Ligon balances dark and light with dual book release

Most authors don’t release two books at the same time. But to Sam Ligon, it made perfect sense to bring his story collection “Wonderland” and the novel “Among the Dead and Dreaming” into the world simultaneously.

After all, he worked on both simultaneously; the weird, fun and super-short stories of “Wonderland” giving him a breather from the darker work of writing “Among the Dead.” He sees them as related. “Both of them are about love,” he said. “I think.”

He added, “The thing about the novel is it’s heavy. But what I like about ‘Wonderland’ is that it’s just play for me.”

When the novel got picked up by Leapfrog Press, he was still writing the short stories, “and I thought it would be cool to see (“Wonderland”) come out at the same time as the novel, because I was writing them at the same time.”

The story collection can trace its origins to Pie and Whiskey, the annual literary reading, now in its fifth year, Ligon organizes for Get Lit. For that night, he challenges writers, himself included, to write works of no more than 1,000 words. The prompts have varied year to year but one thing hasn’t: the stories reference pie and whiskey in some way.

So in “Paradise Lost,” a set of twins continues nursing well into their teen years, as their mother produces whiskey from one breast and melted butter from another. “Sing a Song of Sixpence” is a riff on the old nursery rhyme, but this time, two lovers train blackbirds to kill the king once they’ve been freed from a pie.

“I became really interested in this short form, and what I started doing in that short form was these absurd, playful stories that were a relief from the longer work, which was heavy,” he said. “But then I really liked it. I liked the completion of it. I liked the movement of it.”

The title story, “Wonderland,” was written for The Spokesman-Review’s inaugural Summer Stories series, in 2014. It tells the tale of a teenager who runs away to the carnival and falls in love with the bearded lady, Sheena. Seeing the story published with an illustration created by SR staff artist Molly Quinn gave him another idea: an illustrated story collection. So he turned to a former student, Stephen Knezovich, who created collages for each story.

“His collage work is fantastic,” Ligon said. “He sent me his collages, and they were cool. So we put together this manuscript.”

Ligon, who moved to Spokane 12 years ago to edit Willow Springs, the literary magazine at Eastern Washington University where he also teaches creative writing, has published an earlier novel, “Safe in Heaven Dead,” and the story collection “Drift and Swerve.” It’s in “Drift and Swerve,” he said that he found his latest novel, “Among the Dead and Dreaming.”

“Among the Dead” began life about a decade ago as a 9-11 novel, Ligon said, but it didn’t work, so he put it away. Then he turned his attention to writing the stories for “Drift,” including four about a woman named Nikki who is in an abusive relationship that ends when she stabs her boyfriend and leaves him for dead.

“Then I went back and looked at this manuscript (for “Among the Dead”), and I was like, ‘Oh, I know what this book needs. What this book needs is Nikki.’”

So he cut 99 percent of the book, kept a couple characters, and repurposed the Nikki story involving the fight with her boyfriend. It then picks up her story 13 years later and spins it out in series of vignettes, all told from the viewpoints of different characters, both living and dead.

“It was fun for me to say, ‘Oh, these books are related,’” he said. “And I clearly was not done with her. I wanted to work with her more.”

He sees the book as almost a romance novel, but with the narrative drive of a thriller. The tension comes in the form of Burke, a violent ex-con who tracks down Nikki seeking revenge for the death of his brother. Nikki is a woman whose solution to every problem is to run. In “Among the Dead,” she realizes she no longer can outrun her past.

Burke is one bad dude, a character along the lines of Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho” or Frank from “Blue Velvet.” Ligon writes Burke with so much menace, as a reader he’s hard to shake.

“It’s interesting to have a character who’s really antagonistic. That’s part of how story works. That doesn’t mean they need to be mustache-twirling, but as the same time, I want this guy to be really (messed) up,” he said. “I wanted to write a villain.”