Warning- contains mature content.


Hello and welcome to Behind the Words, a series of interviews dedicated to understand what motivates and moves us as writers.

Before we go down to business I would like to address the warning on top – the interviews may contain strong language, especially because I wouldn’t like to edit out the way an artist expresses and view the world. I think it’s important to see and feel things through the way an artist speak, and for this reason I will add this warning to all the interviews, just in case.

=Snow-Machine writes about the things that makes us twitch; from the fantastic and obscure horror to the core of dramatics, her words are moving and touching with grace and professionalism, and she is only a yearlong member but already got two Daily Deviations and caught many readers heart and attention.


`leoraigarath: First thing, let’s get to know you a little bit better, how old are you?
=Snow-Machine : 19


`leoraigarath: Coffee or Tea?
=Snow-Machine : Usually water, but to be fair, coffee does have more of a writerly aura to it than tea.


`leoraigarath: I’ll have to agree with that. Poetry or prose?
=Snow-Machine : I write both, but I am more of a prose-ist. I’ve only been writing poetry for a year or so.


`leoraigarath: Is there any formal experience in writing you’d like to share?
=Snow-Machine : I’ve published a few short stories in small e-zines, and I write scripts sometimes for my dad’s company, Jovian Minds. They program video games. My last script was about a scared possum that is afraid of the world and has to learn to accept himself and conquer fear. I’m a college freshman and I’ll probably be an English major, but as we all know, that doesn’t actually guarantee any writing skill.


`leoraigarath: That’s very true. What genre do you prefer reading?
=Snow-Machine : Literary horror, philosophical science-fiction, speculative fiction, anything with an idea.


`leoraigarath: And what attracts you to that genre?
=Snow-Machine : Speculative fiction is really about the human condition, placing humanity in high relief with fantastical elements. You feel horror down in your stomach. It’s a very body oriented genre, and you’re able to tap into this primal system that isn’t necessarily present in other genres. I don’t think literature should necessarily be didactic, but oftentimes people are so focused on the thrilling plot they lose sight of the idea, or what is supposed to make their story different from the millions of stories out there. Speculative fiction is all about the idea, the good books anyways.


`leoraigarath: What is the first thing you look for when you open a fresh new book?
=Snow-Machine : A brilliant opening sentence.


`leoraigarath: What is the last thing you expect to find when you open a fresh new book?
=Snow-Machine : A portal into 15th century England. I’ve opened thousands of books and have never found one.


`leoraigarath: What is the one thing you can’t live without?
=Snow-Machine : A sense of the bizarre. I get the feeling I stole this from somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me figure out where.


`leoraigarath: One of the interesting things about artists is what lead them to write, so why do you write?
=Snow-Machine : I started writing when I was six years old, and as I grew, my writing grew. I wanted to have hundreds of cheap paperbacks in my name and write the gory, scary things that make children weep. Now, as I’ve grown older, my goals have changed. I write to pull people into my world. There is a universe we cannot see, inside of every person, that is not the universe we see around us. It is quiet and subtle, and at the same time, it is raging. I write to save people, to unsettle them, to release the bleeding psychosis that inhabits me, to leave the machine that I have been living inside of my whole life, to drink, to finally, for the first time in my life, really breathe.


`leoraigarath: It was a beautiful honest answer, but do you consider yourself a writer?
=Snow-Machine : Yes. An amateur, but a writer, nonetheless. It’s a part of my identity. I work hard to produce my work, and I take the creation process seriously.


`leoraigarath: What makes a person a writer in your eyes?
=Snow-Machine : Real writers do not just try to entertain, they reveal. Real writers do not consider it a hobby or will give up in protest when other people do not appreciate their work. Being a writer makes you somewhat of an insomniac, it makes you stand on top of the roof in a lightning storm and climb into cupboards to cry and punch holes in the wall. Oh, and real writers don’t go to coffee shops and talk to cute girls about being writers. They’re not in love with the prestige, or the idea of being a writer. They write.


`leoraigarath: We all know that writing is not an easy task, it is demanding and can be very frustrating. What is the toughest thing a writer has to deal with? How do you deal with it?
=Snow-Machine : The invisible audience, usually consisting of your mother and father, standing over your shoulder every time you try to write. I’ve told my mother if I wrote only what I thought was acceptable or safe, I wouldn’t be able to write. You can’t consider other people’s opinions when you write. I dealt with this by not showing anybody my writing for several years. I wrote seven novels in utter solitude, and have yet to show them to anyone, outside of one or two people. DeviantART has given me a safe medium to show my work to others. I would say the best solution though, is to be as honest as you can, and never be embarrassed by what you write, or who you are.


`leoraigarath: Inspiration. Where do you draw it from? What makes you start writing this particular piece?
=Snow-Machine : I always saw this as an irrelevant question, just because nobody ever seems to draw inspiration from a single source. I wrote Jolene after listening to a song by the same name, and finding the picture of a beautiful woman waist-deep in water, and I wrote Swan and the Minotaur after being arrested and spending a few weeks in the dark heart of Oklahoma. I’ve created stories from snatches of conversations, from pictures, from real life experiences, from music, from dreams. Anything.


`leoraigarath: When you sit down to write, what is the first thing that you do?
=Snow-Machine : I put on my headphones, open up iTunes, put on some music and open up a word document. I’m a write anywhere kind of person, as long as I have music. My favorite writing music is Tool, A Perfect Circle, John Lee Hooker, and Queen Adreena, but I also like instrumentals when lyrics become too distracting. That, and a good headspace. I’ve got to sink into the head of whoever I’m writing. When I’m deep into writing a story I tend to walk around as if in a dream.
I write nearly every day, except for occasional depressive dry spells. If you force yourself to write regularly, it becomes easier, and more compulsive. Writing only when the muse strikes you is foolish. The more you write, the more you’ll want to write.


`leoraigarath: One of the more minimal-natured works in your gallery, and the more direct in touching the bottom-line, is your poem Dearest Edgar. What brought you to write this poem?
=Snow-Machine : I’ve always loved Poe, but I became absolutely obsessed after I saw this “masters of horror” (a very cheesy program with 1-hour horror stories on various subjects, and there is always somebody naked) episode where Poe and Virginia are in bed and he tries to be all sexy and takes his clothes off. I love the idea of a naked Poe. In that moment he became human to me, and I sensed a great sadness in him. While writing Dearest Edgar, I had one of those moments of manic energy that is always accompanied by a sort of impassioned anger. Poe became my best friend. He’s the Virgil to my Dante. It was a really compassionate sort of poem. It was an ‘I understand what you’re going through’ poem, written for Poe, for me, and written in an attempt to save us both.


`leoraigarath: In Edgar Allan Poe’s words - “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” I find it very accurate in describing many of the things you write. It seems that the dreamy-atmosphere, the obscure fog, is always hovering above the words. How do you set atmosphere? What are the tools that you use when you work on that?
=Snow-Machine : I want that quote on my tombstone, or tattooed on my back, I haven’t decided which. Atmosphere is a very personal thing, a very personal writing tool. I have been living in a dark place. There is a gray, fog-like atmosphere even standing in the sunshine sometimes, and you can feel the people moving about around you and you just want to melt. Atmosphere is not necessarily environmental, it’s mental. It’s the slow and languid, sensual head-dance with the self. It swamps you, it settles itself around your body. You have to write from a very personal place. You can’t use language in the way that you have always seen language used, but you must use language in the way you hear it in your head, the way it feels tipping on your tongue. Atmosphere can’t be evoked with “it was a dark and stormy night” anymore. It’s been used too many times, it’s cliché, it’s thrown out of the world of real imagery. Real atmosphere doesn’t even have to be describing the setting or place, it can be your ribs sticking to the sheets, or the way your head feels when you wake up in the morning.


`leoraigarath: Can you show us few examples of how you set the right tone and atmosphere in your poem - Why I Can’t Leave My Room. What are the main points, in that poem, that affects the reader’s heart in setting that fascinating atmosphere?
=Snow-Machine : Why I Can’t Leave My Room lies heavily on mythology, namely Dante’s “Inferno,” and the bible, and my friend Poe makes a few interjections. Mythology survives because it is primal, it is imbedded deep inside of us, gives us a sense of understanding and peace. It can also be twisted. The Inferno is a very dark epic poem. It is about hell, after all, and the juxtaposition of hell (the “dark woods” ) and ordinary occurrences such as the absence of love, or your parents not understanding you, makes for, in my opinion, a very surreal experience. Why I Can’t Leave My Room isn’t just a poem about depression or anxiety, it’s a poem about the connection between myth and our everyday lives, that the darkness we experience isn’t a new darkness, but a very old one, and that even the ordinary has elements of the uncanny.


`leoraigarath: In many of your works there’s a strong feel of the horror and fantastic. What attracts you to those genres?
=Snow-Machine : Ever since I picked up the Goosebumps books when I was a small child, I’ve been hooked. As it’s very difficult for me to explain, I’ll just quote what I said in my journal a few weeks ago on the subject -

“Speculative fiction isn't about monsters and aliens. It isn't about dragons and knights, wizards, and battleships. Horror isn't about making people afraid, seeing how gory you can make a scene, or how ugly the monster. It's about throwing the human condition in an extreme situation to better understand it.
That's why I love speculative fiction. Throw in the catharsis, the relief and emotional cleansing I feel from reading horror and writing it, and that's why I love horror. We're able to see how people interact, see how people would react when confronted with having their loved ones being brought back from the dead, having a woman living in the swamp behind their house, being stalked by a serial killer, or talking to the devil.”

There are ways we view the world that aren’t necessarily of the external senses. Everyone knows what it’s like to feel a deep sense of dread, especially if you are prone to anxiety, and horror is a safe way for me to come face to face with those feelings. When I write out a story, I’m working out a problem, whether it be loneliness, or loss, or a certain fear. When I wrote Sunshine, Sunshine, I was trying to cope with a horrible break up. When I wrote 'He is Becoming Unhinged', I was coming to terms with the desire I’ve always felt to escape from my body, something for me that’s always been a symbol of peace and relief. Horror is just the medium I naturally go to when trying to divulge and extrapolate my emotions and issues.
Oh, and just as a side-note, my brother refuses to read my work. He reads Dean Koontz and Richard Laymon, but he won’t read my writing because as he said to my aunt, “it’s grotesque!” He can read about rape and violence and castration and random lesbian sex, but if his sister so much as uses the word dick, he doesn’t want to read it. All writers have to deal with an amount of anxiety and harassment from their family, but horror writers have it some of the worst. Horror is a sign of pathology to your relatives. They wonder what went wrong. I told my Dad the other day, hey dad, I published another story, and he goes, does this story have rape in it? All your stories have rape in it. (which is completely untrue, maybe 85% rape. 66%?) I don’t kill small animals, I promise. I have a picture of me holding a very live kitten somewhere on the internet, and it’s completely legit.


`leoraigarath: One of the things that I find so attractive in your works is the way you fuse-down two genres, and coming up with something whole. For example, in your beautiful story Swan and the Minotaur you present to us a Drama story on a platter of fantasy Horror. How do you fuse those two things into a whole concept?
=Snow-Machine : I never set out with a certain genre in mind, which is strange, seeing as I call myself a horror writer. I just find that horror is the natural vehicle for my ideas, but I’ve written fantasy and science fiction, and occasional romance as well. I try to discard the tropes of speculative genres as well, and Swan and the Minotaur, at its heart, was not a true horror story. Traditional horror dictates that Lee ends up being a killer or a rapist, and Emma dies unhappy, which would have served no purpose, or not been meaningful in any way, which is the most irritating factor of traditional horror. Swan and the Minotaur was a love story, a dysfunctional and creepy love story, but a love story nonetheless. The fusing of genres always comes from the natural flow of the writing, where I think it’s meant to go, not necessarily where it should.


`leoraigarath: What is the most daring or challenging piece you ever wrote, and what made it so?
=Snow-Machine : I would have to say my short story Trashpile Princess, because it dredged up some disturbing memories and feelings, things that up until recently I haven’t been able to discuss with anyone. There are many fictional elements to the story, for example, the female rapist Katie doesn’t actually exist, but many elements were real, such as my parents divorce and the turmoil I’ve experienced with my family, and all the emotions the main character experienced. I cried writing this story. My fingers were shaking. I’m terrified of any of my relatives reading this story.


`leoraigarath: One of the more vivid pieces in your gallery is Social Anxiety Disorder, how was it to write a biographical piece? What makes it different than writing a fiction?
=Snow-Machine : Social Anxiety Disorder was my first biographical piece, and my first acknowledgement, at least in writing, of my anxiety disorder. Biographical pieces are often more painful to write, they’re more revealing and bare. At least with fiction we can say ‘that’s not who I am, that’s only my character’s speaking’, but in honest biographical pieces, our faults and insecurities are laid bare. Most of my poetry is biographical, though it’s not always immediately visible. Biographical pieces make me feel ashamed and relieved at the same time, they allow me to come to terms with who I am and exorcise the demons I’ve been keeping inside my head for the past several years. It’s like therapy for people too cheap for therapy.


`leoraigarath: In one of your journals you talked about the way they disregard the horror/fantasy side of fiction in the academic world. Can you share a bit of your thoughts about that?
=Snow-Machine : People want you to think that horror has nothing to teach us. Fuck those kinds of people, those are the people who take their seven year old children to Saw movies and think the Da Vinci Code is highbrow literature. Then there are the kinds of people who praise boring literature because they think it might be profound, or praise literature they barely understand because they think it must be intelligent. Anyone who purposely obfuscates their prose is a coward. I read to learn and be entertained, not be put to sleep or subject to the mental masturbations of someone who’s too scared to write plainly enough for everybody else to understand. Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it isn’t intelligent. As a culture we’ve been taught that ideas we don’t understand are somehow more intelligent than that which we do. Don’t believe it. The majority of the population gets their ideas of horror from the terrible two-star movies that come out every few months, full of blood and gore and unoriginal ideas. Real horror isn’t like that. Real horror isn’t for children or boys who masturbate to tentacle porn. Horror is often written in a simple style, and comes in cheap paperbacks, like Richard Laymon’s books, but it can also be very beautiful and intricate, like Joe R. Landsdale, or Poppy Z. Brite, or H.P Lovecraft and Poe and Rice. I think it’s unhealthy for humans as a whole to continue to fear expansion, the darkness they don’t understand, because every part of the human condition, even the dark parts, have to be accepted and embraced before we come to terms with ourselves. I’ve been deeply religious for most of my life, and with that came a huge amount of guilt and shame for my natural human tendencies. I’m not saying that everyone who is religious experiences that shame, but I’ve always been taught that horror was unnatural, that literature, itself, was a vehicle of sin. I remember when we had relatives over and they were talking about throwing books out of their house because a demon had gotten inside and it was the only way to be rid of it. I think as long as we fear demons horror will be a genre of taboo, a genre of pornography and disregard.
Even the darkness is beautiful, sometimes it can reveal who we are more naturally and completely than the light.


`leoraigarath: ”I am no good at writing letters because I / Do not know how to cross the distance / Between you and me.” is the beautiful opening to the poem Why I can’t leave my room. It seems that many of the things you write opens in a dramatic tone, giving us something familiar and very emotional straight on. Why do you use that method?
=Snow-Machine : I write what I want to read. A powerful opener sets the tone of the story, and instantly draws the reader in. I watch several hundred people on deviantART, and don’t have enough time to look at every piece of writing, and I know it’s the same for many other people. If I read a piece of writing it has to draw me in instantly, or else I move on to something else. I want to sink my claws into people’s faces. I want my writing to be like a religious experience, like a bad dream you once had, it should make you feel unsettled like subliminal porn in a Disney princess movie, or painful in a cathartic way, like having a bone set. I’m somewhat of a masochistic; I suppose you have to be, to be a writer. Readers should know what they’re getting into from the very first sentence.


`leoraigarath: Another thing that I have noticed while reading your works is the focus on dysfunctional romantic relationships or loneliness. Why do you deal with those subjects in so many of your works? Do you believe that a fiction work can be entirely fiction, without the touch of non-fiction in it?
=Snow-Machine : Why yes, a fiction work can be entirely fiction, if it wants to die a slow and painful death. We have all experienced human emotion because we are all human, the magic of fiction is that it connects intimately with our personal lives. I’ve had to deal with feelings of loneliness my entire life, because my social life has been hindered significantly by my social anxiety, and I think we as a culture, are dying of loneliness. Babies that aren’t handled and picked up and talked to wither and die – how detrimentally does loneliness affect adults and teenagers? Maybe it’s not enough to kill us, but it’s enough to wound, to damage us permanently. Writers are lonely creatures, we’re crying out in the dark. I think writing stems from a deep dissatisfaction with life.
One of the things that always bothered me about horror is that the monsters always seem to be incapable of love. They always snap the necks of the pretty girls. The monsters are too distanced from reality, and from ourselves, and I think that in way horror writers have made the monsters too safe. The monsters are OTHER, they are EVIL, and we would never relate, which is so unlike the world we live in. Every one of us has a Humbert Humbert inside of us, we’ve read enough to know that monsters are our next door neighbors, the man on the bus, in the coffee shop, the first girl that kissed you, gentle colleagues and mild-mannered poets. Monsters are able to love, just like you and me. For all you know, I might be a monster. They don’t all snap the necks of pretty girls, but hold them in the dark and cry and pine or press their faces into their hair. There are only two emotional forces, fear and love. Love is an important part of horror. Love defines horror.
I had this friend, he said everyone in my stories were so distant from each other. What a sad way to live, but it’s true, writers are some of the loneliest people. We have to reach out to someone.


`leoraigarath: How do you plot – do you have a certain technique, or do you just go with the story?
=Snow-Machine : Plotting is a form of cowardice. Most of those ‘how to write a book’ guides are shit, they focus on ideas on how to plot the story, pin point to point to point, make it all very neat, and focus very little on the actual writing. Plotting isn’t writing. I had friends who would just plot their stories and never actually write them. Plotting makes you feel like you’re accomplishing something when you’re really not. It takes courage to jump into the waters without knowing what’s down there. Writing is important. Plotting is just a safety net, and for me, unnecessary. Every story that I’ve tried to plot out like they used to make you do in high school, with snowflakes or idea bubbles (very Freudian, very psychoanalytical, very much shit) squeaks and dies in the womb. The beauty of writing is the natural flow of the story, discovering how it unfolds as you write. I’ll start out with a general idea, and I’ll think I’ll know where I want the story to go, but it never turns out exactly how I want it. If I start writing a story and it doesn’t come together, I’ll set it aside and come back to it later, with a new perspective and new face. Swan and the Minotaur went through several incarnations and drafts through a period of a few months before I finished it.


`leoraigarath: I would like to take a moment and focus on the way you create characters. How did you create the personages of Swan and the Minotaur ? What makes them so believable, especially the main character, in your eyes?
=Snow-Machine : You have to know what your characters want. When you’re writing, you’re you but not you. Most of my main characters are females; some of the best writers don’t know how to write women. Sometimes I can’t write women. Women are strange, they are OTHER. Maybe I’m getting off topic, but I consider myself a feminist, and it’s not just because I hate men. I’d like to put it on the record I also hate women. I’ve known horrible women, they can be just as mean and sadistic as men, so whoever tells you that if women ran the world there would be no wars, just laugh, because it’s absolutely facetious. When I say I’m a feminist I get looks like I just said I cannibalize babies. All that feminism means it that women want equal rights to men, it doesn’t mean they’re a ‘higher being’ or ‘more intelligent’. Women are caring and loving and cold and cruel and sadistic and sympathetic, they are the dimwitted lovers and the coquettes and the lawyers and the fierce villains and the middle-aged workers just trying to get through life like any other. We want to contact alien life and we can’t even understand the other gender. Bram Stoker couldn’t write a woman to save his life.
You have to remember when making your characters is that they’re people, not objects to be advanced through a plot. Villains don’t think they’re evil; heroes question themselves just as much as anyone else. Remember, characters don’t believe they’re in a story. They don’t know if they’re a major or a minor character, static or flat, they simply are, and you’re cutting out a piece of their life in your writing. I’m not saying that you should map out every aspect of your characters’ personalities, you don’t need to. I remember those character fact sheets used to be very popular – the ones that asked who the character’s mother was and what eye color the character has and what their favorite food is. That information is irrelevant, and if it is relevant, it will come up in the story.
The main character is always me but not me the most, they’re so me that they’re never actually themselves. I touch upon their voice, I try to make them unique, but they’re always going to end up looking more like me than like themselves. Stories are ultimately about the characters and not the plot. I’m terrible at writing in third person. Every time I create a persona I dig a little hole and live inside their heads for a while. I feel like a body jumper.


`leoraigarath: What makes a dialogue work? How do you know that a dialogue served its purpose?
=Snow-Machine : Dialogue is something I spend a lot of time on. I think my breakthrough came when I realized that dialogue can only reveal plot in an indirect way. The characters don’t realize they’re in a story, after all, they can’t talk like machines. Bad dialogue kills a story, but good dialogue can save it. It has to be natural, but can also be stylized. Listen to the way people talk. Adapt it to your stories. Dialogue can also contribute to the atmosphere if done right.
I know dialogue has served its purpose when it falls off my tongue, when it turns a sharp corner in the narration. You’ll feel it in your bones when it goes right. If your characters are talking like people from the Renaissance Fair or like in a bad soap opera, you might need to change things around. I’ve had to do it several times.


`leoraigarath: What is the best thing in your gallery to represent you and your style? What makes it so?
=Snow-Machine : Everything in my gallery is a different facet of my personality and my style. Glowbodies is the optimist in me. It contains all my hope. Social Anxiety Disorder and Why I Can’t Leave My Room is the lonely misanthrope in me. Just a few days ago I told someone I wasn’t a misanthrope. I think I might have lied accidentally. I think I might be a misanthrope. I want to be around people until I’m around people, then I just want to be alone and writing. It’s a sad sad cycle.
If I had to pick just one piece, like if God asked me “what is the piece that most represents you and your style?” and I could only pick one and I was probably going to go to hell anyways, I would pick Swan and the Minotaur. It pretty much runs the gamut of my emotions and ideas, from loneliness to dysfunctional romantic relationships, to the desire of freedom from the body, the facsimile nature of society, darkness, dreamy atmosphere, and the classic bittersweet ending.


`leoraigarath: When or how do you know that something you wrote is good, or simply doesn’t work?
=Snow-Machine : When something isn’t working, I can feel it like nausea in my stomach. It’s often when I’m rushing or not taking the proper time with language or an aspect of the story. You really have to take time with your manuscripts. You can’t kick them out of the bed, you can’t get a blowjob from them and then beat them like $2 whores. You have to treat them like lovers, let them languish in your bed, get them to know them beneath the skin.
My manuscripts are my children, when they’re not my metaphorical whores, but I’m a very strait-laced, ‘nothing you do is ever good enough for me’ kind of parent. I know all their flaws and pick them apart. My children have horrible self-esteem. I will automatically think ‘this doesn’t work’, but very few people will pick out the flaws. We’re the only ones that think our birthmarks are ugly. Oftentimes I need distance, a few months at least, to see whether my stories are good or not. Even then, I’m the depressive mother that is always going to contemplate throwing her baby out the window.


`leoraigarath: How do you know that this is the end of a piece?
=Snow-Machine : It either throws confetti in my face or lays down and dies like a dog.


To close the interview I’ll ask you 10 questions, and ask that you’ll answer as intuitively as you can:
`leoraigarath: Your favorite book.
=Snow-Machine : Either Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury or A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick.


`leoraigarath: Your favorite poem.
=Snow-Machine : Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost.


`leoraigarath: A word/phrase that turns you on.
=Snow-Machine : I actually read more than I watch television.


`leoraigarath: A word/phrase that turns you off.
=Snow-Machine : Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior?


`leoraigarath: A genre you’ll never write in.
=Snow-Machine : I’d like to say yaoi/yuri, but I used to moderate a yaoi roleplaying forum, so I can’t say that. A possible second would be vampire detective/urban fantasy, but as we all know, never say never.


`leoraigarath: A genre you didn’t try and wish to give it a go.
=Snow-Machine : I’d love to write a gothic western – is that even a genre?


`leoraigarath: Cursing or no cursing in your art?
=Snow-Machine : Yes. If it’s appropriate for the characters, they will say it.

`leoraigarath: The most embarrassing piece you ever wrote.
=Snow-Machine : Some erotica I wrote when I was 14 that I ripped into pieces and threw in the trash. My dad found it and taped it back together and read it.


`leoraigarath: What is success in the literature world for you?
=Snow-Machine : Being published by a major publishing company, with a dedicated cult following. Or going out violently and being published posthumously.


`leoraigarath: If you were to meet any writer/artist in the world – who would it be and what is the first thing you will do/say?
=Snow-Machine : I’d want to meet Bukowski and cap him in the face, or Philip K. Dick, in a surreal dream. We would play an intergalactic cyclical space/time version of Risk and I would win the Babylon empire. They’re both dead writers, but that’s part of the charm.


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Tip of the Week #2 - Breaking the Eye
_{Seeing things in a new way.}

We normally see things within the definitions and categorization we already know. The paradigms are a hard thing to break, but our artistic nature demands that we try to step out of the comfort zone, and look beyond the most familiar.

Try to take a piece of art – a drawing, painting, photograph, prose, poetry – and look at it from another perspective, something unexpected, something that you can’t see when you look at it and don’t crack your mind understanding. Look for something NEW within that art.

If you do it on a poetry or prose piece on DeviantART, send a note with your thoughts/ideas and a link to the piece to me. I would love to hear your thoughts on this exercise.

_{I ripped the name off an episode in Six Feet Under, which is a brilliant show, `leoraigarath}


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We would like to thank wonderful =Snow-Machine for the time she took in answering this very long interview, and for helping us give you a little glimpse into her world and works.

This interview was composed by `leoraigarath and =Synith, for *LitterBugs and is the second in a series of Writing Guides Interviews. We hope that you find it as interesting and enjoying as helpful. Don't stop looking behind the words!

See you next week,
Behind the Words Team [`leoraigarath, =Synith]


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_{If you would like to suggest someone for interviewing, or have something specific you would like to ask or certain topics that interest you, send a note to `leoraigarath. I would very much appreciate your ideas and comments, hope you enjoy it.}