Author Interview: Joe Koch / Invaginies

Horror surrealism at its finest

Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

Author Interviews

I was so nervous to reach out to the illustrious Joe Koch but he very kindly agreed to an interview about his upcoming story collection Invaginies! I’ve been lucky enough to snag an early copy and its complex surrealism is captivating. Check out the interview below and then stick around for info on the collection at the bottom.

Meet Joe

1. What would you say is the running throughline in this group of stories?

In this collection I'm working quite a bit with the idea that transformation is inevitable. Fundamentally, transformation is a very mundane process happening every second as time passes. We all age and change and adapt, but in a short story, you can compress and exaggerate the shock, loss, joy, resistance, heresy, or thrill of it. A transformation can be all those things. It can also blur the line between violence and pleasure, between self and other, between choice and coercion. Examining these interstitial psychological spaces that occur during transformation really interested me when I was writing these stories, especially from the perspective of being someone who has been alive for a long time, perhaps too long, and experienced many changes, both in body and mind.

2. How do you see horror as a lens through which to view queerness?

I might be too immersed in both horror and queerness to answer this well. I guess for me horror is a place where transgression is expected and embraced. Or it can be. Too much popular horror reifies norms, in my opinion, and I think the artist's job is to raise questions and make people uncomfortable. I'd love to exist in a world where queer people did not make anyone uncomfortable, but that is clearly not our reality. There are several states in the US where it is against the law for me to exist, quite literally. Some writers react to this societal pressure by insisting on what they consider good queer representation with sanitized queer characters who never misbehave or do crimes, almost as if they're trying to sell queerness as a product, but once you read Invaginies, you'll realize I'm completely against that. The worse and more messy a character is, the better.

3. How do you define "new weird" or "weird" horror?

To be honest, I really don't! I listen to conversations about it. I find the discussions about what the terms "weird" and "new weird" mean can sometimes boost my confidence to go in the direction I want to go creatively when I have doubts. Without some theorizing smarty-pants to help out, it would probably take me longer to trust myself and my process, so I'm grateful these discussions happen, and that theoreticians exist to debate the meanings of things.

4. What draws you to write about these so-called postmodern, apocalyptic worlds?

Is that what I write about?

I suppose we live in a postmodern apocalyptic world, though, don't we? I'm just writing about reality.

In a sense, however, I feel like I write a peculiar sort of fan fiction, especially the stories in Invaginies. During the years of the pandemic I became immersed in watching films, in part due to isolation. Stories in Invaginies reference the early work of Kenneth Anger and David Cronenberg, film noir, Herzog's Nosferatu remake, and the notorious lost film footage from Event Horizon, which is a personal obsession that I researched extensively. However, the truth in the stories is the imagery, allegory, and emotion; please don't go reading me for actual film facts, though I admit, they are wickedly and perhaps inappropriately peppered throughout the fiction, making it impossible to sort out what is objective from what is fantasy. These stories are more like mirrors of the things they could factually represent if I were trying to write an essay about the state of the world.

5. Tell us about the title and what it means to you and to the collection.

The title Invaginies is the title of the first story in the book, which I wrote for Chris Kelso's Children of the New Flesh, an anthology about the early work of David Cronenberg. I needed to make up a word that stretched bodily definitions for that piece, and having done so, I began thinking about this word as a cross between a verb and a noun, a very active thing. The meaning grew as I considered it for the title of the full collection. It's an idea of invasion, of perception that is bodily and transcendent, folding inward and outward, creating holes, paths, or pockets of alternate truth and (often involuntary) enlightenment. On a very basic level it also conjures the idea of certain genitalia in a way that I hope is a little bit provocative.

6. What would you like readers to get from this collection that hasn't already been asked?

I want readers to have an experience that changes and challenges them. Less sitting back in a comfy chair to read and more like you've gone through some shit. I hope they will have images playing in their head like a waking dream and be left feeling like they've had visions or spent time in an alternate reality. I guess the greatest compliment would be a reader who said they felt they had been drugged with hallucinogens.

Meet Invaginies

The Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author returns with a new collection of literary horror and weird fiction that glitters with startling prose and tortured souls. Invaginies is an invasion, it is a perception that is bodily and transcendent creating holes, paths, or pockets of alternate truth and--not always voluntary--enlightenment. Every line sings and strikes like grotesque poetry of the possessed. With 17 disturbing tales exploring plagues, possessions, gender & corruption, set in apocalyptic eras not much unlike our own, Joe Koch brings the terrors of a postmodern world into vivid focus. Haunting and beautiful, Koch takes their place among the great names of the weird like Brian Evenson, exploring the queer perspective in horror as Billy Martin and Clive Barker, and contemporary rising voice, Eric LaRocca. Literary prose meets the grotesque in this collection of stories to galvanize lovers of horror and weird fiction. With a growing cult audience, this collection is sure to shoot to the top of readers' tbr piles.

Goodreads | Buy links

Thanks!

Thanks Joe for sharing your secrets!

Like the new feature? Are you an author who wants to do an interview? Let me know in the comments!