me. So I would, yeah. I would memorize that one.
NL: I love that.
But what do you think about the turtle? I’m sorry, but we now have to talk about the turtle.
GF: I’ve read books where it’s like, “That [element] didn’t go well.” But I think sometimes that captures the weirdness of experience, and the weirdness of the world. And sometimes that’s the way the writer expresses it. It’s that feeling of something bigger than what we know.
What are your thoughts on the turtle?
NL: They’re similar to yours. [Apologies, reader, for the dissertation.]
From, like, a phenomenological perspective, if you were to encounter a—I don’t know—a being of ultimate goodness and wisdom, the brain would just look for a metaphor, right? It would be something that you couldn’t directly perceive.
And so I actually love it, I think the turtle’s kind of a perfect metaphor. And then at the end—I mean spoiler alert for a book that came out 40 years ago—when the turtle is dead, that crushed me, you know? It’s like, when they’re kids, they have this beautiful experience, and it’s very, “Okay, here are the forces of good and evil, counterpoised.” There seems to be some kind of balance in the universe.
And then, nope, sorry—that rug is just completely pulled out from under you.
I think the turtle is one of my favorite things about that book. I’m glad we could talk about the turtle.
GF: And there are other books. Salem’s Lot is probably one of the books that really terrified me. And Needful Things.
With my psychology background, [Needful Things] is just playing people off against each other. Again, it’s like, what do they need? What do they want? And who’s going to choose what they need and who’s going to choose what they want?
Those were my two other choices, but yeah, I had to go with IT.
NL: IT remains tremendous.
Most underrated or sadly forgotten TV show.
GF: I’ve been watching a lot of Korean horror, and the two series I would recommend are Kingdom, which is a zombie plague set during the Joseon period. The writing is incredible.
And also Gyeongseong Creature, which is in the 1940s, and it’s about the experimentation by the Japanese—and the results. Again, incredible writing, and I love that there are female characters that would, I think, meet the Bechdel Test.
They have agency, and they’re not seen just as a romantic interest.
NL: Last question. Tell us about one thing we haven’t talked about yet today that lives rent free in your brain.
GF: Okay… Rent free. Well, two things. The first will probably be story, and how to write it. I will just turn story over and over in my head, which sounds very, very sad and nerdy. But, yeah, just how stories work, how they’re told, why they work, why they don’t.
But the other thing—and this is also going to sound very sad—there’s this little French bulldog called Walter Geoffrey. Have you heard of him?
NL: Nope.
GF: Oh, come on. You could’ve saved me.
He’s this little French bulldog, and he has a lot to say. He gets mad about things.
There’s one that I really love, where he wants to go to the park, but the park people were spraying for bugs so they couldn’t go, and he’s very, very mad. His owner is trying to talk him down from this, you know, emotional cliff.
In another video, he’s about to melt down and she’s like, “It’s not that serious. It’s not that serious. Let’s keep it together.” He tries for, like, a second, then just throws his head back and howls his little heart out.
And that makes me laugh sometimes. When I’m winding myself up with anxiety, that helps, just to remember life lessons from Walter Geoffrey: It’s not that serious, we gotta keep it together.
NL: I think we found the title of this interview, “Life Lessons from Walter Geoffrey.”
GF: Aw, I liked “three things that don’t go together.”
NL: You suggested earlier, read widely, read nonfiction. What’s your most recent nonfiction recommend?
GF: Actually I have two. The Business of Being a Writer, by Jane Friedman. It really is all about the business of being a writer. It’s about how to promote yourself, markets, agenting, contracts, all of that stuff.
And Just Add Writer: A Complete Guide to Writing Tie-Ins and IP, by Tim Waggoner. I picked this up at StokerCon, and it was a really good read as well.
Oh, can I add another one?
Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird. It’s all about kishotenketsu. It’s an excellent read. I can’t remember the author’s name [Henry Lien], but that one is another recommended nonfiction.
NL: Beautiful. Thank you for taking the time—over an hour of your morning.
GF: Thank you for reaching out.
Noah Lloyd 