Interview with Joe Koch | Author of Invaginies
Joe Koch, author of Invaginies, writes “literary horror and surrealist trash”
Joe Koch is that rare kind of horror author. His voice is so original, it’s safe to say there’s no other writer out there doing what he’s doing. Koch, according to his website, writes “literary horror and surrealist trash”. While it’s doubtful anyone would ever refer to his work as “trash”, his stories definitely push new boundaries in literary horror and are as surreal as any you’ll read. Take it from Laird Barron — a master author in his own right: “Joe Koch is a phenomenal talent who writes with poetic fury.”
To be sure, Koch’s stories are wonderfully bizarre, often psychotic nightmares packed full of alien descriptions, sensations and twisted body horror. But be forewarned if you come to Koch’s work looking for a conventional story. A former visual artist, Koch writes horror for the thinking man. His stories often start off in a world you’re not familiar with — and it only gets weirder from there. An open mind and a bit of patience are key to enjoying the experience. The first piece of his I read, “Eating Bees from the Ass of God”, co-written by Joseph Boutheitte, Jr., left me stunned and puzzled but thirsty for more. It’s a dizzying revenge tale in which insects get their comeuppance against mankind with the help of a disgruntled sex worker. I think? It’s hard to tell what’s going on, really. But that’s the beauty of Kochs’ work. He leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks.
Since 2015 Koch has published over eighty short stories in books and journals like Southwest Review, Vastarien, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, and The Queer Book of Saints. His novels include The Wingspan of Severed Hands, The Shipwreck of the Cerberus, and The Couvade, for which he was a finalist for a Shirley Jackson Award. His first short story collection, Convulsive, is a must-have for horror lovers, and his newest collection, Invaginies, will be released in June of 2024. (Pre order it here.) Koch is formerly published as Joanna Koch in some venues prior to 2021, and you can learn more about his body of work here.
Look for Joe Koch’s new short story collection, Invaginies, in June of 2024
Interview
Let’s talk about your love of gardening and how it relates to your artistic process.
At one point in my life I moved away from doing visual art, which I had done all my life, and got into gardening. I gardened sort of vocationally for about ten years. I was learning a lot about the science associated with growing food, native plants, making habitat for native bugs, and the like. I had the experience of working very intimately and consistently with this whole miniature environment or community where there are different creatures and unpredictable factors like the weather, the way plants grow differently from each other, and how certain plants have different bloom times and all of that. I realized it’s a lot like creative process. I feel like gardening kind of taught me how to how to write, how to be patient when I need to be or when to push something to move faster when I need it to. How to edit, which is like weeding or pruning. To basically juggle lots of different elements at the same time.
Describe your writing process.
I'm not sure I know how to describe it really. It can vary so much depending on what I'm interested in doing with a piece. I tend to take a lot of time on the first draft and edit as I go. Then start from the beginning and do a rewrite. Then I’ll put it away for what could be a period of couple of days, a couple of weeks or a couple of months depending on how much I feel like I got into the heart of the story. Sometimes it takes a very long time to really get to the meat or the heart of it, to figure out what you're really trying to do with it. Then I’ll do a final rewrite. I'd say I do at least like three to five drafts of most of my stories. So I’m not an especially quick writer.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever heard?
To read a story out loud. I’ve been doing that for a while now and it's been really helpful. It helps me hear where the language gets too deep or clunky. I can tell where maybe I need to have shorter sentences or if I have too many thoughts or words thoughts crammed together so that it’s hard for people to follow. Of course, sometimes that’s exactly the effect I’m going for. But the idea is to be able to make it a choice on my part, so that I’m in control of when it’s best to do that or not.
“Joe Koch is a phenomenal talent who writes with poetic fury.”
You’ve collaborated on a few stories. “L’Homme de Houbigant” with Jonathan Louis Duckworth. “Eating Bees from the Ass of God” with Joseph Bouthiette Jr. “More Weight” with Michael Tichy. What’s that process like?
It depends on the story and the author. With “Eating Bees from the Ass of God”, I’d come up with a title which I simultaneously found a bit amusing and intriguing. I reached out to Joseph asked him to write me something. He's a poet who uses some of the most unusual language I’ve run into. I took what he wrote and crafted it into some kind of story with a plot, and we went back and forth that way about three or four times until we had the final version.
With Jonathan we collaborated I'd say much more equally in terms of language, but he started out with a well-established plot. He and I have a more similar writing style to one another, so it was a very easy flow. I suggested changing up some of the chronology and mixing up the characters’ different storylines, and wanted to bring out a lot more of the perfume language, so we did that.
With Michael, we were friends and I had a general idea for an anthology story, but I don't really have the gym or weightlifting background I needed. He did. So he filled in some of the blanks. And that story went off in a direction I think neither of us could predict. We were challenging each other to see how far we could push each other as we passed the story back and forth. That one was definitely a lot of fun.
You die and get to come back as one of the following film monsters: Which do you choose and why? Pinhead from Hellraiser, Nosferatu, Cthulhu or The Blob.
I’ll go for Cthulu. Go big or go home, right? I’m not an egotistical person but being an elder god sounds like anathema to some of the things I’ve been through (laughs).
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