We have recently published Mehreen's collection of stories, White Moon. Today she tells us a little more about her collection.
So White
Moon is a collection of stories that have been published elsewhere. What
made you decide to put these particular ones together?
That is
correct. These are republished pieces. There is a reason why I wanted these
together. The stories are speculative and fall under a broad genre with many
sub-genres such as sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and alternate history. They explore
the many facets of imagination blending in a genre-bending, and unique collection,
pushing the boundaries.
Can you tell us a little about some of the journals and magazines where these were
published?
Yes, some of the publishers were journals such as Litro
Magazine,UK. Panorama: Journal of Travel Place and Nature, UK. Kitaab,
Singapore. Quail Bell, USA. Popshot Quarterly special collector's edition, UK.
Decolonial Passage, USA. Ink Pantry curator of fine words, UK, BlazeVOX special
issue, USA. The Chiron Review, USA.
Do you
have a favourite publication?
While
they all pushed the limits of my creativity, however, I was happy with what
I was able to achieve with the River of Melted Chocolate in
which I thought of an ultimate world where people had entered a house
that was hosting a party for a motley crowd. But no one ever saw them coming
out. It was a house without any exits.
Which
story was the most difficult to write?
Yellow
God was tough to write. Because I was trying to write it by bending the
genres. Hence, this story blends fairy tales and cutting-edge AI, following
Kant's transcendental Idealism which in simplest terms means what we see is a
partial reality because hyper-reality exists in space and time of which we see a
representation only. see https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-transcendental-idealism/#TranRealEmpiIdea.
I wrote and
re-wrote this many times tying and untying knots as it were while grappling to
understand Kant's theory and use it in the story seamlessly.
Even
though the stories have been published before we did quite a lot of editing.
This was in part, I think because the stories work differently collectively from
the way they worked individually. Could you tell our readers a little more
about this?
When stories
are published individually, they use a set of phrases, words, and sentences that
work uniquely for that particular story only. However, when put in a collection,
a lot of syntax may appear similar and redundant. To avoid this redundancy or
repetitions, edits need to be done meticulously to preserve both the integrity
of the individual stories and yet, not sound monotonous at the same time with
the same kind of syntactic constructions.
Do you
have any advice for the short story writer?
There should
be some speculative elements in short stories with a reeling effect, so readers
may come back as ask what was this story really about? The answer must be
alluded to but not entirely written. Let readers connect the dots and come to
their conclusions.
Do you have
any more news about your writing or any events?
I am writing
my third novel. I have only just drafted the first two chapters. I think this
will take a while. I am also compiling another book of one-sentence
pre-published stories, which I would like send out once I have enough
one-sentence in it.
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