San Diego Comic Con isn’t all about the pretty pictures and upcoming blockbusters. There’s actually a massive literary presence throughout the week and tons of fabulous authors with whom one might have the opportunity to speak. I was fortunate enough to sit down with Daryl Gregory, author of We Are All Completely Fine, Afterparty, and, most recently, Spoonbenders, to talk about reading, writing, and psychic spies.

SWS: One of the things I’ve loved most about your books is that they feature supernatural extremes in a very normal world. How do you strike that balance?

DG: Part of it is, I feel like I’m cheating in a way. If you set things mostly in the real world, where the supernatural is intruding into it, you can do less work as a writer. You can just have the character say, “We’re going to Colorado,” and you don’t have to explain “Colorado.” But also I like the grittiness of the real world because when the strange stuff starts happening… I’ve always liked that effect. I like when things are off-kilter and there’s something about a dirty windshield and a dirty road and then a monster by the side of the road that gets me going. I can’t explain why… maybe it’s because I spent a lot of time daydreaming and hoping stuff would happen and I was trapped in the real world and I just wanted something to come through.

SWS: You stuff reminds me of my favorite Stephen King books in that way. I’m not big into blood and guts but that one. Weird. Thing. Makes the story so much more interesting. You also tend to include a little bit of horror. What’s important about the horror to the total alchemy of your stories?

DG: The horror is almost by accident… I mean, in my second book, there are strange bodies and a father with pus coming out that turns out to be a hallucinogenic drug that his son gets addicted to…” People said, “That’s awful That’s horrifying!” And I thought, “I don’t know, it’s kind of a metaphor for parenting. They make you love them and then they do something awful and you’re still there and you can’t leave…” I like anti-horror. You start with something that’s repelling on the surface but if you sit with it and you develop empathy for the characters, it’s transforms into something that’s just different.

SWS: Do you pick those elements you want to use before you start the story or do the elements figure in as the story develops?

DG: It depends. Every book starts with a strange image I can’t get out of my head. It’s that first image I try to explain to myself to make a story around. As you get deeper into the story, stuff arises you want to put in. But sometimes there’s something so cool, you have to change your plot to get to that thing. It’s really organic.

SWS: So are you a plotter or a pantser?

DG: I used to be a pantser. I used to run into a wall…  I would start so many stories that would hit a brick wall and have nowhere to go. Now, I pants it while I’m outlining… and then when I finally figure out where the story is ending and where it’s beginning and maybe a couple of things in the middle, then… I try to write to the outline and hit that ending. Though halfway through the book I usually realize, “That’s not the ending,” and then I come up with something better but that’s okay. I needed the ending to get started.

SWS: Have you had your own experiences with weird stuff? Or was it more of a desire to have weird stuff happen to you?

DG: It was more of a desire for weird stuff to happen, though there’s always that stuff that happens when you’re a kid, when the neurons in your head are growing and forming and you have these experiences… For example, I had that “little-big” feeling… you’d be lying in your bed and you feel like you’re giant and then you feel like you’re tiny and then giant. I kept running into people who also had this kind of feeling. It’s something kids can summon a lot more easily than adults can. I also grew up in a really religious household so it felt like the numinous was supposed to be happening. God was supposed to be right around the corner and Jesus would shake hands with you when you walked out the door. None of it ever happened but there’s always this expectation, something more interesting is supposed to happen. When it didn’t I had to go make it up… I went to a lot of church… sometimes there was a revival and you had to go every night. I think that boredom is what made me a writer. I had to fill the time and the one thing they’d let me do was keep a notebook. I could draw in the pew and I could write stories because I was quiet and that’s why I became a writer.

SWS: You were an English teacher before you became a full time writer. Did you always know you were going to be a writer?

DG: I did. That was a great gift. I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t want to be a writer who’s a reader. As soon as I started writing books, I wanted to do that same thing for someone else… I always wanted to make other people feel that same thing, blow their minds like the books I got to read.

SWS: What did you read as a kid?

DG: Everything. Including cereal boxes. Once you start as a reader you just want to suck everything in. I’ve read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, that was the thing that got me going. I love that stuff. But also we’d go to the beach and I’d get bored, I’d blow through all the books I’d brought and I’d start reading my mom’s Harlequin Romances… She did have a rule: I had to stop making fun of them while I was reading them.

SWS: Do you remember the first sci-fi/fantasy book that really caught your attention?

DG: I remember the first chapter book I finished on my own, and I actually think this is science fiction: Herbie the Love-Bug. It’s a talking car! It’s either fantasy or science fiction depending on what you think is happening under the hood. The first things for me were comic books. The first things I could read on my own… I couldn’t get enough of them. From there, I worked my way through anything in the library that seemed a little strange, with adventure. I also read a ton of Hardy Boys. They’d just show up at the house. I basically read anything I could get my hands on.

SWS: Do you have anything you go back to if you’re stuck? Comfort food?

DG: The thing that gets me unstuck is short stories. I can’t go back to a lot of what I loved as a kid because it turns out it’s really badly written. Bantam, in the 70s, was reprinting all of these Doc Savages and I couldn’t get enough of them but they’re awful. What I’ll do to jumpstart myself is go to short stories. When Harlan Ellison died, I reread a lot of those stories. I had a lot of problems with Harlan Ellison as a person but as a writer, I love those stories. He had such a huge effect on me as a young writer… and then I made the mistake of meeting him and then getting yelled at by him. Everyone in the field has a Harlan story like that.

SWS: Switching to your work: Spoonbenders felt like it could be based on real people. For some reason, Uri Geller and James Randi came up in another conversation I was having the other day, which was bizarre. Are the characters based on actual people?

DG: I grew up in Chicago and my family was really boring but I would stay overnight at my friends’ houses and they had these bombastic, Chicago families where they’d be yelling at each other and there was drama going on and slamming doors and I’d think, “I want to live here! This is so exciting!” I’ve known those families and I love them. What you steal are parts of people. You assemble a cast out of qualities, you don’t grab somebody whole. I found out people will never recognize themselves unless you describe them physically. You can make them talk the same, have the same quirks, and be total jerks and they’ll never recognize themselves.

SWS: Something I found really compelling about the story was pairing a con man with an actual psychic and then giving them a family that was maybe talented and maybe wasn’t. Why was that compelling to write? What was interesting about that for you?

DG: When I was thinking about the book at first, I was thinking, “Maybe he has a power too,” and one of my first readers said, “No! He’s the world’s greatest con man meets the greatest psychic in the world.” Teddy Telemachus is a card sharp and a con man and he’s tricking people through these psychic tests and he meets this woman who he thinks is the greatest con artist ever but she actually has powers. Playing with that idea of different kinds of magic; Teddy who can make things happen, through the book he’s running a very long con, I love that because I love stories about con men and card sharps who can make magic happen. He’s a cynic who runs into actual magic. Sometimes that’s what it feels like when you fall in love. The most cynical person turns their way of thinking around. It seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up.

SWS: Years ago, I saw The Men Who Stare at Goats and then I read Spoonbenders. Now I’m wondering… this is so absurd, is there something to this?

DG: Yes. Men Who Stare at Goats is based on actual army and government programs that were run through a couple different departments. There’s a thing called Project Stargate, that’s referenced in Spoonbenders, that was a real thing the government funded until 1995. Psychic research to raise psychic warriors who could use clairvoyance or travel outside their bodies to spy on the Russians. They also had spoon bending parties; generals were holding spoon bending parties. One of the reasons the book is set in 1995 is that was the last year we funded Project Stargate. That’s why there’s a CIA agent in there who’s desperate to keep the program going… All of that is absolutely real and so are the mobsters.

SWS: Is that public record information at this point?

DG: Oh, this is the best part. Right when I finished the book, the CIA released online all the records from Project Stargate. They’re mostly pretty boring but you can see them testing Uri Geller, the famous 70s psychic… People always ask, “Do you believe in psychic powers?” And I have to say, “No, I think it’s all a scam. I wish it was true but if it were, google and Facebook would already be monitizing it.” It’s the capitalism defense as to why these things don’t exist. If someone had actual telepathy, you know they’d be making money on that.

SWS: Another thing that grabbed me about the book was a quote, something one of the adults said to Mattie, the teenager about, “Transferring that faith to you in the manner of all family religions.” Tell me a little bit about that and why that was an important part of the story also.

DG: Mattie is 14 years old and he knows his family used to be famous but the circus has already left town. Everything interesting in his life is over, in the past, he’ll never be as special as his family was. But all families have that kind of history, the stories filter down, they feel like religion. I grew up, for example, as a Cubs fan back when they weren’t winning. The whole thing about being a Cubs fan then was showing up to the park. You’d show up and learn how the universe worked; they’d fail and then you had to go back the next day and do your job and fail again even if no one was coming to watch you. The Cubs won the World Series just as I was finishing the book so there’s an Easter egg at the end about the series.

SWS: Our readers love to know what authors are reading. What are you reading right now?

DG: There’s always stuff floating through, Sometimes you’re reading books of friends to blurb or help with editing. The Chaos Function by Jack Skillingstead, which comes out next March, is a great science fiction thriller. Mostly, I read a lot of non-fiction. I’m working on a new novel right now about the area of Tennessee my family came from so I’m reading a ton about the Smokey Mountains, Cade’s Cove, pioneer life. What it was like to live in this isolated cove in the 1800s… the house is filling up with random books about that period… Having a novel to write is an excuse to do a deep dive into something. And when you finish the book… you have shelves of stuff you’ll carry around with you for the rest of your life. So, my current obsession is this area of Eastern Tennessee and there will be monsters and aliens and such.

SWS: Do you do location research?

DG: Yes. My parents actually moved back there after they retired. I’ve always visited this area of Smokey Mountain National Park and now I have an excuse to spend a lot of time there and suck up as many details as possible.

SWS: Last question: I’m a Star Wars nut so I always ask what color lightsaber people would want.

DG: No one has ever asked me that. You know, I’m not as badass as Mace Windu… is there a color for bookish guys who turn on the lightsaber to read by? Any color I want? It would have to have enough light to read by Mostly a silvery kind of light, but it would be great if it was also a mood lightsaber.