Get to know Caroline Devlin, the author behind the centerpiece “There Was A Tearing” for the surprisingly timely UPRISING.
What inspired "There Was a Tearing"?
I had just finished listening to Within the Wires by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson and fell in love with the atmosphere it created. That was the first time I felt like I’d seen a first/second person weird fiction story that really worked. The language was beautiful, the worldbuilding was fascinating, and even though the character’s interacted “off-camera,” their relationship was so perfectly done. I wanted to make something that would have a similar feel to it.
The world seemed a little darker in 2016 and at the time I was living in a small, insular community for my job. I’d started writing the story as an homage to Within the Wires but it became a way for me to process the things I was feeling. A lot of Aleisha’s first-person chatter on loneliness and connection mirrors what I was trying to work on in myself.
How do you connect with the idea of UPRISING?
I connect most with it as an active process. Uprising isn’t something you can do once and be done with it. You have to choose it again and again and again. Somedays it might be easier, somedays it might be more difficult, somedays it might involve eating a crumpled-up drawing of the sky or other metaphorically significant object of your choice.
Your piece blurs the area between longing for another person and haunting them - how did you decide on this dynamic?
In my experience, that’s just kind of how it feels to have a crush on someone. You see them more than they see you. Everything they do is beautiful and significant or heartbreaking betrayal. Not that I think that’s a good place to be in for a long time, though. At some point, you’ve either got to move on or cowboy/girl/person up and let them see you too.
Where did this particular dystopian setting come from, with its unique, extra-dimensional overlords?
Nowhere in particular. It was more of an amalgamation of different images and ideas that I’d been thinking about for a while. That being said, if there is a weird hell-dimension someplace, it definitely involves corporate bureaucracy.
How did you get into horror? What do you enjoy in the genre? What scares you?
One of my earliest memories was listening to a dramatic reading of the Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs at my church’s Halloween haunted house. I held it together pretty well until the reader got to the point where the zombie son was slowly shuffling up the driveway to his parents’ front door, at which point I absolutely lost any fragment of cool. I must have been like six at the time and I didn’t get over my zombie-induced fear of the dark till I was seventeen. Still, I think that is what’s so cool about horror as a genre. It can make you feel something in such a visceral way.
As for what scares me, right now I think I’d just have to point at the general state of everything. Also radiation-poisoning. And heights.
What’s your writing process like?
Guilt-ridden, mostly? I guess that’s the best term for it. I’ll start off with an idea/scene/image that won’t leave me alone till I get it down. Writing it out is almost a relief, like it lets my brain finally think of something else without that scene playing in the background, and the first third to half of the story will come really quick and easy. Then, I’ll usually run out of willpower to make myself keep going or I’ll get busy with work or something else, feeling lowkey guilty the whole time that I’m not finishing what I started. From there, I’ll work on it in bits and pieces whenever either inspiration or guilt builds up enough to overcome the inertia.
How does identity play a role in your writing?
When I asked one of my friends to edit my stories, her main criticism was that not everyone had to be queer. But if I’m writing it, ninety-nine percent of the characters probably will be and the remaining one percent will be set dressing with occasional dialogue.
What role do you think horror plays in the LGBTQ community?
I think a lot of traditional horror themes, like having a dark, unknowable secret or feeling the pressure of some distant but overpowering malevolent force, resonant with the LGBTQ community in particular. Ideally, horror fiction can be a way for us to work through our collective issues.
What’s next for you, creatively?
I’ve got another finished story I’m looking to sell, so that’s pretty cool. I’ve also got another couple pieces that are half-done and filling me with lowgrade, background guilt, which is less cool. But if anyone wants to buy a post-apocalyptic, radioactive zombie wife, horror short story, please hit me up.
Any great horror recommendations?
Though it’s not strictly horror, I can’t recommend Within the Wires enough. The Magnus Archives by Jonathan Sims is another great horror anthology podcast. For books, I’d say everyone should check out You Shall Never Know Security and With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer by J. R. Hamantaschen. Also, HPL sucked pretty bad on social issues even by the standards of his time, but The Colour Out of Space is one of my favorite horror short stories.