Real Tales of Gothic Creep into Eric Rickstad's Writing

HALLIE EPHRON: Settling in to read one of Eric Rickstad’s Canaan Crime series novels is like accepting an invitation to listen to a scary tale, told as the embers of a campfire fade. Reviewers have called his novels “diabolical," "haunting," and (my favorite) "creepy." They're also praised as literary page turners.

Even the title of his brand new series novel, What Remains of Her,  and the cover with its cottage surrounded by dark woods and shadow, conjure ghost-like apparitions. Today Eric talks about where his inspiration comes from.

GATHER 'ROUND THE CAMPFIRE...

 

ERIC RICKSTAD: I’m often asked what inspires me to write crime and suspense novels so steeped in elements of the Gothic and horror traditions. Why do my books possess the haunting and claustrophobic atmosphere of isolated woods, fog, snow and rain, of derelict cabins and farms, cobwebbed attics and dirt cellars?

It is true that as a boy, I devoured the dark tales of Poe, King, Jackson, Hawthorne, Irving, and so many others. Who of us does not love a good old macabre tale of murder and terror set in the woods or an isolated town on the edge of the woods? These books influenced me, but it was an actual place that most spurs me. Since grade school, when the writing fever first infected me, I’ve written about these themes because of one locale.

Growing up in Vermont, I was drawn—one might even say lured—to the desolate and bucolic woods of the Northeast Kingdom. The Kingdom is the northeastern most region of the state, a remote area with Canada as its northern border, and the Connecticut River and New Hampshire as its eastern border. A region with town populations of 62 and 24 and 106. A place that, even today, may not have cell phone service for a 500 square miles. A place where if one gets in trouble, help is not coming for a long time, and perhaps far too late.

As a boy, I explored the Kingdom’s woods and its abandoned farms and mills, its hidden streams and crumbling stone walls. Up there, even on the sunniest days, the woods could remain in a perpetual dusk, their ancient cedar, spruce and hemlock trees blotting out the sunlight.

The Kingdom was a place of mystery and tranquility; a place where I believed nothing bad could befall me. This was a naïve notion, of course. Nature itself can offer up its dose of danger. In an instant, a calm sunny day turns fierce, the temperature plummets, a lacerating wind drives rain or snow sideways, a fog settles in, and a person is left at the mercy of now deadly elements on what was supposed to be an ideal day for a nice hike. And, of course, wherever people reside, danger lurks; as remote as the Kingdom is, it has its share of people who have committed heinous crimes.

Even as that naïve boy exploring The Kingdom, I could sense, as dusk fell on the Kingdom or the skies blackened with storm clouds, that the woods changed when shadows fell across the land. The beauty of the woods was overtaken by an ominous and haunted air. I would feel as if I were being watched and followed, as if something awful was always just about to happen to me. Within the pastoral woods, there now lurked potential violence, even death. 

This is an old story, perhaps the oldest. The woods have always frightened us. And that fear triggers two other elemental and primal fears:  fear of the dark,  and fear of the unknown. Put all three together and…what dark tales can unfold. From classics such as Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, to In the Woods and In a Dark, Dark Wood, we’ve told stories of the woods and our fear of it and the unknown. At times, we also seem to revel in that fear of what perils the woods may hold for us, whether it be another human, a beast, or a legendary ghoul of our collective imagination. We understand that no place, however beautiful, is safe.

In The Silent Girls I wrote:  

Violence lurked here as it did the world over... [Rath] had always wondered why people in rural areas, when interviewed after horrific violence, said, "This isn't supposed to happen here." As if violence had forgotten to keep itself within some prescribed geographic boundary.

This unpleasant truth, that acts of malevolence and violence can strike any of us, anywhere, at anytime, even in the most idyll settings, allows me to examine the nature of good and evil, of suspense and dread and tension, all of which are at the heart of crime novels, as well as  horror and Gothic novels.

I don’t go about the writing of my books with a genre in mind, I don’t even agree with the concept or definition of “genre.” Far too many wonderful books overlap. What I write are dark, gritty, realistic tales set in or near the woods, hopefully with original prose and twists, and with characters to whom readers can relate.

As a reader, I’ve always loved staying up late at night, immersed in novels that scare me and make me wonder what caused that creak on the stairs and if I left a window open. It harkens back to those nights I camped with friends in the woods of the Northeast Kingdom.
Of all the stories we could tell in the dark night of the woods, stories to calm our nerves out there in the dark woods, we chose scary stories. We told and listened to ghost tales and gruesome horror stories around the campfire, our faces carved into macabre masks by the flames’ light and the night’s shadows, our spines stiffening at a crack of the branch.

We loved telling those tales. I still love telling them. How, as a writer, could I possibly resist writing about all of this rich terrain I adore and know so well?

HALLIE: Yikes. Just reading this in broad daylight had me spooked.  

I vividly remember ghost stories told around a campfire Anyone else know the one that ends,"Bring me back my bones!"

What's really scary is when a truly spooky tale feels as if it could happen, which are the kind of tales that Eric tells. 

Today we're sharing memories of tales told around a campfire, and what spooks us most.

Eric Rickstad's prescription: Grab pencil & paper & GO!

HALLIE EPHRON: Today I'm happy to welcome Eric Rickstad to Jungle Red. He writes gripping literary thrillers, the kind that hook you on page one and don't let up until they gobsmack you with an ending you should have seen coming. Along the way, his prose dazzles.

His debut novel, a New York Times Notable Book, REAP, came out to critical acclaim in 2010; his fourth book, THE NAMES OF DEAD GIRLS, is just out. 

Eric sets his books in his home state of Vermont, this new one on a remote college campus. You can feel the poetry in his writing in this one-sentence introduction to Detective Frank Rath's niece, now his adopted daughter (her parents were killed):

Rachel Rath's flesh knew before her mind did that she was being watched.

I won't spoil what happens, but let's just say it's a page turner. Reading Eric's books is more like inhaling than reading... and I asked him what writing them is like for him.

ERIC RICKSTAD:  I write my novel’s first drafts in notebooks, with #2 pencils. I like the physicality, the feel and sound as graphite scratches paper. I like to cross out a paragraph with a dark, violent X, to circle a passage and draw arrows up to show where the passage really belongs, then draw more arrows. I like to doodle and to scribble notes, important notes like: This sucks, get a job. I like to write anywhere I want when I want, on a stream bank or on my porch steps, or perhaps your porch steps.

What I love about writing with a pencil is that the writing comes so much easier, in a surge I cannot replicate when click-clacking keys. The physical act of writing sparks a white-hot livewire from my mind to pencil to page.

There was a period when I “transitioned” to writing first drafts on my laptop. It was wasted time, I reasoned, to write a novel in a notebook only to then have to type into a Word doc what looked like a 100,000-word drug prescription.

During this period, the words still came. Yet, I found myself “stuck” far more often, staring at the blinking cursor, and, while stuck, I became tempted to “check” email, social media, and “breaking news.” When I succumbed to this temptation, it proved a shameful waste of time. We all do it, but I loathed it.

So, I made a pact: when I got  stuck staring at a cursor, I’d shut down the laptop, grab my pencil, pocketknife, and notebook, and venture to a comfy chair or under a tree. 

And. Voila. No longer stuck. Often on a day when I got no writing done in the first few hours on my laptop, I ended up writing 20 notebook pages in an hour. Not all of it was good, but all of it was useful. Every word we write is useful.

Long ago, I reverted back to writing first drafts longhand. I have boxes and boxes of notebooks of my novels. Even when working on a tenth draft in Word, I’ll go to the notebook to work out a plot point or to resurrect a dead passage by writing it anew on a real page with a real pencil.

I still get stuck writing this way. I still have atrocious days of dreck; yet, instead of staring at that blinking cursor, I get to see how fine a point I can whittle on my pencil tip. I get to study the wood shavings, which are far more fascinating than a cursor. Even when no words come, I’ve not wasted time, my mind, my subconscious, remains fully engaged as I tap my pencil on the page. And, much as one tries, one can’t surf the Internet on a notebook page. Not yet.

So, if you find your writing is stuck or uninspired, for any reason at all, change it up, unplug, go to a location that does inspire, get outside, grab a pencil and a notebook and see what comes when it is once again truly just you and the page. 

HALLIE: Great advice! What I want to know from Eric is: Pencil shavings? Don't you have a pencil sharpener (my electric pencil sharpener is my favorite time waster)? And how much of what you write longhand actually ends up going in the book?

And for the rest of us, does the writing implement make a big difference? Pencil? Sharpie? Fountain pen? Or keyboard?? What's your weapon of choice?

Eric Rickstad, literary genre masher

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HALLIE EPHRON: It’s pretty exciting when your first novel is published by Viking Penguin and declared a New York Times Noteworthy Book. That’s what happened to Eric Rickstad with Reap. Critics call it  “an American classic that draws readers into the dangerous and claustrophobic backwoods of Northern Vermont to witness a drugged out Gothic thriller of maimed and desperate characters.” “A masterwork.”

Now Eric is out with another chiller, The Silent Girls. It’s dark and literary, and the main character is a PI.

Got to ask: crime fiction, horror, Gothic, literary novel? Does it matter how we categorize your newest book, and what inspired it?

ERIC RICKSTAD: It defies categorization, doesn’t it!? I think most of those descriptions are accurate, with the possible exception of horror. The Silent Girls has been called a dark psychological thriller, and that may wrap it up the best. But most of all it's a novel that keeps you on the edge of your seat, compelled to find out what happens next, even if part of you doesn’t want to know. It is full of nasty twists and turns.

My agent told me that he’d never been so shocked by an ending; even upon reading it a second and third time he said he was left shaken. Best of all, most readers have felt that way, and expressed that the novel earns the ending, and does not cheat to arrive at it. Mystery and crime readers are not easily misdirected or surprised, so I am pleased this seems to be the case.

The Silent Girls is also literary in the sense that it has a clear voice, an awareness of language, hopefully fully-fleshed characters, and a singular setting that makes the novel stand out. 

HALLIE: Setting seems so essential to your story: Vermont backwoods. Do you live there, and how do you and your wife get up the courage to walk your dog? (See Eric's noble watch dog himself below.) 

ERIC: Ha! Yes, I do live in Vermont. I grew up in Vermont. I love Vermont. I have lived elsewhere. But I love it here. And so does my wife. This is where we chose to raise our family. 

I'm inspired byVermont’s beauty and the way it contrasts with the rare violent crimes that take place that shatter not just the communities in which they happen, but the entire state. Such acts feel like a betrayal. It can create paranoia and suspicion, and trigger deep emotions. I like exploring that.

 
From my novels, you’d think I’d have to go out armed with my Winchester .30-.30 deer rifle (not that anyone would notice or care). I want the setting always to influence the characters, so that description of setting is not just a backdrop, but impact the characters one way or another, and thus the reader. I think it makes the reader more engaged.

I also love the backwoods of Vermont, the Gothic landscape and the severe changes in weather that can suddenly turn a fishing trip or a hike into something perilous. But, really, the everyday Vermont is quite safe and its pastoral beauty reflects pretty accurately an idyll. I tend to write about the dramatic storms.

HALLIE: Your detective, Frank Rath. Police detective turned PI. What defines him for you, and where did you find him?

ERIC: What defines him most for me is that he is a single father who would do anything for his only daughter. He is devoted, and he is also afraid at every turn, as all parents are, for her safety. But his fear is even greater than most parents, because he came to being a single father through very dramatic and traumatic events that he wishes had never happened. 

He knows that being a single father has made him a much better man than he’d otherwise be. He became a single father as a result of horrific violence, and the experience made him grow up overnight and dispense with his frivolous and empty playboy ways. The irony for Rath is that the most awful event of his life in a way saved him.

HALLIE: We have many writers who follow our blog, and I’m wondering if you can speak from your own experience about the plusses and minuses of an MFA to launch a writing career?

ERIC: It does have advantages and disadvantages. I never intended to earn an MFA. Frankly, I did not even know they existed. A David Huddle, a wonderful mentor suggested I apply. I did not know what to make of the idea. Writers I liked never needed an MFA, and the prospect of earning one seemed too formal for me. Too academic. 

But David put it in perspective by saying, “Look, it will give you two years to write, where all that is expected of you is to write, and the people around you will respect that and understand it and encourage it.”

In the “real” world, when you say you’re a writer, you get one of two responses from people: either they romanticize it as a dreamy life where there is no hard work involved and it’s all just fun and glamor, or they denigrate it: “A writer? Cute. But what do you really do?” 

So what is great about an MFA is you are surrounded by writers and readers who respect what you are doing appreciate the work and perseverance it takes, and can support you in it. And you are exposed to other great writers and mentors. If you are able to find a program that suits your style and temperament, it can be a great experience—one where you can be taken seriously as a writer, where you have an excuse to do nothing but write, and where you can make lifelong friends in the process.

HALLIE: What were your favorite books/authors growing up, and how did that shape you into the writer that you are?

ERIC: Roald Dahl was a huge influence when I was in 3-6^th grade. DANNY CHAMPION OF THE WORLD especially, and Dahl’s macabre short stories. Poe’s stories. THE GREAT BRAIN and ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN series. There was a book called ALGONQUIN about a boy and his dog I loved and found again through the miracle of the internet. Then later, Stephen King, especially his short story collections NIGHT SHIFT and SKELETON CREW. And Faulkner, Shirley Jackson, Ruth Rendell, Joyce Carol Oates. So many!  

HALLIE: We writers are all shaped by the books we loved, and your affection for King, Oates, and Dahl -- that says it all. Both the high standard and the sensibility.

So asking our readers, how often are you truly surprised by an ending, and do you love a setting that freaks you out?