Root Rot is an extremely unnerving read, told from the perspective of nine children visiting their Grandfather’s cabin. While the adults are nowhere to be seen, kids start disappearing, strange fungal growths and the stars in the sky starting blinking out one by one. It’s stuck with me since I first picked it up, and I was able to pick Saskia’s brain about it a little!
First off, congrats on the release! How has the launch been?
Saskia Nislow: It’s been great! I’ve really enjoyed meeting booksellers and readers and hearing about what everyone is taking away from the story.
Where did the initial idea for the book come from?
SN: I was avoiding doing rewrites on another book and distracted myself by trying my hand at horror, which is a genre I’ve always loved to read and watch but haven’t written in before. My partner introduced me to the creepypasta “Anansi’s Goatman Story,” which I think is great, and I was interested in playing around with this idea of a story in which it’s hard to keep track of where one character begins and another ends, including the monstrous characters.
(Lor Note: this is a top tier creepypasta, well worth checking out!)
The way you write from a child’s perspective feels very accurate. Jumping from topic to topic, describing things in terms they’d know (eg it was like spaghetti) and you really get a good grasp on the many characters.
SN: Thanks so much! I was an elementary and middle school teacher for a long time, so that definitely informed how I wrote the child characters. I think that being a child is a uniquely horrifying experience. Children are constantly taking in so much information about the world around them while their minds and personalities are still developing, which creates this terrifying sense of overwhelm. The ghost of that kind of horror still haunts adults (think, for instance, of the feelings of something being “not quite right” about someone but not knowing why) and I’m very interested in capturing that.
The children are named by an identifying trait rather tha names (The Girl and Boy Twin, The Oldest, The One Who Runs Away, The Secret Keeper, etc.) Did you have charts listing each kid and their personalities? How did you keep track of everything?
SN: I actually started the story by listing out nine epithets and then brainstorming how I imagined each child might have come to be seen this way by their family. Because the characters came first, it wasn’t too difficult keeping track of each character’s personality. However, I definitely did have to spend quite some time charting out where the characters (or parts of them) physically were in any given chapter.
As a reader, I relate the most to the Crybaby and the Liar. Who feels the most personal to you?
SN: Oh, The Liar for sure, which I think comes out in the writing. While she’s based much more on kids I’ve known than on my own childhood, that experience of being a queer child that adults and other children find frustratingly confusing is certainly a familiar one. I also have a soft spot for both of The Twins. For better or worse, I was probably the most like The Girl Twin when I was a kid.
I almost see the parents as an entity, just as the kids are. Like a Charlie Brown, mysterious and incomprehensible. The only identifiable adult is the Grandfather, which feels appropriate.
SN: That’s so funny! I always describe The Adults as the Charlie Brown adults too! I chose to write the adult dialogue in quotation marks and the child dialogue in italics, partially to create this effect. There’s an interesting dynamic that children have to navigate in their relationships with adults, where the adults may be mysterious or untrustworthy or even adversarial, but the children are also aware of having to rely on them.
The mushrooms are so Lovecraftian, and completely fascinate me. Were you inspired by any stories or films during their development?
SN: For sure! I’m always, always inspired by Joy Williams’ The Changeling, which is one of my favorite books of all time. Annihilation is an obvious one. Definitely Samanta Schweblin, who I think is just so brilliant. Particularly her book, Fever Dream. All of these books create a very rich and unsettling atmosphere through both language and imagery that I very much admire (and hope to achieve in my own writing). And in terms of films, I drew from Eyes of Fire, Burnt Offerings, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, The Innocents… Man, there are so many. I actually made a little “horror movie playlist” for Root Rot on my Instagram, where I say more about the films that inspired or were in conversation with the book in some way.
What’s your favourite mushroom?
SN: I love Tremella. So beautiful and gooey. But I’m a pretty equal-opportunity mushroom lover (and I can’t really pretend that I know all of their names.) I also love the little purplish-grey ones, though I have no clue what they’re called!
Do you have any upcoming projects to plug? Where can people find you?
SN: I have a novel that will hopefully see the light of day sometime in the next few years! It’s literary fiction, but still pretty fleshy and gnarly, so I think it would appeal to Root Rot fans. I will also hopefully be making new ceramic work soon. You can find me at my website, saskianislow.com, or on Instagram at @cronebro.
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these!!!
SN: Thank you! It was such a delight getting to speak with you.
Make sure to check out Creature Publishing, and Root Rot!
LORMAGGOT 