Welcome, most beloved listener. Following our launch interview with Catherine Lundoff at the beginning of the week, today we hold a neat session with a gay male writer, Scott J Couturier, for our January LGBTQ+ series of features. Knowing us, we’ll probably post about dogs and Victorian detective fiction in between these themed slots, but we want to keep the ball rolling.
NOTE: One aspect of these features is that we offered interviewees a range of questions which they could pick from, or even add their own. We’re not even sure we like some of our own questions – you inevitably ask yourself (or should), would you put this question to a straight author? No one asks a straight white male author to be representative of their ‘kind’, for example. So these are at best conversation starters for individuals to play off – the answers are the important bit.
Let us dive into the meat – or tofu – of the subject…
SCOTT J COUTURIER
“There should always be a safe place for queerness to flourish, with its own sacred hill & bonfire.”
Scott J. Couturier works with both prose and poetry, and has written three novels (starting with The Mask of Tamrel) as part of a projected five-part dark fantasy series titled The Magistricide. His work focuses on blurring the conceptual walls dividing the fantastic, the cosmic, and the literary; currently he lives in his home town of Traverse City Michigan.
greydog: Hi, Scott, and welcome to greydogtales. Obviously we’re here to talk about LGBTQ+ writers and characters in strange fiction, but maybe you could tell the readers a bit about yourself and your work first, to set the scene. If you wanted to share your personal identity in the context of this feature, how would you do so?
Scott: Hi! My work & my personal identity are, for the most part, one & the same. Even before I could spell, I was dictating little stories (that I would later illustrate crudely) to my mom. Growing up, I felt a compulsive desire to work with words. Having such a feverish & single-minded drive set me apart – specifically, I have always felt the primal compulsion of the fantastic, beginning with Madeleine L’Engle & Ursula K. LeGuin, moving on to Tolkien & Moorcock & the myriad glories of Weird fiction (Lovecraft, W.H. Hodgson & Clark Ashton Smith being primary influences). So, I think of myself first & foremost as a fantasist: but, I’ve always been lured by the darker & more charnel side of things, & of late much of my writing has become expressly horror-based. In recent years my work has increasingly reflected pagan & nature-veneration aspects, as well.
It’s all syncretism. My novel ‘The Mask of Tamrel’ (self-published 2014, pending re-release on Mission Point Press 2019) can nominally be shoved into the following pigeonholes: High fantasy, dark fantasy, flintlock fantasy, steampunk, Weird fiction, dystopia, horror fantasy, ‘literary’ fiction, Folk Horror, GrimDark, decadent fiction, & gnomic fiction (I like this one best). I draw from a pretty broad swathe of influences in my work: I do not at all find horror an uncomfortable or inappropriate label, & in fact am getting more comfortable with it by the day. My recent writing has largely focused on the production of Weird/horror poetry of a quasi-formal bent… really, ‘Weird’ is such a marvelous genre definition. It acknowledges its own syncretism & indeterminacy. I work in wonder, that’s really what it boils down to.
greydog: What’s your preferred format and length as a writer – flash fiction, short story, novella, novel, book series, poetry?
Scott: Egads. I roam all over! From 2012-2017 I worked almost exclusively in novel/series format – then, due to my ever-increasing fascination with Weird fiction (both the historical & present burgeoning scene) I started to focus more on poetry & short story pieces in 2017. 2018 was the first year since 2011 that I didn’t work on a new novel (beyond a couple dozen pages & some outline work). In all, poetry has become an incredibly rewarding outlet. Short fiction can be more troublesome, & I have an unfortunate habit of half-to-3/4 finishing tales & then leaving them by the wayside to rot. Hoping to salvage some of these homunculi in 2019, & refine the tendency in general. That said, I have four or five pieces of short fiction out for consideration right now that I have pretty high hopes for.
greydog: Were there any key books or films that helped you realize and accept your own sexual identity?
Scott: The very first time I remember bumping into explicitly gay characters was in Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman’s ‘The Will of the Wanderer,’ first volume in their Rose of the Prophet series. At the time, I was young & having some very troubling worries about my own sexual identity – I put the book aside, & to this day have never finished it! Later on, other books, films, & music would help me adjust to my queerness: art helps me to orient & self-identify, always has. The music of Rufus Wainwright & Queen (my very first rock band at 13), & rock-&-roll in general, the films ‘Velvet Goldmine,’ ‘Beautiful Thing,’ ‘Kinsey’ & ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ Andy Warhol & John Waters’ oeuvre, the writings of Oscar Wilde & Rimbaud, Poppy Z. Brite & Anne Rice… ‘Ethan of Athos’ by Lois McMaster Bujold was a big one. So much of my ‘coming out’ has only occurred in the last ten years or so!
greydog: Be honest: Have you ever dialed down the queer aspects of a piece to try and draw in a wider audience? Or: dialed them up on purpose, to hammer a point home?
Scott: Honestly, at this juncture I’m still exploring exactly how to incorporate queerness into my work, & what that means. Because so much of what I write is concertedly abstracted, otherworldly & fantastical, the sexual preferences of my characters often don’t come into the scope of the narrative! The last ‘sex’ scene I wrote was an orgy of distinctly non-human, non-binary gendered aliens.
I will say that, more than once, I’ve contemplated whether to make my book series (The Magistricide) more explicitly queer, & that may still be coming in future volumes. At present, the protagonist (one Kelrob Kael-Pellin, a young mage) is asexual, driven by atavistic yearnings for truth, knowledge, & beauty rather than physical consummation. His companion Jacobson (a sell-sword) is bisexual: I’m interested myself to see where that goes. As for recent work…I’ve started experimenting with some queer/homoerotic sentiment in certain pieces, & have been very pleased with the results. I can say that my hesitancy to explore these themes is less based on a fear of losing a ‘wider audience’ & more rooted in my own relatively private nature. I write fantasy: I don’t really write about myself (at least, not directly or consciously).
greydog: We were at a panel during the 2018 UK Fantasycon, which included discussion of asexuality in fiction as part of the diversity spectrum. You mentioned writing an asexual character in your books… can you talk about that?
Scott: Ah, Kelrob! In Thevin, Kelrob’s world, there is a pretty easy-going sense of sexual leniency. However, there isn’t a defined ‘asexual’ identity, per se…Kelrob’s asexuality is something that emerged organically over the course of writing the books. He doesn’t think of/contextualize himself as asexual, but: he has little-to-no interest in pursuing sexual matters, & his intimate/romantic experience is practically nil. He’s spent his entire life with his face in some book or other, blissfully abstracted & driven by a love (perhaps even a lust?) for knowledge & esoteric illumination. His passions lie mostly outside the flesh – Tesla would be a good analogous ‘real-world’ historical figure.
greydog: Which piece of your own work are you most proud of, and why?
Scott: I have a poem coming out in Weirdbook #41 that I’m immensely fond of. It’s called ‘Twin Hungers,’ & it depicts frank homoerotic yearning between a half-changed vampire & his thwarted sire…. It’s subtle & bleak, but it was a conscious choice to write something queer. I’m sure 2019 will see further experiments. Also, 2018 saw me share three anthology ToC with my husband Shayne K. Keen – Trumpland: An Alternative History of the Future, Caravans Awry, & 32 White Horses on a Vermilion Hill (the latter two from Planet X Publications). His first professional publications – I’m proud of him!
LGBTQ+ AND THE FIELD
greydog: The most common phrase you hear when people object to active movements encouraging diversity in fiction is “I don’t care about the sexuality, gender, colour, etc. of the writer. I only care about good stories”. How would you respond to that?
Scott: ‘I don’t want to know’ so often translates to ‘I am afraid…’ at least, that’s what I hear in it.
greydog: Are many readers basically scared of queer fiction (which would be ironic in the horror field especially)? Or, do you thing that they just don’t come across enough good examples to get into it?
Scott: I think reading queer fiction in particular causes people to reflect on themselves. It’s inevitable – who am I attracted to, what do I like? Do I feel like/identify as a woman, a man, neither, both? Queer fiction forces people to confront these questions head-on – both in the context of characters & in context of themselves. “Uh oh – was I just turned on?” Personally, I feel that the scope of human sexuality is infinitely variable, & that any hidebound conception of ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ rings as a hollow absolutism. Since this absolutism/dichotomy is backed up by all kinds of cultural ‘norms,’ conditioning, & expectation, the very hint of queerness in oneself can be felt as a monstrous, terrible thing – at first, & forever if the person never chooses to look into themselves frankly. Thus, it can be infinitely more terrifying for an unexamined person to read a queer story than the blackest horror tale…at least the threat of gibbering cosmic oblivion won’t make your parents disown you!
greydog: Is LGBTQ+ fiction more acceptable to the broader public when it comes from ‘nice middle-class white people’ as opposed to additionally marginalised groups, such as queer black writers?
Scott: Grotesquely, anything is more acceptable to the broader public when it comes from ‘nice, middle-class white people,’ at least in Western European & North American culture. The marginalized always have to speak louder & with more power & force, specifically because they are marginalized.
greydog: True, except when it becomes a media fad, in vogue for a short time, as Catherine Lundoff pointed out a couple of days ago. Getting work noticed at all is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve. Do you think there are more barriers for LGBTQ+ writers in general?
Scott: I can unequivocally say ‘yes,’ insofar as there are simply more barriers for LGBTQ+ people in general. That affirmed, in regards to writing & publishing I thankfully haven’t faced any active discrimination. It’s (of course) interesting to imagine a reality where all marginalization ceases, where new standards of cultural empathy result in gay/queer people just being characters in a story, without their sexual identities as the lynch-pin of the narrative…. I feel humans get too reductive about labels. But then, labels allow the like-minded to find each other, help foster identities & movements. Safety in numbers…a complicated question, clearly! Ironically, this is my first major interview as a writer, & it’s due to my queerness.
greydog: There’s probably some strange irony in that somewhere! So, there are a number of presses dedicated to LGBTQ+ fiction. Do you view these as a good thing, or do you think they risk perpetuating exclusion from mainstream presses?
Scott: I think it is important that queerness maintain its own identity, separate always & ever from the mainstream. That’s been a major job of queerness throughout the ages… to upset convention, foster debate, scandalize, innovate, create art, mysticism, & beauty. As such, these presses have my full support – right now there is a lot of confusion as to what ‘normalizing’ means. For so long gay culture was the subculture, hidden & forbidden, feeding the mainstream… now, LGBTQ+ people are being accepted into consensus reality, & new norms are evolving (which is obviously a good thing). Still, there should always be a safe place for queerness to flourish, with its own sacred hill & bonfire.
greydog: What have you planned in the way of work for 2019?
Scott: 2019 is going to be a busy year. The first three volumes of The Magistricide (my dark/gnomic/etc fantasy series) are going to be re-edited & re-released on Mission Point Press – I’m hoping this gives me the impetus to jump-start the fourth volume. I’m also determined to pull together enough material for a poetry collection in 2019 – a dream of mine when I was younger, long-abandoned, now rekindled. I’m hoping to spend more of this year exploring the work of my contemporaries, too – I work as an editor, & finding the time to read for pleasure is sometimes a challenge. Finally, expect more short stories covering a bewildering array of terrain. Hopefully someone will want them!
greydog: We send our best wishes for those endeavours from across the Pond. Many thanks for taking part.
Anthologies including Scott J Couturier, such as Caravan Awry and 32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill mentioned above, are available now:
FOR A WHOLE RAFT OF LGBTQ+ ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS ALL MONTH, HEAD OVER TO GINGER NUTS OF HORROR, AT: