LAUREN: I find this question surprising, coming from the Unsubconscious Robot. What more logical mind can there be, compared to us meatbags? But I will attempt an answer.
First, sorry to disappoint, but I don’t write true horror, and almost everything I write (though not quite) is satirical. I do occasionally wander into reality and all the angst that goes with it, but then I come to my senses and get the hell out. So, for the most part, the only ones taking the story events seriously are the characters (and hopefully not the readers), because it’s all . . . satire, and what’s not to laugh at? Any characters I’ve offed have soundly deserved it and much rejoicing is heard across the land.
ROBOT: Your publication history includes ghost stories, monsters, angels, gods, fairy tales, political satire, fantasy, and at least one leviathan. Which creature or supernatural entity have you written that you would least want discovering your home address?
LAUREN: The “creature” I’d really loathe discovering and stalking me at my address would be the orange toad currently infesting the big white abode on Pennsylvania Ave. and/or any of his minions.
ROBOT: Your website was launched on World Turtle Day in memory of Terry Pratchett and “small gods everywhere.” If the universe actually rests on the back of a giant turtle, what should humanity apologize to it for first?
LAUREN: For dreaming the poor god into being, then saddle it with four gigantic elephants standing on it and holding up the entire planet on top of them, burdening them all with our craziness. I mean, you’d also need to apologize to the bummed-out elephants. Talk about one helluva back ache! Not to mention a stacked deck.
ROBOT: You moved from California to New England, which your biography says was apparently for the thrill of “skiing on ice and owning a snow blower.” After sufficient exposure to New England winters, do you now consider this decision evidence of impaired judgement?
LAUREN: After this last winter, yes! I’m beginning to see why people move to Florida but still shudder at the thought, knowing what the inhabitants tend to be. I guess I’ll stick around in New England for the greater overall sanity as much as the prettiness and changing seasons.
ROBOT: Your stories have appeared under both Lauren Stoker and Laurie Hall. If the two author identities were forced into single combat for control of the keyboard, which one survives?
LAUREN: It’s an amicably symbiotic relationship. And I possess two laptops.
ROBOT: Your recent story “Buryin’ Mama” appeared in More Monsters Next Door. This unit is concerned about the phrase more monsters. How many monsters were next door previously, and why were additional units required?
LAUREN: In my particular area there are at least five residing in my neighborhood, and their numbers have only grown since roughly 2016. But we plan to annihilate them in the mid-terms.
ROBOT: Your new novel, Biting Back, begins when Alice Cooper — apparently not that Alice Cooper — is bitten on the butt by a werewolf in a dive bar. This unit has reviewed standard werewolf-transmission protocols and cannot locate “ass bite” in the documentation. Was this an accident, an innovation, or a deliberate failure to follow manufacturer specifications?
LAUREN: I bow to the superior intelligence of Your Robotness. Unbelievably, this meatbag missed the amusing opportunity to apply that sobriquet to the villain, although it was perfectly obvious. Mea culpa.
ROBOT: Biting Back also contains a 12-step program for werewolves attempting to live humanely. Which step is most frequently violated, and does the program provide chips for consecutive days without eating anyone?
LAUREN: That would have to be Step 9, found on page 18: “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.” Impossible to carry out, once you’d ripped someone’s throat out, wouldn’t you think? And no, they don’t get a side of fries for not reverting to type or trope.
ROBOT: You have written both comic satire and darker supernatural material. Which is more difficult: inventing something absurd enough to be funny, or inventing something more absurd than actual human behavior?
LAUREN: I suppose the latter is the more difficult. Absurdity has always come naturally to me and I find it in most things. But I don’t think I’ve written anything truly dark, except some tense scenes within the plot arc of a satirical fantasy and content where I’m alluding to what’s going on with the planet and its despots.
ROBOT: If the Unsubconscious Robot appeared in one of your stories, what horrible fate would you assign this unit?
LAUREN: I’d never harm such an intelligent being! But if I were to envision a horrible fate for him, I suppose being a slush reader and/or editor might do the trick.
ROBOT: What question should this unit have asked but failed to compute?
LAUREN: Q: How did you come by your pen name?
A: I was hoping you’d ask that! It’s legit. I was named after my mother’s brother, Laurin Stoker, and family legend says that we’re related to Bram, the guy who wrote Dracula! So, it only made sense. I was born with my own fang club. (And they were a very funny bunch.)
ROBOT: What hypnotic suggestion should we use to convince unsuspecting meatbags to acquire your books?
LAUREN: To paraphrase the late Robin Williams in his voice portrayal of Ramón, the romantic Adélie penguin in Happy Feet: “Jou know jou want it, jou know jou do!”
INTERROGATION COMPLETE.
