Questions and Answers
Body Snatchers in Baywood
Author and Cal Poly ethnic studies lecturer Nick Belardes discusses the intersections of horror, community and environmental crisis in his new novel, "The Deading."
Interview by Larry Peña // Photos by Joe Johnston
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Author and Cal Poly lecturer Nick Belardes at Sweet Springs Nature Preserve in Los Osos, one of many real Central Coast locations featured in his new novel, “The Deading.”
In the new eco-horror novel “The Deading,” the fictional town of Baywood — based on the real San Luis Obispo County community of Los Osos — is cut off from the outside world when a mysterious alien contagion emerges from the sea and begins taking over the bodies and minds of the town’s human and animal residents. Strange phenomena and violent struggles ensue as the community makes sense of their sinister new world.
“The Deading” is the debut novel from Cal Poly ethnic studies lecturer Nick Belardes. Belardes, who has also published short story and essay collections, spoke to Cal Poly Magazine about his experience writing his debut novel, the inspiration behind it and what it takes to fictionalize home.
Tell me about the process of writing your first novel. How is this different from other kinds of writing you've done?
This was my first foray into horror, and since I already like to unsettle readers, it was kind of a natural fit. The process included attending the UC Riverside Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA where I finished that book and three others. I sold two while a student — “The Deading” and “Ten Sleep” — both in the eco-horror/mixed genre wheelhouse. While writing them, I studied under horror writer Stephen Graham Jones, and familiarized myself with the genre. I think that being a bit seasoned, and having a good idea on what I needed to work on to improve my craft helped the process go extremely well.
Don’t get me wrong — long-form prose is challenging, can be heartbreaking and is a kind of migraine that you’re somehow willing to endure over and over. In addition, I think writing about the natural world in such detail was a surprisingly good experience, and excellent therapy. A group of bird watchers is central to the story, and I felt like I could create the kind of believability the story needed about birds especially — though writing about something like a red-eyed vireo was a lot different than how I’d been writing contemporary Chicano fiction.
What were you thinking about that inspired you to tell a horror story rooted in environmental issues?
We’re faced with environmental crises every day in San Luis Obispo County. We can’t escape them, though so many people ignore, dismiss and pretend that things like agricultural runoff into our coastal waters doesn’t happen.
While I knew I wanted to write horror, I’d also been attracted to reading climate fiction, eco-horror and eco-thrillers. I’ve since come up with my own definition of eco-horror: If horror is the literature of fear, then eco-horror is literature that confronts the terrifying damage we’ve done to the natural world. I was really thinking about climate, the environment and storytelling, and how a novel should be a beacon of truth, a way into a difficult conversation about our world in peril.
First image: Author and ethnic studies lecturer Nick Belardes. Second image: the cover of “The Deading.”
Writers have a duty to make clear the many dangers and pitfalls in our current world. We point out hard truths. We’re the needle on a compass pointing toward a stark northward destination. That needle wiggles and tells you, if you don’t solve our collective environmental disasters, humanity’s future will be at risk, and all of the wilderness, and everything with it will be gone. I don’t want to be around when the Earth gives her final exhale. I want her to get her lungs back.
One of the most horrifying aspects of the story is the breakdown of the community into fighting factions. Why do you think we react this way when facing uncertainty?
The horror genre embraces the unknown and tells us we must react in some way to what we don’t understand. I think we can look at America’s violent divisiveness for easy answers on why some react the way they do in the story. The community’s dark turn in the story is symbolic of anti-science, anti-intellectual behaviors that run amok in the highest levels of political and corporate power in America.
In reality and in the story, those views can infect some people unpredictably — like some kind of dark magic — and even win over some of the scientific minded. Common sense tells us not to create death cults. But in that messed up environment and community in “The Deading,” the dark unknown becomes the very thing that people become consumed with. That’s both alien and familiar, and is an ailment, until those affected believe it’s just the new normal. And I think that reaction is what’s most scary, because it makes us think, well, what if it was real?
The story is set in a fictional version of a real community close to Cal Poly. What are the benefits and challenges of writing a story like this set in a place so close to home?
I’ve been to many of the natural areas that make Baywood special, and many of those locations make an appearance in “The Deading.“ Montaña de Oro, the sandspit, the estuary, Pecho Road Willows, the Elfin Forest, Islay Creek Campground, Coon Creek … I’m an avid birder myself, and I think having seen such incredible bird species in those areas, and experiencing that sort of repetition in discovery creates muscle memory in the brain, allowing me to write certain scenes in vivid detail. I think of the Coon Creek chapter and do hope that anyone who has been on that trail will feel immersed in those scenes.
I think with any setting inspired by real locales, there are people who might get offended. People forget that fiction is fiction — it isn’t real — though it tells truths. Getting offended is kind of silly. But I haven’t received any hate mail yet.
How, if at all, do your writing and teaching inform each other?
I like to use a mix of essays and fiction when teaching students about writing. I don’t think the publication of “The Deading” changes that process much. Writing a novel is an exercise in seeking clarity, in building themes and scenes and character. It has to have an emotional core for me to be interested, and story has to be built through logic and inquisitiveness.
Students, similarly, have to ask the tough questions — which is what a novel does — and seek the very answers that may surprise them. My more creative approach to teaching how to write the academic essay might make me a little different from other professors. Then again, my aims are likely somewhat different. I simply want to help students become a more polished version of themselves: interesting, unique, inquisitive, critical, confident and most of all, caring.
