|
|
BrendanConnell.
Wordpress.com
Brendan Connell was
born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1970. He has had fiction published
in numerous places, including McSweeney’s,
Adbusters, Fast
Ships, Black Sails (Nightshade
Books, 2008), and the World Fantasy Award winning
anthologies Leviathan
3 (The
Ministry of Whimsy, 2002), and Strange
Tales (Tartarus
Press, 2003). His published books are: The
Translation of Father Torturo (Prime
Books, 2005), Dr.
Black and the Guerrillia (Grafitisk
Press, 2005), and Metrophilias (Better
Non Sequitur, 2010).
|
|
Short
Story Collections
Metrophilias
(Better Non Sequitur, 2010)
reviewed
by Annie Clarkson
Unpleasant Tales
(Ebonvale Press, 2010)
|
|
Interview
with Brendan Connell
The
Short Review:
How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
Brendan Connell: The bulk of
them I wrote over a period of about two years. A few however I had written much
earlier. These earlier ones I changed and rewrote a bit for the book.
TSR:
Did you
have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
BC: Yes. It was
intended to be a single thing from the beginning. My actual intention was to
write it fairly quickly, but for various reasons it ended up taking longer than
expected.
TSR:
How did
you choose which stories to include and in what order?
BC: Well, I
wanted to have stories that represented cities in all parts of the world, and
many periods in history. I also wanted the pieces to be arranged
alphabetically, so I made sure there was at least one piece per letter.
TSR:
What
does the word "story"
mean to you?
BC: For me, any
piece of writing that has action in it is a story. Truth be told though, in a
sort of technical way, I don’t consider Metrophilias
to be a collection of short stories, as a lot of the pieces are more like
anecdotes.
TSR:
Do you have a reader in mind when you write stories?
BC:
Usually I
write what I myself would like to read.
TSR: Is
there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection, anything at all?
BC: I am always
interested to hear how people view the book, but I don’t have a specific
question I want answered. Obviously I want the book to be liked, but I am
willing to accept any criticism that it might get.
TSR: How does
it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
BC: It feels
correct. I believe people should buy my books. Metrophilias is not perfect (is anything?), but I think on a
writing level it can hold its own against other new books out there. I realise
that this isn’t a very modest statement. But I did put a decent amount of
thought into the book, so there is no reason why it shouldn’t succeed.
TSR:
What are you working on now?
BC: Right now I
am putting the final touches on a collection for Chômu Press titled The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for
Antiquated Children. That will be out next year. Aside from that, I am
finishing a full-length novel that should be completed within the next month or
so, and working on a couple of other books, one being a book of jottings,
another being a sequel to my novel The
Translation of Father Torturo.
TSR:
What are
the three most recent short story collections you've read?
BC:
1. Stories to Caution the World, by Feng
Menglong. This is a Ming Dynasty collection that has a lot of fantastic
material.
2. A
collection of stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa that I can’t remember the name of.
3. La Pipe de cidre, by Octave Mirbeau. I don’t think this exists in
English.
|
|
|