Interview with Jamie Booth & Kit Zheng

For those who may not be familiar with them, Jamie Booth and Kit Zheng are (in their own words), "a pair of rogues who are best known for stealing the shoes off homeless people and occasionally trying to cause mayhem in the boys' clubs of sci fi, fantasy and horror. Results have been mixed thus far, but that's not stopping them."

Wit and modesty aside, both are talented authors in their own rights. Most recently, they teamed up on "The Tale of Tom Katt & Martin Rue," a novella that appears in the cat shapeshifter anthology Here Kitty, Kitty (Torquere Press).


What was it like working together on this?

Jamie Booth: I think we worked together really well. It seemed to happen quite easily. At first we discussed possible methods of working—as we’re basically living on opposite sides of the globe, it seemed like it could be a challenge with time differences and so on if we wanted to, for example, do dialogue by IM as we did discuss at one point. But once we started writing, we just passed it back and forth and the whole thing fell into place very naturally.

Kit Zheng: It was a lot of fun and Jamie always came up with the freshest ideas for things. Originally I was trying to go it solo and I was stumped, so I was just chatting with Jamie about some ideas... and next thing you know, we'd started to build a mythology together. Things just grew out from there.


It sounds like the process was an organic one, which is always great—but maybe even more important when you have to coordinate with someone else. What turned out to be the greatest challenge for you?

JB: I’d say the time difference was probably the biggest challenge, and the fact that we were both so busy with personal business when we took the project on—trying to co-write a novella and move house at the same time isn’t something I’d recommend to anyone!

KZ: Yeah, the time difference and our schedules were definitely the biggest challenge. Originally we wanted to map out everything via IM conversations, but that never happened because life had sort of exploded and all plans sort of fell apart.

JB: It was definitely a lot of fun, though.


That's a great segue to my next question: What were the rewards or advantages of working together?

JB: Working with another writer whom you really gel with is incredibly rewarding as you always have someone to get enthused over your storyline with you, to bounce ideas off and generally keep each other motivated.

KZ: Writing with someone else is like having a built in audience, collaborator, [and] cheerleader as well as, of course, a co-creator, so it's much easier to keep motivated. I also think a cowriter challenges you to get out of your comfort zone, and to break some of the bad habits that we've all got ingrained in us. You're just so easily confined by what you know and a cowriter brings their own experiences and knowledge to the table, changing everything in a good way! Jamie definitely did this and made the story something it never could have been with just myself alone.


How did your individual writing processes change, and what (if anything) stayed the same?

KZ: I never work from an outline, especially not from a detailed one, and we totally had to for this, especially once it became apparent that we weren't going to be able to do any real-time collaborative writing. And for once that was liberating, to have that guide, rather than [being] constricting. The process worked out very differently than I'd pictured, but I think it made the story grow in a way that I'm not sure passing dialogue back and forth might have done.


How interesting! That puts me in mind of a roundtable interview I read years ago with some fairly successful film directors who had started doing straight-to-video projects on the side. One of the questions was why they'd choose to do such a thing, and a couple of them said that the restrictions and requirements of the generic formula actually freed them up to be creative in other ways they might not have thought of otherwise.

In your case, of course, it was the structure of your outline rather than the genre, and the way that outline was called for by this particular collaboration. Has your experience been that every collaboration is different, or are there commonalities?

JB: This is the first time I’ve written in collaboration with Kit, although we’ve read over each other’s work and discussed plots and so on together for years. It’s definitely been a different experience than collaborating with other writers who I’ve worked with. I think for me, the deadlines have been tighter on this one so there was definitely more motivation, out of the desire not to let Kit down.

KZ: I found this quite different than other collaborations as well. My other collaborations have always been for nothing in particular, careless fun; so yes, the deadline changed a lot—added a level of stress which I think would have led to a lot more conflict if we were two different people.

I guess the one thing in common is that when collaborating, we tend to take ownership of certain characters—I mean, I'll still write some of Jamie's character and Jamie will write some of mine, but we were sort of "in charge" of coming up with their initial design/personality/etc... That seems to happen with every collaboration I've been in. I guess it's just easier to split it up like that—maybe keeps the characters more consistent?


That makes sense. I've done character creation that way as well in collaborations, though it my case I think it came from a roleplaying background. On a related note—you've touched on this a little, but I'd love to hear more about how you divided the writing on this.

JB: Initially, we each came up with our own character to write. The original idea behind this was that we could IM each other for more realistic dialogue and then write scenes around that; but in the actual event of writing, we ended up writing alternate chapters, passing the story back and forth, and then just adding or editing each others chapters as we saw fit. There weren’t really any hard and fast rules we adhered to. It worked well doing it that way,.

KZ: Yes, we each took certain chapters. At first we wrote almost independently on those chapters. Again because of the whole scheduling madness, we just wrote this in an entirely counterintuitive manner. Like writing out a rough version, almost a sketch, and passing it off and the other coming in and changing whatever, fleshing it out more and more with each pass. I remember there were bits where I was writing things like, "Character says something to the effect of X here," then write a response, and Jamie would come in and write up the line. And sometimes it'd work with what I'd written as a response and sometimes it wouldn't, and so on the next pass I'd fix that or smooth it out, and Jamie would do the same. In a way I think that turned out more integrated and more controlled [or] coherent than if we'd been [writing in] real-time, passing it back and forth line by line, if that makes any sense. It was very organic, but in a sort of structured way. Like growing vines into a shape over a wire skeleton.


Makes perfect sense—and that's a great image. So, getting into the story itself: "The Tale of Tom Katt & Martin Rue" appears in a shapeshifter collection, Here Kitty, Kitty. Shapeshifter narratives most commonly are associated with the paranormal genre, and those elements certainly are present here—but it's by no means straight genre. To what extent were you deliberately blending fairytale, paranormal, and romance, or was that a natural result of the story you wanted to tell?

JB: The blending was pretty deliberate as there was a certain atmosphere that we initially wanted to create.

KZ: We definitely wanted it to be a blend of those three things. Definitely set out with the fairytale-esque atmosphere in mind. It was sort of... I know that modern interpretations of the were-(insert animal here) are all—bring to mind a certain kind of thing like (oh god) Underworld or whatever, shiny and slick and Hollywood to the max, but that whole thing is so much older. You find shapeshifting animals in so many stories across so many cultures. I like that we tried to bring some of that "old school" back. I mean, the concept of a werecat is a little silly anyway, so how do you bring some legitimacy to that? We tried looking at what's come before, steeped in tradition and folklore.


I love that you wanted to call on older traditions, too. In fact, as I was reading and thinking about the story afterwards, it seemed to me that in this marvelous blend of genres, the most dominant is not the paranormal but the fairytale. From the dark edges of tone and atmosphere to the structural tropes (the journey, the riddles), and perhaps most of all the clever meta-narrative interludes—the tale told within the tale—there's something classically fairytale about this. Insofar as it's possible to identify a starting point, did you begin with the characters or with the plot?

JB: We came up with the mythology behind the characters before we thought up the plot. We were researching and looking into cat mythology in regards to legends and folklore – traditional ideas such as cats sucking the breath from sleeping humans – and it all built up from there. We wanted to try and get a new spin on the idea of cat shape-shifters. Our initial thoughts were ‘werecats’ as opposed to ‘werewolves’ but then we hit upon the fairytale angle and we both got really sucked into the idea. We were basically trying to take existing traditional folklore and re-tell it in our own way, with our own characters –

[After coming up] with the background mythology for our cat boys, we then each created a character. Discussing Martin and Tom as characters and how they’d react (and clash!) with each other played a large part in developing our plot.

KZ: It's fun to look at our old emails... how we sort of got all excited about the world/mythology and then by the boys.


Without giving anything away, I love the solution to the third riddle. Did you always know what it was, or did you—like Tom and Martin—have to work towards it?

JB: When we initially came up with the plot we had a vague idea that this is what we were working towards, but the finer details definitely took time to form and work through.

KZ: I think we were sorting out the riddles, etc. even midway through the story. And some stuff just happened. I remember the bit about the twine: I think I'd sent the initial riddle-game bit to Jamie with some sort of note [that] there needed to be more to that scene but I couldn't think of anything. And Jamie sent it back, and there was that delightful scene where they're playing with the twine. It was like magic. Suddenly the thing worked. I think I'll start sending Jamie my stories whenever I'm stuck.


More of that organic process at work. Well, it looks like our time is nearing an end, so I'll wrap it up with the old standby: What can we look forward to from each of you after this? What are you working on now? Any plans to collaborate again?

JB: I’m currently being kept busy writing a paranormal genre novel, and I’m due to have two micro fictions published in a biannual UK magazine called Flash this October. We’ve got no immediate plans for future collaboration, but I’d certainly be up for writing with Kit again, maybe something more paranormal or horror oriented?

KZ: I've got a mystery/thriller/eroromance novella that's been picked up, but I don't know when it'll be out. Other than that, I'm working on a sci-fi noirish mystery novel, a fantasy novel, and a zombie/family drama short story, all of which ought to be complete in oh, 2099 or so. I'd love to work with Jamie again. I think we should go all out horror this time. ;) That's sort of the genre that brought us together.


Sounds like you've both got a lot to look forward to on your plates. On a personal note, I'm really happy to hear you're thinking about the possibility of working together again (and I bet I'm not alone!). Thanks for taking the time to talk with me today, and best of luck with your stories.


~ interview by Mallory Path

"The Tale of Tom Katt & Martin Rue" appears in Here Kitty, Kitty, available now in print and eBook from Torquere Press.

Advance Review: "Deconstruction" by Kit Zheng

Title: Deconstruction
Author: Kit Zheng
Publisher: MLR Press (print) and Aspen Mountain Press (eBook)
Release Date: Forthcoming, summer 2009

Everyone likes something for free, right? In Kit Zheng's new book (due out this summer), you pay for one story but you get three: the love story of two men at a crossroads in their longtime relationship, in which the decisions they make, separately and together, either will strengthen and deepen their bonds or sever them entirely; a murder mystery in which our hero must try to stop a killer who is targeting male hustlers; and a man's journey of self-discovery, delving into the darker side of his desires as he comes to terms with who he really is and what he really wants. Zheng's book is not a triptych but a single story woven masterfully from these threads: Deconstruction.

It may seem crass to start this review with such blatant mentions of commerce, but that is one of the matters central to Deconstruction: a stripper by profession, Tomas is not above taking a little extra cash from customers at the club in exchange for his off-hours sexual favors. "For the gentleman," Zheng tells us of one such encounter, "it was two hours indulging appetites he could never satisfy; for Tomas, it was a car payment taken care of, one less bill to worry about." With deceptive simplicity, Zheng draws a line--one of many that will be blurred and even erased in the course of the story, between fantasy and reality, between payer and payee, between desire and action.

Although this is how Tomas and his boyfriend, Vic, met--and recountings of these private exchanges even served as foreplay for the two in the early days of their relationship--the thrill has worn off for Vic. Aggravating the tension is the string of murders that police detective Vic has been assigned to: someone is killing young men who, like Tomas, offer sex for money and who lately, also like Tomas, are blond. The resemblance may end there, but that's more than enough to escalate Vic's wish into a need for Tomas to stop doing what he does. But it's not that simple for Tomas: it's not just what he does, it's what he is, how he defines himself.

The heart of the matter, though, is not this disagreement over how Tomas lives his life and how that affects their relationship: it's the gap between what each man thinks and what he says, between what he says and what the other hears. It's everything that is spoken and even more, it's in everything that isn't. Zheng sets up the story beautifully: from the beginning, I was willing to invest in this relationship between two guys I didn't know much, if anything, about, because the emotional push and pull between them was laid out so well. From those first moments between Tomas and Vic in the bedroom, simultaneously and subtly awkward and comfortable in the way that only long-term lovers can be, I wanted them to make it. And as the narrative unfolded, I started to see why I wanted them to make it: because they need each other, and they're good for each other; they could be as close to perfect as two people can get--if only they could talk and trust. Which is no small thing, of course. Zheng walks the line of using words to illustrate their failure for these men with heartbreaking clarity.

The emotional connection between the two central characters is not only clear but compelling. In fact, it's this connection, the problems they're having and their desires to overcome those problems that kept me reading as much as the "whodunnit" aspect of the serial killings, which seem to hit closer and closer to home, clouding the judgment of both men in different ways, with different reactions and potentially disastrous effects.

The third thread, the journey of self-discovery, is Tomas's. Without giving too much away, Tomas has festishes that Vic knows about, and fetishes his lover is unaware of (except in peripheral ways). It even seems that Tomas himself is unaware of the depths of his desires. His one rule, after all, is to remain in control of situations and of himself. As Tomas becomes more involved with one of his customers, Jon (who is such a strong secondary character that I'm tempted to call him a primary one), he begins to do things that he doesn't do even with Vic; things that, by his own rules, he hasn't even allowed himself to imagine or fantasize about.

The way that Zheng entwines Tomas's desire with his shame so that each heightens the other is gorgeous, agonizing, and compulsive. It's also crucial to the story. The question brought up by the realization of these desires splits in two: will Tomas be able to accept himself, and will he give Vic a chance to accept him. During one session with Jon, Tomas wonders if "he should be enjoying this more, somehow. If it were Vic standing here instead of Jon, playing a game, just playing--would it be such a fucking turn on? Would Vic even do this, let him be this? Now he just didn't know. Might never know."

At this point in the story, we don't know if Tomas will be able to give Vic the chance to give him what he needs, or if Vic will be able to do anything with such a chance. But Zheng has painted the characters with such vivid emotions and sucked us into their lives so thoroughly that we know they need to try.

In Deconstruction, Kit Zheng has given us three stories--and three profoundly human characters, each full of hopes and fears and desires and flaws. Zheng challenges and rewards us, giving us men who might be difficult to like at times (most especially Jon, whose thoughts and actions verge on crossing the line) but who also tug at our hearts and make us think. This is provocative romance at its very best.

- Mallory Path

An Afternoon at the Fox & Ginko Leaf, Part 2 (Kit Zheng & Mallory Path)

Part One of Kit & Mal's conversational interview is here.


MAL:
Can we go back to what you said earlier about watching movies in your head?

KIT:
Sure!

MAL:
I heard another writer make a similar comment recently. My first thought was that I also see stories as movies in my head, in that I watch the scenes over and over, letting images transform into words before I start writing them down and finding the words myself. But it's not exactly like watching movies, in that I jump all around. So maybe a better analogy for me is that I put on the DVD and make frequent use of the remote control.

Then it occured to me, as we were talking just now, that this is the way I consume a lot of fictional texts. Not the jumping around, but the not starting in the middle.

KIT:
Not starting in the middle? How do you mean?

MAL:
Usually when someone recommends a TV show to me, I ask them what their favorite episode is and--regardless of any back story I might need--I start there. If it grabs me, I'll go back to earlier episodes for what I need.

Or there's a very famous author I won't name. I wasn't going to read the last book in her series, but almost everyone I knew was obsessed with it and so if I wanted to talk to my friends that summer, I knew I had to read it. I tried the first chapter and couldn't get into it. So I looked at the table of contents, found a chapter with the same name as the title of the book about half-way through, and started there. I loved it so much I went back and read the first half of the book after I finished.

KIT:
Oh, that's so cool. I totally couldn't do that.

MAL:
I think that might make some authors cry, because they start where they start for a reason. Anyhow, I guess the way I write comes from the way I read/watch/consume texts. Or maybe the other way around.

KIT:
*nodnodnod* I could imagine doing that with a TV show more easily than with a book.

MAL:
Now I want to do a survey of authors to find out where they start when they start writing a story!

KIT:
That would be cool. *_*

Now I'm fascinated by the idea of reading a book non-linearly. I don't know why. That's super cool.

MAL:
That's the only time I've ever done that with an individual book. I've done it with series, though--not on purpose, but I started with a book in the middle of the series and I couldn't figure out which order the books came in, so I just read in the order of whichever ones were at the library when I went.

KIT:
I've done that with series, too, though I always have mixed feelings about it.

MAL:
So, non-sequitur time: what are you working on right now?

KIT:
Hm, actively or active + derailed by deadlines?

MAL:
*laughs* ...Both, maybe? Or whichever is less painful?

KIT:
Actively for a deadline, I'm working on revising a collaborative story with Jamie Booth which will hopefully be included in an anthology about cat-shape shifters. Our story is about a pair of misfits, who stumble into each other and realize they have a common goal, which they can achieve faster by working together--or should I say, exploiting each other? I'm not sure they know. And how that working relationship evolves into something else.

MAL:
Intriguing! It sounds like there are a lot of blurred lines in that: physically with the shifting, and psychologically--maybe even emotionally--with the distinction between collaboration and mutual exploitation.

Any other pokers in the fire?

KIT:
I was also sneaking in bits of a sci-fi novel(la?) which is working-titled "The Red Box," but right now deadlines have pushed that completely off the radar. I'm really in love with that story though, and am still actively researching for it—e.g. I just picked up The Dao of Pooh (as in Winnie) because there's an element of Daoism in the way these, I guess you could call them hackers, work.

How about you? You said you've got several ideas going. What are you writing on?

MAL:
Well, I'm trying to do that slave world story for a May 1st deadline, which I suspect I won't make--but I'll write the story anyhow.

I have another story called "The Playground," which is about an Amish boy during rumspringa (the period when Amish youths get to experience the English world before committing to the Church) who meets the devil...but that one has been sidelined by research and realities. First, rumspringa takes place when you're 16, which makes it problematic in terms of finding a publisher. So I've found a workaround, an excuse as to why Jonathan hasn't started until he's 18, but I'm not sure I'm on solid ground. Researching Amish communities is not easy!

KIT:
Oh, that is bummer about the age thing. I mean, in terms of a coming-of-age story.

MAL:
Yeah. I'm considering my options, which are (1) age up the human character, (2) don't make it sexual, or (3) write it for a non-romance market. I'm leaning toward that first option.

KIT:
People come of age at all sorts of ages, but I guess when you bring sex into the picture things get skewed.

MAL:
Jonathan is a very innocent character in a lot of ways, and I think I can get away with making him 18 in terms of characterization. I'm not sure he would be allowed to delay rumspringa for two years, but the excuse I've come up with is that his twin sister was in a terrible accident and her rehabilitation has just finished. He got permission from the community to delay so that he could do it with her.

KIT:
Good excuse.

MAL:
Yeah? Hurrah!

Another of my ideas is for a post-apocalyptic novel, and it goes right back to security vs. freedom, which we were talking about earlier. I'm kind of obsessed with this concept of a "velvet apocalypse," where great transformations occur but instead of leaving devastation in its wake, the apocalypse leaves the world a better place.

So in this story the world, which is secretly being run by a group I'm calling The Faction (I'm terrible with names; everything has a placeholder when I'm writing), seems to be a nice place to live, post-apocalypse. There's a group of people who feel that too many freedoms have been sacrificed for the maintenance of this nice world; they're secretly working against The Faction.

Most of the population is unaware of all this. my characters get caught up in it, and it's about the choices they make.

I'm firmly anti-Faction, but I "met" the head of The Faction in another story I wrote recently. It was an epiphanous moment when I realized who he was, and that I was seeing this much younger version of him than the one I've come to know. So now I'm a little tiny bit in love with him. *wry grin*

KIT:
Aww. That is so cute!

MAL:
Does that ever happen to you? You start to flesh out the bad guy, and you realize he isn't such a bad guy?

KIT:
Hmm, I don't really think of people as bad guys in my stories.

MAL:
That's one of the things I adore about your stories, you know.

KIT:
*laughs* Thanks.

I'm one of those assholes who doesn't think people are anything but assholes anyway, so yeah, you just get a range of assholes.

MAL:
The antagonist, then, as opposed to the "bad guy"?

KIT:
Hmm, yes... I think? Yet Another Unfinished Novel, The King of Salem, came from--well, it came from a lot of things...

I'd been reading a novel that shall not be named and the handling of the interaction between the protagonist and the anti-hero (not the antagonist) annoyed me so much it sparked me into writing a short story, about a priest being taunted/seduced by a demon-summoner/witch; which I then turned around and spun off into a high fantasy story that asked who really was the bad guy, this priest or the witch; which got canned and became a sorta-steampunk story about the same characters but less "who's the bad guy" so much as--actually, ideals vs. "right."

All of that happened because I grew so awfully fond of the demon-summoner/witch way back in that little short story, and the more I thought about him, the more the story grew and changed and became something else.

LOL, sorry, I'm babbling--I'm terrible about talking about my WIPs.

MAL:
No, that's fascinating! I had mentioned to you before we started this that I thought we had shared thematic interests but our ways of illustrating those themes was very different. At the time, I had thought of it as different paths to the same destination, but now I feel like we have different maps of the same country. Please forgive the terrible metaphors. ;p

KIT:
Not terrible at all--that's a great way to put it. I'd agree.

MAL:
I guess it's time to stop writing about our WIPs and get to the actual writing of them...


Thanks to those of you who came along for the conversation! If you enjoyed yourself here, you can visit
Kit @ http://kitzheng.thatdamncat.com
and Mal @ http://mallorypath.com.

We hope you'll come back tomorrow for Mal's review of Kit's "Deconstruction," and Kit's review of Mal's "Handle With Care."