The Roots Run Deep with CM Forest

C. M. Forest, also known as Christian Laforet, is the author of multiple projects including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin silver award winning novel Infested (Eerie River Publishing), and the novella, We All Fall Before the Harvest (Timber Ghost Press.) and the upcoming (Sept. 2024) short story collection, The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories (Eerie River Publishing). His short fiction has been featured in over a dozen anthologies across multiple genres. A self-proclaimed horror movie expert, he spent an embarrassing amount of his youth watching scary movies. When not writing, he lives in Ontario, Canada with his wife, kids, three cats, and a pandemic dog named Sully who has an ongoing love affair with a blanket. His newest release is the short story collection The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories, from Eerie River Publishing.

https://christianlaforet.com/

Transcript

(0:14 - 1:17)
Welcome to All Write in Sin City, a podcast about writers and writing in the Windsor-Detroit region. Your podcasters today are Irene Moore Davis, author, educator, and local historian, Sarah Jarvis, former bookseller, publishing rep, and literary festival chair, and me, Kim Conklin, Windsor-based writer and filmmaker. Today, we are joined by C.M. Forrest. 

C.M. Forrest, also known as Christian Laferrette, is the author of multiple projects, including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Silver Award-winning novel Infested by Erie River Publishing and the novella We All Fall Before the Harvest, Timber Ghost Press. And the upcoming thing that we're going to talk about today is his latest work, The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories by Erie River Publishing. That's a short story collection that's available now.

(1:17 - 1:36)
His short fiction has been featured in over a dozen anthologies across multiple genres. A self-proclaimed horror movie expert, he spent an embarrassing amount of his youth watching scary movies. When not writing, he lives in Ontario with his wife, kids, three cats, and a pandemic dog named Sully, who has an ongoing love affair with a blanket.

(1:37 - 2:11)
And so we're here to talk about the new short story collection, The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories. Welcome back to our podcast. Thanks for having me. 

I'm excited to be here. So I want to share that my commute to work includes frequent morning visits to a particular coffee shop drive through where I have occasionally seen you writing on the other side of the glass and have declined to honk my horn. I think of it as a sort of performance art, observing a friendly neighborhood gentleman inconspicuously typing away at his laptop in a place where most people probably have no sense of the horror he's writing.

(2:12 - 2:37)
How do you take your coffee and what is it about coffee shops that makes them a favorite writing room? Well, first answer is I don't I do drink coffee, but when I write, I usually drink tea. So I prefer a chai tea if it's available, which is what I get at this big chain coffee shop that there's one on every corner. So, yeah, I think I like I like going to coffee shops to write.

(2:37 - 3:09)
I go to that particular coffee shop because it's it's a cheaper option if you're going every day. I mean, if you're going to like a kind of a more smaller coffee shop, it can get pricey if you're hitting that every day and grabbing a hot beverage and a treat is going to cost you a lot of money there. It's only about four bucks. 

So I just like getting out of my house. So it's not necessarily a coffee shop. And in fact, if I forget my headphones, then it's kind of a huge distraction to be at a coffee shop because it's so noisy and there's so much kind of bustle happening.

(3:09 - 3:25)
But yeah, I think it's more the leaving my house, leaving all my my little toys I like to play with that will distract me, leaving my TV and my PlayStation. And otherwise I just won't write. So it's like I have to get out of my house and there needs to be a place to go.

(3:25 - 3:37)
And coffee shops have donuts. So that's where I'm going. Awesome, every writer needs fuel, eh? So this latest release is a collection of very diverse, different stories.

(3:38 - 4:04)
What do you enjoy most about writing short fiction as opposed to the longer novels that you've done? And as the first of these stories in The Roots Run Deep begin to take shape, when did you realize it was going to be short stories over a novel? Well, I mean, I kind of like I cut my teeth on writing short stories when I first got into writing. Like I went to school for animation. I always wanted to be like a visual artist.

(4:05 - 4:24)
And then after animation, three years of animation school, like any sort of love of drawing out of me, I knew I wanted to. Oh, God, it was so much so much drawing in three years that I never wanted to do it again. But anyways, yeah, after that, it was like I still wanted to write stories.

(4:24 - 4:43)
I still wanted to tell stories. I just didn't want to do it with a drawing anymore. So I started writing. 

And the first things I wrote were short stories. I love it's kind of weird because I love writing short stories, but it's not something I gravitate towards a lot in reading. But it's just sort of what I just started writing.

(4:43 - 6:14)
And then as I got more experience as a writer, I started writing like long form things like novels and whatever. But now there's it's more like I like going back to writing short stories because. There's something just so so kind of like pure about a short story, it's like an idea boiled down to its base elements, so there's not subplots and all these extra characters, it's usually like one person doing one thing in one moment and that's all there is to it. 

So you kind of get like really stripped down, minimalist kind of horror story and usually, you know, three thousand words or five thousand words or whatever. And I just really enjoy doing it. So how much fun did you have choosing the order in which these stories would be presented? And what were you thinking about when you did it? So for Roots Run Deep, a lot of most of these stories had been published before, so they were I had just enough, it kind of hit me one day, I had enough published work that I could put them all together and I could collect them into a short story collection. 

So the thing about that, though, is that like a lot of these stories I had written when they cover kind of like. Up to that point, my whole writing career, so some of them were published before I even had like a pen name that I was using, you know, before my novels came out and then other ones were published after that, so it was like pretty much everything I had done up to that point. And so there was years separating these stories.

(6:14 - 6:48)
So when it came time to put them together in the book, I kind of was hit with like, do I put them in chronological order or do I put them in an order that makes sense for like a book? I kind of wanted to put them in chronological order because in my head I was like, well, the newer ones are going to be better than the older ones, so like it'll get better as you go. But I then realized there was a lot of similar themes in some of these stories that, you know, wasn't a problem when they're written three years apart. But if you're going to read them one right after the other, you're going to go like, oh, this is a little samey, you kind of tread in the same ground here.

(6:48 - 7:10)
So that was kind of a big issue. That was really the deciding factor was how, what, what way is it going to, can I put these in this book that'll make the book interesting to read from front to back without it feeling repetitive? Just a quick follow up. So what were some of the themes that jumped out for you? Well, it turns out I don't like children at all.

(7:11 - 7:29)
They, they don't fare well in my stories. And I didn't really realize that until someone pointed it out. And there's a lot of like travel gone awry, which is something also that I, you know, I think like I have like a lot of anxiety towards traveling as a lot of us do.

(7:29 - 7:43)
So I don't know if that just, you know, kind of like subconsciously kind of in my, a lot of my stories. But there was all these kind of themes of like, yes, on a road somewhere. And I mean, and there are things that lend themselves well to horror stories anyways.

(7:43 - 7:48)
But, you know, it just was there a lot. Travel is bad. Kids are bad.

(7:49 - 8:04)
Like, you know, and it's like those kind of things kept popping up. And I had no idea until even when I was putting the book together, I didn't have an idea. It was, I think, until later on, somebody had pointed out to me that that's kind of was something that they were noticing in all the stories.

(8:04 - 8:17)
And I was like, oh, yeah, you know, like I do hate kids and I do hate travel. So that makes sense. You don't seem to really love beaches either, eh? Yeah, no, no, I like to stay inside.

(8:17 - 8:24)
I don't like the sun. I don't like any sort of weather. I like controlled environment in my house or like a hotel room.

(8:24 - 9:10)
That's fine. So you've been writing horror for a long time now, looking back over your long list of publications and indeed even going through this process you've just described of collecting stories from across the career. What do you see as the aspect of your writing that has evolved the most? I think that, you know, when writing horror, it's like something I've never really had problems with. 

I've always felt like I've had a handle on anyways, is structure of a horror story, pacing, things that make, you know, building up to moments that have a lot of, you know, like building dread, building atmosphere. So I feel like I've always been pretty good at that. I would say like my language for writing, like just my voice has gotten a lot more refined reading stuff.

(9:10 - 9:54)
I'm currently like stuff I'm currently working on and reading it now, going through it and looking back and just realizing that, you know, past Christian couldn't have written this, not even close because there's things that are, you know, just things I inherently do now, having the experience of having written books that I wouldn't even have known that, like how to approach these things, you know, like it's just but now I just do it because I've done it so many times. And I just say for our audience, again, it's in your introduction, but you you are the father of two kids who are thriving. I guess it's just fictional kids that you're really kind of against, right? I mean, sure, we'll go with that.

(9:56 - 10:15)
All right. Well, another thing that's particularly about Enjoyable, your writing is the dialogue, the realistic dialogue, which is really hard to do between and among the characters. Is that very easy for you or is it challenging to craft that kind of dialogue in your writing? Oh, it is definitely a challenge for me.

(10:15 - 10:28)
It's probably the thing I feel weakest at. I try to write dialogue in the way that people actually talk. I always find it very odd when I'm reading dialogue and I'll be like, I've never heard someone talk like this before.

(10:29 - 10:42)
It's so formal or, you know, and I get there's like context to whatever the who the character is and what the situation is. But for me personally, I've always been I try to write like I speak and how I hear people speak. But I don't love it.

(10:42 - 10:49)
I don't like writing dialogue. I would like to write a whole novel with no dialogue. Just description would be would be my dream.

(10:49 - 11:09)
Have you know, I don't like it. And I have friends that are really good at it. That just I have a friend who I'll name drop on Ben Van Dong, and he writes incredible dialogue. 

It's so smooth and it flows and it goes back and forth. And it's like I just can't I feel like I can't do that. But then people say that they do like the dialogue I write.

(11:09 - 11:13)
So I'll take it as a win. But I'm never comfortable doing it. I don't like it.

(11:15 - 11:50)
There's also such a strong sense of place in your writing and the stories happen in a multitude of settings. Going back to your love of travel, how important has it been to your development as a writer? Well, I mean, you know, certainly going to new places and seeing, you know, visiting and having new experiences, I mean, it does add a lot, especially as a horror writer. You know, I can't not go somewhere and see be inspired in some way by, you know, if I go we used to go east a lot to, you know, Nova Scotia.

(11:50 - 12:03)
And it's like, you know, you see these small little fishing ports and things which are incredible. But depending on what lens you're looking through could also be really scary, you know. And so I take a lot of that certainly out of.

(12:03 - 12:27)
But I mean, I take that any I guess being a somewhat of an anxious person. I don't know. I take that anywhere I could walk to the store and I could find all kinds of scary things on the way that where I'm convinced something could kill me at any moment. 

So I do pull a lot from that. But I wouldn't say I keep I think it just kind of permeates into my brain when I'm anywhere. But it's like because I feel like danger is everywhere.

(12:27 - 12:42)
Like I don't feel safe anywhere ever. So I feel like that is what leads to this sort of I'm always on the lookout. Where's like, you know, where's like a wild cat going to jump out and kill me or like a knife wielding psychopath? I don't know just where my head goes.

(12:43 - 13:12)
Where would you like to feel unsafe next? Well, I mean, I mean, if it was like an all expense paid unsafeness, then there's lots of places I would love to be. But, you know, yeah, nowhere probably going to be doing a I'm hoping to be doing some more traveling within Canada this in the next, you know, a couple of years. So, you know, I would say like we go all over the place, but, you know, a lot of a lot of our home is unexplored to me.

(13:12 - 13:30)
So I think it's time to check some of that out. I really want to encourage you to consider a side hustle creating or curating all expenses paid unsafeness for travel industry purposes. I think that sounds like the next big trend.

(13:30 - 13:59)
So what are you working on now? Well, I have I have two books, so since my last novel came out, which was actually infested and it's it's getting a little long in the tooth now, I've been working on a few things since then. I've actually almost finished several books, got really far and then abandoned these projects because I'm an idiot. I don't know. 

But and then I finally settled on something that I've been working on this year. It's I started it this year. It was an idea I had in the past.

(13:59 - 14:11)
I wrote a little little blurb about what I thought the idea could be, and then I put it away. And then this year, I think like February, I opened it back up and I was like, this is a good idea. I'm going to do this.

(14:11 - 14:16)
So I'm really close to finishing. It's a novel. It's a it's a period piece set in nineteen twenty five.

(14:16 - 14:33)
It's a board, a train, a guy coming home from a place in northern Ontario. And he's a writer and he's got there's kind of like a book within the book. It's either going to be honestly, it's either going to be people are going to read and go like, wow, this is great or they're going to read it and go, this is total trash.

(14:33 - 14:39)
There's going to be like no in between. They're going to think I'm really smart or I'm really dumb when this book comes out. So we'll see.

(14:39 - 15:00)
And then I have a novella that I've been working on, too. And it's a it's a dystopian math horror novella. And yeah, I think I like literally coined the term math or I don't know that that even exists, but it's just got a lot of math and the horror is all based around math, which is so weird and dirty.

(15:00 - 15:10)
And I'm not good at math, but I just have this like fascination with like weird numbers. And so I was like, I'm putting that into a book. Well, math is horror to me.

(15:11 - 15:21)
Yeah. You know what? Yes. Agree. 

I think that all sounds very fascinating. And we look forward to these releases in seriousness. Christian, thank you so much for joining us today.

(15:21 - 15:34)
It's always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Hey, thank you so much for having me here. It's great. 

I love talking to you guys. And for our listeners, the short story collection is The Roots Run Deep and Other Stories. It's available now from Erie River Publishing.

(15:36 - 15:52)
Thanks for joining us. Look for more episodes of All Right in Sin City wherever you listen to podcasts or check out our website, All Right in Sin City dot com for information and announcements of new podcasts. Sign up to our email list or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.