Caitlin R. Kiernan — Sirenia Digest
In 2005, Caitlín R. Kiernan published Frog Toes and Tentacles, her first collection of “weird erotica.” Only a few months later, in November ’05, she began a monthly fiction digest, in PDF format and available by e-mail subscription only, the goal of which was to further explore the territory she first charted in that book. Imagine a collaboration between H. P. Lovecraft, Anaïs Nin, and Angela Carter, and you begin to get a glimpse of what the readers of the first twelve issues of Sirenia Digest have experienced. In January ’07, Subterranean Press will release a second collection of Kiernan’s weird erotica, Tales from the Woeful Platypus.
SubPress: When you began Sirenia Digest a year ago, did you imagine it would be this successful?
CRK: No, I didn’t, actually. I thought we’d probably do a few issues, say five or six, for maybe fifty subscribers, and that would be that. I’d really enjoyed doing Frog Toes and Tentacles, and late last year, having just finished a very difficult and long novel — Daughter of Hounds — I found that I wanted to go back and write more of those sorts of short stories. And since I didn’t know of any suitable mar-kets to submit them to, I decided I’d just create my own. But I think, originally, when I was talking with friends about it, I didn’t expect it to continue more than a few months. Now, here we are at one year, and it’s still going strong.
SubPress: Then would you say that Sirenia Digest has remained true to the vignette format of Frog Toes and Ten-tacles? Those kinds of very short, intense pieces?
CRK: No, not really. I’d meant to. I think the FAQ on the Sirenia website still says the stories will average one to three thousand words in length, which was true of the FT&T vignettes. However, almost from the very start, most of the pieces for Sirenia Digest have come out quite a bit longer. By this past summer, I’d pretty much given up and accepted that I’m just writing regular-length short stories for the digest, not vignettes. I think I’m averaging about six thousand words per story, two stories each issue, and a couple have gone over ten K. So, no, I pretty much blew the vignette format. It just wouldn’t have felt natural con-straining the pieces to keep them short, just for the sake of keeping them short.
SubPress: How about the erotic elements? Has that changed from what you originally intended?
CRK: Yes and no. On the whole, Sirenia Digest has a much broader scope than I’d first planned. I’ve done some very erotic pieces for it, but then I’ve also done stories that have only hints of erotica or no erotica at all. Some times it’s just something I let simmer in the subtext. Sometimes it’s very overt.
SubPress: And very weird.
CRK: Well, yeah.
SubPress: And just what do you mean when you talk about what the Sirenia Digest website?
CRK: Oh, I think it’s fairly self-explanatory. I’m still working with all those elements I’ve always worked with, within fantasy and science fiction, and especially dark fantasy, but with an erotic focus. I think the basic structure is still the same, encounters with the Other, which lead to awe and wonder, terror and transformation. Only here we have distinctly erotic encounters. And I don’t mean the “dark romance” stuff you’re seeing these days, not Anne Rice or Laurell K. Hamilton. No, it’s really nothing like that. When I say weird, I mean weird. When I say dark, I mean dark. It’s heady stuff for me. I’m looking for my own limits and then trying to push myself just a little further past that. There was a time I said I’d never write erotica, and I never thought I would, so it’s been quite an adventure. And the digest has allowed me to experiment, to write things I never would have written had I been writing a piece knowing it was headed for an editor. I did some-thing called “The Black Alphabet,” for example, that I know I’d have never written had it not been for the digest.
SubPress: Frog Toes and Tentacles was illustrated by Vince Locke, a name readers familiar with graphic novels ought to recog-nize from books like The Sandman, Witchcraft: Le Terreur, A History of Violence, and Batman. And he’s also been your illustrator for Sirenia Digest. What’s it been like working with Vince?
CRK: Wonderful. Really, really wonderful. He’s also just finished up the illustrations for Tales from the Woeful Platypus and has agreed to stay on as my illustrator in 2007. Vince and I just clicked right off. I showed him the stuff for FT&T, and he said he saw them having sort of an uber decadent Harry Clarke look, and that was so spot on. I’ve been very impressed at his lack of inhibition. And his ability to take things which are genuinely horrific, but which I also feel are very beautiful, and show me both the beauty and the horror in equal measure. Sometimes, I think working with Vince has been the best part of all this.
SubPress: You’ve also showcased the work of Sonya Taaffe in Sirenia Digest. What’s the story behind that?
CRK: Back in the spring, I read Sonya’s collection, Singing Innocence and Experience, and I loved it. I mean, I really loved it, in a way that I hardly ever love new writers. Especially writers as young as Sonya. The whole book amazed me, start to finish, and I asked her if I could reprint one of the stories, “Constellations, Conjunctions,” in the June issue. I even had Vince illustrate her that month instead of my piece. Since then, I’ve printed two previously unpublished pieces by her — “The Depth Oracle” and “The Boy Who Learned To Shudder,” and we collaborated on a story for the September issue, “At the Praying Windows.” That was my first collabo-ration with anyone since Poppy [Z. Brite] and I did Wrong Things in 2001. And Sonya and I are planning to do more work together in future issues of Sirenia. Getting Sonya’s writing in front of new readers, that’s been another great part about the digest.
SubPress: At this point, do you see Sirenia Digest continuing for the forseeable future?
CRK: I do. I’m very happy with how it’s going, so I think I’m just going to let it continue for a while. At the start, it was sort of a secret thing, something for me and my most die-hard readers, but I think now it’s starting to get read by lots of people in the field. These days, most of the short fiction I have time to write is going to the digest, and it’s likely to stay that way for a while.
SubPress: So, I guess a natural place to wrap this up would be to ask how people who want to learn more about the digest or who want to subscribe can do that?
CRK: That’s easy. Just check out FAQ, which probably needs updating by now, and it’ll take you to the subscription page. We accept payment — $10 a month — via PayPal, though we can make other arrangements if necessary. If you have more questions, e-mail Spooky at crkbooks@gmail.com, and she’ll see they get answered straight away.