Arianna Reiche and C. J. Leede are the authors of two new books set at an iconic theme park modeled on Disneyland, but with nefarious goings-on hidden behind the festive veneers. Reiche’s new book, At the End of Every Day, is a speculative novel about a young woman who works diligently to keep up the rides at her beloved theme park, even as the park is being dismantled to be moved elsewhere and angry spirits appear to be inhabiting newly life-like animatronics. Leede’s novel, the delightfully disturbing Maeve Fly, follows a woman who works at the park as a princess, and moonlights as a serial killer. Maeve Fly is already available, and At the End of Every Day is forthcoming on July 4.
Arianna Reiche: First off, I gobbled up Maeve Fly in one sitting. It’s got the most incredible momentum to it, which is rare and special—especially for books whose characters have some nihilism in their DNA, as with Maeve. I think I was also expecting our books to be really really similar, because they both have to do with, uh…huge and iconic southern California theme parks. But I was struck by how totally different our stories are, in the best way. Like I said, MF seems to be about movement, and how slippery something free will is in a city like Los Angeles, where people are speeding toward these set (and sometimes awful) destinies. And ATEOED is, in a lot of ways, about stagnation.
But bringing it back to the books’ similarities, my first question has to do with something I really wrestled with: specificity, and winking to the distinct features of said iconic theme park. I think I could see you doing what I did, which was to identify anything in the public domain by name (Snow White, Peter Pan), and then try to artfully describe existing IP—the Scandinavian princesses, for example. But I found that it made for a really odd kind of tempo when fleshing out scenes…How did you handle that?
C. J. Leede: Well, I just quickly have to say (is fangirling allowed?!) I finished ATEOED two days ago now, and it’s still haunting me. I have this feeling like I’ve accidentally slipped and fallen into a glitter pool or iridescent gasoline spill, and I just know it will cling to my skin for a very long time. And I wouldn’t have it any other way! Truly, I loved your book. I found the whole thing beautiful, suspenseful, devastating, mind-expanding, and frankly terrifying. Without getting spoilery, I’ll say the ending was unbelievable.
To answer your question, I have a feeling we had legal teams similarly advising us, but I actually sent the book out to editors and people on the tv/film side initially with none of the names changed. So there is a copy of MF that circulated and still exists somewhere with many names and places that could have been problematic in the long term, and I’m just lucky there have been no issues from that. (Thank you, *hypothetical* Theme Park Corporation!) So I wrote the book without thinking about it and then went back later to make the changes. But I can’t imagine starting from the beginning doing it that way! Is that what you did?
And I had a similar reading experience to you, imagining our books to be so much more alike than they were. I loved getting to experience such a different tone in the same essential setting, and I think it made me realize even more what a ripe and full setting it is, to allow for and evoke such variety.
I have so many questions for you with this book. I’m sure you’re so sick of this one, but what initially inspired this? Was there a singular moment or impetus, or did you collect ideas over a longer period of time? And what is your relationship to the Park? I’m honestly still reeling from so many scenes even as I write this!
AR: First, those are such kind words! I’m always so happy to hear from people who connect with the book—something no author has ever said before, hah! With ATEOED I knew, sure, parts of it would appeal to Disney adults, parts would appeal to the ‘Weird Lit’ crowd, parts would appeal to dozy-shoegaze-ennui readers, but I think there are really only a handful of people who have that big cohesive itch to scratch, about fascination with the machinations of this one strange place on earth. It’s so exciting to meet people—especially fellow authors—who know that itch!
Which leads to your question: At the start of the first big lockdown I was working a job I was quickly losing passion for, reeling from getting dropped by my agent after my first manuscript didn’t sell, getting claustrophobic in the under-furnished one-bed I shared with my partner, and at this absolutely perfect moment in time my friend in Berlin sent me a link to a video about a very shitty—like remarkably shitty—Disneyland ride, and its various iterations before it shut down. There was nothing inherently spooky or hypnotic about the video, but it just woke up this beast in me that had been sleeping since I was about eleven and would pour over Imagineering books. Just this obsession with the underside of theme parks and hyper-designed spaces, a hunger for seeing things glitch and go wrong even though it would make my skin crawl. I found myself thinking about parks all day long, and spending hours at night watching those videos, and I thought that if I was ever going to write joyfully about something else ever again, give one more attempts to write something novel-lengthed that might land me an agent, then it would have to be about this: A celebration of this type of all-consuming eeriness, and my genuine, unbridled love for these parks. And I guess it worked!
With all that said, I’ve often wondered what the book, and my writing overall, would be like if I really allowed myself to access dark, dark shit. And in that way I’m so envious of how you made decisions with Maeve. There was an inevitability to where it went in the third act, but—again, without getting spoilery—it takes such courage to deliver on that inevitability. To get that intense. What sort of fuel do you draw on to get into terror, gore, and deeply disturbing moments? (With so many of the Greats of literary horror the answer was “Cocaine!” but I have a feeling it’s more interesting with you ?)
CJL: Cocaine!
Kidding. But I do have a bottle of peanut butter whiskey on my desk, for the scenes that need it! (Highly recommend). I’ve always been someone who struggles with fear. As a kid I could never sleep because of nightmares, and that has never totally left me. It’s just the way I came into this world. But the beautiful thing about writing horror for me is that I can put it to use. Like, I’m already asking myself at any given moment in my day, What’s the worst thing that could happen right now? and letting it unfold in my mind– and of course that’s really all horror writing is. For most of my life I’ve fought it or tried to shove it away somewhere, but writing it out, leaning all the way in, and letting myself really live it, has been not only freeing but also exhilarating. And for me, the most frightening idea is always of hurting someone else, so Maeve definitely pushed me to my limits at times (and taught me a lot about various aspects of human anatomy)! Closing the curtains always helps too.
And ATEOED is STILL haunting me. If you go darker with the next one, god help us all!
(Obviously here for all of it).
I love the idea of the video awakening the sleeping beast inside you, and I think that feeling is so palpable in the book. Obviously we live for that obsessive, electric, chaotic rushing hum that is having the real *idea*. The one you know is going to turn into your next project, one you know you can’t let go of, even if you tried. I’m picturing you watching that video for the first time, the pieces sliding quietly and momentously into place. Have you had that feeling since then with anything new? Did ATEOED deplete your creative well, or have you recovered if it did? Or was it just totally freeing getting to write the thing you needed to write with the sort of f*ck it all attitude that comes with being at the end of your rope? (Why is the agent finding/book publishing process so needlessly brutal)!
AR: Oh man, I’m a writer who needs to rest. Was it Stephen King who said there are the two phases of creativity: transmitting and receiving? I could be getting that wrong, but I know that after my final draft was in, I felt like I wouldn’t ever be able to transmit again. Sometimes opening your laptop and pulling up your word processor can feel like poking a bruise, and for a while that feeling was really clogging up my creative well. But then as a sort of last hurrah before I gave birth last November (side note: babies are a complicating factor in craft if ever there was one!) I went to Berlin to visit my friend, and I got the fuel that I needed for my next book, which is set there. Since then it’s been a different process—less a manic, obsessive outpouring like with the last book. It’s something I’ve never experienced before: a slower mapping, and interrogating the concept, and the narrative shape, and the characters, and it’s so thrilling uncovering the ways that everything weaves together. Having a more relaxed grasp on the story, rather than this white-knuckled thing, has made me feel a little more in control, a little more masterful, and that’s allowed me to feel like I can experiment a little bit more, and take some risks.
That’s so interesting what you say about fear and anxiety and writing horror being a kind of therapy. I think that’s why I only recently started reading horror—when I was younger, I’d read three pages of something spooky and then I couldn’t sleep for a week, so my impulse was to stay away from all that…but then curiosity would get the better of me, and I’d repeat the cycle all over again. I probably should have just embraced it!
And with that in mind, I’m always curious about writing as labor—often fun, cyclical labor. I’ve had moments where—as I mentioned—the act of writing was really painful, but then I’ve also had many periods where I’ve had no choice but to pause writing because I needed to get a real, tangible job, and of course that’s painful in its own way! But those two modes also bring about their own distinct joy?… Maybe this is a really long rambling way of asking about what other jobs you’ve had, and how they’ve made you the kind of writer that you are! (Hah, wow, what a winding road that was!)
CJL: I really can’t imagine writing with a baby. That’s so amazing, and truly inspiring! I can’t wait to read the next book.
It’s so funny to think of jobs I’ve had now. I’ve been a spin instructor, yoga teacher, nanny, preschool teacher, actor, volunteer aquarist, animal shelter volunteer, very briefly a tech recruiter, and my last (non-writing) job was working at a very groovy comic book store here in LA. I wanted to be a career academic for a very long time, but the writing took hold of me before I made it back to school.
I completely agree that there are distinct joys to be found in various labors—it’s a great way to put it. And I think everything we do, whether we want to be doing it or not, is necessary fodder for the creative work. I can’t really say how my various respective jobs have influenced my career thus far other than that they each were a stepping stone in their own ways to landing here, now. And I’m sure they’ll all end up in my stories at one point or another. (I mean, the world probably needs a spin class horror story, right?)
I’m not sure how long we can go on here (I could do this back and forth forever!), but maybe a potential final question is this:
If you and your work could be seen and remembered as one thing, if readers walk away from your books and your worlds taking just one thing with them, what would you hope for that one thing to be?
AR: I could spend years mulling over that question. I think it has to do with earnestness, and a willingness to let yourself be immersed in something, even if that “thing” is significant to you alone. Occasionally in life something or someone crosses our path that is so fascinating to it feels like you’ve seen a tear in the fabric of spacetime. It’s rare and when it happens you need to really dive into that rupture. You won’t win points by ignoring invitations to be in awe of something. You won’t win points by keeping a door shut, just because something frightening might be on the other side of it. You won’t win points by rolling your eyes at It’s A Small World. God, does that make sense?
Arianna Reiche’s new novel, At the End of Every Day, is forthcoming from Atria on July 4.
C. J. Leede’s new novel, Maeve Fly, is now available from Tor Nightfire.
