Pushing Beyond what’s Appropriate: Interview with Jeff Jacobson
Jeff Jacobson is a horror author and playwright, with four novels published to date (‘Foodchain’, ‘Wormfood’, ‘Growth’, and ‘Sleep Tight’), as well as a short horror fiction anthology (‘All-American Horror of the 21st Century, The First Decade: 2000-2010’). He also happens to be a professor at Columbia College Chicago, where I first met him. I stumbled into his Fiction 1 class as a freshman, and was happy to have him again in my junior year, as my Horror Fiction professor. He’s also currently helping me with a short horror story that we’re hoping to be published soon.
When the assignment to interview an author arose in my Creative Writers and Publishing class, I knew he would be a great candidate for brain-picking. I was lucky enough that he obliged, and even luckier with how quickly his responses came in. Our correspondence took place through email, on October 9-10, 2021.
MM: When did you publish your first book, and was it difficult? Did it take a long time? Tell me a little about the process.
JJ: My first book was Wormfood, published in 2010. This was my master's thesis, so I finished it somewhere around 2003 or '04. I tried to get an agent first, but nobody was interested. Since it had a 16 year old narrator, everybody treated it like a YA novel, and then balked at all the gore and foul language. Around '05, I saw a poster up at school, where a small publisher down in Georgia was looking to start a new horror imprint, and they were open to submissions. They told me they wanted to publish it, but it wouldn't come out until 2008. Hardly any money, but I figured it was better than nothing, so I signed the contract. As it turns out, their business wasn't going well, so they cancelled the imprint in '07, and I started sending it out again. In the meantime, I was working on my second novel, and both were accepted to different publishers in '09 (both acceptances were about two very surreal weeks apart). That's why my second novel, FOODCHAIN, was published first, and a few months later, WORMFOOD came out from Medallion Press. Later, I found out the first publisher- can't remember their name right now- started scamming authors, promising to publish their books if the author agreed to purchase a thousand copies. It wasn't much fun to hear that they had dropped my book, and I had to start over submitting it, but I'm thankful now because they were basically con artists.
MM: What is your favorite thing about writing horror, and why did you decide to start writing it?
JJ: My favorite thing about writing horror? Probably pushing things way beyond what is appropriate. It makes me laugh. I enjoy ramping up the suspense, cranking it up a little at a time. I have no idea why I'm drawn to horror. All kinds of theories, but I really don't know. I don't remember a conscious decision to write horror- it was more of a given, as that was mostly what I was reading those days.
MM: I’ve been in your fiction class, so I know you read lots of other genres. But do you write outside of horror, and is there anything published we can read?
JJ: My second novel, FOODCHAIN, was supposed to be more of a crime novel than anything, and while there's no monsters or anything supernatural, it's definitely the darkest thing I've written, as it deals with exotic animal hunting. I think it came out of my fury over animal abuse (this was around the time some asshole NFL player was convicted of dogfighting). I've done a couple of interviews with authors here and there, but that's about it. All my short stories are horror. Probably because I'm playing it safe. I understand horror stories and I'm in my comfort zone. If I didn't have something terrible in the story to fall back on, my characters would just sit around and not do a damn thing. God help me if I have to write a story about two people just talking. No violence or histrionics- I'd be lost.
MM: And lastly— tell me about your favorite piece you’ve ever written. No specifics on genre, and even if it’s not published that’s ok. I just want to know the piece that is special to you, or that you think about often.
JJ: That's a tough one. I don't know. I just finished my fifth novel, and I'm reasonably pleased with how it turned out. But that's still too close, too raw to be halfway objective about it. I'd probably got back to FOODCHAIN. It's clumsy, but it's a cold-blooded crime novel that was kinda sorta original, rather than something like WORMFOOD, which was basically a mish-mash of the nature-gone-amuck horror movies of the 70s. I'm proud of it. Working on trying to adapt it into a screenplay now, so I'm revisiting it. Now that enough time has passed, I've got a better perspective on how to improve the structure and speed things up. Well, we'll see. If I keep going at the current pace, it'll be a screenplay for a movie that's around six hours long. It'll be interesting to figure out what to cut and how.
Jeff Jacobson lives near Chicago with his family and a whole bunch of pets. He teaches fiction and screenwriting at Columbia College, Chicago. He's a fan of hard-boiled novels, heavy metal, movies with lots of guns, good whiskey, bad monster movies, mountain biking, Krav Maga, and needlessly violent video games, among other interests.
