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Today I had the sincere pleasure of interviewing Evie Pearman. Evie in an absolute delight and a breath of fresh air, both as a writer and as a person. In this interview we talk about creative writing programs, Victorian era criminality, “Weird Girl” fiction, virtual reality, true crime, cannibalism, and a lot more. Check out the video above to see the full interview!
~Drew
Read Evie Pearman’s short story, “It’s Too Easy”:
Click the image to get your copy!
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Q&A
Describe your ideal reader.
To me, an ideal reader doesn’t come from why or how or what they read. An ideal reader is just someone who loves reading.
To expand, I believe that the ideal reader is open-minded, isn’t afraid to criticize and critique, to question and speculate, and also isn’t afraid to have fun and lose themselves in fiction. The ideal reader is someone who picks up a book expecting to not put it down and, if it’s worthy, read it all over again. Someone who could sit up all night talking books. Someone who is willing to engage in a story and to take it seriously. An ideal reader is one who reads to feel something, to see the world anew and to be changed. For me, the ideal reader is also the ideal kind of person.
Is there any standard publishing or writing advice that you disagree with? Or any standard advice that you feel is too often neglected?
As a writer, I often feel encouraged and pressured to follow the trends when it comes to publishing. Everything’s all about what sells and what sounds catchy on a blurb or in a pitch. Tropes, vital cornerstones to literature they may be, are currently being flogged to death on a book’s tagline. Everything has to follow the bestselling formula. But for me, rules were made to be broken, to be swerved, to be run over. And that’s how good stories are written and exciting new tropes are made.
I also think we should take back the em dash from ChatGPT. It’s highly evocative—see? We need exciting punctuation more than ever. I’m of the firm belief that form highly shapes the story. On that note, I’d like to see more stories written in the second person. It feels like unexplored territory for both the reader and writer in me.
If you could obtain certain knowledge of one specific thing, what would that be?
Other than the meaning of the universe (which, as Douglas Adams said, is obviously 42), it has to be if there are parallel universes where things worked out differently or someone made a different decision and, as such, humanity’s evolution was tweaked and we’re now all green slug monsters. Writing inherently deals with possibilities, and I’d like to know what possibilities are out there (so long as the discovery of them doesn’t explode my brain).
How do you come up with ideas for your short stories?
Often, it’s like a lightning strike. An idea of a situation will storm into my head, and then I have to figure it out, or rather, figure out how my characters will figure it out. Then I just write.
With my short story, “It’s Too Easy”, my first thoughts were to satirize our ongoing interest in true crime by writing a mock how-to-be-a-serial-killer guide. But then I realized that the customer was by far much more interesting than the instructor. And where there’s popular demand, surely new and far more exciting products will follow… Lightning strike!
I know I’m onto something when I find myself trapped in the web of a character’s decisions and I’m having fun, sweating it out, battling through their psyche.
Evangeline Pearman is currently studying literature in London, but she spends most of her time writing fiction designed to make readers like you question reality. She also enjoys reading tarot, studying cold cases, eating anything covered with chocolate, and participating in immersive experiences. Instagram: @the_literary_angel Check out one of Evie’s stories below!
