Strange Attractor | The Conium Review

Contributor Conversations: Chelsea Werner-Jatzke interviews Christine Texeira

Oct 15, 2015

Chelsea Werner-Jatzke interviews Christine Texeira (contributor to The Conium Review: Vol. 3). Her work has also recently appeared in Moss. She currently works at the Hugo House in Seattle, and she is managing editor of Paragraphiti.

[Chelsea Werner-Jatzke]: What is Paragraphiti?

[Christine Texeira]: Currently it’s an online journal, but we’re about to release our first print issue. It was started by a fellow grad student at University of Notre Dame and is focused on international writers and artists. I’m the managing editor.

[CWJ]: Besides the journal, what else are you working on?

[CT]: I’m editing my graduate school thesis into a novel. It’s a series of stories that feel cohesive to me. One of them was published in Moss. It’s very much a novel of the Northwest. Lot’s of Sasquatch and D.B. Cooper.

[CWJ]: Both the story in Moss and the piece published by Conium are focused on strange sibling dynamics. What’s the deal?

[CT]: I was raised as an only child and had always wanted a sibling. There’s something about that relationship that I have no insight into. It’s like, because I can’t comprehend it I am trying to figure it out in writing. Later in life I discovered that I have an older brother that I’ve never met and I don’t think he knows I exist. Before that discovery I had always written characters that had siblings but it wasn’t the focus of the story. After that discovery I decided to focus on this obsession.

[CWJ]: At AWP I asked you if all your stories were so odd and you were like, “yeah pretty much.” Conium is a journal for experimental fiction, is all of your writing experimental in form or just bizarre in content?

[CT]: A lot of it is form. I become attached to strange bits of information and write about them. Then I begin to see how they can combine. I like to be surprised and am always looking for the funny and the scary that together create the strange. I don’t mean “surprised” or “scary” as in, horror stories. I mean I like to be surprised by my own narratives. To write to the place where I’m a bit afraid because I don’t know where the narrative will go, what the rules are. Then I go back and tame the story, edit a lot of that out.

[CWJ]: Can you describe your editing process?

[CT]: I typically write in sections that are titled and specific. They can have a wide variety in length. Then I cut entire pieces and see what’s left, how they fit together. I consider myself a short story writer but the pieces that I am editing into a novel right now feel unified.

[CWJ]: You have a Furnace reading coming up in 2016 and they publish longish, self-contained stories incorporating audio. What are you presenting for that?

[CT]: That is also a section of the novel, similarly self-contained as the Moss piece. It’s about Mortal Kombat. I’m partial to Mortal Kombat 4 since it’s what I grew up playing so I am going take recordings from that for the reading.

[CWJ]: Are you working anything outside of the novel?

[CT]: I’m writing other stories, not connected, about strange jobs.

[CWJ]: Like what?

[CT]: One is about a continuity editor for a porn production company in futuristic Seattle.

[CWJ]: Do you watch a lot of porn?

[CT]: No not really. I was talking to someone who works at Amazon writing descriptions or reviews or something, and I got to thinking about the job of someone who has to watch a lot of porn, what that would be like.

[CWJ]: Well there’s certainly room for improvement in the cinematic qualities of pornography.

[CT]: Yes, this production company believes porn could be so much more.

Look for more fiction from Christine Texeira to inspire the literary world and the hopefully the porn industry too. Visit her website at https://christinetexeira.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @xtinetexeira for more information.

Vol. 3 Collector’s Edition Preview: “Strange Attractor,” by Christine Texeira

Nov 9, 2014

Here’s another taste of the Volume 3 collector’s edition. We’ve finished the layout and design for many of the stories in the collector’s edition, and we’re printing and assembling the final products.

Christine Texeira’s “Strange Attractor” is a 44-page, 4″ by 5.25″ booklet, including a couple special leafs printed on graph paper (yeah, like the kind you took to math class in elementary school; Texeira’s title comes from a mathematical concept). The two-color cover is printed on 65 lb. bright white stock.

This booklet will go inside of the finished collector’s edition box along with seven other pieces.

The Collector’s Edition is currently available for pre-sale, along with the standard paperback. We’ll post more previews prior to the official November 30th release date.

Introducing the Vol. 3 authors

Sep 21, 2014

Volume 3 of The Conium Review will include eight stories from seven different authors. As usual, we’ve got some flash fictions, some short stories, and a novella for those who feel daring. Pre-orders go on sale soon. We’ll also unveil more details about the collector’s edition in coming weeks. Get excited about this issue, and be sure you stay that way; do something stupid and reckless just for the adrenaline rush if necessary.

This issue’s stories and authors are:

“Nostalgia,” by Olivia Ciacci
“American Rag Story,” by Tom Howard (winner of the 2014 Innovative Short Fiction Contest)
“Ladyfingers,” D. V. Klenak
“For Two Nights in a Row,” by Jan LaPerle
“Laden,” by Jan LaPerle
“Sleeping Bears,” by Zach Powers
“Strange Attractor,” by Christine Texeira
“Happy Endings Inc.,” by Meeah Williams.

About the Volume 3 Authors:

Olivia Ciacci is an improvisational comedian who teaches high school English in Connecticut. Her work has occasionally appeared on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Tom Howard’s work has appeared recently in ARDOR, Storm Cellar, Quarter After Eight, Digital Americana and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Arlington, Virginia.

DV Klenak’s piece is part of a book of linked short stories titled Le Jardin de Montenegro. She has been published in Raven Chronicles, The Pitkin Review, Underneath the Juniper Tree, Portland Monthly Magazine, and others. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College.

Jan LaPerle lives in east Tennessee with her husband, Clay Matthews, and her daughter, Winnie. She teaches at Tennessee’s oldest college, Tusculum College. She has published a book of poetry, It Would Be Quiet (Prime Mincer Press, 2013), and an e-chap of flash fiction, Hush (Sundress Publications 2012), and several other stories and poems.

Zach Powers lives and writes in Savannah, Georgia. He is writing this bio himself, and writing it in the third person, which to him feels rather pompous. He is averse to pomposity and is really quite personable. You’d like him. Give Zach Powers a chance. Why do you have to be so judgmental? His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Review, Forklift, Ohio, Phoebe, PANK, Caketrain, The Bitter Oleander, Quiddity, The Nervous Breakdown, and elsewhere. He is the founder of the literary arts nonprofit Seersucker Live (SeersuckerLive.com). He leads the writers’ workshop at the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, where he also serves on the board of directors. His writing for television won an Emmy. Get to know him at ZachPowers.com.

Christine Texeira is an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. She is from Seattle, Washington.

Meeah Williams is a graphic artist and writer. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her husband, Hank.