The days are getting shorter and the nights longer as we head into the dark season of the year. For author Richard Thomas, that’s all to the good, because for his novel Incarnate, he wants dark. And cold. And lonely.
RICHARD THOMAS:
When I started doing research for my fourth novel, Incarnate, there were a few big ideas bouncing around my head. I was fascinated by the long span of darkness that happens up in Alaska, and what might fester and thrive there. I thought living in Chicago would give me some insight into the cold, but I needed more than dark, cold, and isolated. That has been done to death in horror. In isolation there is desperation and violence, the communities up in Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow), and the arctic, riddled with suicide and loss. When you have violence and death there are questions—and for some, it’s about what comes after. In a dark, lost, broken place, might there be a need for absolution? Enter the sin eater.
I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of the sin eater—a shaman, a priest, a witchdoctor—who might absolve the sinner of the sin by eating a favorite meal of theirs. Beyond the eating and absolution, what might be created? During this time I was also curious about horror that took an emotion and had in manifest in form. So in some ways, this novel is inspired by Micaela Morrissette’s story, “The Familiars,” which I teach in my Contemporary Dark Fiction classes. What might the sin eater birth into existence? Well, that depends on how much sin had to be absolved, right? Can you see where this novel is going?
Add to all of this a tear in reality, a rip split open where creatures keep coming through. Are they drawn to this place because of the violence, evil, and death? Or have they come here, bringing a stain and darkness that infects everyone in the community? And how might you battle it?
Incarnate: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
Source: The Big Idea: Richard Thomas | Whatever
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