So happening it is. Please do check out the full interview here, and some excerpt below. Word.
Alex Behr: The scenes on the Coast Guard cutter turned the Stargazer into a character: sometimes almost an accomplice or certainly an enabler to the crimes. As you were writing, how did you navigate (ha) the ship AS a setting and as an aid to developing the plot? Did you use pictures, sketches, etc.?
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Spencer Fleury: I’m actually gratified and relieved that the setting spoke to you the way it did. In my fiction, I always try to make setting an integral part of the narrative in whatever way I can. For The Shitbird, it kind of felt like I had a cheat code for that, because the ship is a very distinctive setting all on its own. For McAllister, the Stargazer is an actively hostile environment, even if not to the extent of, say, a haunted house would be in another kind of book. I actually read The Haunting of Hill House three separate times while I was writing The Shitbird, and while I didn’t realize it at the time, I do think my subconscious had made that connection and was directing me to try to glean as much as I could about writing hostile, closed environments from a true master of the art (though this book is not horror, and I’m certainly no horror writer).
The Stargazer is based closely on the ship I served on for two years during my own Coast Guard days, the Campbell. I lived on that ship full-time for the first year I was assigned to it, and for that second year, I still spent more time on it than I did in my own apartment. Even though it was thirty years ago, I’ve never really forgotten the layout of the place, and I’m sure that if I were to suddenly be dropped back into my former role there, it wouldn’t take me long to fall right back into the swing of it. I did use my collection of photographs from back then to get some of the details right, and there is actually a pretty good documentary about a similar ship on YouTube that I revisited more than once (it has the additional benefit of having been made around the same time the book is set). But I found that those visual aids were more helpful in stimulating my own memories than in any of the direct information they conveyed.
Alex: I had a feeling you served in the Coast Guard! My son spent three years in the Army ROTC, including leadership training in Fort Knox, Kentucky. I got insights into the military world that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I think it would’ve been hard to fake some of the details you included.
Spencer: Let me segue into my first question for you. The stories in Animal Kingdom keep coming back to a few specific settings in time and place: San Francisco in the 1990s, Portland in the 2010s, punk bars in the Mission. It gave the collection a sense of cohesiveness, even though it didn’t seem (to me, anyway) that all the stories are intended to be read as linked. Can you talk a little about these specific settings, and why they in particular spoke to you strongly enough to use as a framework for the collection?
Alex: You’re right, the stories aren’t supposed to be linked. I read historical fiction and some sci-fi, but due to basic character flaws, some may call it ADHD, I lack the patience to research and create believable worlds that don’t draw from where I’ve lived before. I immediately see lights flashing the word fear. I wouldn’t know how to stop researching. Animal Kingdom intersperses autofiction with fiction, although I don’t believe in genre formalities. But most of it draws on places I’ve lived, with the exception of a beach full of walruses. Why do I write about places I’ve lived? It’s partially homage to a lost time and perhaps that I’m more comfortable re-creating structures, sounds, smells, etc., so my characters can bash around and be glorious fuckups.