We’re pretty pumped to have just signed an outstanding new novel by Shane Jones, called Crystal Eaters, which should come out late-spring or early-summer 2014. It’s part sci-fi fable, part family drama, and 100% awesome.

Q: I was telling someone the boiled-down set-up for Crystal Eaters – a village believes in crystal count: that every person contains within themselves a number of crystals that designate how long they have to live, and once they reach a zero-count they die; so a young girl named Remy, in an effort to save her sick mother, sets out to discover a way to increase one’s crystal count – and the thought occurred to me that the premise sounds somewhat like a videogame. Many games that I remember playing – Myst, Zelda – have a fable-like quality to them. Have videogames influenced you at all?

I think videogames from my childhood influenced me a lot and while writing Crystal Eaters I remember looking at images from a bunch of games like Zelda, Super Mario Bros, and Myst. I think the fable-like quality you mentioned probably comes more from reading fables early on, or just some hardwired thing inside me that leans toward alternative realities, or hating on reality. But some of the images in games like Zelda and Super Mario Bros I really love, I think they are just beautiful pieces of art, and I’m sure they burned into my brain early on. Sega had a game called Alex Kid In Miracle World which was basically a more fucked up Super Mario Bros, more raw and poorly developed and just weird, and I played that game religiously. And a lot of those old school Sega and Nintendo games have main characters with health points or HP and I just love that. The idea of a number you have and you’re losing the number and always trying to increase it to avoid death. That’s a detail from videogames that influenced this book. I will say I don’t play videogames now. The last system I owned was the original Playstation. And here’s a confession: I never owned a Nintendo as a kid. I’m not sure I’ve ever told anyone that. I went to a friend’s house whose Dad was a heroin addict and we’d play Nintendo all day and cook hot dogs in a fire pit in the woods. For some reason, I only had a Sega. I was the weird kid playing Alex Kid In Miracle World. You should look that game up if you don’t know it. If I remember right, at the end of each stage you had to play rock, papers, scissors, to defeat a boss, which seems really lazy on the developers side and just strange. This is after you spend the entire stage punching things and avoiding skulls.

Q: Crystal Eaters contains this incredible line: “As a child what you see is creation. As an adult what you see is destruction.” What do you see?

If I talk to people or read the news I see a lot of destruction. Adults tend to talk about everything that is wrong with the world. Tell a coworker the weather for tomorrow and they’ll probably say what’s wrong with it. But if I just keep to myself and my family and, I don’t know, just walk around and be inside my own head, I see a lot of creation and beauty. The books I read and the books I write are a reflection of destruction and that reflection leads to creation. It’s a cycle, right? The line from the book you mentioned singles out Remy and her father and how the two see the world differently, which creates tension in regards to the dying mother. Sometimes adulthood feels like a trap because the responsibilities, the mundane nature of work and shopping and eating every day, can wear on you and I think that can feel like destruction. That can feel like you’re moving through mud. But not kids, no way. They are constantly in forward motion, always discovering, always creating, and I try and tell myself that often when writing: be a kid and play, don’t be an adult and complain it’s been cloudy for three days.

Q: Mom’s sickness has brought all these emotions to the surface: Dad struggles with the guilt of hogging the blankets while they slept; Remy’s brother, Adam, essentially commits a crime and is imprisoned out of the guilt he bears from witnessing an attack against his mother as a younger boy; Remy, frustrated with her father and brother’s immobility as a result of their guilt, sets out to act. So Crystal Eaters can be seen as a family drama. With the crystal-count, the story could be viewed as a fable. Then you have an approaching sun that is gradually warming the world and a clash of cultures between a tiny village community and the encroaching city; so it can also be imagined as deft social commentary. How do you juggle these threads without spinning your wheels?

I drove myself insane with this book. Both Light Boxes and Daniel Fights a Hurricane have a fairly simple plot or concept and a forward motion where I can be kind of loose and run wild, but with Crystal Eaters there’s a bunch of different characters, various settings, and lots of storylines that I really worked hard at developing. It just had to feel more structured and solid. I want the book to be heavy, deep, like it’s pulling you down with it. The feeling is much tighter, kind of dug out and deepened, more constricted. As far as writing and not spinning my wheels with all the themes and storylines you mentioned, I cut 45,000 words from earlier drafts, wrote and re-wrote, spent days on single sentences, etc. I’ve never worked so hard and it nearly destroyed most of my personal relationships because I was so far gone inside it. I kind of lost my grip on reality. I set out to write the biggest book I could and then I cut that book into the smallest box it would fit. I hope it worked. Of course, because of all the stuff you mentioned, it feels impossible to describe. Over the weekend my father asked what the book was about and I mumbled something like, “it’s a sci-fi fable about death” and then I started describing people eating crystals and vomiting light and twin horses in portals and hexagons on faces and he got real quiet and asked, “are you on drugs?”

Q: Crystal Eaters feels, to me in many ways, like the most ambitious project you’ve tackled. You’ve already accomplished a lot with your work, having found success in indie publishing circles, getting a project optioned by Spike Jonze, two books published by Penguin. Aren’t you due for some rimmed glasses, a vest, and some safe stories about affluent suburbanites?

For me, all the stuff you mentioned doesn’t mean anything when I’m working. I don’t think my past writing even exists really. It’s disposable. Besides, any success I’ve had I haven’t really felt. I think I had a few months where I got some money on a regular basis and a lot of emails and things really felt different, but it faded away pretty quick. So I don’t think I’m due anything. I don’t ever want to feel that way. I want to feel on edge and hustling and working hard and being humble and always learning. I always want to be creating something new and messed that feels electric. Writers who write safe stories and know they are, I just don’t understand that. Do they exist? [Editor’s note: They do.] I don’t even understand writing to an audience because I’m insane. In my opinion, no matter what you’ve accomplished you’re still due nothing. You can’t really escape a blank page. You have to keep hustling and working and putting stuff out in the world because if you don’t it’s going to push inward on you.   

Q: You’ve stated in past interviews that much of your writing is image based. In Light Boxes, the effect is whimsical and sparse and dreamy, where with Crystal Eaters the images feel more meaty and anchored. Light Boxes took place in a world blanched by February, while in Crystal Eaters characters dig through the muck of the mines in search of a mythical black crystal that is rumored to prolong life. Do you ever consult photographs, paintings, or music to help inspire the mood you’re casting?

Yeah, for sure. I’m always looking at stuff online and I think that influences what I’m writing. I’m always looking up artists and paintings and letting that seep inside me. Just yesterday I spent a good hour looking at Morris Louis. My past books have relied heavily on imagery, but I think Crystal Eaters goes next level. At least that’s my hope. I really don’t want to fail. I want every page to pop with light or darkness and I want the book to be an image orgy and something that burns you. Sure, that sounds kind of pretentious, but I think it’s true. I’m trying my hardest to blow sentences and images off the page and not waste any time. In a way, Crystal Eaters is the opposite of Light Boxes. I think you’re right in the comparison. One is up in the air and light while the other is grounded and covered in gunk.

Q: Having worked with a couple different indie presses and then with Penguin, I imagine you have an interesting perspective on the industry. Would you care to share anything about your experience, or how you circled back around to working with indie presses?

I prefer working with a smaller publisher. I think there’s many benefits of working with a larger publishing house, like Penguin. You have a whole network of people and departments working on your book, and you get a larger advance, and you get to tell friends and relatives the name of your publisher and they don’t ask, “Say the name again?” It’s exciting. But my experience was really up and down with Penguin. I felt stressed out with the money and business aspect of things toward the end. My editor, the guy who bought Light Boxes and Daniel Fights a Hurricane, left immediately after buying Daniel. We were really close and I had a blast working with him on Light Boxes. So I got a new editor at Penguin who I could tell right away didn’t understand the book from initial edits. I remember showing the edits to someone, a close friend, who actually said to me, “I’m sorry.” My agent just brushed it off. Everything went along fine in a way, she was great and nice, but the entire time I just knew the book was going to fail, that Penguin wasn’t going to push for it. They were going to publish the book, throw it out there, and move on. I had to fight for my own interviews and reviews and there wasn’t any mention of a book tour or even a single reading - things any publisher does. I remember emailing my agent before the book came out to get excited, let’s contact everyone about the book, and he never even responded. It was a really awful feeling - just knowing your book is going to bomb. Which goes back to what I said earlier - it’s all good and great you have a major publisher, but what if they (sales, marketing, your publicist) don’t really care about your book? What if they put the feelers out there early and know interest is low?

I could probably ramble on about this for a while, but my feeling is that things have changed drastically in the past few years. Larger houses are publishing less and less interesting fiction. The sales aren’t there. Editors, many who love different fiction, are scared for their jobs. Sure, they may publish your weird artsy novel, but don’t expect to be promoted like James Patterson. You’re their art project that they hope breaks into a larger audience. I wasn’t able to do that. Part of me feels like I failed. Part of me feels like I wrote a bad novel that never should have been published. The other part of me is excited to get back to publishing with indie presses. This is where the best fiction is being published and it’s only going to grow stronger. So much fiction published at larger houses feels washed with money. You can feel the marketing on it. I’m fueled up to be with Two Dollar Radio. I’m not thinking about book money or worrying about an audience or what sales are like or if the line I just wrote is too weird and will be edited out. I just don’t care anymore. My focus is one hundred percent on the writing now. I don’t feel distracted. I feel like now I can do whatever I want and run wild.

If you are a bookseller, or are interested in reviewing Crystal Eaters, you can drop a line to eric[at]twodollarradio.com.