[This is the last in our series of interviews with authors featured in our anthology of outstanding stories from the web, The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology. You can find more information about the anthology and download it for free here, or you can read all the interviews and find new ones here.

Scott Cheshire earned his MFA in fiction at Hunter College, City University of New York. He is currently working on his first novel. "Watchers" was published on AGNI Online, And can be read here.

Marcos interviewed Scott by email]

A "sailing stone" of the Racetrack Playa, featured in Scott Cheshire's "Watchers"

Chamber Four: I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you first about the story’s setting. The Racetrack is real, correct? And stones really do move by themselves across it? Do people really go out to watch?

Scott Cheshire: The Racetrack Playa is in Death Valley, a very flat and now dry lake surrounded by mountains. And the stones are sometimes referred to as “sailing stones,” they’ve been studied since the forties. There are still only theories as to how they move. No footage has been captured. But they do move, depending on size, some as much as ninety miles an hour and some only a few inches each year. To my knowledge, watchers, as I imagine them, don’t exist.

C4: So how did you come to know this place and what about it inspired your writing?

SC: I first heard about the playa on television, not sure how long ago. It was brief, the tail end of a nature show, but it stuck with me. Years later I read about it in National Geographic. I found the idea kind of chilling and beautiful. At some point, I read of viewing benches in the valley and wondered about who sits on these benches.

C4: What, if anything binds these “watchers” together? Do they have anything in common besides the time they spend together hoping to see a stone move?

SC: We live in a strange and special time, we seem to know more and more every day and at the same time we know so little. I’m not one for nostalgia, in fact I generally find it not very helpful and often destructive, but mystery does seem in short supply these days. Or maybe I mean an appreciation of it. …
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[This is the third in our series of interviews with authors featured in our anthology of outstanding stories from the web, The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology. You can find more information about the anthology and download it for free here, or you can read all the interviews and find new ones here.

Andy started writing short fiction seriously about a decade ago and has published north of 100 stories in print and online publications, from Spork to Poor Mojo’s Almanac to the upcoming Beat to a Pulp anthology. His work has been short-listed for a Derringer mystery award and nominated for a Pushcart (by the editors of Lynx Eye) and a Million Writer’s award (by a kind reader). For five intense months, he served as the weekly writer for Thieves Jargon. A journalist by training, Andy lives in flatlands of south central Michigan and roots for the Tigers and the Lions, God help him. You can find “Bad Cheetah” in Word Riot here.

Sean interviewed Andy by email.]

We’re sharing a joint in my basement bedroom. Cheetah and I sit on the bed while Gordon stands ready with the crossbow. Lined up against the wall is a series of mannequins from the department store my mother manages. The first six have photos of former boyfriends taped to their plastic skulls and are in various stages of degradation. One has steel wool for pubic hair and a crude vagina carved into its crotch. Others are covered in happy faces and swastikas. All are pierced with arrows from the crossbow.

We’ve attached a digital image of Cheetah’s face to Mannequin No. 7. On its arms, in brown and yellow marker, I’ve replicated the cheetah tattoos. Cheetah squint-eyes my handiwork and christens me a damn fine artist. Gordon pats him on the back and tells him it will be a damn fine honor to perforate his sternum.

SC: While we were reading and vetting stories for the anthology, the term “joke story” came up more than once. At first it had an almost-negative connotation, and I got to thinking about why that was. In the end we selected a number of stories such as “Bad Cheetah” and “The Naturalists” by BJ Hollars which are definitely humorous, but also successful as dramatic fiction. Obviously you think humor can work in serious fiction, but do you think it gets a bad rap or stigmatized somehow? Is there some distinction between a funny story and a “joke story”?

AH:  For me, good fiction strives for the meaningful. It can get there in any number of ways—drama, humor, mystery, horror, etc.—but in the end, no matter the genre, it leaves you with something to think on. The characters evolve, even incrementally. That said, I think humor is underutilized in fiction. Humor as an element in the story, that is, not as the be-all and end-all. Make them laugh, absolutely, but make them think, too.

SC: Off of that, what kind of books/stories do you tend to read? Is this story a departure from or in-line with your tastes as a reader?

AH: In many ways what I write differs pretty drastically from what I read. I read a lot of serious literary fiction, a la Annie Proulx and Cormac McCarthy. Would I love to write like that? Hell yes. But there’s only one Cormac McCarthy. The older I get, and the more time I spend stringing sentences together, the more I realize it’s about developing my own voice, and being comfortable with it. I figure I should have it figured out in about thirty years.

SC: I’ve never read anything else you’ve written, so I guess I’ll pose the reader tastes question about your writing. Is this story typical of what you write, or a departure?

AH: This is fairly typical for me. I’ve written quite a few stories from the perspective of kids (reflecting a kid at heart, stunted intelligence, perhaps a bit of both), and more often than not I attempt to inject some humor.

SC: Where did this story come from? Is there a real Cheetah out there in some form?

AH: Bits and pieces are borrowed from my past. You could say my childhood was, ah, colorful. I moved around a lot, attended different schools, developed a nasty case of insecurity like the main character. Cheetah is a potpourri of relatives and stoners and stoned relatives. I did have a cousin, a trucker, with flowing black hair and larger-than-life persona. A real-life Cheetah, of sorts, he would play basketball with a nervous kid in a northern Michigan driveway before one day fatally overdosing in his semi truck.

SC: I’ve got a few favorite parts of your story, but to me the ending really stands out. This is where “joke story” first came up in regards to “Bad Cheetah.” The last line definitely reads like a juvenile butt-sex punch line. And while it’s easy to dismiss it as just that, I think it also wraps up the story nicely, serves the whole piece far better than, say, an overblown metaphor like many short stories trying to be literary tend to end with. What was the decision process like with this ending line? Did you just knew it fit, did you vacillate on it? Did readers or work-shoppers try and talk you in or out of it?

AH: This is where a good editor comes in. With the initial version of the story I sent to Word Riot, I did exactly what you describe: Try to finish with a forced example of literary flare. In that version, I ended the story just as the main character was standing in the parking lot thinking (instead of acting)—a misguided attempt to let the reader interpret what would happen next. Kevin O’Cuinn from WR called me on it. So I revised, deciding to play it straight—to have the kids go after Cheetah. The last line just came out, an unintended pun, but when I wrote it I knew I had my ending. Hats off to Kevin for his help.

SC: Thanks, Andy.

[Read "Bad Cheetah" and 24 other excellent stories from around the web in the very free Chamber Four Fiction Anthology]

[This is the second in our series of interviews with authors featured in our anthology of outstanding stories from the web, The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology. You can find more information about the anthology and download it for free here, or you can read all the interviews and find new ones here.

Roy Giles is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma. He is a founding member of Arcadia Literary Journal where he serves as the drama and assistant poetry editor. His story “Black Night Ranch” was first published with Eclectica Magazine where he was chosen as a “Spotlight Author.” You can find “Black Night Ranch” in Eclectica here.

Nico interviewed Roy by email.]

A Versatile tractor, the same kind that appears in "Black Night Ranch" --- photo by Roy Giles

Chamber Four: What did you do between undergrad and enrolling in an MFA program?

Roy Giles: Those were the most boring eight years of my life, particularly from a writing standpoint. I’d call them wasted except that I think I needed to be bored a while. I managed a clothing store during that interval. I worked for good people, but the job felt meaningless, which made me feel meaningless. I wrote almost nothing. I finished a first draft of a full-length play and maybe a half a dozen bad poems. That’s it.

When I look back on it, I don’t know where I got the idea that I might be a writer. Maybe because other people thought I was. I remember sitting in my driveway about to mail an application to law school when I got this panicky feeling I was screwing up. I called my friend in Dallas and told her I was having second thoughts. She practically yelled at me, “Why aren’t you applying to a writing program?” It was like I suddenly had permission. I scrapped law school and found a program.

C4: Where did you grow up?

RG: I grew up in the country outside of Holdenville, Oklahoma. Little town. I hardly ever make it back anymore, but it seems like everything outside of there moves at mach pace, but once you top the hill just as you enter town, you hit a brick wall of slow. It’s nice when you’re in the mood for slow. …
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[This is the first in our series of interviews with authors featured in our anthology of outstanding stories from the web, The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology. You can find more information about the anthology and download it for free here, and you can find all interviews and bonus content here.

Angie Lee is the author of "Eupcaccia,"* which originally appeared in Witness.

Eric interviewed Angie by gchat.]

The Chickens’ septic system had always been a “ball breaker,” and the way it “worked” had all three of them practicing the ancient art of inhalation and retention before crossing the threshold. Even without the contributions of Mr. Chicken over the last few years, the tank “kept its own way of thinking,” and Mrs. Chicken tried everything (short of liquefying the load before sending it down, and Malchicken had to threaten her with a kitchen knife before she conceded to let go of the blender) to keep the flow moving.

eric: Where did the idea for this story come from?

angie: I guess I need to start out by saying the story is part of a much larger piece/novel that I’ve been working on for a long time. My roommate in art school (who I think is responsible for every great idea I have) told me about the Eupcaccia bug from Kobo Abe’s book. I based the story on the memory of her description. I didn’t actually read the book until after I finished writing the story. I had the name misspelled for years.

eric: So the whole story sort of emerged from that reference to a bug that lives on it’s own feces? What struck you about this image?

angie: Shall I admit to loving poo? …
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