Mexican by birth,
Canadian by inclination. Silvia Moreno-Garcia's debut novel, Signal to Noise,
about music, magic and Mexico City, was listed as one of the best novels of the
year at io9, Buzzfeed and many other places. It has been nominated for the British
Fantasy, Locus, Sunburst and Aurora awards. Her second novel, Certain Dark
Things, about vampires in Mexico City, will be out October 2016. She has been
nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her work as an editor on She Walks in Shadows. She also co-edits The
Jewish Mexican Literary Review with Lavie Tidhar. Her website is
www.silviamoreno-garcia.com.
The Book of
Cthulhu, Signal to Noise, Historical Lovecraft, Witches: Wicked, Wild &
Wonderful, Future Lovecraft, She Walks in Shadows, Tales of Jack the Ripper,
This Strange Way of Dying, Dead North: Canadian Zombie Fiction, Fractured:
Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse, Sword & Mythos, Certain Dark Things,
Evolve 2: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, Whispers from the Abyss, We See
a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative, New Cthulhu 2: More Recent
Weird, Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories, The Humanity of Monsters,
Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages, Tesseracts Thirteen: Chilling Tales of the
Great White North, Dangerous Games, Where Thy Dark Eye Glances: Queering Edgar
Allan Poe, The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir and A Mythos Grimmly!
Now on to the
Interview!!
1) How old were you when you started writing?
I wrote since I
was a little kid and all throughout university, but it was crap. I didn't
seriously being writing until 10 years ago. By that I mean the writing at that
point stopped being laughable and actually began to acquire a shape, and a
vision.
2) What do you want a reader to gain from reading your
works?
I don't know if I
want them to gain anything. I do hope readers completely embrace me as their
tour guide into another world.
3) What are your three top suggestions on becoming an author,
or being a pleasure writer?
Any writer is a
narcissist, and it is best to be a stubborn narcissist, since persistence seems
to be the only way to "make it" in a very competitive publishing
climate. Read a lot and read outside the genres you like and the areas you are
comfortable with. Be honest. Readers can sniff dishonesty. Honesty is a
laudable and rare trait, but honesty also means baring yourself, your phobias,
anxieties and idiotic desires upon a page.
4) What is your favourite novel, why? Who is your favourite
author, why?
This is one of
the questions I always shrug at. It changes, it depends. I've re-read Lolita
and Madame Bovary more times than I care to count, along with The Haunting of
Hill House. I guess they are my favorite books. Tanith Lee, Daphne Du Maurier,
Julio Cortázar and Silvina Ocampo are all great writers. I like things that
straddle different arenas and are hard to classify, I like authors who tackle
difficult, 'unlikeable' characters. I like the lean prose of Bukowski and the
lushness of García Márquez.
5) What are your favorite pass times besides writing?
Food and movies,
with an emphasis on many varieties of cheeses. I am a very dull creature.
6) Who in your life do you credit your imagination to the
most?
My great-grandmother couldn't read or write
properly, but she did tell me a lot of stories, and I'm a storyteller due to
this oral history which provided me with plenty of folklore and family tales to
utilize in my own writing. I am also fond of old movies, which I used to watch
late on the TV set, things like Hammer films. My parents were also avid readers
so we had a lot of books.
7) What are the top five things on your bucket list?
I don't have a
bucket list. I do have a crippling fear of death, which is likely why I write.
8) What is your funniest childhood memory?
I had a peculiar
childhood in Mexico, actually grew up in what you'd call a tenement, and
although there are many moments I remember with laughter, it was more of a
black comedy set in a working class area than a wholesome sitcom. One of the
people in my barrio had a Great Dane named Snoopy and when I was about four of
five I used to ride it like a horse.
9) To the youth of today, if you could tell them one thing,
what would it be?
Enjoy it. Soon
enough you'll get old and your hair will gray. Take some chances. Looking back
and regretting is terribly annoying.
Dark and depressing, Certain Dark Things shows a world with very un-romantic vampires and violent monsters. On the run from an evil vampire mafia family, Alt (a vampire herself) flees to Mexico City where vampires are killed on sight. Living on the streets of Mexico City, Domingo is a runaway down on his luck when he runs into the enchanting Alt. Together, they face constant danger and violence as Domingo joins Alt on her flee from the other vampires.
