American author (1969- )
I didn't do anything as active as deciding that I wanted to be a writer. For one thing, I didn't feel like I was the final authority on whether or not I was anything like a writer. (I'm a timid soul.) I just kept writing stories, because becoming a veterinarian seemed as if it involved too much dissection.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
What I like about narrative in general is when there is some incongruity between the form and content. Let's say, mixing up the gothic with a coming-of-age narrative. Telling a love story that's also a monster story. Mixing up superhero tropes with your monster tropes. I like category confusion.
KELLY LINK
"A Vampire is a Flexible Metaphor: An Interview with Kelly Link", Gigantic Magazine, October 23, 2013
The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
A vampire is a flexible metaphor. You know, death, sex, change, stagnation, loss of self, loss of agency, having to keep one's real self secret, the possibility of something lasting forever: love, hate, grief.
KELLY LINK
"A Vampire is a Flexible Metaphor: An Interview with Kelly Link", Gigantic Magazine, October 23, 2013
I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones that took so long to finish. With those, I've lost perspective. Mostly I'm just glad that I can be done with them.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
You were going to travel for love, without shoes, or cloak, or common sense. This is one of the things a woman can do when her lover leaves her. It's hard on the feet perhaps, but staying at home is hard on the heart.
KELLY LINK
Stranger Things Happen
There was something about clowns that was worse than zombies. (Or maybe something that was the same. When you see a zombie, you want to laugh at first. When you see a clown, most people get a little nervous. There's the pallor and the cakey mortician-style makeup, the shuffling and the untidy hair. But clowns were probably malicious, and they moved fast on those little bicycles and in those little crammed cars. Zombies weren't much of anything. They didn't carry musical instruments and they didn't care whether or not you laughed at them. You always knew what zombies wanted.)
KELLY LINK
Magic for Beginners
Our eyes are always blind when they view the future.
KELLY LINK
Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
I built a cannon out of ice, and wrapped myself in the funeral carpet which my husbands and wives had woven for me out of their own hair, and one of my wives was my gunner. I came back here, after many adventures, and once, when I'd been drinking, donated the funeral carpet to the national museum. When I was sober again, I asked for it back, but they claimed not to know what I was talking about.
KELLY LINK
Magic for Beginners
I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (coffee shop, someone else's house, my dining room table), I'm pretty fast. I go back to the start of whatever I'm working on, every half hour or so, and revise my way back to where I left off. I have my headphones on, I'm checking email, I look at Twitter and Tumblr, and drink a lot of coffee. I need a lot of distraction to work.
KELLY LINK
interview, Electric Lit, February 6, 2015
I'd be flattered if someone said that my work is "too weird" for them. I value the uncompliment.
KELLY LINK
interview, Weird Fiction Review, November 2, 2011
The next stage of their life is slouching over the horizon. Naomi says go. The tickets are nonrefundable. Everything will be fine.
KELLY LINK
Get in Trouble: Stories