Four Questions with Maxwell Ian Gold
With hundreds of poems and stories in print and several award nominations, Maxwell Ian Gold’s body of work is impressive. I’m excited that he stopped by ahead of the release of his latest work, Tiny Oblivions and Mutual Self Destructions coming soon from Raw Dog Screaming Press. Here, he shares the inspiration for this new collection of poetry.
Tamika Thompson: What is horror?
Maxwell Ian Gold: Horror is a feeling, an anxious pang in your stomach when you know something isn’t setting right, when you swore you locked the front door, the dark gray clouds forming across the horizon on your drive home. It’s also the dread that comes with understanding the meaningless values placed on systems we find ourselves justifying every single day without end, creating our own cyber gods and cosmic horrors out of the Starbucks mugs and corporate slogs just to conquer those very gods and monsters. Horror is everything and nothing at the same time, a Schrodinger’s Void of constant beauty and grotesque misunderstandings that lead us back towards those same feelings where we started. The unnerving sensation in our gut when we ask: is everything all right?
Thompson: What is the spookiest experience you've ever had?
Gold: It’s difficult to say, but off the top of my head I recall sleeping over with friends when I was in college at this 20th Century mansion in Toledo. It belonged to a wealthy family and looked like most houses in the West End historic neighborhood that once were owned by industry barons and tycoons of the day. The innkeeper who ran the house told us a story of how the husband’s wife had died in the home and so the family had decided to leave, but her spirit haunted the home. I thought the whole thing was silly. We were all gathered in the main foyer by the stair, including the innkeeper and his husband in the kitchen preparing dessert. He was telling our group the myth of the Reynold’s family, the death of the wife, the whole story. The ghost that never forgot. The entire time I couldn’t help but think this was all a bit over the top. I turned to a friend of mine, the two of us laughing at the story and said, “Well, maybe she should show herself.” And the antique bulb on the stair. No other lights. Only that light flickered, and it wasn’t as if the bulb was faulty, it was like something was listening to us. My friend and I bolted to the yard, but we ended up sleeping in the house that night, barely.
Thompson: What is the scariest book you've read and what about it frightened you?
Gold: I don’t know that I could say one book is the scariest since there are so many, but I recently finished reading James Chambers’ short story collection On the Night Border from Raw Dog Screaming Press. The sense of dread, the pace, the unsettling cosmic terror in each story will keep me up at night and also…never make me think about candy the same again.
Thompson: With more than three hundred poems and stories published already and several award nominations, what stands out to you about your upcoming release, Tiny Oblivions and Mutual Self Destructions? Is this body of work in any way different or did you approach it in a different way?
Gold: When I am writing cosmic horror, particularly with Tiny Oblivions I felt like I was I pulling at the anxieties of an already anxious world and the wide, diverse vulnerabilities of a species, attempting to grapple with its own reasons for being. Tiny Oblivions was also a little bit of coming home in terms of the content focusing on weird fiction and cosmic horror solely, whereas Bleeding Rainbows and Other Broken Spectrums had a much different tone.
I don’t think I approached this collection any differently than I would any writing project as they all require me to look inward. It’s a matter of what taps my inspiration, or dread.
Maxwell I. Gold is a Jewish-American cosmic horror poet and editor, with an extensive body of work comprising over 300 poems and stories since 2017. His writings have earned a place alongside many literary luminaries in the speculative fiction genre. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, magazines, and anthologies including Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology, Chiral Mad 5, Tales from Omni Park, Back 2 OmniPark, Spectral Realms, Weird Tales Magazine, Space and Time Magazine and many others. Maxwell’s work has been recognized with multiple nominations including the Elgin Awards, Eric Hoffer Award, Pushcart Prize, and Bram Stoker Awards. Find him and his work at www.thewellsoftheweird.com.
