Zack Be has managed to straddle not one but two creative interests.
As a musician, he’s released the EP Used To, Elsewhere and various singles; he is also the member of several bands, including Pretty Bitter (which won multiple Wammie Awards for their 2022 album Hinges).
As a writer, he’s contributed short fiction to Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction and Fact. His stories have earned praise from Locus Magazine contributor Rich Horton and Tangent Online’s Dave Truesdale and Victoria Silverwolf. In 2020, his short story “As Able the Air” won a place in the Writers of the Future Contest and was published in Writers of the Future Volume 36.
However, the experience opened up further possibilities. Some contestants decided to strike out on their own and start an original project, the small press Calendar of Fools. Be is editing the press’s first book, the anthology Inner Workings. The anthology will include fiction and essays by 12 writers who met at the contest, along with guest pieces by Eric James Stone, Kary English, Martin Shoemaker, and Wulf Moon.
Be was kind enough to answer a few questions.
Interview Questions
When did you start writing stories? Were you one of those writers who started writing as far back as you can remember, or did it come later?
If not writing, I certainly started telling stories as far back as I can remember. I was more than a bit of a ham growing up—somewhere between creative spirit and undiagnosed ADHD—and loved the attention from teachers, classmates, whoever. To give you a sense of what I mean, I was awarded the class clown superlative upon graduating from the 8th grade and went on to defend my title in 12th grade as I left high school. Spinning stories for friends and classmates was a big part of the reason I actually liked going to school—“all the world’s a stage,” but especially the classroom, the lunchroom, and pretty much anywhere else people gather on school grounds. Writing (and making music, too) is just an extension of that in my life. I did write at a younger age, but it was an outlet that never felt as immediate as making jokes in front of a class until I got a bit older.
My first real attempt at fiction was in the 7th grade or so, when I wrote and hand-drew an absolutely vulgar superhero comic book that I passed around for my friends to read. I completed 3-4 issues before my mind wandered towards making music and writing fiction. I wrote several short stories in high school, and a few even got published in our school lit mag. This was very exciting, especially because I was the only person in the lit mag who had not been on lit mag (i.e., part of the afterschool club that worked on editing and printing it). In my senior year of high school, I also wrote and recorded a 78-minute album for a school project (I was part of something called the Humanities program that required a year-long project), and that itched the same itch as writing. But it wouldn’t be until much later that I actually pursued more professional avenues for either medium.
Who are some writers who have influenced you?
This is the hardest question to answer. For me, everything is an influence. I take on something new every time I read a book or a short (or see a movie I like, or hear an old album in a new way, or feel a nice breeze on a walk in the woods). As it relates to writing specifically, I prefer to be surprised by something or someone new rather than trying to copy or repeat what another author has done. Mostly, I am influenced by whatever excites me in the most recent issue of Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, or Apex. There are always new treasures from a diverse array of authors writing at the cutting edge of sci-fi, which helps expand my mind to new ideas. Some favorite authors include Rich Larson, Suzanne Palmer, Bo Balder, and Angela Liu.
For longer works, I feel like I take influence from everything I read, but if I had to pick a couple, Hyperion-era Dan Simmons comes to mind, and definitely a bit of Chuck Palahniuk when I feel angsty.
But my biggest influences have been and will always be music-related, even when it comes to writing. It’s hard not to be influenced by everything you consume, and I tend to think mostly in terms of how a piece of art makes me feel—story, music, etc.—rather than the specific technical components of the medium itself. In that spirit, the best answer to what has influenced me as a writer is music—sometimes I want to write a story that makes me feel the same way ( ) by Sigur Ros makes me feel, or develop a sci-fi world that feels like an Aphex Twin album, or send readers on an adventure that feels as massive as Yes’s Close to the Edge or Genesis’s “Supper Ready.”
Getting short fiction published is hard enough these days, but it’s even rarer to get published in two of the premier science fiction magazines. How does it feel to have reached that milestone?
Well, of course, it feels amazing! I have so much gratitude for every editor who agrees to take a chance on my work and put me in their pages.
The funny thing is, when I started seriously applying myself to writing SFF1 in 2016/17, I didn’t have a good idea about the short fiction market or how competitive it can be. It was only the second story I had written in that period, “True Jing,” that was given a rewrite opportunity by Asimov’s editor Sheila Williams. She asked me to rewrite the story’s entire ending—which was the right call, in retrospect. Having no idea how huge of an opportunity this was, I went ahead and chopped the last quarter off the story, wrote an entirely new ending, and she accepted and printed it in 2018. It was only after the fact that I realized how rare a position I had found myself in! I now have an unending well of gratitude not just for Sheila choosing to publish me but for continuing to print my work and help me develop as a writer over the last several years.
This January (2024) will see the release of my fifth story for Asimov’s, and guess what? I celebrate every time! It never gets old.
Analog is a whole different can of worms and a much more traditional experience. I honestly never thought I would see one of my stories get published in a magazine with the “hard SF” pedigree. But after many, many rejections, it happened with “Trust Fall” in the September/October 2023 issue. This was cause for further celebration, as I now felt seriously validated by this milestone. I might even let myself work on a novel now.
In an interview for From Earth to the Stars, you spoke about how you went through a period after graduating from college in 2013 where you weren’t writing much. Still, you were developing your artistic side in other ways—particularly playing music. What are some advantages of taking time off from one creative activity and trying others?
It’s funny you should ask this because I am in a similar—though less extreme—period right now. I’m much more enlivened by music at the moment. So, I’m writing less than usual while I focus on developing my next musical project. Perhaps this comes as a surprise, but I don’t think of any of it as “time off.”
Creativity, at its core, is all about taking chances and taking chances often manifests as trying to perceive things through different lenses. Consider musicians like David Bowie, Bjork, Radiohead, and Joni Mitchell, or authors like Dan Simmons, Marlon James, Margret Atwood, and Kazuo Ishiguro… they may not all be changing mediums, but part of the reason these musicians and authors managed to stay relevant for decades is because they aren’t afraid to follow their muses into different realms, genres, styles, and personas (see Bowie in particular). I have one foot strongly in music and another strongly in fiction, plus a rogue third foot planted squarely in my professional clinical work as a couples and family therapist. Some weeks, I may be drawn more to one medium than another, but each experience reinforces the skills that form the fundamental essence of creativity. Basically, every time I push myself to take a chance, regardless of the medium, I grow creatively overall, building confidence in taking further risks.
And yes, I hear how pretentious that sounds, but think of it in terms of sports—or, more fundamentally, competition. Even if basketball is my main sport, I am still developing my skills as a competitor when I take time away to play billiards. The gains may not be obvious, but they are happening all the same.
Moreover, anything you can do to enrich the variety and quality of your life experiences will increase the variety and quality of your creative output. This relates to the metaphor of the 10 blind men encountering an elephant for the first time. Each describes the elephant from their limited vantage point, and although their descriptions may be rich, they each lack information the others have, which would thicken the description. But imagine being able to step into their shoes and gain that experience. Any creative (or non-creative) risks taken outside your genre or medium widen your aperture, leaving you with more tools and experiences to enrich your work.
You’ve made music and taken on the tough task of writing a short story about music, “Meryl’s Cocoon.” What were some of the big challenges to writing the story?
The biggest challenge in writing any story is getting the “feeling” right. When I sit down to write something, I generally do not start with the specifics of the plot, the unique SFnal idea,2 or the MacGuffin. I may have those thoughts first, at random, any day of the week (so keep a notebook handy!) But when I actually sit down to write a story, my concern, first and foremost, is in considering what emotion I am feeling or want the audience to feel as they read the story. Is it uplifting, existential, anxious, explosive, revelatory? And how can I squeeze that emotion out of text on a page? Especially when people spend most of their time reading text on their phones/tablets/computers these days.
For “Meryl’s Cocoon,” I wanted people to feel both the excitement that I feel about music—and in particular, the motivation to explore its infinite possibilities—but I also wanted the audience to feel the disappointment and eventual acceptance of letting go of something you love. These are challenging emotions for any story, but they get harder when I can’t simply play the music I am hearing in my head for the audience!
But this was a blessing in disguise. Music is highly subjective, and even if I could play the music from the story for the audience, there is no telling that they would feel moved by it. Instead, I turned to the words themselves and tried to elicit the feeling that the music was VITAL through the descriptions of the music. The descriptions border on psychedelic visions, but in the written medium, and this might be the best way to evoke the sense of vitality and uplift with which I wanted the audience to identify.
To do this, I drew on my four years of writing music reviews for the University of Maryland’s The Diamondback. This job required me to describe music and elicit the audience’s interest (or disdain) just from reading the review. Hopefully, “Meryl’s Cocoon” readers felt something without having to hear the band!
What was your response when one of your stories won a place in Writers of the Future?
Elation, as I am sure you can imagine! I got the call from Joni that I had won and then had to go into a therapy session with a client immediately. It was a battle to not derail the session by telling them the news!
Luke Wildman and others have talked about how COVID meant the 2020 and 2021 Writers of the Future winners attended the same gala in 2021 and how that situation created a community from a group twice the usual size. What were some unexpected things you got from this community?
I greatly value the friends and connections I’ve made through our WOTF year. I was hopeful that I would make long-term friends with the other winners, so I wouldn’t say it is unexpected that I have. What’s more unexpected is how game so many other writers have been to saddle up and create our little publishing house, Calendar of Fools. Between our weekly meetings, legal and financial set-up—and, of course, planning, executing, and editing the successful Inner Workings Kickstarter—the Zack Be I was in 2020 would definitely be a bit surprised at how far we’ve come. It seems there was a unique energy in our year, and maybe it is the result of having two years’ worth of winners in the same place at the same time.
How did you come to be the editor for Inner Workings?
Great question! I raised my hand and said I would take on the responsibility. Inner Workings is a weird anthology because we didn’t do an open submission call. Still, we didn’t give me free reign as the editor to select existing stories a la a normal reprint anthology. Instead, we solicited new stories and essays on writing from the 2020/21 crew (mostly, we added a few 2022s later). This means that the choice of content for the book was largely a group effort. My responsibility was in:
- Helping to edit the stories and essays to their highest quality (which included, in some cases, asking authors for significant rewrites).
- Being prepared to put my foot down and tell someone “no” as needed.
- Just generally having a figurehead to send out emails to everyone and keep the train moving.
I have really cherished the opportunity and look forward to possibly editing an open call in the future.
What were some challenges and joys of editing the anthology? Are there any lessons you’d care to share with readers thinking of editing an anthology?
I really enjoyed helping people work out what they wanted to say in their craft writing essays. Developing clarity in written form, function, and purpose is something I really enjoy. It feels somewhat like a puzzle but less abstract. I got into some great conversations about writing with people and helped them develop essays that I think will help many of our readers with their own work.
Something I don’t love is formatting and proofing. Luckily, we had a whole team working together on this aspect of the project, and I think our readers will like the professional-quality product we’ve developed!
Are there any future projects you can tell us about?
Sure! First, I always have a short story or novelette (or two or three) in the oven, so maybe one of those will sell sometime soon. My next confirmed sale is a story called “Early Adopter” that will appear in the January 2024 issue of Asimov’s. It concerns the early adoption of a technology that allows people to connect to the internet—and each other—from inside their own heads. It explores how these technologies will impact modern dating, and I was asked to put a content warning on it because things get steamy (and for those who know my writing, suitably psychedelic). I also have a novel outlined that I hope to start once I finish my dissertation proposal.
Elsewhere, I am working on new music! I recently finished an exciting album with the non-standard trio of saxophone, synthesizers (that’s me), and drums. The band is called Last Scene Alive, and the record will be coming soon (details to follow). Additionally, I am working on a new solo album focused on incorporating banjo and mandolin in a modern indie sound. Follow me on any social media @bezackbe (mostly Instagram!) for details on any of these topics!
More information about Zack Be’s fiction and music can be found on his website. Listeners can find his solo music on Spotify and SoundCloud. They can locate Hinges’ music on Bandcamp.
More information about Inner Workings can be found on its Kickstarter page. Interviews with fellow contributors Andy Dibble and Storm Humbert are also available at Fellowship & Fairydust.
Interviewer Notes:
- SFF is an acronym for science fiction and fantasy.
- SFnal was coined by Robert Savella to mean “science-fictional.”
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