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Book Tour: Virtual Sitdown with Sarah Langan

Today Angela Wilson chats with the author of the super-creepy suspense thriller, The Missing. 

Who is Sarah Langan?
Is this a trick question?
Is my nose walking around, pretending to be me again? Her real name is Gogol.

When is the first time you remember saying to yourself, I want to write novels?
I was five years old, with my family on a vacation in Moosehead Lake, Maine. Though I’d never written anything, I announced to my family that I wanted to be a writer, and my dad told me, “Most writers don’t make any money. Be a film critic.” The logic here is lacking, I think. I can’t imagine film critics make much money, either. Anyway, my first assignment was a 100-word review of “Singing in the Rain.” Over the years writing became such an important dream that I was afraid of it. I didn’t write my first story until my sophomore year in college, at nineteen.

You are in a critique group with many other authors. How does their feedback play into your manuscripts?
Every other week, I meet up with a group of other writers whose opinions I trust, and whose company I enjoy. Those writers, past and present, include: Dan Braum, Milda DeVoe, Rhodi Hawk, Nicholas Kaufmann, Victor LaValle, K. Z. Perry, Stefan Petrucha, Lee Thomas, and David Wellington. I like having a writing group because it makes me part of a community. We understand each other’s frustrations and challenges, and can give each other advice, not just about the manuscripts we submit for critique, but about career decisions. They’re invaluable friends, and our meetings are a safe place for us to talk about our work. I’m inspired by the fiction they write. Basically, they’re a touchstone that reminds me what’s important, and I feel very lucky to have them.

You have an MFA in creative writing. What is the main lesson you learned while studying the craft of writing?
Edit. Edit again. Then edit again. And don’t take criticism personally. Sometimes it’s good, other times, not so much. What was great about grad school was the books I was assigned to read from the cannon. Aside from 1984, I’d never read Orwell. I’d never read Wolfe or Marquez, either. It opened up my mind. I also met a lot of other writers, who’ve remained friends.

You are a master’s candidate in environmental medicine at NYU. How does your knowledge in that area play a role in writing stories like The Missing?
For The Missing I mined a lot of my knowledge about toxicology to create my monster. A virus is unique in that it’s neither living nor dead, but something in between. It can exist, encapsulated in a dormant state for decades, and then, when the environment fosters its survival, its suddenly alive and contagious. There are some solid theories that human mitochondria are viruses. It’s not such a leap from there, to posit the possibility that viruses can interact with the nervous system, and affect human behavior, or even cause psychosis. In rare occasions, that’s what happened to flu epidemic survivors in 1918. They recovered from the flu, but it forever altered their brain chemistry—they went mad.

Who is the character you most relate to in The Missing?
I relate to all of them. They seem very real to me, so it’s hard to say which one I like best. All of them, I guess. Eudora Welty said she loved all her characters, even the morally bankrupt ones, otherwise she couldn’t have written about them. I think I feel the same way.

Why was it important to tell this story from several different character points of view?
It’s more fun, and in the case of The Missing, serves the story. The virus threatens humanity, and one family in particular. The book I’m working on now is a haunted house story, and for a change, from one perspective. Here, one perspective is scarier, because it provokes a kind of claustrophobia in the reader.

There is a definite creep factor in The Missing, yet, there is a balance with reality when you have evil spread through a virus that people initially think is a deadly flu. How important was it to you to relate this evil to modern-day killer flu fears?
Well, I wanted to infuse enough science that readers might suspend disbelief and maybe have some fun with the theories. Beyond that, I don’t think it matters—it a McGuffan to catalyze and examine the breakdown of human relationships and American society in general. 

Why this genre?
It’s the format in which I like to tell stories. You can get away with talking about issues that in literary novels would seem pedantic. The big questions—social responsibility, the nature of war and government, divorce, good versus evil, and even the nature of God fit into genre in ways they don’t fit into literary realism. That’s not always the case, of course. I love plenty of realism, too, and expect I’ll write some of that down the road.

What inspires you?
Things that frighten me or make me angry. War. Bad decisions. Incompetence. Greed. The front page of the newspaper, basically.

How do you balance your writing with life?
I’m still figuring that out!

What are you reading?
This is going to sound reaaaaly pretentious, but I finished my last book, Chris Barzak’s very skilled One for Sorrow, and was out of town, so I borrowed what my boyfriend had on hand—Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It’s fantastic, and deals a lot in theme with what I’m trying to address in my third novel, Audrey’s Door. It’s about the constancy of change, with lots of murder and love and Gods and devils mixed in for good fun.

Your first two novels are set within two communities in Maine. Where will you take readers next?
My next book is set in New York City. A woman with a bad past is too wounded to commit to her live-in boyfriend. She breaks up with him, and moves into a haunted apartment where her OCD flairs up, and in her sleep, she builds a door. I’m also working on a collection of short fiction, a collaboration with three other authors (Deborah LeBlanc, Alexandra Sokoloff, and Sarah Pinborough), and at some point plan to write The Missing’s sequel.

Where can readers find you on the Web?
www.sarahlangan.com
www.musefour.com
And I’ve got a column, with MUSE, at www.darkscribemagazine.com