Special Feature: Interview with Angela Yuriko Smith

Hey, everyone! I am finally back from my writer hiatus and I have a ton of adventures and folklore to tell you about later. I am working on getting my third novel published and released this summer and I have started my own spiritual coven. Making the journey from Niceville, Florida to Nashville, Tennessee wasn't easy, but I had no idea that I would learn and experience new stories and interesting people along the way. One of those people is my old friend and fellow writer, Angela Yuriko Smith. I met Angela back in 2015 while I was still attending the Say The Word open mic nights in Niceville, Florida. Since then we have both moved out of the area with myself settling in Nashville, Tennessee, and her settling in Independence, Missouri, a historic suburb of Kansas City. A fun fact about Angela is when she is not writing, she is studying and investigating paranormal activity and writing poetry about the stories and information she finds from these investigations.

When asked about her passion for writing, Angela fondly remembers that it all started with a popular DC comic series, The Suicide Squad. “When I was in second grade, I got my hands on a copy of Suicide Squad Vol. 1.58. In this comic there's a villain called The Writer (Grant Morrison). He wore a laptop computer strapped to his chest and his superpower was writing. He was able to control things by writing the reality he wanted to see. It hit me that this truth was bigger than just the comic. In the end, The Writer dies from writer's block. That was the day I learned I could write a new life for myself as long as I kept the ideas coming.” They do say the pen is mightier than the sword. From that day on, Angela started to create a whole new life for herself through her passion for writing and her second grade year was when she decided to pick up the pen. “I wrote a story about a man driven mad because he moved into a house once owned by a serial killer who filled the walls with baby skulls. My teachers were worried about me. My first official fictional sale was to an online zine called Lovewords-ezine back in 1998 or so. Around the same time, I started writing for The Community News in Browns Mills, New Jersey. I did all sorts of writing for advertisements, newspapers, online news outlets, basically anyone who would give me space for a byline. If they paid me, even better.” From her hard work, Angela was able to achieve her dreams and publish her first book in 2011.

The creativity process for Angela is as follows: “It's less a process and more just being receptive. I feel like my stories already exist somewhere, in an alternate reality, and all I'm doing is relating what happens there. I think of writing as being like a medium. Instead of a planchette and a ouija board, I have a mouse and keyboard. The words flow through from somewhere else, already finished. All I'm responsible for is listening.” Angela states that past and current events inspire her genre and writing. “I read a lot of science news and never fail to find something bizarre to make me think. I love art as well, especially anything that breaks the rules.” Starting up with your passion is never easy, but Angela was able to create and plan goals for herself. “I always felt satisfied with my writing until I published my first book in 2011. Before that I had defined goals and I wrote different projects. Id' have the word count, the general idea of what was wanted and a paycheck. When I published my first book, End of Mae, it was like sealing the biggest thing I have ever written into a bottle and tossing it into the ocean. I had no idea if anyone would like it or not. I felt like I had just started over again.” It was someone's encouraging words that kept Angela going. “I was listening to an interview and the author was being gushed over as being an overnight success. She laughed and admitted she had been doing this for ten years and stated that she was just now getting noticed. From her experience, five books and five years is what it took. I had two books out at the time so it gave me back that goal. From my experience, she was right. I do feel like around my five year/five book mark I started gaining traction. That was also around the time where I joined the Horror Writers Association. That was one of the best things I did for my career.”

Balancing our passions with our everyday lives can always seem to be a challenge, however, Angela had ways to overcome them. “The hardest thing was balancing my writing needs with the needs of the world. I had four babies along the way, and I would take them with me when I did newspaper interviews. Because of it, they got to go backstage for a lot of events. While the interviews were fun, finding time to write them was the trick. I remember one afternoon when I was a few hours away from a deadline and the kids weren't cooperating. I wrote the story on my knees in front of the computer so my youngest one could nurse while I typed. I had a three year old who had decided jumping on moms' calves while holding onto her hair would be fun. It was a painful experience but I got the job done. When I feel frustrated, I always go back and remember that afternoon and remember how I survived it. The rest of my experience has been a cakewalk.” Angela sites Laura Ingalls Wilder, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, J.R.R. Tolkein, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Neil Gaiman as her influences for her work. “Laura Ingalls Wilder what love looked like. J.R.R. Tolkein showed me you don't have to be big to do big things. Edgar Allan Poe taught me how words can be like magic spells to conjure shadows. Arthur Conan Doyle taught me the power of keen observation. However, the biggest influence on my life would be Neil Gaiman. I picked up a strange graphic novel called Sandman in a bookshop. I felt reality shatter around me.”

Angela's husband, Ryan Aussie Smith, and her children have been her biggest support system throughout the whole process. “The same children who gave me shin splints when they were younger are now my biggest cheerleaders. Ryan is also an author and listened on Skype to End of Mae as I wrote it and he encouraged me to finish it. Without him, End of Mae probably wouldn't have been finished.” Hearing that also reminds me of how supportive my own husband is of my work and goals. It's always helpful to have supportive partners. When it comes to having a target audience, Angela states that she never focused on a direct target. “I write based on what pops into my head and what demands to be written. Sometimes it's for children and sometimes it's for adults. Sometimes it's even for a certain struggle. My work, Bitter Suites (2019 Bram Stoker finalist), was written for those contemplating suicide. I hoped the story could be a role play tool to help someone walk through the experience and learn from it vicariously.” The biggest influence for Angela would be Neil Gaiman's character, Death. “When I read Sandman, reality shattered around me. In the middle of the broken pieces was his character, Death, one of The Endless. I had a damaged view of myself up to that point and considered myself to be a kind of monster, unlovable and vile. However, here was Neil Gaiman's character, Death. She didn't pretend to be something she wasn't. She accepted and loved herself despite being the most terrifying concept most of us can imagine, and she was happy. I certainly wasn't as monstrous as Death herself, no matter how terrible I thought I was. She became my role model. As a concept, death also influences me. I'm told that I burn the candle at both ends. This is because I never know when those flames will be snuffed out, and I hope to make good use of the light while I still have it.”

Angela had many people to thank for supporting her and helping her accomplish her goals. “My husband and my family, as I mentioned before. For poetry, I have to specifically mention Linda D. Addison and Marge Simon for their mentorship and encouragement. Jonathan Maberry is excellent and taught me how to accept fiction as a serious business. Alessandro Manzetti has taught me how to be bold and unapologetic in my work. Bryan Thao Worra for mentoring me and helping me to allow my blended Asian culture to find its way into my work. The entire Horror Writers Association and every creative soul that has come before me. Every innovative stroke has paved the way for new things to come. Authors have suffered to bring forth new ideas so that we can build upon them. The foundation of mankind is built on pages and pages, a paper and ink colossus that marks out where we've been so we can go forward. If it weren't for all the innovators, I'd be starting out with a bit of mud on a cave wall.” Angela says that being yourself and putting yourself in your work is the most important advice she can give. “My first real story of any value was Vanilla Rice, it first appeared in Where The Stars Shine, an anthology that took Alberta's Speculative Book of the Year. It's been reprinted a few times since, most notably in Black Cranes, at this moment another Bram Stoker Awards finalist and a strong contender in the anthology category. Before Vanilla Rice, I was writing Gothic style horror with none of my personal quirks in them. Bryan Thao Warra asked me why I didn't have any Asian experiences in my work, since that was part of my personal life. I told him because I didn't have the full Asian experience. I'm pinched between two worlds. He told me to write that. Vanilla Rice is the first story that has me in it. There is the stress of two worlds fighting to coexist, and every time I look back into it, I see facets of myself reflected back. That world was a good place for me, and everything I write in that authentic place I have had success with it. The other story I have in Black Cranes, is called Skin Dowdy, and it is in the same world, just higher up in the economic food chain. That's a really long way of saying be authentic in your work. Authentic doesn't mean who you think you should be, but be who you are right now.”

In conclusion to my time with Angela, I had to ask a random fun question: If you could interview any historical figure, who would it be and why? “I would say Noah, from the Biblical Ark story. If that all happened as it's written, that man literally survived an apocalypse. He saw humanity wiped out and the entire face of the earth wiped clean and lived to tell about it. I'd love to hear a first hand account of this. Did he have nightmares thinking everyone he had ever known, aside from his immediate family, was dead? Did he have regrets? Would he confess he'd forgotten the dragons and unicorns, and the Fae had refused his offers? We complain about self-isolation for a year, he floated around on a boat with two of every animal with no internet. I would love to find out what that was like.”

Angela Yuriko Smith has many different links to her work. One of those is a magazine she co publishes with her husband, Space and Time, at spaceandtime.net . All issues can be found at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RDVZ6F9?ref_=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_tpbk&binding=paperback . Her personal blog is featured at www.angelaysmith.com which features poetry and story links as well as interviews with other writers. I hope you all enjoyed this interview with an old friend who helped me get on my feet in the writing world. Next few interviews I have are with my old friends, Sweet Cambodia, a musician, Chloe Halpin, and a tattoo artist with a passion for traveling. Happy Reading!

-Melanie Lane Fontaine