Tell us about the Saint
Flaherty Series. What’s the significance of the name?
In chapter one of book one, we meet Simon “Saint” Flaherty, the
prize-fighting teenager on the verge of a back alley mixed martial arts fight
he’s expected to win. Win it he does—but at a terrible cost. When his opponent
pulls a knife mid-match, Simon responds with a baseball bat and swings a
homerun.
The kill cements his reputation as a fighter to be reckoned with. It
also makes him believe that no matter what he does from now on, he’s going to
hell. In the meantime, he might as well do what he can to make sure no one else
will. Not if he can help it.
The rest of the series follows Simon’s rise, each book almost a
snap-shot of time, a point in his life where momentum and groundwork and pure,
gut-clenching chance ignite the powder-keg and decide what is to come.
Make-or-break moments, for better and for worse, that define who Simon is.
Can he be Saint Flaherty? Or will the hell he came from claim his soul
for once and all?
As for how he got that particular nickname, well. That would be telling,
now wouldn’t it?
Your first book, What Boys Are Made Of, introduces us to
a dystopian world. What part does the world play in the story?
The dystopian elements create the central conflict for the book. A Mexican-cartel-style
kingpin has set himself up in the town of Buchell, ruling the town and all
trade coming and going. He’s taken an interest not only in Simon, but his
guardian and pseudo-sister, Erin, both whom have every right to fear him.
At its heart, the conflict is simple: how these two can escape this
tyrant, this madman. It’s the setting that complicates the story.
Simon and Erin can’t escape through the woods because those have
landmines, and they can’t just hop on a convoy out of town because those go
through checkpoints controlled by the cartel. They’re being watched, strings
are being pulled. Who can be trusted?
And every day they need to survive, to eat, to stay as safe as they can
while still searching for this way out. Of course, that’s a lot easier said
than done in a town that lacks an intact criminal justice system, or a high
regard for human life.
To me, setting a book in the future is more than sticking a high-tech
weapon in and saying humans are at peace now, or at war with the aliens. It’s all
about changing norms, little details like three shells in the bathroom or, in
my case, offhand comments about “back when we still had indoor plumbing” and
the fact that all guns are 3D printed.
Likewise, the narrators don’t wake up and say “I live in a totalitarian
dystopian society with bad evil baddies on the street.” It’s a gradual
introduction. Your first wakeup call is when Simon kills someone and the police
don’t start asking questions. The second is when you find out there are no
police. The third? At a certain point, the creeping realization that the
younger characters don’t even know what police are.
We are not in Kansas anymore.
What inspired you to write
this series, and where do you see it heading?
This series came from a lot of places. My love of language and idioms,
my desire to write something fast-paced and unpredictable. But far beyond those
rises my experiences in high school.
For me, high school was a trial-by-fire gauntlet, where the goal was to reach
adulthood without making too many bad decisions. Not a great mind-set, right?
Even to me, so much of what I did at the time seems inexplicable. Why did I
think that my choices in any given situation were so narrow? Why did I do what
I did, say what I said?
But the answer is simple. People under duress do not make the best
decisions; rather, they make the best decisions they can. Lacking sleep and safety, pursued by demons imagined and all
too human, most people are incapable of making choices anywhere approaching the
best. They do what they can and keep on.
I wanted to write people like that. I wanted to write those stories, not
based on good and evil but good enough and all that entails.
As for the series itself, it has two books published, another three
written, and I’m working on what should be the final main book right now.
Altogether, that means four main series books as well as two in-between novels
that explore side-stories mentioned in the main narratives. I have ideas for a
handful more side novels, not to mention another series in the same universe,
but no promises on those ever seeing the light of day! For now, six books seems
like a pretty good number.
Your bio says much of your
writing is based in the hills of Appalachia. How is the sense of place
important to your writing?
To me, Appalachia is all about the speech. That was actually one of the
first things I knew about the Saint Flaherty series, when I sat down to write
those early chapters: that my characters would, as we say here in Southeast
Ohio, “talk with an accent.”
That’s a touchy subject, because the dialect used around here is one of
the most ridiculed in the United States. You want to instantly show a character
is dumb? Give them an Appalachian accent. In media these days you either hear
it out of the mouths of red-neck hunters or mystic foresters in tune with
mother nature. It doesn’t seem to come from regular people who live
unremarkable lives, and so that’s what I wanted to do. As much as I write speculative
fiction, I do my best to populate it with ordinary people, those who might be a
check-out clerk in Walmart or the guy who does your plumbing with plenty of
friendly banter in another life, a more peaceful life.
Around here, we say “him what I was talking to” instead of “that guy I
was talking to.” We occasionally drop the various forms of be, slur our don’t knows
into dunnos and going to into gonna.
Aside from those couple words, I otherwise avoided phonetic renderings, but to
me, the speech rings true.
Fifty years ago university students with this dialect automatically got
put into remedial speech lessons—it only seemed fair that in the dystopian
future it reasserts itself in full force.
You say you like British
political snark shows. Which ones and why?
There’s a few of them! I’m a huge fan of Mock the Week—it’s the first political commentary show I got into. I
love how silly it gets, and back when I didn’t know much about British politics
it was the perfect intro to the main players. Not to mention it features one of
my favourite comedians, Dara O’Briain. It’s great to relax in front of an
episode and listen to people who aren’t panicking at every political event.
I also love Have I Got News for
You, but for the opposite reason. Call me cruel, but there’s nothing more
satisfying than seeing some poor politician put themselves in the hot seat for
half an hour. It’s like a ritual sacrifice the parties make each season. Part
of me feels very sympathetic every time they have some MP on, but most of me
loves seeing a little discomfort from the elected ones. Schadenfreude at its
best!
Politics are serious, but like all human things, they have their
ridiculous side, and these shows do a fantastic job of highlighting that while
still being surprisingly informative. The best of both worlds.
How does the gritty realism
of your settings introduce speculative fiction elements?
Back in 2011, driving down an isolated road through the woods, my mind
combined the brutal events of the recent Kenyan civil war, the total lack of
government in Sudan, and the hills of Southeast Ohio to come up with a mixture
guaranteed to create conflict. My mind raced. What if you had to take a convoy
to safely reach the next town? What if 3D printed guns became something you
make in your basement for the war outside your front door? What if modern laws
disappeared?
As a kid, I thought the future was robots and space and flying cars, but
I only had to watch one democracy fall to a political coup on the evening news
to realize that’s not always the case. Sure, sometimes we move forward—but just
as often its backwards societies go.
In the Saint Flaherty series,
that’s exactly what’s happened. There was a war, a civil war, and as my
characters put it, it turned rude pretty darn quick. After all, America as a
country relies on free transport in order to function. Cut off a place like
West Virginia from the rest of the nation and you’re going to hit starvation
point pretty quick.
Not all futures are bright and shining. Some reach back to the roots of
society and rip them up.
Are there any contemporary
SF/dystopian/apocalyptic writers whose work you admire?
Funny enough, one of my favorite recent works is the Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and
Stephen Baxter. I say funny enough because that series is almost the polar
opposite of mine in theme, despite following a similar arc. Both take a young
man, give him extraordinary circumstances, and see what he’s made of in a
future that’s been simplified from modern life. But the Long Earth assumes humans have one sort of nature, and I assume
another.
What I loved about this series was the wonder it brought to the page. I
could’ve read descriptions of the various Earths for as long as the authors
were willing to write them. The various theories of why one evolved one way and
not another, how people were branching out and developing, all of it created
such a soothing space in my mind. Some days we want catharsis, but sometimes a
peaceful read through an ideal place is a nice change.
Your books sound very noir. They could be about contemporary
events. Are they cross-genre?
They definitely are, to all parts of that question! While they’re set in
the future, anyone who’s interested in books that deal with abuse would like the
Saint Flaherty series. More than
being about concepts, it’s really a story that focuses on people and how they
deal with trauma, stress, and the dark parts of their own souls. I tend to call
the Saint Flaherty series dystopian
psychological suspense. The first book has heavy post-apocalyptic tones, while
later books branch more into organized crime.
As for sub-genres? It’s noir. It’s grit. Not to throw out spoilers, but
as one review points out, it’s more a story with characters who are LGBTQ than
an LGBTQ story, so there’s that too, and where to stop?
If you like dark character-driven pieces, you will like this. Genres are
only the things I argue with Amazon over.
Are you a Luddite? Or do
you prefer to be on the bleeding edge of technology?
I’m a terrible Luddite! Technology isn’t scary to me, but it’s a
terrible inconvenience to learn to use, so I’ll stick with what I know until it
actually becomes a problem. I’ve had to be dragged to get my last three phones,
and I hung onto my previous laptop until it began erasing chunks of documents
at random.
That attitude towards technology probably shows in my books rather more
than it should. I barely had a cell phone when I began writing What Boys Are Made Of, so didn’t really
write them into it. Not from a great grand reason, but more forgetting about
them. I had to retcon an explanation about cell phone towers and satellites
into the narrative later, so they could show up in later books. Ah well, it
contributes to the atmosphere.
Are you--or have you ever
been--a gamer?
Oh, the tricky question. I play a small selection of modern Nintendo
games. Does that qualify me, or do I need to be more hard-core about it? Either
way, I love to relax with whatever cute adventure that’s caught my eye that
week. Pikmin, Mario Kart, Yoshi—if it’s adorable and not too difficult, I’m
there.
Do you have a garden? Have
you ever grown your own food?
What I have is a black thumb. This occasionally worries me. If the
apocalypse came tomorrow, I would be in deep trouble, having managed in my life
to grow only a single tomato. What skills could I trade on to survive? After
all, if I was sent back in time, I could definitely make my way as a teacher of
some sort, perhaps even publish a bit, but modern people don’t have as much
trouble in that department. As someone who can’t grow their own food and is too
squeamish to hunt, I’ll have my work cut out for me if everything goes to heck.
I probably spend too much time thinking about this.
Would you prefer an
independent bookshop, or a big chain?
Oops, I guess I’m for big chains, because I do all my book shopping on
Amazon! Really, I’m for any place that supports independent authors and gives
them an equal shot at sales.
Most of my reading decisions these days seem to be made on whether the
book in question hits the right genre buttons, and then is it on sale. Or did a
friend write it. I’ve found some fantastic books from buying an author friend’s
new release.
On a scale of 1-10, how
eccentric are you?
Outwardly? Not very. I’m one of the hyper-competent people who has no
trouble dressing the part or acting it—whatever the part may be. I have potluck
games nights with my friends, dote on my parents’ dog, eat the fashionable
number of avocados a week. So on an eccentric scale, even adding in my crazy
author thoughts, I’d probably be about a three.
Okay, okay, I think peanut-butter onion bacon sandwiches are delicious.
Four.
About S. Hunter Nisbet:
S.
Hunter Nisbet is a dedicated writer of dark tales. Born and raised in
southeast Ohio, she bases much of her work in the hills of Appalachia.
When not working on the next novel, Hunter spends her time posting on
her blog and watching British political snark shows.
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