(Another!) Interview with Author Holden Arquilevich

We were pleased to encounter another weird story from Holden Arquilevich this issue: "Doctor Neighbour", a piece whose strange imagery and concepts definitely stuck in the editors' minds after reading. We like to find more (weird) work from previously published Weird Lit authors, and it's always special when we discover the writer behind the title is familiar, as we read blind for every batch. Please enjoy the catch-up and interview we had with Holden this round!

Advice on creating that you’ve learned by trial and error.

Keep your day job. When I’ve gotten sucked into the black hole of writing YouTube or watching artist interviews, often you’ll find lots of discourse about how to save time so you have more time to make art. People talk about eating really simple, pre-planned meals to save time on cooking, for example, so you’ll maximize your time to make art, but you need to ask yourself: is it really the 20-30 min. you spend time preparing a home-cooked meal for yourself or your family that’s keeping you from becoming the voice of a generation and winning all the awards and raking in the cash? Really? Don’t become obsessed. Don’t think missing out on decent meals and spending time with friends and family is worth it for art or even what’s keeping you from finishing your work or achieving your goals. Art will always be there for you, whether you’re producing or consuming, and those other things won’t be. Writing in particular is a long haul. Don’t be afraid to winter and take time to remember why you like to make art at all. 

What's your favorite underappreciated novel or short story (a work you never hear anyone else talking about)?

One of my favorite things are stories that are effectively weird fiction but that I don’t think the author would have called them that themselves or intended them to be. For me, that’s The Hawkline Monster: A Gothic Western by Richard Brautigan. It’s such a weird weird weird book. From what I know about Brautigan, he was more associated with beatnik writing, which I haven’t been interested in yet, but I feel like this book is solidly weird fiction, and even new weird before we started calling things new weird. It’s a story told with a logic that is out of reach and doesn’t need to explain itself and it wriggles your brain.

Have you seen a ghost before?

No, but I’ve smelled one.

If you weren’t a writer, what other type of creative would you be?

A chef. Or maybe a singer. Chef singer. 

When did you realize you were weird?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH

Zombies: beat ‘em or join ‘em?

If it’s sprinters, join ‘em, if it’s walkers I might try to survive. Honestly, spending the rest of eternity until I decompose just going around eating free food doesn’t sound half bad.

What’s the point of all this, really?

Eating out at restaurants (take-out or dine-in). If I can’t eat out at least once every two weeks, what is any of this for? Looking back at all my answers to this interview I am clearly very hungry right now. I gotta go.

Unpopular opinion, go: 

Being cold sucks. The cold. Sucks. And anybody you’ve ever met who says they love the cold, when you ask them, “What’s your favorite thing about the cold?” They always say, “Oh I just love bundling up.” NEWS FLASH: YOU DON’T LIKE THE COLD, YOU LIKE BEING WARM AND STAYING IN. CMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON! GROW UP! FIGURE IT OUT! GET REAL!

Holden Arquilevich is an aspiring writer and aspiring librarian. His work has been featured in publications like Mad Swirl, Horror Sleaze Trash, and Cosmic Horror Monthly. He is from Ojai, California. He loves karaoke, and don’t even get him started on Char Man. For updates on his writing follow his Instagram: @harquilevich