Q&A with Sang Pak - Wait Until Twilight

This week's post marks the first author Q&A for Great Stories. Our guest is Sang Pak, whose excellent debut novel Wait Until Twilight was the focus of last week's post.

Here, he sheds some light on the inspiration for the story and its dark themes.

Was the idea for the book something that grew over time, or did you have a clear story outline from the start?
The idea was born from a set of dreams I had over a 2 week period a few summers back. I took the dreams, fleshed them out and added parts until I formed a story arc I could work with. Then revisions galore.

How much have your studies in psychology influenced this story?
You know, I think most of my psychological insights come from personal experience. Observing not only how I react to situations but other people as well. I've learned more from watching my thoughts and classmates during class than from the textbooks or lectures themselves. The only thing I gained from my studies were scientific terms to go along with those observations.

How did you decide on the idea of deformed babies to be the “freaks” that drive the change in Samuel? (And why three of them?)
Actually I dreamt of the three deformed babies. After I put it down on paper and was working on the revisions I started understanding what they meant. I'm not sure about the signifigance of three but I see it as a magical number not unlike the holy trinity: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost, which does play a role in the book. The deformed babies are a metaphor for a wounded twisted aspect of Samuel that seeks nurturance and protection from an absent mother.

Did you have resistance from publishers on the theme?
My publishers loved the theme. They supported me from the get to. Very few revisions were asked for and they consisted mainly of a little more description in certain parts of the book.

What would like readers to take away from this story?
On a deeper level, it would be great if they recognized on some level, the struggle between chaos/nihilism/darkness versus order/belief/light. And how one can choose between the two...and how that choice can effect the rest of one's life.

Who/what do you like to read?
Hermnn Hesse, Raymond Carver, Flannery O'connor, Tolstoy, Yukio Mishima, Kurt Vonnegut

What’s next for you as a writer?
I'm working on another project but I don't talk about works in progress. It's bad luck!

(Thanks Sang for your time. Much appreciated.)

Sang Pak explores the darkness within

It’s easy to ignore evil when your life hasn’t been touched by it, but what do you do when it has? Do you just walk away or will it haunt you until you face it? And what if the darkness is in you?

American writer Sang Pak’s debut novel Wait until twilight explores the influence of dark impulses on sixteen-year-old Samuel, an intelligent and intuitive teenager whose world is shaken when he encounters a set of deformed triplets hidden behind closed doors in his sleepy southern town.

Samuel is repulsed by the “freaks” and his reaction – and the dark thoughts he has towards the babies – haunt him for days afterward.

But when he attempts to atone for these thoughts – to prove to himself he’s a not monster – he’s confronted by true evil in the form of the twins’ adult brother Daryl. Daryl is menacing, brutal and obsessed with using Samuel’s inner turmoil for his own ends.

Samuel’s usual defence is to find a single focus and wipe everything else out of his head. He feels most normal when he feels nothing. But while that seems to have helped him suppress his grief for his mother, he can’t suppress the reality of the deformed triplets.

He tries to turn his back on the disturbed household, but he’s haunted by the triplets and the threat Daryl poses to them, and ultimately decides the only way to confront his own darkness is to save the defenceless babies.

His response to them is all the more amplified by the fact his friend David seems unperturbed by them: the triplets and their unbalanced mother are just another of life’s oddities – nothing to disturb his thoughts beyond the moment.

Wait until twilight has elements of J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, as Samuel starts to react to the world around him in increasingly confusing ways – his own world of ordered focus starts to crumble, and we wonder if he might actually be descending into madness.

But, just as the violent encounters with Daryl disturb and conflict him, relationships in his “normal” world provide balance and help Samuel transform into the man he wants – and needs – to be.

Pak creates a dark undercurrent throughout the story that ensures a sense of menace pervades every page, even when Samuel is relaxed. The idea that seediness and darkness lurk just out of sight is not new - particularly in American fiction - but Pak's approach is powerful in its understatement.

In Samuel’s home town, the seedier side of human nature is indulged in back woods cabins only a stone’s throw from suburbia. That reality leads Samuel to assume the only way the rest of his community can be “normal” is to pretend there’s nothing terrible in the world - a luxury he no longer has.

Wait until twilight features a strong and confident narrative voice. Samuel is a likable and sympathetic character; he's masculine without being overtly fuelled by testosterone, and his inner struggles are compelling and believable.

Pak has created a novel that's at times deeply disturbing, but ultimately redemptive, and I suspect its characters will continue to stay with me for many weeks to come.

Next post: a Q&A with Sang Pak.