While earning an M.A. in English Literature from Kansas State University, with an emphasis in writing poetry, Jim Hohenbary was captured by the school’s gravitational field and has worked there ever since. He currently serves as both the Director of the Office of Nationally Competitive Scholarships and the Associate Director of the University Honors Program at K-State.  Before crafting his debut novel, Hohenbary won the Phi Kappa Phi Forum’s national poetry contest in fall 2010 for “The Witch” and was recognized as Honorable Mention by New Millennium Writings in 2014 in the Short-Short Fiction category for “The Chimera.” He lives in Manhattan, KS with his wife, Laura, and his two children.

 

Interview with James Hohenbary

 

What is Before the Ruins about?

Before the Ruins tells the story of three cliff-dwelling clans in the American Southwest at the end of the 13th century. Drought and resource depletion, prejudice, and the memory of past grievances have all served as fuel for years of hostilities. Just as a break in the drought finally promises a respite, a vampire finds the system of canyons and cliffs they call home.

Makya, a talented war leader for the Morning Crow clan, is bitten and begins to thirst for blood. When he murders a man from the High Rocks clan to quench that thirst, the young warrior shatters the fragile quiet between the clans. It immediately re-ignites the cycle of violence between the rivals. And like dry kindling, the logic of vengeance quickly burns out of control.  The curse of the vampire also begins to spread among the three clans. Hototo, the clever but stubborn clan leader of the Morning Crows, must try to cope with the marauding vampire, the fury of the other clans, and his own cursed war leader, whom he loves like a son, if his people are to have any chance at survival.

 

What inspired the creation of this novel and/or the aspects within it?

I was thinking one night about how vampires could grow quickly in number because of how easy it is to make another one. You bite somebody and, five minutes later, that next vampire is fully formed and ready to pass the curse to another victim. I hate it when people misuse the word “exponentially” but in this case, exponential growth really would be possible. However, that quickly led me to imagine that vampires would want to avoid the supply and demand issues associated with too many vampires being created.

My next thought was that, if vampires had been around for a long time, that they might have made that mistake before.  It occurred to me that maybe that could explain why the Neanderthal population crashed in Europe. And then, one more link in the “what if” chain, I thought maybe it was something that had happened repeatedly through history. My next thought was to wonder if an outbreak of vampirism could explain the sudden disappearance of the Anasazi from their cliff dwellings in the American Southwest. The idea for “Before the Ruins” instantly exploded in my head.

At that point, I only knew a little bit about the Anasazi civilization. I started writing but I also had to start researching.  I quickly developed a better understanding of what they think happened to the original builders and residents of those cliff dwellings.  In short, environmental stressors, and the sorts of conflicts and social upheavals that such stressors can provoke, seemed to have forced the Anasazi to ultimately migrate out of the region, or at least to different locations in the region. I thought their story had a lot to say in regards to contemporary issues that we face today. The vampire, as a personification of that which drains vitality, as a personification of bloodlust, seemed like a perfect speculative extension of those actualities.  In other words, I didn’t want the story to argue against what we actually know about the abandonment of the cliff dwellings. Instead, the vampire participates within the space of what archaeologists have actually pieced together and becomes the proverbial last straw.

l thought about the danger of too many vampires is still reflected in multiple ways in the final form of the novel. In particular, the vampire follows a code called the “Eight Precepts” that is specifically the code of conduct for his kind, and the last of those precepts is: “Never again an immortal horde.”

 

In comparison to your other works, how does Before the Ruins stand out to you?  

This is my first novel. My interest in writing started with poetry though, and I hope that there are still images, metaphors, and a lyrical echo in what I’ve written that do justice to that poetry background. Without giving anything away, I would cite the last scene in which the vampire appears in Before the Ruins as having a poetic moment that I personally particularly liked.  However, my poetry always pulled in narrative directions, so I think that was a natural evolution.

Beyond that, I do like the idea that staples of mythology and fantasy continue to get traction in society because they continue to be metaphorically useful.  With that in mind, I have written several things that try to intentionally explore that metaphoric potential. For example, in my poem, The Witch, which was published in Phi Kappa Phi Forum magazine in 2010, I tried to juxtapose the Halloween image of a witch with the historical cruelty visited upon people who were accused of witchcraft in order to, hopefully, explore the all-too-current tendency to try and exorcise our fears through sanctioning violence. And in a recent short story that is currently looking for a home, I wrote about a Civil War soldier that encounters a Bigfoot that has been wounded by cannon shrapnel, hoping that it touches upon the ways in which people seem to compartmentalize compassion. In that sense, Before the Ruins aligns with some other shorter things I have done, just on a much larger and more ambitious scale.

 

Are there more specific ways you find your experience in poetry influencing your writing within Before the Ruins?

The point of view shifts frequently in Before the Ruins, which makes the sections relatively compact. One specific way that my previous experience with poetry was reflected was that it was familiar to my writing habits and sense of composition as I wrote those short sections. I think those changes in perspective were essential to telling the story, but also, the practice of writing poems, where you are trying to get mood, imagery and ideas into a relatively small vessel, was potentially helpful practice for the structure of the novel.

 

What draws you towards historical fiction as a genre?

When I was in college I was assigned to read The Education of Henry Adams, which is autobiographical. I recall reading a part where Henry Adams has just taken in all the wonders of the Chicago World’s Fair and he is sitting on the steps feeling like he has just had his intellectual neck broken by all the technological progress he has just seen. I feel that way most of time . . . The present is incredibly complex and a very fast moving target. So maybe the historical setting is a way to try to take something important from the present and move it into another space so that you can look at it without the whole context shifting under your feet before you even get to the end of the sentence. Of course, you could say the same thing about science fiction, probably other genres too. I don’t know if am drawn to historical fiction in any exclusive or preferential way. If I were given a time machine, I would want to run it both forward and back.  Having said that, I have always found ancient civilizations interesting. It is like seeing a faded picture of a great grandfather that died before you were born and wondering what you might have had in common. But times 100.

 

What draws you towards the vampire genre?

My mom likes vampires, so maybe it is hereditary. But among the monsters, I think vampires are interesting because, depending on the version, of course, they retain a lot of humanity.  Unlike werewolves and zombies, for example, they are much more cognizant of who they are and who they were. This gives them the opportunity to have style and personality. In addition, the allure of being immortal and ageless . . . it is hard to not find that intriguing. The cost is steep though. No more daylight.  No more garlic bread. And you have to be willing to prey on humans. If you think about the traditional aversion that vampires have for the crucifix, it makes perfect sense when you consider that the essence of being a vampire is that you are willing to sacrifice others on behalf of your own immortality.  Even as they retain a lot of human characteristics, vampires still become monstrous by renouncing their humanity, their moral kinship with other men and women, for the own selfish desires. Honestly though, I didn’t have an intentional plan to write a vampire novel or a historical novel before I started this project. I was thinking about vampires and knew a little about the cliff dwellings, and when the two came together in my head, I knew immediately that it was a story I wanted to write and that it would probably need to be a long story in order to tell it well.

 

How did you begin your journey as a writer?

My mom and dad both read to me a lot when I was little. I think that certainly helped to set the stage for having a strong attachment to books and stories. Let me share a couple of quick childhood memories.

First, I loved dinosaurs and I remember using my crayons to draw and label different types of dinosaurs on different sheets of paper. I wanted to create my own vividly illustrated dinosaur book. I think I even bound the pages together with yarn.

Second, my dad subscribed to several Time-Life book series when I was a kid: WW II and the Old West. I had not read much of them but I liked looking at the pictures, and I can still identify an abnormally high number of WW II-era tanks and fighter planes as a result. At any rate, one summer my younger brother, several neighborhood kids and myself spent a lot of days in the backyard pretending that we were hunting different monsters: mummies, vampires, werewolves, ghosts.  The funny thing was that “the plot” of our game was that we were pretending we had been tasked by Time-Life Books to create a book series about supernatural monsters, like the books my dad had in the basement.  This necessitated us seeking out the various monsters and then, of course, fending off their hair-raising attacks when we found them.  In both those stories, I think it is interesting that I was attracted to the idea of producing a book, even if only an imaginary one; and I assume that is reflection of the enjoyment I associated with books.

However, I did not really begin a writing journey until, like, my senior year in high school. I think I started trying my hand at writing some poems at that point. I don’t really remember why. I remember that I wrote a descriptive poem about a diner in a nearby town that my dad particularly liked (the poem, not the diner) so I was definitely not using the writing process as an emotional outlet.  It wasn’t therapy. I’m wondering if I had enjoyed some writing assignments in an English class, gotten some positive feedback, and just decided that I liked the fun of finding a well-turned phrase. However, somewhere on that timeline — I think it was my freshman year of college — I read Wilderness, a posthumous collection of Jim Morrison’s notebook poems. It blew my mind.  I was used to poems that followed a very formal structure, and the poems in Wilderness were not always finished, often not rhymed, and often not even clear regarding what they were trying to say.  And yet, as I read the words, it still made my neurons fire. They still created images, moods, associations with meaning attached. They only very loosely exercised control over what they were communicating, and that potential for the pieces of something to roll around loose and still add up to something really struck me.  It seems obvious to me now, but at the time, the idea that words could work more like abstract art and less like highly representational art was a fairly muse-like realization.

 

As an author, what do you think makes a good story?

I have told multiple people over the years that I only like movies with monsters, aliens, and/or lasers in them. And I’m not really kidding. So maybe that does not bode well for my ability to answer this question, but on the other hand, there is nothing like watching a bad movie to cause you to reflect on what makes for good storytelling.

But curiously, I don’t have the same need for monsters, aliens and/or lasers in the books I read.  In fact, the two most recent works of fiction that I have read were On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher, neither of which has any speculative element at all. I guess I feel like I generally want a good story to transport me somewhere outside of my own experience and/or outside of my own skin, do so in a rich and full way, and in the course of what happens in that other reality, give me something that stays with me after the story is over.  Hopefully it gives you multiple things actually: memorable images and characters, new lenses for thinking about the world, and an aesthetic experience through the prose.

I do believe there is something about a beautiful, crystalline, graceful description of something ordinary that can help any story transcend its subject matter. It is like cinematography and directorial decision-making combined. I think the short story, Big Two-Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway, is a classic example of that.  Not much happens, there is only one character, and the focus of the action is fishing — a subject that does not much interest me — and yet I still thought it was terrific the first time I read it, primarily because of the prose.

 

What does writing mean to you?

I work with applicants for nationally competitive scholarships in my job. I often give advice to students as they write personal statements. In this arena, writing is very empowering. If a student can show that he or she understands the value of their past experiences, and understands how their goals fit into the larger world, they can make a compelling case to that scholarship committee. And even if they don’t win, students often say that the writing process intrinsically helps them get more clarity about those goals and experiences.

I think there is an intrinsically rewarding reflective process in play for writing poetry and fiction too.  Whatever you dwell on in the writing process forces you to think about that thing.  As one small example of how the writing process can deepen/broaden your perspective, in writing Before the Ruins I found myself wondering how to describe the look of steel from the perspective of a culture with no mirrors and no metallurgy.  It was a simple question, but once I had asked it, I immediately wondered if individuals in stone-age cultures ever got to see themselves.  I thought that maybe they could in water. And that made me wonder if still water would have been imbued with spiritual significance because of that.  I also thought about what kinds of shiny things did exist in the desert.  I also wondered if a lack of mirrors would change the nature of vanity in that sort of cultural setting.  Lots of rabbit holes to go down but also the simplest question can open up all kinds of new horizons.

But even more than that, writing is linear (even Jim Morrison’s most rambling notebook poem gets read from left to write and then top to bottom) so whatever you dwell upon has to be wrestled into an order, into a relationship with the ideas and images that are around it and part of it.  The attempt to set your ideas down on paper and make the linear order accurately capture what is in your head forces a kind of consideration and re-consideration that impacts the clarity and complexity of the thought itself.

Of course, writing can also be enjoyable. I don’t want to make it sound like some sort of self-improvement regimen.  My experience is that, when I imagine something or think of a concept, and then start writing about it, the writing process makes what I imagined more vivid and more complete. And as you work out how to better capture on paper what you have in your head, you get the satisfaction that comes with creative problem solving. Whenever I am writing a lot I actually chew on the side of my left index finger until it gets calloused. I don’t even notice I am doing it at the time, but it is a testament to how to riveting the writing process can be in the heat of the moment.