Thursday, November 10, 2011

On the Fourth Day of Tesseracts: An interview with Claude Lalumière

TT: Hi! welcome to Totally Tesseracts.  Thanks for joining us today. Please introduce yourself...

Claude: Claude Lalumière

TT: Great to see you Claude. Our authors in Tesseracts 15 are located in many places in Canada. Where in Canada are you currently located?

Claude: Montreal, but I will soon be moving to the West Coast.

TT: Good luck with your move. Could you please tell us the name of your story in T15 and a summary of your story without spoilers?

Claude: "The Weirdo Adventures of Steve Rand".
Summary: A teenager who has a fraught relationship with his mother experiences immersive visions of being a superhero called the Weirdo.

TT: Thanks Claude. On a recent Tesseracts Fifteen multi-author interview on Bitten by Books, one of the authors asked our authors to share the first sentence of their story.  What is yours?

Claude: "Surrounded by five Hellscorpions, the Weirdo draws his ropegun and laughs maniacally while the disembodied voice of Madman Mastermind issues yet another death threat."

TT: That is great. Thanks! What do you love the most about this (or being in this) anthology?

Claude:  The cover is fantastic. Also, it's a personal goal of mine to be in as many Tesseracts anthologies as possible.

TT:  True. So that our reading audience can appreciate how many Tesseracts you have actually been in, could you list the editions, and indicate whether you have been an author or editor?

Claude: My first one was the one that Edge relaunched the series with, vol. 9. I've also been in 11, 14, and 15. And I was the editor for vol. 12, New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction.

TT:  One of the things we decided to do to make sure that each of the interviews does not have all the same questions, was to give each author their choice of the final two questions to answer.  So, could you please share the questions you selected, and the answers?

Claude:  Who are your biggest inspirations?

J.G. Ballard. Jack Kirby, R.A. Lafferty. Philip José Farmer, Robert Silverberg. Paul Di Filippo. Rachel Pollack. Garry Kilworth. And tons more. In the case of "The Weirdo Adventures of Steve Rand" -- Steve Ditko.

What story have you written that's your favorite and why?

That changes depending on my mood, but right now I'd say it's a toss-up between "The Ethical Treatment of Meat" (which is in OBJECTS OF WORSHIP) and "Dead" (from CHILLING TALES), the former because it's my favourite story to perform at readings, the latter because I feel it perfectly encapsulates so much of what I try to do with my fiction. But other days I could say "The Object of Worship" or "Hochelaga and Sons" or "Vermilion Dreams: The Complete Works of Bram Jameson" or "This Is the Ice Age" or ...

TT: Thanks Claude for being with us today!

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