J.D. Forrest on The Mourning Man
By Nora Ashby
I write romance, so I read everything the same way, hunting for where the wanting is. The Mourning Man: Volume One is horror, and it still has the best kitchen scene I've read all year: a woman at a table, waiting on a man who keeps dying to get back to her, and less room every time he makes it. When I sold rings, a customer who came back to the same case three Saturdays running got my sales pitch put away and a cup of coffee and a lot of nosy questions. This book walked me back to that kitchen five times, once a tale. So I went and got nosy with the man who wrote it.
Full disclosure: Niche of One, J.D.'s publisher, is publishing my first book.
The book is The Mourning Man: Volume One, five horror tales, $4.99 as an ebook. Read the content notes in my review before you buy it. I mean that.
I sent J.D. Forrest seven questions, then went back with a follow-up wherever an answer opened a door, and each follow-up sits under the answer it came from. The answers are his, the way he typed them, except two words I fixed the spelling on. I didn't trim a thing or soften a thing, and there were spots my mother would've wanted me to. He talks about trauma, addiction and mental health, and he doesn't clean any of it up.
The woman in the kitchen
The woman in the kitchen never gets a name, and by the last page Jim can't say what color her eyes are. Do you know both?
Ha! I didn't expect this one... Yes, she has a name. She has a story. And the reason she's not explained more in-depth here is this isn't her story. But oh, yes... she has a story to be told. Don't you worry about that.
She has a name and a story, and this isn't her story. Without telling me either one, does Jim learn her name before the reader does?
Jim knows her name. He just can't remember it.
Why she leads
In the first kitchen scene she sets the pace and you let us hear what she thinks while she does it. Why did the book give her the desire first, and did it cost you anything to write it from her side of the table?
I guess it's kind of a representation of a lot of real life horrors I've experienced. Codependent relationships, toxic relationships, being the toxic person, being the victim of them, drug issues, addiction, sex as a problem solver... it's really an amalgamation of these things that terrify and I find myself inside at the same time. It feels kind of like that desire to harm as it's represented in the story. I think the price you pay for putting these things out in the universe in the form of fiction, specifically horror/weird fiction, is giving those things a metaphorical presence as an entity in the mind. It also gives you power over it in the long run. Honestly, this is my therapy.
You called the book your therapy and said putting these things on the page gives you power over them. Does the reader get that power too, or does it only work for the person who wrote it?
I hope the reader gets power over it, especially if they identify with something in the book. I mean, I'm a combat veteran with PTSD on top of feelings of insecurity, anxiety, depression and the rest of that alphabet soup of disorder shit out there. I identify with this obviously. I wrote it. This is my subconscious vomiting out my deepest fears and failures and the dark shit we refuse to deal with and compartmentalize. I've been to therapy, learned coping tools, take the necessary medications to not fucking go complete nihilist, and I recommend if anyone has these problems they do the same, but this allows me to personally exorcise my demons without wasting $200 an hour to try to achieve some sort of happiness. I can get a sex worker for the same amount, they'll appreciate it more and I'd be happier at the end guaranteed.
The love affair with death
Jim's version of love is a few seconds long, and by the time he's in Webb's bed the dying itself has become the lover. Who is the love story between, in your head? Jim and her, or Jim and the going?
Ahh, the examination of the human love affair with death. Jim is in love with that... death. He's addicted to it because afterwards, for that brief moment, it all goes away and only some warm, twisted happiness remains. And it's a bit of a commentary on how we're all really obsessed with death because it ultimately calls for us all. We just put it in the back of our minds because it's a fucking bummer, dude. I don't. I think it's an important thing to confront and get comfortable with. I've seen a LOT of death over my life, so maybe I'm desensitized to it, but it's just the reality of things. Best to face it and overcome the fear of it.
You said it's best to face death and get comfortable with it. Jim faces it constantly and the fear is gone, but the book doesn't look much like peace. Where does his version of facing it go wrong?
Jim doesn't get peace yet. He's got a job to do and the role very rarely cares if you select it or not.
Seduction
Vasquez, in Alamogordo, wants a stranger's mouth and a stranger's hands, sees the frightened man trapped behind them, and turns the third bank anyway. I think it's the best sex scene in the book and the worst decision anybody makes in it. Did you write it as seduction or as surrender, and did you worry readers would flinch?
I can only say what this one is from my point of view, and it was meant to be seduction. A very demented and wild seduction. Pleasure and pain frequently live in the same room. Was it meant to make anyone flinch? I'll say this: I am writing horror.
"Pleasure and pain frequently live in the same room." Which scene in the book has the most of both in it at once?
Jim and the lady in the kitchen was just powerful to write, so I'd have to say that one. I tried to imagine myself as a woman that was losing everything that made her her against her will. Having it eaten and destroyed as if it never existed in the first place. It turns out that's a pretty universal feeling, but I thought of a woman losing her child. I feel like mothers just get hit harder, even though it hurts everyone.
The pitch, the years, and what comes next
I've got horror friends who'd skip the kitchen and romance friends who'd skip the knife. What do you tell each of them at the door, one sentence apiece?
I'll say only one sentence to them: Horror is in the space, the knife, and the head.
How long did this book take, and which of the five fought you hardest? What did you cut that you still miss?
Well, this book has lived in my head and as proto-versions on the web a few times. But this is the first time I think I finally got it right. After I read the first draft, I knew I was getting it. I think the final product is something I'll always be proud about. And oh, man... what did I cut??? So much, but the good thing is that a lot of it will come to fruition in the near future. This isn't a one and done series. I'm building a universe for horror and genre fans to love.
Jim looks at the room with the drain and the room with the cracked yellow linoleum and calls himself a coward for the choice he makes. Then, in The Farm, she tells him to come alone. Do you forgive him? And does he get a happy-for-now in Volume Two, because I will take one.
I'll be honest... Jim's in for a world of shit that will baffle the mind. I mean, wait until he gets involved with the whole "murder of God" thing.
Jim's in for a world of shit with the murder of God. Yes, no, or "wait and see": is the kitchen still standing when he gets there?
Definitely wait and see... things are going to get very interesting.
Does Jim get to be forgiven by her, or only by himself?
Forgiveness isn't necessary for them, I don't think. Their story isn't quite finished just yet, though, so we'll see.
Where this leaves me
I asked the man for a happy-for-now and he handed me a world of shit and the murder of God, which, fine. He won't say whether the kitchen's still standing. He didn't say it's gone, either, and he says their story isn't finished yet. I sold rings long enough to know what "we'll see" from a man means. It means come back Friday.
My review of the book, with the heat level and the content notes, is here: The Mourning Man: Volume One. The book is $4.99 and you can buy it here.