Greg X Graves Interview

Ever have a dream where you’re being chased by a tyrannosaurus rex and everybody’s really scared but then you’re suddenly riding it and having all sorts of fun and everybody thinks that its really cool? I do. Every night.

Greg X Graves

The Interview

Part I: The requisite writing questions

Why do you write? Have you been afflicted with this quirk for long?
I write to keep the monkey off of my back. The monkey shares a common affliction with vampires: arithmomaniaa variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder where they have to stop pursuing your silly ass in order to count and arrange a set of small objects.

The monkey ceases to maul me only when it has words to count.

Why did you choose to write online? Didn’t anyone tell you that was a bad idea?
No worse of an idea than writing for a traditional publisher. It is partly at their feet that I lay the blame for the decline of reading.

Part II: About your work in particular

The morals in your “Guide to Moral Living” aren’t the usual “eat your vegetables” and “don’t picking on the kid with glasses.” What are your thoughts on morals in stories, in general?
They never make any sense. For example, there’s a cute little story about a father who spends all of his life working to give his family a good life and just as he’s about to retire and spend time with them, his heart explodes like an over-filled water balloon.

That’s just crap. Unalloyed crap.

The drama of that story happens after he rises from the dead. Have you ever witnessed the tragedy of a zombie trying to make grilled cheese for his children? They can’t eat that. Too much saturated fat and their family has a history of heart disease.


Among non-writers, short stories–aside from classics (i.e. forced-reads-from-middle-school) like The Casks of Amontillado and the Lottery–aren’t really that popular. But short stories seem perfectly suited to the digital world. Are they destined to take the place of web fiction novels, which are about as popular among non-writers as short stories in dead tree format are?
I think that novels and short stories will both find their place in the world of web fiction. Short stories make the risk of reading lower and are great to attract new readers into the fold. As far as I’m concerned, web fiction as a discipline has barely made it into infancy. Sure, plenty of people have released stories online, but until you have a large community, web fiction remains a club and not a phenomenon.

So when we hit the terrible toddler years of web fiction, I think novels will become more popular. At least, I have to believe that, as my first novel, Codex Nekromantia, is due for release September 1st.

Is there any particular reason you like zombies, necromancers, and, well, monsters?
Yes. They’re awesome, and unlike snakes, bread and that scum that grows on dirty shower curtains, they can’t exist without a little help from their friends. Kind of like toast. Ever see wild toast?

Zombies as usually non-sentient beings, like robots, possessed children and politicians– a bit one dimensional. But your zombies are more than that. For example, your zombies are sentient enough to read signs and form an orderly queue. Do you think zombies as a whole can break out of their one-dimensional box (which is really just a square)?

Listen, when I hold up a mirror to you and me and our whole society, I mean, when it’s reflecting, like, what I’m trying to say is that WE’RE the zombies. You and me and everybody else. But are we in a box? Are we, at bottom, a box of zombies, except the box is the Earth, and it’s a sphere, and we’re on the outside? Absolutely. Yes, zombies have to break out of their box, because otherwise all we’re doing is prancing around with one another on the surface of the sphere. And that’s why we need to fund NASA.

Wait, that wasn’t the question?

A lot of popular novels and stories are “angsty.” but your stories all put a humorous spin on dark situations. Is there any reason you do this? Do you think looking at scary things through funny words gives us a different perspective on things that would otherwise constitute nightmares?
It absolutely gives us a different perspective. The world around us makes its own decisions and lives by its own laws, whether they’re physical or magical. We can’t control that. But we can control how we act. Nobody can make you take the world seriously.

Ever have a dream where you’re being chased by a tyrannosaurus rex and everybody’s really scared but then you’re suddenly riding it and having all sorts of fun and everybody thinks that its really cool? I do. Every night.

Part III: Some pressing questions about you and zombies:

In a zombie apocalypse would the zombies ultimately defeat vampires?
No doubt. The vampires would be busy counting all of the zombies and while the zombies wouldn’t actively attack the vampires, the vampires also couldn’t get anything done. Have you ever tried to go to the bank with a wall of zombies in your way? Imagine tourist season, forever.

If you were a zombie, whose brain would you go for first?
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s because I’d appreciate a lump of fine, aged grey matter.

Ever have a dream where you’re being chased by a tyrannosaurus rex and everybody’s really scared but then you’re suddenly riding it and having all sorts of fun and everybody...