🎙️ A.J. Hodges

Read AJ's story, Silent Disco, now!

Are you a pub or a club kind of person?

100% club! Or a small live punk concert. The older I am, the more I get the appeal of a pub with a cozy fireplace, though.

What’s your experience/opinion of EDM?

If it gets people dancing in a good way, I’m all for it. I loved minimal techno and electroclash back in the day (was low-key shocked to learn this is now a retro thing).

Best experience: Seeing Autechre play at Berghain in Berlin. But is that EDM or IDM?

Do you have any Lucys in your life? Past or present?

Past—definitely! This story was partly addressed to my teenage self, after all.

Present—thankfully not. Maybe if I was still working in academia, I encountered a few there…

We often think about the arts and creativity as things that make the world a better place, so there is something a bit subversive about flipping that on it’s head and stealing the creativity of the youth to make the city a "better place;" was this intentional or more of an afterthought?

I’ve been thinking a lot about the extractive aspect to many (not all) social media platforms recently (shout-out to Off the Grid), and how the feed can lull us into a hypnotic state, while profiting off other people’s creativity—the influencer slash content creator model. I think that’s what inspired me, but it wasn’t a conscious decision at the time of writing. There are no smartphones in the story.

If you wanted to put someone into a musically induced trance/coma, what music do you think you’d play?

Easy question! Boards of Canada. One of my favorite bands. Maybe “1969” or “Buckie High”?

How many times has this story been rejected by other markets?

This story has been rejected twice by other markets. And I submitted an older version to a music-themed short-story competition that I didn’t win, obv.

What’s a great short story you’ve read recently?

I keep returning to “The Longest Season in the Garden of the Tea-Fish.”

What book are you reading right now?

I always have a few books on the go! Right now it’s Deep Wheel Orcadia (Harry Josephine Giles), Red, White, and Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston), and Gathering Moss (Robin Wall Kimmerer)

Do you have anything else you’d like to share?

I used to live in Croatia and Serbia, and I’ve been collaborating with some awesome writers from there. I recently had this literary horror translation published on the Asymptote Journal blog. And a big shout-out to my friends at Shtriga Books – Croatia’s one and only queer speculative fiction press.

Thanks to AJ for chatting with us this week about music and creativity!