Welcome, Jo!

Jo Kaplan is the author of It Will Just Be Us and When the Night Bells Ring. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Horror Library, Nightscript, and award winning anthologies. She has also published work as Joanna Parypinski. In addition to writing, she teaches English and creative writing at Glendale Community College. She is currently the co-chair of the Horror Writers Association’s Los Angeles chapter.

About When the Night Bells Ring

In a future ravaged by fire and drought, two climate refugees riding across the wasteland of the western US stumble upon an old silver mine. Descending into the caved-in tunnels in search of water, the two women find the diary of Lavinia Cain, who brought her family to Nevada in the 1860s.

Lavinia discovered something monstrous that dwells in the depths of the mine. Whispers of curses and phantom figures haunt the diary, and now, over 150 years later, trapped and injured in the abandoned mine, the women discover they’re not alone.

The monsters are still here—and they’re thirsty.

Interview with Jo Kaplan

Tell us about yourself – what is something readers would be surprised to find out? 

In spite of writing dark and gloomy fiction, I love the sunshine—hence, I’ve been living in Los Angeles for the past twelve years. I even teach a class interrogating the narratives of LA, alongside a Gothic literature class and creative writing, at a local college. Obviously I love to read and write (and teach these things, too), but I also love music and play cello in my college’s orchestra. I recently started playing with a singer-songwriter friend, and I’ve done the cello part for one of her songs so far. We’re hoping to put out more songs together soon.

What is it about the Weird West genre that draws you to it? What are your favorite aspects or examples of this often-underappreciated genre?

I think what draws me to the Weird West is actually the ways in which the genre can defy and play with elements of classic Westerns—and I think to that end, there are different forms of the Weird West. On the one hand, there are stories that use the gunslinging cowboy trope to explore the weirder elements of the story in a way that mashes up familiar things in an unfamiliar way. And then on the other, there are Weird West stories that evoke the time and place but deliberately twist our perspective away from classic Western tropes through the introduction of the Weird. Both types of stories are wonderful, and I think the former is probably more popular, but I find myself drawn to the latter. That’s the case with all historical fiction for me, though. I love exploring historical moments, and I love to see them presented in a way I don’t expect, that I’ve never quite seen before, that reveals something authentic about that moment via the strange and uncanny…  Really, there’s just so much possibility to infuse the history of the U.S. with the Weird, because so much of history is already weird! The landscape of a few hundred years ago would have been so much stranger, vaster, and wilder, and isolation was a much more significant issue, that there is inherent uncanniness already built into the setting.

What inspired you to write this story?

There were a couple of seeds for When the Night Bells Ring that came together.

First: I’m a bit claustrophobic and find myself drawn to horror where people get trapped in caves and tunnels… so I knew I wanted to write about characters exploring an abandoned boomtown mine.

Second: I love all the trappings of the Gothic, but I wanted to try setting a Gothic-style story into an unconventional setting. Instead of the cold, wet moors… what would such a story look like in a hot, dry desert? The landscape became an important force in the book, with the near-future climate apocalypse mirroring the harshness of the Old West.

Third: As I mentioned, I love historical fiction that puts us into a different perspective. I wanted to know what women in these mining towns were up to at the time. What were their struggles? How would they have dealt with a supernatural threat rising from the very mine their husbands worked in? My main character, Lavinia Cain, is no hero or damsel in distress; she’s just a troubled woman doing what she must to survive in a hostile world.

If you were living in the Weird West, what kind of character would you be?

I’m afraid I would be rather useless. A bit of a coward, most likely. Or perhaps the bookish person chronicling the weirdness going on. Let’s put it this way: one of my near-future characters, Waynoka, thinks about this question as she’s reading Lavinia’s diary. She marvels at the resilience of the people she’s reading about and realizes that, having grown up with modern conveniences, she really has very little by way of actual survival skills (the only reason she’s doing okay these days is because of her more-experienced partner in travel, Mads). She concludes she would be somewhat useless in Lavinia’s time. And… well, there may have been a bit of me in that conclusion, too!

Are there any other writing projects you’re working on?

I’m sort of in-between projects right now. I’ve recently finished a new novel, which my agent has in hand. Not a Weird Western, but rather a novel about a female-led metal band staying at a cabin in the woods where their lead singer disappeared a year ago—when they start hearing her voice singing out from between the trees and begin to wonder if she is haunting the forest, or if there is something else out there mimicking her. Oh, and there’s fungus. Hopefully I’ll have more to share about this one soon! In the meantime… I should really get started on a new one.

What are you reading right now?

I’m currently reading The Actual Star by Monica Byrne, which is a fascinating tale that takes place in three time periods—1012, 2012, and 3012—each story linked by Mayan mythology, Xibalba, and the ATM cave in Belize. I’m enjoying the way it blends historical fiction, contemporary fiction, and futuristic sci-fi. I realize I attempted to blend historical fiction and future dystopian fiction in When the Night Bells Ring, so maybe I’m just a sucker for books that can balance both such genres. January has been a reading catch-up month for me; a few other books I’ve read and enjoyed recently are In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt, Whalefall by Daniel Kraus, A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck, and Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel. In terms of Weird Westerns, I haven’t gotten to Lone Women by Victor LaValle yet, but it’s high on my list!

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