Rail: Ugh, I want to take that class. Have you personally ever been to a clairvoyant or psychic?
Macon Fleischer: I’ve only been to one formally-listed-on-Google-Business psychic. Soon after I finished the final draft of the book, I went to one just a few blocks from your building. Picture it: above a funeral home, unopened mail and empty Coke cans and cigarette butts tumbling down a red carpet staircase on the way up. The stench! YouTube with a slideshow of nature scenes around the world. I didn’t care that it was a scam. I gave her a hundred dollars to see what would happen. She had me clutch a little rock that said “faith” on it, which I later saw at Family Dollar. She was so confidently wrong. That said, telepathy and precognition are real and study-able. Take something such as the CIA’s remote viewing research—thousands of people have benefited from those techniques. It fascinates me how most world religions hinge on the power of prayer, meditation, and manifestation, yet it’s written off as debunked in mainstream science. I’m skeptical to think all these beliefs people across mankind have dedicated their lives to out of faith are moot just because theorizing on the unknown feels uncomfortable. “It’s something, but we don’t quite know what,” is a perfectly acceptable answer.
Rail: Throughout the Chicago section, Daniel, who is running the residency that both Maxine and Corey are participating in, has an array of exercises and prompts like “Get the Scary Out” and “Hot Seat.” Do you have any much-loved (or hated) exercises that you like to give your students?
Macon Fleischer: Weird exercises are my jam. My pedagogy is largely focused on the experience of the classroom. It isn’t always possible, but I’m known to show up early and move around furniture, adjust the window curtains and lighting, or get people standing or on the floor. Teaching playwriting, I like to drag props out of the supply closet and make stations. When teaching English or creative writing workshops, we get limited to one table, so I’m keen on bringing objects from home which have interesting scents, textures, and tastes. A student favorite is when I bring a big bag of objects and dump it in the middle of the table. Students get to choose a few of the objects and build characters and scenes around what they picked.
Rail: CLASH Books, your publisher, is an indie cult fave, known for their punk rock attitude and affinity for horror and genre-blending work. How did you end up publishing this with them?
Macon Fleischer: I met my editor, Christoph Paul, at the AWP conference in Seattle. Curse had just crashed and burned on submission with every respected publisher in New York City. So I was blabbing about that, not even really pitching it, and he asked me to send it his way. He read it on the plane ride home and I had an offer a few days later! It feels fated because, after signing, I realized how many CLASH books I already had at home and one was even on display because I loved the cover—At Sea by Aïcha Martine Thiam. That designer, Joel Amat Güell, made the cover of Curse. He went multimedia on it with a lithograph design. Christoph and his wife Leza Cantoral are really good people. In my book, there’s a line that says “I’m not interested in pony shows. In it to make cool stuff.” That really encapsulates CLASH. Their sense of fun is infectious.
Rail: You’re producing the audiobook of this novel yourself—how are you approaching it?
Macon Fleischer: Yes! I’m so craving face-to-face interaction which we’re all deprived of, even still, post-pandemic. My husband Andy Fleischer (who I cast as Daniel after his sparkling audition) as well as Taylor Blim (the actor playing Corey) were commiserating about how these sweaty, intensive, emotionally amped years of training led to self-tapes and Zoom calls. Feels like a void. I’m doing something a little different than a traditional audiobook which feels akin to a staged reading. I want the rawness and imperfections of theater to come through and make the recording an experience. Heidi Stillman, the other dedicatee of the book, celebrates the ephemeral nature of theater. She’s been in my head with that for years because it’s cool.
Rail: Later in the book, Corey states “I realized then that I’d integrated evil into myself. I viewed it without judgment as a special trait or skill.” What is evil and why are some people pulled into its dark glamor?
Macon Fleischer: I feel like mistakes are morally neutral but evil comes with wishing harm on others. Why anyone would want that is mysterious to me. I can’t even handle when people are mad at me, which is a fatal flaw of its own.
Rail: The scariest thing in the novel, arguably, is, as Corey notes near the end, “Human scorn, the worst punishment of all.” Why is scorn so painful to Corey and what made you construct a whole narrative around her perception of this scorn?
Macon Fleischer: Corey has some whack takes, but I agree with her on this one! Scorn is ultimately self-serving. One is left to think they need to earn approval and respect back. That’s when power dynamics get screwed up, when the ground is too uneven to be fair. As a mother, for example, I’ve noticed that usually the consequence of my son’s so-called mistakes is his shame that comes after. No need to allow someone to feel ashamed but continue to reprimand them.
Rail: What have you read or watched recently that you want to recommend here, horror or otherwise?
Macon Fleischer: You recommended the 1977 film Suspiria which was artistically tense and so yummy with the visuals. I also felt inspired by the 2018 game Celeste, made by an indie company called Maddy Makes Games. Both of these show how perception creates its own existential reality which can distort how we view the world. I’m also obsessed with Anna Biller’s 2016 film The Love Witch, which doesn’t give a crap about realism and commits itself to some weird, preternatural, theatrically aesthetic snow globe.
Rail: What’s next?
Macon Fleischer: As for horror, I’m co-writing a scary feature film with the actor Daniella Pineda and we’re working fast and having a blast. In non-horror, I’m writing a memoir about my mental illness but it isn’t at all “woe is me.” I want it to be spectral, inspiring, and charming. There is more than enough horror in and about the mind, but psychological symptoms often point to something special and good about a person.