Interview with Author Michael Tyree
Interview with Michael Tyree
1. Thank you so much for joining me! Let’s talk a little bit about The Pale Horse, your short story collection. For those just learning about your work, can you tell us a little about this project?
The Pale Horse, my second collection, is made up of two novellas and four novelettes. It’s based on the mythology of The Reaper, and the deconstruction of death. Some stories have characters who meet an unfortunate end, but rather than pearly gates or brimstone, they are offered another chance as vengeful avatars. Other stories have you question the weight of taking a life. In Necessity, a young man is car jacked on his way home and forced to drive to a remote location. He makes a split-second decision that will change his life forever, whatever is left of it. A Glimpse of the Last Hours, the last novella, dissects the barrier between the living world and whatever mirrors that. It’s a surreal head trip, and the first story to begin tackling my universe’s mythology. TPH has some gruesome moments, but I leaned harder into the grief horror and social commentary with this one. I tell people, if they want to be emotionally wrecked, this is the one for them.
2. Out of the six stories, do you have a favorite?
My favorite in The Pale Horse is Cherrywood Hearts. That was the most difficult story to write, but I feel like it was worth the heartache. I’m happy with the ending. Sometimes stories end and I feel like I could have done more, but not this time. People messaged my after they read it, saying it gave them nightmares, brought them to tears, even rethought what they would do if they lost a loved one. My editor told me, even though he had already been through that story twice before, the third read through still gave him anxiety. As story tellers, all we could hope for is to get the desired emotional response from a complete stranger. It’s a rewarding feeling when it does happen.
3. Were any of the stories particularly challenging to write?
Going back to the previous question, the hardest story to write was Cherrywood Hearts. For starters, this story is pulled from a deeply personal event that I didn’t speak about often. A little over ten years ag, my wife had a miscarriage, on Valentine’s Day, as if it couldn’t be worse. If you take out the witches, golems, tree sex, and the fact that we’re both still alive, Cherrywood Hearts is the story of what happened to my wife and me.
Just like with any important, and difficult topic, I wanted to write a story about infertility in order to maybe spark some of those difficult conversations. But the problem I had was tip toeing around such a sensitive subject. I wanted to be respectful, but honest. My hang ups about the subject made me scrap and rewrite this story until I had worked through close to 5 different versions. Originally, I thought it would be shitty to tackle the subject head on from my wife’s point of view, not sure if I could speak for her. I planned on telling the story from my experience in the situation and how that loss affected me. But I put a stop to that. I got cold feet and figured even though I’m trying to be honest, it’ll probably come off as mansplaining PCOS and ectopic pregnancy, despite my sincerity. The original draft had Sandra die and Damon struggling to live without her. I thought it might be kinda cheap to write about infertility and kill the one woman within the first ten pages.
The next few versions were closer to the final story. Damon would die first, or Sandra does not die at all. I had an ending reminiscent of Midsommar, where Sandra inadvertently joined this Stepford Wives cult within Zelda’s support group. But I squashed that one when I realized Sandra was way too smart to pack up everything and move to the suburbs with all the sketchy white women. I had a version where the witch takes the form of a young twenty something and seduces Damon before later sacrificing him in the same “life for life” ritual. The first problem I had with that version came about once I really fleshed out Damon as a character. I’ve killed a lot of horrible people in my stories and some not so horrible. Either way, I usually don’t put much after thought into them. But Damon felt different as a character. Not only did it feel like “he” wrote his own dialogue, but he dictated his own moral fiber. When I started hashing out scenes with him running around on Sandra with the witch, under spell or no spell, it never felt right. It almost felt like a character assassination. Even in the final version of the story, during the car crash scene, I actually felt remorse for that character, which is weird for me.
4. What are the themes of this collection and why did you gravitate towards them?
The main theme is centered around The Reaper, literally, figuratively, and philosophically. The title story, The Pale Horse is straight and to the point with the personification of Death as someone disarming, who convinces the main character to let her walls down for a time, just so they can have a conversation on life. In Cherrywood Hearts, the protagonist loses everything but her own life. In her grieving, she learns how to figuratively live with the dead through the memories she clings to. In Survivor’s Guilt, the protagonist lives with the actual dead, as he carries the collateral damage of his past. Imagine an ex-politician/war criminal, suffering from something similar to Mary Winchester’s curse.
I wanted to put the ideas of living and dying, coexisting with the dead, as well as carrying the weight of grief under a new lens, and hopefully through that, break down some cultural norms.
5. Where can readers find you online?
Folks can find me at the usual haunts. I’m on Twitter (or whatever they’re calling it these days) as @MSTyree1 and Instagram @Michael_Tyree13.
