Every Tuesday, get to know a bit about the stories behind the books you love, and discover your next favourite novel.
Regular Night Beats readers will know Marten Norr as the illustrator for the Sad Bastard Cookbook. But did you know that he also has a book out? And it’s amazing? The man is just too talented and we’re all jealous.
Zilla: Both Rachel and I are obsessed with your debut novel. Tell our readers all about it!
Marten: Demon Engine is my publishing debut—a genre-fucky, self-indulgent, gross pirate adventure full of Problematic™ queers and weird allegories (try as I might, I cannot stop the allegories from appearing in my writing. They haunt me). Said problematic queers include Salvador AKA Sally, a skrunkly trans dude who could beat Jack Sparrow in a rum-drinking contest and who my wife has deemed a “deadbeat brotherfather” to Dru, an eleven-year-old wunderkind who wields her extremely well-earned attitude problem to great effect. The two of them are business partners—Dru serves the ale at the tavern they own; Sally drinks it to drown out the 200 ghosts trapped in his skull and thereby spare everyone around him from his cursed magic. Their perfect lives are disrupted when two naval sailors come to town intending to recruit Sally for the famously-straightforward One Last Job. The sailors are Captain Chelsea Millard, former pirate turned team dad (his left arm is an eel) and First Mate Mary McCracken (she made a faustian bargain with an eldritch chaos entity to trans her gender. It had Unforeseen Consequences and she will make that your problem). They’re joined by a self insert silly little academic who uses their autism for evil. There’s also a tentacle that speaks in Shakespearean free verse.
The ruler of their country has commissioned them and their ship, the Steadfast, to hunt down an ancient sea monster so they can stuff it inside a battery and use it for imperialism. This obviously ends up going extremely well for them, and they definitely don’t encounter any meat rooms, sentient storms, angler fish gods, or ethical crises along the way. Certainly no found family, either.
Zilla: One of the themes in the book is the idea of second chances–whether we think we deserve them or not. What drew you to this theme?
Marten: When I set out to write this abomination it was meant to be low-stakes and full of monsterfucking. No themes only vibes. The theme of second chances didn’t really manifest until the original vibes (low stakes and monsterfucking, to reiterate) had been unintentionally defenestrated. I got to the first scene where the monsterfucking was supposed to occur and some cosmic force gently guided my hands away from the tentacles and toward…well, more tentacles, but these tentacles ended up being more concerned with whether or not humanity as a whole deserved to recover from climate change and whether a person can make up for the harm they enabled or enacted under a colonial regime. The tentacles are indeed the ones asking those questions, to be clear. Specifically the Shakespearean one mentioned above.
That said, I’m certain that the theme of second chances eventually appeared because I’m fascinated by hauntings as a concept. Sally’s haunted by literal actual ghosts, but he’s also haunted by the poor decisions he’s made. He can banish the ghosts themselves easily enough if he has the right spell components, but what components does one require to banish the ramifications of one’s own actions? The book asks that question again and again, and sometimes the answer is “you can’t,” and sometimes the answer is that you have to try again, you have to look straight at the bad stuff you did, and if you can’t go around it, you have to go straight through. Often the answer is that, even if you do get a second chance, you have to be okay with taking it, and doing the work, and getting exactly zero pats on the back for it. But sometimes you get the second chance and you take it and the ghosts get quieter.
Zilla: Please infodump about ocean creatures to me. Please.
Marten: Siphonophores can grow to lengths of over 150 meters. There’s a species of sponge that has a lifespan of at least 15,000 years. Oarfish are a likely cause of early mariners’ tales of sea serpents; they’re also called “doomsday fish” because they are said to wash ashore just before earthquakes. Fish that live between 100 and 1000 meters below the surface (mesopelagic fish, the ones we rarely catch samples of) make up NINETY-FIVE PERCENT of the world’s fish biomass. Starfish vomit out their own stomachs in order to eat. A pufferfish makes crop circles in the sand to attract a mate; the process can go on for days. There’s a type of mollusk that steals other creatures’ shells and glues them onto its own. Many deep sea fish are reddish in color because red’s wavelength is the least visible in darkness. Sharks as a species are older than trees.
Zilla: It’s shocking to read the book and realize I’ve devoured 400+ pages in a handful of days—but the book is impossible to put down. How did you keep the pace of the story without it ever feeling rushed?
Marten: One thing I felt was really important when going into this project was that I didn’t want to strictly adhere to the 3-act story arc they teach you in high school English class (you know the one: inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, etc.). I’ve always had the ability to predict the course and events of a story, like…really really accurately, to the point where when I’m watching a movie I can see a character and instantly know whether they’re going to survive the film. I’m pretty sure it’s just autistic pattern recognition and a deep love of/familiarity with storytelling, but it honestly gets pretty tiring because I know the prescribed story arc progression so well that any story which follows it super closely feels less exciting because of that fact. More than that—the three-act story arc I’m referring to is so vehemently championed by mainstream publishing (not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation) to the point where other narrative structures, such as those from non-Western storytelling traditions, as well as those that are simply less-used in general, are actively discouraged. While Demon Engine doesn’t follow any one narrative structure in specific, I did make an effort to play with story beats in a way I hope is engaging for people like me who yearn for something stranger and more surprising than the three-act structure. Most if not all of the people who’ve read Demon Engine at the time of this interview have indicated in some capacity that I achieved that goal, with comments from beta readers ranging from things like “this reads like a hot knife through butter” to “why does this feel like a slice-of-life anime with no plot; I’m sorry but I literally cannot finish it.” I’m pretty pleased with both assessments.
Zilla: Squelch.
Marten: …Listen. Sometimes I truly feel wicked for bringing Barnaby Tethers as a character into the world. At first he was just going to be a nameless voice in Sally’s head saying ‘squelch’ over and over to add to the creep factor, or maybe the silly factor. I honestly don’t remember what gave me the idea for his backstory, but it was one of those times where you write something and then have to stand up and go for a walk and think about your life choices for a couple minutes.
I strenuously debated how to read his lines for the audiobook. He only ever says “squelch,” “walls,” and “please.”
But.
In a thing I wrote for myself to flesh out Sally’s backstory, well…here’s an excerpt from that. (Spoilers ahoy.)
Another familiar sound coalesced out of nothingness. But although it was undeniably the sound of viscera squelching rhythmically, it oddly sounded like a person imitating it with their voice.
“Tethers?” Sally whispered, remembering the impressions he’d gotten of the inside of the Whale’s heart and the horrific sounds it made as Barnaby joined his school of remora. The tears in his eyes spilled over. “Saints, Tethers, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Yeeeah…Anyway, I left it up to the reader’s imagination in Demon Engine whether or not Barnaby is saying “squelch” or making squelch noises—whether or not it was a little bit silly or just plain horrifying. In the audiobook I ended up just saying ‘squelch’ so listeners don’t have to hear a bunch of wet mouth noises in their ear.
But Barnaby’s situation as a character is similar to two others of Sally’s ghosts: Ioan (which is pronounced YO-an, for anyone who’s curious) and Ronald. For the first third-ish of the book, Ioan comes across as slightly overbearing, maybe a bit passive aggressive, but overall interested in Sally’s wellbeing. Ronald’s just a grouchy guy who loves tea so much. At first they function as something like comedic relief—quirky and almost endearing at best; dubiously redeemable just like every other character at worst. About halfway through the novel, you find out their real pasts and motives and, like Barnaby, their words, actions, and backstories become much more sinister. Barnaby, however, is just a dude who got the absolute shortest end of the stick. You’ll have to read the book to find out what Ioan and Ronald did.
Zilla: Where can we find you on social media? Where can we buy the book?
Marten: I am, regrettably (but blissfully), pretty inactive on social media. I’m only on tumblr (martennorr) and Instagram (@martennwrites). Demon Engine is available in physical, ebook, and audiobook format almost anywhere you find books online.
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