Interview: Shane Hawk and Ted Van Alst Jr. talk about Stephen Graham Jones and collecting original stories for Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood
- Jonathan
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Shane Hawk Ted Van Alst Jr.
We're over halfway through August, which has been a good month for horror fans; an intriguing Netflix film, Hokum coming to physical media. But screens aren’t hogging all the horror fun this summer.
August 18th marks the release of Never Whistle at Night Part II: Back for Blood, a collection of 21 horror shorts written by indigenous authors. It is a sequel to 2023’s Never Whistle at Night.
Both collections are edited by writers Shane Hawk and Theodore (Ted) Van Alst Jr.
Shane Hawk is a writer who works as a contributing editor at Counterpoint Press. He is the author of Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror and is a high school educator. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.
Ted Van Alst Jr. is a writer and professor of Indigenous Nations Studies. He is an enrolled member of the Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians. He is the author of Sacred Smokes, a winner of the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing.
I recently had the privilege to speak with Ted and Shane. Our initial topic, of course, being the collection. But, like the great writers do, they expanded it into a great discussion of community, horror authors, and the influences of the genre.
This interview was edited slightly for clarity
The Horror Lounge: When you were collecting stories this time around, was it a similar process as the first time?
Shane: Yeah, it was pretty much the same. In our mission statement with this series our biggest aim is to get more native, indigenous people published. Whether they are writing currently and just trying to get noticed. Whether they see the open call and they, you know, maybe have a dream of becoming a writer and they can join in and try to get published.
With the first one, we started out with inviting people. That’s while we’re getting the concept ready and saying, “Hey, would you like to be a part of something that we’re building?” And we didn’t really know at the time initially, because in the early times we were thinking of crowdfunding or self-publishing, and it kind of switched majorly once we got the attention of an agent. She said, “We’re gonna try the big leagues, we’re gonna write this thing called a proposal, and do all this market research, and try to sell it to one of the big houses,” and we ended up doing that. So that’s where we switch it up, but it was basically the same process; inviting folks that we know. Or at least tangentially know online.
Ted: Ohhh yeah!
Shane: But it’s an open call process as well. We announce the book—I think for the first one we announced July 21, 2021—and then we had an open call. You could send it that day and all the way until November 1st. We did the same thing this time, but I think we extended it a month to December 1st. So we just wait, wait, wait, and then the floodgates open. It’s kind of slow at first, and then it really hits the last month or so.
Ted: It’s different, too, as an anthology compared to other horror anthologies. I think Arley Sorg pointed that out in his review in Locus. He did a review of Back for Blood and mentioned that one of the things he likes with our anthologies is how with most horror anthologies it’s always the same writers. They’re all invited writers who appear again and again, which is great, but he pointed out in our case you get to hear a lot of new voices, you get to find new favorites, and you get to read all sorts of varied stuff from all over Indian Country. What he said really meant a lot to me, so I do want to mention that.
The Horror Lounge: You mentioned that the selection process was easier this time around. Having said that, were there still any big difficulties?
Ted: Haha, yeah! Saying “no” to some of the most amazing stories because we just don’t have room sucks! That’s really hard.
Shane: Yeah, I mean, just to clarify what I said earlier, I mostly meant that the back end of it was so much easier than the first time because the first time we were supposed to use Submittable—that’s a platform for receiving submissions—but that didn’t really work out. So, I had to rig a page on my website to have a form. I did it all on the same night that they said we couldn’t use Submittable. The form on my website auto-emailed submissions to an inbox that forwarded to a different Gmail. We had to manually keep track on a spreadsheet with Google Drive.
So, for the second time we used a platform that you pay for. You just have a landing page with all the guidelines, and they just submit. That was so much easier on us! The first time around, we got around 104 submissions, and the second time was around 156. The process is brutal though, like Ted said; we have to say “no.” And Indian Country is pretty small, so a lot of these people we know closely online or in-person, and we just have to say “no” once we’re revealed who the names are. We do blind reads, and then we figure out who it was we go, “Oh, we have to reject a friend” or someone that’s very talented and has a really good story, but maybe we had another Mothman story, or another Bigfoot story, or whatever it might be. That’s the tough part about being an anthologist is using the machete. Haha.
The Horror Lounge: Did you guys try to push for an extension of book’s length to accommodate more stories, or did your company set a hard standard?
Ted: Haha, there was, but, you know, whatever. Especially the first one.
Shane: Haha. Yeah, they gave us a goal for word count, and we were like, “Okay, well we’ll see.” They were kind of sweating a little bit…
Ted: Thanks for the “suggestion,” but yeah.
Shane: Haha. Yeah, so for the first one we went over, and that was 26 stories, and it was kind of beautiful in a way because when we first sent out the proposal, I think Ted and I were sort of on eggshells because so many anthologies at this level are invitation-only, or maybe only one slot. At the top, they’re very scared of “unknowns” being included among the big names. So, I think we asked for seven slots—which is not asking for a ton, maybe a third or fourth of a book—and Anna Kaufman and Vintage said, “Why just seven? What if you get nine, ten, eleven beautiful stories?”
Ted: She is a bold, daring, kickass editor! She was like, “Do it!”
Shane: She’s great. Although she gave us guardrails to keep us in check and in line, it was very much nearly full creative control to be honest. Same with the second one—even more so in my opinion.
With the second one, we did 26 stories and we listened to a lot of feedback. We don’t really care for the feedback that was like, “There’s too many stories” and “I got more than what I paid for.”
Ted: Haha!
Shane: We don’t really care about that! What we care more about is being more cunning in our selection process and really just getting the best of the best. Not to say anyone who wasn’t in the first book was not worthy of it, but we really wanted to hone it down, and we moved the account down to 21 stories. So, aside from Ted and I, there are 19 stories. I think 11 are from open calls, so even more than the invitees. That’s pretty important to us. So yeah, that’s the difference, I guess.
The Horror Lounge: How was it having Stephen Graham Jones submit a story this time around?
Ted: That was his request! He did the forward intro for the first book, and I was like, “You wanna hit that again?” He’s like, “Nah man, I wanna do a story!” I was like “Oh! Okay, alright, that’s fantastic!”
I’ve been reading him for a really long time and I’ve never said “no” to him asking, “Hey, you wanna read this?” because..
The Horror Lounge: How could you?
Ted: Exactly! So that was very cool that he did that, and his story is something else, man!
Shane: Yeah haha. So, Ted and Stephen go way back. Ted edited a whole collection of Stephen’s stories and his early work. We first approached him—he’s one of the first ones we kind of said, “Hey, you wanna be somewhere in this thing that we’re trying to create?” And he originally offered a reprint of “Brush Dogs,” which is a fantastic story, but we had to reject him because we wanted all original stories. So, he said “Okay, uhm... how about I write an intro or forward?” So we got that! And he wrote it beautifully on an airplane ride and sent the first draft. I think we only changed like a comma?
The Horror Lounge: Haha!
Shane: That’s it, that was just perfect. Haha. I think we even shed tears, it was like “Wow, okay, this is it.” Such a bro.
Ted: Yeah, very moving. Always has a pen in his pocket wherever he goes. Always writing.
The Horror Lounge: I wonder if it’s also the academic in him.
Ted: Yeah, no. I mean, it could be. You know, I write notes to myself too. But he’s a writer. I know academics, they don’t write like that, bro.
The second part of the interview will be published on August 20.
Great interview!