Filipino blogger and bibliophile Charles Tan has been conducting short interviews with a number of nominees of the inaugural Shirley Jackson Awards, including Lucius Shepard, Laird Barron, Carrie Laben, Barbara and Christopher Roden, Christopher Golden, Conrad Williams, and now my humble self. His interview with me was just recently posted:
What made you decide to use the format presented in 12 Collections?
Many prose books of mine share that format. Ursula LeGuin called it a “mosaic-novel”: A whole that is bigger than the mere sum of its constituent parts. An amalgam, not just a conglomerate. I find the term quite appropriate. The stones my literary mosaics are made of can be read and, hopefully, enjoyed, individually, but their true meaning emerges only when seen in entirety of the big picture. This is particularly evident in “Twelve Collections”: The final, twelfth collector collects collections, as if giving a frame to the picture…