BY: A.A. REDD

So last week, we asked D.A. Alston to curate a Spotify playlist for her novel The Unlikely Tale of The Royal Elite Squad and she dropped off an incredible list of tracks. This week, A.A. Redd does the same for her book of poetry, A Body Held Still By Fear And Loathing. The playlist features songs from Sia, Frank Ocean, Tame Impala and Frederic Chopin.

Brand New - "Sowing Season (Yeah)"

“This has been one of my favorite songs for nearly a decade. Brand New merged their own lyrics with some lines from Rudyard Kipling’s “If” to paint a sorrowful soundscape, resulting in an ode to watching your life destruct before you and being forced to reassemble it under the worst circumstances. Both “Learning Curve” and “Underground” share the themes of failure and struggling to recover from it, and the same somber tone.”

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Frederic Chopin - "Nocturne no. 2 Opus 9"

“I fell in love with Chopin in middle school because his music embodies the era of classical music he lived through. It is utterly romantic in every sense of the word and it manages to do that with only a passionate piano to carry the listener from gentle start to sweeping finish. Some of the poems in this book are about toxic love, but quite a few are just love poems, like “Honeyed” and “Overboard.” When reading those, the lilting keys of Chopin would be the best accompaniment in my opinion.”

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Chaos Chaos - "Do You Feel It"

““Dependency Dance” was what drove me to choose this song. Toxic love is something I can’t seem to stop writing about. This is one of those songs that broke my heart as soon as I heard it, because the relationship it portrays is blisteringly desperate and incredibly fragile, something that feels very familiar to me.”

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Motion City Soundtrack - "Everything Is Alright"

“Last year, a lot of things started to make sense after I was diagnosed with OCD. One of those things was why I loved and identified with this song so much. Justin Pierre, the lead singer, penned the song about his own struggle with severe OCD. I’m starting to feel more comfortable writing about my disorders and other neurodivergencies (“Split” and “Dissociation Dreams” are two poems that deal solely with those topics) and that’s partly thanks to music like this.”

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You can listen to the entire soundtrack below or on Spotify.

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A Body Held Still By Fear And Loathing is available now on Amazon, Kindle, B&N and Vital Narrative.

BY: A.A. REDD

Recently, I was asked a question I couldn’t answer. Not for lack of trying; I did everything I could to try and push myself toward resolution, but every step I took felt rushed and wrong. An hours-long Google search eventually brought me to a website that sold these little bundles of herbs and gemstones that promised to realign my energies and “clarify my mind.” It was cheap, so I was suspicious—but I was also desperate.

When the package got to my house, it was too heavy to bring inside. I opened it on my porch and found out why: instead of a mixture of stones, there was a chunk of white quartz nearly as big as the box itself and a pound of uncut sage. The only other thing in the box was a note: To find the answer to your questions, you must take raw material and raw energy and combine them until they create something new.

I was at a loss—I can barely cut cake, let alone a gemstone. Going at it with a hacksaw didn’t work. Whacking it with sledgehammer didn’t dent it. I even dropped it off the roof of a four-story building a few times. It was also hit by a car (and I learned the hard way that insurance doesn’t cover quartz damage).

Still, even though I hadn’t an epiphany or an answer—and I now had two problems instead of one—I couldn’t give up. The sage and stone stayed on my doorstep while the question remained unanswered, no matter how many methods I revisited.

One night, I got so frustrated that I set the sage in a pile on top of the stone, lit it on fire...

And watched the whole thing melt into my porch.

It wasn’t quartz at all. In fact, I have no idea what it was, but it left a wide, translucent puddle over the red brick of my front porch. When the sun strikes it, it looks like a shimmering sheet of ice; in the moonlight, it looks more like a patch of algae. It’s slick to the touch, almost like marble, and it will not move. Except when it gets bigger. I feel a tremor when I’m near it, and I don’t step on it unless I have to. It seems to be vibrating gently and constantly in its place on the porch. (Or maybe it’s speaking.)

Whatever it’s doing—whatever it is—it still hasn’t helped me answer the question. And after all this, I wasn’t sure I could give a good answer.

So I came back to the question and wrote a story instead.

Q: What made you sign with Vital Narrative Press?
A: Three words: "Our stories matter." It’s important to me that I work with people who feel the same way about certain key things—like visibility and representation—and the Vital Narrative team is passionate about many of the same things I am.

Q: What made you want to write A Body Held Still By Fear And Loathing?
A: When I write poetry, it’s like I’m painting my internal landscape with words. It feels like I’ve been at war with myself and everyone else during the last few years, emotionally and creatively. And I guess I just wanted to put together all these textual pictures, so I could make sense of what happened and figure out where I need to go next.

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“I hope people get whatever they need out of this book.”

— A.A. Redd

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Q: Describe your writing process.
A: Aside from lots of procrastinating, I don’t really have one. I’m still experimenting with different methods and habits while I have a little free time.

Q: What is your most unusual writing habit?
A: Writing poetry in the body of an email, saving it as a draft and then forgetting it forever.

Q: What literary/movie/TV character is most like you?
A: I’m a combination of Hermione Granger, Ilana Wexler and Michael Scott.

Q: Where do you see yourself in ten years?
A: Writing. Making TV and movies.

Q: What writing advice do you have for other authors (especially those looking to release their first book)?
A: The only person you should be working to please is yourself. Do right by yourself first.

Q: Do you plan on reading your reviews?
A: I don’t think I’ll be able to stop myself!

Q: What's your least favorite thing about the writing process?
A: Editing. I didn't write second drafts for years.

Q: What is your next project?
A: A short story collection and a web series.

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“I once told someone I met Stephen King way back in elementary school before I realized that lying was bad even when there was no obvious victim. I even thought my mom was going to buy it.”

— A.A. Redd

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Q: If you had a superpower, what would it be?
A: I’d love to be able to stop time. I’d have endless time to do everything.

Q: If you were a superhero, what costume would you wear?
A: Something very low-key. All black with a dash of color, like a jumpsuit with a royal purple hood and purple shoes. I want to be stylish, but still practical. No capes.

Q: What is something you want to accomplish before you die?
A: I really want to shoot a feature-length film.

Q: What were you like as a child? What was your favorite toy or activity?
A: I was curious, intense and trusting. My favorite thing to do was read—normally, things I wasn’t supposed to be reading! A close second was constructing sordid, soap-opera style dramas with my dolls and action figures. They usually ended in a graphic death.

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“My biggest fear is failure.”

— A.A. Redd

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Q: What has been your biggest failure?
A: Giving in to fear.

Q: What has been your greatest triumph?
A: Choosing to keep living when almost every fiber of my being was telling me not to.

Q: What books do you wish you could have written?
A: Cloud Atlas, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Q: Just as your books inspire authors, what authors have inspired you to write?
A: Stephen King, Zora Neale Hurston, J.K. Rowling, Patrick Ness, Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes and Margaret Atwood are all authors whose work stirred something in me that has—so far—never stopped moving.

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A.A. Redd will release her first book, A Body Held Still By Fear And Loathing on October 21.