Midnight with Siggy Franzen
A Midnight Mosaic Author Spotlight
Author Siggy Franzen just sort of appeared out of nowhere for 13 Days of Dark Lore in April. We hadn’t heard of her and she hadn’t yet been published. Her story, A Peaceable Kingdom was a little on the longer side of submissions, but I was completely entranced the entire way through.
Siggy creates a world that seems like something from a movie you’ve watched through slightly-parted, frightened fingers. In fact, I tried searching various terms and names she used thinking she must be adapting from popular media. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been there before, in her story.
It was familiarity in the most horrifying sense of the word and her writing is so evocative, the imagery so fascinating and grotesque, that I fell victim to unshakeable goosebumps. Upon finding the end, I knew I’d need to read it again, and probably again to fully take it in, and I can’t remember the last time that I felt both so compelled and so averse to a task.
A Peaceable Kingdom unsettled me and I needed rest afterward. We’ve received great fiction at Midnight Mosaic and I’m so proud to be home to a number of notable writers and their stories, but I must say that Siggy Franzen’s story might be one of the most effective pieces of weird and dark literature that I’ve read to date. On concept alone, we had to give her first place for 13 Days of Dark Lore.
I’m truly honored to have published her before anyone else, and I’m so excited to see what comes from her brain going forward. Siggy’s interview is as captivating as her story — her philosophy on writing is not to miss.
We highly recommend you read the story & then read more on the author below.
~ Daph
On Writing this particular piece:
Three flashes of irrelevant imagery played in my head one night, and upon waking, I wanted to do something with them. Those three images I placed in the beginning of A Peaceable Kingdom.
Then I found Midnight Mosaic’s post that morning about the deadline extension on 13 Days of Dark Lore and I got to writing. I completed this story in 3 days. This is my first published piece ever.
Does the story have any personal meaning to you?
I was in a mood. I tend to find myself in an occult-drenched mood that involves darker manifestations often. I personally haven’t questioned why I tend to magnetize toward the esoteric and nightmarish.
Do you plan to take this piece further ?
I am pretty happy with this little morsel. I’d like to leave it alone as a creepy, tiny creature sitting in the forests of the internet. It’s not mine anymore.
It already has had a few fans that love it more than me, in fact. I wouldn’t mind it being turned into a film, though. [we agree, Siggy]
Is dark/strange fiction/poetry your typical genre?
I think my own interests are called dark/strange by the masses. But by messiahs, shamans, priests, wiccans, psychologists, professors and historians, my writing is pretty typical of the mythological working-out of the horror of existence. I do not shirk away from dead-end beginnings, meaninglessness, terrifying events, and the many horrible things humans do or experience.
I also don’t give into the temptation of complete pessimism, cynicism, or nihilism. I like to drench my writing in the indescribable beauty and luster of Nature and its powerful influence on our imaginations that births meaning and gives purpose to this otherwise absurd existence. I find I can do that in a variety of genres.
No sacred symbol is off limits to me. I indulge in it all.
Would you consider yourself a genre writer?
My writing relates to the ancient Greeks’ sense of living when they revered Artemis. She was the Mistress of Animals and the protector of children -of innocence- yet she brought death with her arrows and was feared as a horrific huntress. Artemis was free and not married to any other God, and so my writing is not married to any particular style, ideology, belief, or genre.
Life is terror and horror, creating awe and beauty. These are the only “genres” that describe humans’ grappling with Nature’s alluring constraints and expanding horizons. Artemis is a virginal killer, who was ferocious to gods and humans alike. I experience my own humanness by observing and hunting down the strange and horrible events of the human condition.
A good fiction writer is a hunter without constraint and with ferocious accuracy.
Any practices/routines/mantras that help you keep at it?
Burn a lot of bridges in life and let your life crumble and rebirth itself over again. Do this an unnatural amount of times. Change all of your friends, change towns, change wardrobes, leave every single thing you own behind in a place you don’t own, and toss all filled up journals. Never mention your well-earned degree, job, income, and change your social titles and stop being another person’s sibling, child, parent, partner, boss, employee. Give up your beliefs, religion, mantras, goals, personal narratives, ideologies, and adopt a whole new set. Then write under a pen name and remain elusive to yourself and others until you are absolutely certain you actually “know thyself”. Then publish.
Do you experience writer’s block and if so, what helps you break through?
Writer’s block is not a real thing. This is a modern concept generated from the capitalistic requirement for perfection and production. I allow myself to just write something when I have something worthy of my own attention. I don’t require myself to meet a deadline unless I am inspired to do so. I don’t need to produce anything, thus no “block” occurs. I write when I have something to write, and when I do, it generally falls out of me so rapidly that I am hardly able to type fast enough.
I think writer’s block is also a confused form of psychic exhaustion and mindless chatter. Staring at screens constantly and being dedicated to one’s career are typical inhibitors. Useful inspiration is born from emotional busyness, like pain and pleasure. You have to be ripe in mind to capture it.
Any rituals you have related to writing?
Thoroughly giving myself over to many others’ cultural beliefs and fictions, both foreign and familiar. Some make me really uncomfortable and I am able to pull the grotesque out of it. Some make me feel really empowered and there I find the awe and bliss in my stories. I then try to put those feelings together in one story.
What does your ideal writing environment look or sound like?
I typically have tears streaming down with a smile on my face for hours over some idea that “hit” me randomly. Then I go outside and stare into space over the duration of a cigarette I am smoking. Then I write.
Do you have a Work-In-Progress that you’d like readers to know about?
Well, I started to describe a few short stories I have been working on looming in the horror/strange/magic realism aspects, but then I felt that I’d prefer not to write too much about what I am writing about else the elusive nature of my inspiration would be squashed.
In other words, telling you about my works in progress nearly became their abortion. So, negative.
All I will say is that I have a few stories planned for Midnight Mosaic’s Season of Strange.
If you couldn’t write anymore, if there anything else that would bring you almost as much “peace”, “happiness”, “joy”, “self-confidence”, “whatever emotion you get”?
Writing does not give me a sense of joy, self-confidence, happiness, or peace. It is an indulgence in my own selfish motives toward living life and sharing them with other people; a desire I am not entirely fond of but can’t quite stop doing.
If I couldn’t write anymore, I would just become a gardener. Writing burns off a psychic energy that is always building in me, and gardening is the physical equivalent.
Favorite author to read? Favorite story?
My favorite story is the heart wrenching non-fiction story Ernest Becker tells of the human condition in Denial of Death. That book brought a soul singularity for me where I was never able to un-see the truth of human motivations, desires, and psychic states; a very cynical trade and a baffling anomaly with immortality and the love of gods.
I gravitate towards pieces on beauty and aesthetics, and enjoy untangling the various absurd aspects of urban cultures. Sigmund Freud was a fantastically bizarre inspiration for me. All of the towering figures of psychology, comparative myth, and existential philosophy are the authors I typically am drawn toward.
I applaud Algernon Blackwood and H.P. Lovecraft. Who doesn’t?
I sometimes like to indulge my irrational, metaphysical side and read Israel Regardi among many other metaphysical works. Northwestern European, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese folklore are always a fun read to me. I am slowly creeping through the big weird fiction authors like Thomas Ligotti, Brian Evenson, and Jeff Vandermeer, but admittedly am completely new to the genre. Jorge Luis Borges blew my mind and continues to be a back burner inspiration for me.
