An Interview With John WM Thompson

Editor of MOONCALVES

For the December issue of Noglesque, I offer an interview with John WM Thompson, the founder of NO Press. The press’s first anthology, Mooncalves, is coming in 2023 and available for preorder now.

Mooncalves features wonderfully eerie stories from authors including Brian Evenson, Lisa Tuttle, L. Marie Wood, J.A.W McCarthy, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Sofia Samatar.

“I will always be more grateful than I can say for anthologies like this, that not only include some of my favorite writers, but also introduce me to work by writers I haven’t encountered before. Mooncalves is splendid, surprising, and delicious.” — Kelly Link, multiple prizewinning author of Stranger Things Happen and Get In Trouble

“Surreal and superb, Mooncalves is a narratively abnormal exhibition, with stories that both alter and accentuate fiction traditions.  John WM Thompson has procured a haunting and often horrific anthology of literary asymmetry which will unease the unconscious.” — Clint Smith, author of The Skeleton Melodies

What is the significance of the title Mooncalves?

Like any aspiring writer, I had a little running list of titles for things I would work on, but Mooncalves wasn't on it. It came to me as I was conceiving the project, and because so much of the process had been intuitive, I sort of knew it was the right name as soon as it arrived. I had a vague idea of what the word meant when it presented itself, and I had to follow up on it.

I'm no scholar, but my understanding is that it was originally a folk term for literal calves, as in cattle, born with atypical physical characteristics. The thought was that they had been "touched", in the sense of some invisible and celestial influence being brought to bear on their fetal development. You could call it proto-epigenetics, I suppose. That idea ran in parallel with the project's interest in surrealism -- which to me is defined simply as relationships that develop between things that don't share any clear or rational connection -- in and between stories. Why wouldn't the moon brush against beings within the womb? You wouldn't expect it, but there’s the manifest evidence.

I also understand it became a pejorative term, at some point, for people with developmental disabilities, which is clearly wrong. That speaks to me as indicative of the social tendency, in all places touched by capital and eugenics, to fetishize standards of typicality (which are inevitably and purposefully unachievable, even to the privileged) and cast any deviation from them as dysfunctional, dangerous, and worthy of scorn. I grew up in special ed programs (I wrote about this for the dearly departed Mask; I am myself developmentally disabled, on paper), I knew children who'd be cast in that way. I knew them as well as I can know anyone. They are just like anyone else, as much as administrators and adults feared and denied the fact. 

The gnostic turn that my mind has taken in the last few years (and of which Mooncalves is a part) has cleaved my love and affection for such people toward celebratory tones. That they continue to exist is an expression of natural difference that becomes sacred, in part, by the ambient hostility with which they are constantly regarded. It is not so much the embrace of difference for the sake of difference as the forceful denial of a mandate that certain resemblances must be met before a person is allowed to live in fellowship. That the mandate fails is cause for courage. 

Anyway, to my mind there is a faint rhyme to all of that in the embrace of strange or experimental fiction. These stories are strange, but they are for everyone. One needs only to let go of the shame accompanying being in the presence of something unfamiliar.

I have read some of your writings about the process of completing Mooncalves and encountered two terms I found intriguing: “immanence” and “resonance.” Would you like to say something more about these terms as they pertain to Mooncalves? 

I’ve thought a lot about this! My sense of “immanence” is not precise or certain, but most of what I think is imprecise and uncertain; imprecision and uncertainty become surprise and interpretation once they’re accepted, and those two things are my crucial to the joy that comes from reading and editing, for me at least.

Immanence is, to me, something totalizing about a story which is latent within it but never fully expressed, and which is of the story, meaning that it is not chosen or designed by the writer, is not dependent on the writer’s intent. I can’t even guess where it comes from, but it’s always there.

It’s like a derivation of that old parable of the blind men and the elephant — every choice the writer makes provides some pinhole glimpse of the immanent quality of the work, but every individual observation taken together only gestures at the whole. You have to intuit or imagine what it is in an almost synaesthetic sense: the story reminds you of its immanence the way a taste can remind you of a color, or a sound reminds you of a shape.

If surrealism is a practice one does as an editor, I think the most straightforward way of going about it is to try and identify what’s immanent in a story and trace — or convince yourself of — connections between it and the immanences of other stories. It goes beyond genre; it’s all vibes-based rather than the formalist repetition of specific motifs. Which makes “resonance” apt! Stories can be like tuning forks, you can play be ear the ways their vibes interact.

Philosophically you could think of the approach to editing in Deleuzian terms: Strict genre distinction or anthology themes tend toward “arboreal” structures, so named for the analogy of the tree as this thing that in growing and expanding, repeats its shape (the structure of the tree-and-branches is reflected in the structure of a leaf, etc). Every story relates to every other story by repeating elements — character archetypes, plot elements, aesthetic or conceptual ideas.

What I had to do with Mooncalves was try for a more “rhizomatic” structure. Some stories share elements, but there’s no central organizing principle to what was accepted, not even “stories the editor thinks are good” (though all of the stories in Mooncalves are!) It was like a game of dominoes — every story added to the anthology created new angles from which another potential story could be added, and foreclosed on others. I had stories I sat on for frankly rude amounts of time because I saw how they could fit into Mooncalves, but they lacked a point of entry into the anthology as it was at the time. 

All that said, I and my co-conspirators put a lot of attention into gathering that winding network of relations and shaping them into a TOC that flowed pleasurably. It was an interesting, exciting, confusing process. I don’t think I could retrace my steps!

What sort of audience do you think would best appreciate Mooncalves? (e.g. what other works do these people enjoy and what kind of reading experience are they seeking?)

I hope that everyone who’s enjoyed a story from any one of the authors on the TOC can discover new-to-them authors they love just as much. The pitch I sent to authors was “write me something unexpected, preferably on the borderlands of horror,” and that’s what I got — if you like ominous fiction, and you like wandering the borderlands between genres, you’ll find a lot to love here. 

There are seasoned horror authors on the TOC, but I also have writers outside the genre making inroads to places where it can be seen. Elwin Cotman’s story has deep Robert Aickman vibes; Janalyn Guo and Jaime Corbacho bring Kelly Link to mind.

Speaking of, Kelly was one of the first people I sought for a blurb. I think anyone who admires her sense of adventure will really enjoy Mooncalves!

I read that you sought out advice from other editors while you were planning and completing Mooncalves. What was the most valuable or surprising advice you received?

From a pure process perspective, I learned that when you’re working primarily with solicitations (and I was) you want to take your target and overshoot it substantially. So if you’re going for 20 stories in your antho, you send invitations out to a list of 35 writers or more. 

Some of the folks on your list will be busy with other projects, some will write stories that don’t fit the project, and still others won’t respond at all. Also, it’s not unheard of for writers to blow deadlines.

In terms of approaching authors, if you’re aiming high with your potential TOC, you’ll want to pay a good rate and state that straight away in no uncertain terms when querying. For more literary writers, I usually lead with naming the work of theirs that most affected me and save the money talk for lower on the page. I had one dyed-in-the-wool literary author accuse me of running a scam when I approached them as I would any genre writer.

If you’ve got enough up-front juice to follow through on it, commit in writing to payment on story acceptance, rather than on book release. If you do, you’ll only be ignored by the truly prestigious literary types, and people who don’t read their email. Their loss!

How has the process of editing Mooncalves affected your own fiction? 

Truthfully, it’s hard for me to write from a place of envy! But I will say that reading and editing these stories has lent me courage to play with the formal strictures of storytelling, which my authors often do, and invest in atmosphere. If we write the things we want to read, perhaps it’s fair to say we publish the things we would want to have written.

What’s next for you as a writer?

I have a story of surrealist apocalypse due for publication in Aurealis in Summer ‘23 (its acceptance came before I even read Chelsea Sutton’s story in Mooncalves, but there is a weird resonance between them even so). 

Beyond that is the writer’s life between triumphs: Submissions, rejections, always drafting. Lately I’ve had a lot going on and have lacked the energy and headspace for really productive writing, but in the wee hours I nibble around a weird sci-fi novel that’s been cooking for years. 

What’s next for NO Press? 

Mooncalves deserves marketing and promo beyond what I’ve been able to lend time toward, so in the new year I’m putting some money into a marketing push alongside authors interviews on the site.

The next book, though, is Adam Golaski’s second collection of weird horror stories; its tentative title is Stone Gods. Adam’s first such collection, Worse Than Myself, was an unsung classic published by the mighty Raw Dog Screaming Press back in 2008 — it was profoundly important to me as a writer. The authors who thrill me are many, but the list of those who reliably and genuinely unsettle me is very small, and Adam’s on it.

I’ve read incredible drafts, and the final manuscript is due in the next few months. The plan is to have it produced and out in 2023, hopefully by the summer.

Beyond that, I have so many ideas — so many authors I want to work with again and lift up — but I’m taking pains not to commit to too much in too short of a time.

What books and media have you enjoyed recently?

Novels — Ladivine by Marie Ndiaye, Failure to Thrive by Meghan Lamb, Beulah by (????), OK, Mr Field by Katherine Kilalea, White Horse by Erika T. Wurth, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany   

Print Anthologies — Prime Evil ed. Douglas E. Winter, Cutting Edge ed. Dennis Etchison, New Fears I/II ed. Mark Morris,  Children of Poe ed. Peter Straub 

TV — Andor; The Terror

Keep up with John Thompson and No Press here:

Here’s my preorder link: https://no-press.org/mooncalves/

Very occasional substack: https://basicchunnel.substack.com/publish 

On Twitter, I’m @basic_chunnel; on Mastadon I’m @basic_chunnel@wandering.shop.

Thank you, John, for the interview!

And to keep up with Christi’s forthcoming work:

See http://christinogle.com/forthcoming/ for a list of forthcoming stories in venues such as Mooncalves, Zero Dark Thirty and Monstrous Futures from Dark Matter INK, Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction from Cosmic Horror Monthly, Obsolescence from Shortwave Publishing, and From the Ashes: An Anthology of Elemental Urban Fantasy.

And, of course, The Best of Our Past, The Worst of Our Future from Flame Tree Press, coming February 21, 2023, available through the publisher and other booksellers

Happy New Year!