Featured Writer

What brought you to the writing life?

The only true answer I can give is that I started as a kid, maybe around 5-years-old, and I haven’t stopped. Horror was a huge influence on me, and I couldn’t get enough of it, so I started creating my own stories. That, and the opening of Ray Bradbury Theater where Bradbury comes up the rickety elevator and goes to his office and sits down at they typewriter. That’s what I wanted to do.

What attracts you to using historical curios or footnotes  such as Ota Benga, Eddie Gaedel, and William Greer as characters in your stories?

I am borderline obsessed with outsiders. From circus freaks to outsider artists, musicians, writers, and historical figures, all of that draws me in on a personal level. I seek out these figures for my own satisfaction, and sometimes they end up in my fiction. It all comes from that obsession, really.

Do you write for yourself or the reader? Both?

I start with a story that is interesting to me, something that I would want to read. However, I do want to get my work out there and have it read. I don’t have a Salinger complex or anything like that. If I just want to write for myself, then I can create entire stories in my skull. I suppose the correct answer for me would be both.

I’m particularly interested in …And Nail–the character of Cochran Baines in particular and his fixation on children’s teeth, what can you tell me about the story? I don’t know that I’ve read anything quite like it.

The idea for …And Nail came to me while I was covering a meeting of the local Board of Education for the newspaper where I have worked for the past couple of years. At the meeting, some dental experts were talking about visiting schools and going on and on about the importance of dental health in children. Of course, my broken brain sent the topic into the shadows and next thing I knew, Cochran Baines was pulling teeth from the corpses of children. The story, to me, is about innocence and a ruined man’s attempt to gain it through bizarre means.

Once a story is published and in a reader’s hands, if you can accomplish one thing with the piece, what do you hope that is?

All I want is for the reader to be entertained, intrigued, and, on occasion, disturbed. If the reader only gets one of those out of my work, then I am still a happy writer.

Also by Jarrid Deaton:
Ota Benga Figures it Out
…And Nail

Be sure to read What’s The Trick, featured in Volume 14 of Emprise Review.

Interviewed by Patrick Mcallaster