Interview with Christi Nogle, Author of The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future
Christi Nogle’s novel, Beulah, is out now from Cemetery Gates Media, and her first collection, The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future, is coming in early 2023 from Flame Tree Press.
Her short stories have appeared in over fifty publications including PseudoPod, Escape Pod, Vastarien, and Dark Matter Magazine along with anthologies such as C.M Muller’s Nightscript and Flame Tree’s American Gothic. Christi is a member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and Codex Writers’ Group. She lives in Boise, Idaho with her partner Jim and their gorgeous dogs. Follow her on Mastodon or Twitter @christinogle
Christi Nogle’s short story collection, The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future, releases in February 2023 from Flame Tree Press. She sat down to answer questions on ghost stories, horror, and the gothic in everyone.
Jacquelyn Scott: Congratulations on your upcoming release, The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future! What are these stories about?
Christi Nogle: Thank you so much! I am excited to have my first collection make its way to readers.
As the title suggests, most of the stories in this collection deal with trauma from the past and the question of whether the future will be any better. They are focused on close relationships, such as between parents and children, spouses, lovers, and best friends. They are in many cases also focused on their settings, such as decaying mansions and farmhouses, small towns, and various country settings—I’d say there is a bit of a contemporary gothic sensibility to most of them. There is some variety in genre, from supernatural and psychological horror to more experimental, works, but all are horror stories.
Scott: Is there a story that was harder to write than the rest? Is there one that was easier?
Nogle: “A Children’s Treasury of Windows and Doors” is the longest story here and was the most difficult to complete. I initially wrote it for the Bath Novella-in-Flash contest, which had strict rules about the form as well as a limit on the length of each flash piece that made up a chapter. I often find restrictions to be energizing, but in this case, they presented quite a challenge as well! The story was shortlisted for the award but was not quite fully realized at that time. I revised it again and again, and the editor S. Kennedy Sobol helped refine it further after accepting it for the journal Hermine Annual.
In contrast, “The Old Switcheroo” came quickly. I remember writing it in one sitting, and while I’m sure there have been some edits here and there, the story you find as the last piece in this collection is much the same as it appeared in the initial draft.
Scott: How does psychology play a role in these stories?
Nogle: Some of the stories here belong to the subgenre of psychological horror, by which I mean that they focus on the characters’ inner states rather than external threats such as ghosts, monsters, or other anomalies. The stories “Resilience” and “Move-in Weekend” are examples of psychological horror dealing with what most would call pathologies or disorders, but most of the stories here, even those stories that also feature supernatural or events, deal with psychology in some way. For example, characters deal with issues like denial, repression, self-hatred, or questions about what is real and what is not.
Scott: What significance do ghost stories hold in your collection?
Nogle: My first novel, Beulah, is a ghost story. In terms of short fiction, I am very drawn to old-fashioned ghost stories, but I haven’t written that many of them. My current work tends to be a bit more experimental, though I would love to do some classic ghost stories in the future. I think that the aesthetic of the ghost story colors a lot of what I do, but the only conventional ghost stories here are “The Gestures Remain” and “You Will Make Me Strong Again.”
“I Came Back” is also a ghost story of sorts, but I think readers will find that it is more of a surreal take on what a ghost story can be. “The Pelt” and “The Porches of Our Ears” likewise take on certain elements of the ghost story without having ghosts as the story focus. The collection focuses on how the past can affect the future, so there are of course many ghostly presences.
Scott: How did you decide to order the stories in this collection?
Nogle: Deciding on a story order was more complicated than I initially thought it would be! I tried out several organizational approaches before deciding on the current order. I considered many factors, such as the age of each story’s main character, the stories’ lengths, the tone (for example, hopeful versus hopeless), whether each story was experimental or relatively conventional, how easy or difficult each story was to understand, and each story’s subgenre. I also thought about which story might feel refreshing and new after which other story. I think that a reader can catch hints of all of these considerations while reading. Age is probably apparent, for example, as we have stories about babies followed by those about childhood, and the later stories are more about the end of life. This is not a rigid organization, and there are some outliers.
Scott: What do you love about horror?
Nogle: I enjoy the feelings of tension and fear that horror aims to provoke. Horror also feels real to me in a way that other genres sometimes don’t. I think that while reading fiction, it’s important to suspend your disbelief and get past your inner critic. I have an easier time doing that with horror and other dark fiction than I do with more optimistic fiction. Because I’ve read a lot of horror and have been reading it for a long time, I can sometimes see how works were influenced by other works, which can be rewarding.
Scott: Do you think everybody has a little gothic in them?
Nogle: What a great question! I don’t know what is in everyone’s heart, but speaking of the people I have gotten to know, yes, there is a fascination with darkness and mystery. I think of how people revel in gossip and how popular crime series are, and so on, so my guess is that most people probably do tend toward a gothic sensibility.
Scott: What authors or books have inspired your writing?
Nogle: I read a lot, so there are too many to list, but I think the authors I mark as influences are the ones who surprised me the most when I read their work for the first time—I picked up a book knowing nothing much and was caught up in the author’s world—and these are relatively few. In my early years, these authors were Edgar Allen Poe, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Flannery O’Connor, and Shirley Jackson. In college, they were authors such as Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Kazuo Ishiguro, and George Saunders. More recently, I’ve felt especially inspired by Kelly Link, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Samanta Schweblin as well as horror writers such as Stephen Graham Jones, Michael Wehunt, Gwendolyn Kiste, Steve Rasnic Tem, and S.P. Miskowski. I’m always looking for new authors to be amazed by as well.
Scott: What are you currently reading or working on?
Nogle: I’m writing new short stories, as always. In the coming year, I’ll be working on edits for a collection of science fiction and futuristic fantasy stories titled Promise, as well as a collection of weird fantastical stories titled One Eye Opened in That Other Place, both from Flame Tree Press.
In 2022, I co-edited the anthology Mother: Tales of Love and Terror with Willow Becker of Weird Little Worlds Press, and in 2023, I will get the opportunity to co-edit another anthology, this one titled Wilted Pages, which will focus on dark academia. The co-editor is Ai Jiang, and the book will be published by Shortwave Publishing.
I also have a second novel in the works and, instead of reading a lot of new fiction as I have been doing, I plan to reread some of my favorite novels as I work on it in 2023.
Scott: What is the best piece of writing advice you've received?
Nogle: One memorable piece of writing advice was from Jean Hegland, author of a post-apocalyptic novel that I absolutely loved called Into the Forest. I had the opportunity to visit with her at a Q & A event, and I remember she talked at some length about the proper attitude toward critiques. Her view was that feedback is meaningful but that it is up to you as a writer to decide what it means. If someone says something in your draft is confusing, for example, that might mean you need to make that part clearer—or, perhaps just as likely, it might mean you need to make it more obscure, really lean into what is confusing or difficult about it.
I think this advice was so helpful because just then I had come to feel as though a story had to be approved by beta readers before it was worth sending out. Her advice reminded me to keep ownership and responsibility for the stories I was writing. It introduced the idea that taking feedback and revising a story can be a creative act too, just as creative as drafting.
From Flame Tree Press:
The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future by Christi Nogle
The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future is whimsical and dreadful, verdant and sinister. Readers of “quiet horror” or “slow-burn horror” will enjoy this collection.
"Without a doubt, Christi Nogle is one of my favorite new voices in horror. Her fiction is by turns devastating, horrifying, and beyond beautiful. With her collection, The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future, she's created something truly remarkable, the kind of horror that's filled with grit and heart. Don't miss this book; it's sure to be one of the very best collections of 2023."- Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens and Reluctant Immortals
The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future collects Christi Nogle’s finest psychological and supernatural horror stories. Their rural and small-town characters confront difficult pasts and look toward promising but often terrifying futures. The pieces range in genre from psychological horror through science fiction and ghost stories, but they all share fundamental qualities: feminist themes, an emphasis on voice, a focus on characters’ psychologies and a sense of the gothic in contemporary life. Stories here may recall Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Renegade,” or Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals.”
Get your copy from Flame Tree Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster.
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