Stephen Graham Jones, author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is often referred to as the book equivalent of a slasher movie. What would you say are the most iconic slasher films, and how did they influence your writing of the book?

How much time you got? I can go on and on. I have list after list, this grand sweeping attempt at a taxonomy. And each new release shakes things onto different branches. But . . . let’s see if I can limit it to five here. Halloween, which codified it all; Friday the 13th, which is when the slasher metastasized; A Nightmare on Elm Street, which was kind of the high point of the Golden Age; Scream, which reinvigorated the whole genre; and then . . . The Cabin in the Woods, say, which recontextualized the whole genre for us in a way we hadn’t been anticipating—we hardly could have anticipated. They all supply the lifeblood thrumming through My Heart Is a Chainsaw’s veins. Without them chiseling conventions and tropes into stone, and then runnelling blood into those well-worn grooves, then I’ve got to do it all myself. And it’s much easier to stand on the shoulders of Jason and Michael, Freddy and Ghostface.

Have you thought about who would play your main character, Jade, in a movie adaption of the book? Who would be on your shortlist?

Saw someone on social media saying Devery Jacobs, of Reservation Dogs of late, would be a good Jade, and I have to agree.

The setting in both My Heart Is a Chainsaw and in your previous book, The Only Good Indians, is such a vivid and pivotal part of both stories. How do you decide where to set your books and do you base these locations on real places?

For The Only Good Indians, yeah, it’s the reservation, it’s Browning, it’s Great Falls, it’s Montana—all places I know. So it was less about making them up, more about getting them right. Or, less wrong, anyway. I did have to move the elder section across the road, from Yellow Mountain to down by Duck Lake. For My Heart Is a Chainsaw, though, yeah, Proofrock’s not an actual place. But it is, to me, a real place. That place is the small town I grew up in. Like Jade, I felt like it was stuck in the sixties. Like Jade, I was the only Native around. Like Jade, I was the weird one who liked the horror stuff. And I was always having to go home from school for my T-shirt choices. 

If you had to choose another genre to write in that you’ve never written in before, what would it be and why?

Romance. I love rom-coms. Just as much as horror, really. When they all come together in the end, in a kiss? What can be better? I’ve only ever written one romance story, “Boys with Guitars,” now unavailable, I think. But it was so, so fun. I could do that more and more. Who doesn’t want to run through the love fields, right? Or the “fields of love,” maybe? Not sure what the best term is, really. Maybe I need to start there.

Are you a big film and TV buff? And if so, what have you been watching recently?

Reservation Dogs, Rutherford Falls, Ted Lasso, Yellowstone. Just now watched the pilot for the new Walker, Texas Ranger. I’m now one episode into Midnight Mass, but, as slow as I watch television—it’s been nearly a week since that ep—it’s probably going to be a while before I’m done. I don’t seem to have the ability to binge. Or to remember that I’m actually watching a show. And? I’ve always got slasher movies on hand, right? They’re usually where I end up. Happily.