We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title Dark Factory by participating in their blog tour. And if you're at all into winning free stuff, they're running a giveaway where you can potentially win a $50 book shopping spree.
Dark Factory is
Kathe Koja’s new immersive novel from Meerkat Press, that brings together
Kathe’s award-winning fiction and her experience producing live events, to
create an experience for the reader that takes place on the page (and ebook and
audio), and onsite at https://darkfactory.club/ where readers are invited to be part
of the party.
Marfa
Carpenter is a freelance culture journalist for Blog Out, Daisychain, Excelsior, Artfetish, and Journal of Daily Pop. She interviews various Dark Factory makers
and regulars, as well as a philosophy professor, a sound designer, a tattoo
artist, an editor/arts journalist, and more. Recently, she interviewed Kathe
Koja.
Q: Can you dance?
A: I can! I love to dance. And I’m a Detroit native, so,
techno.
Q: How long have you
been wanting, or planning, to write about the club scene?
A: I never actually plan out any of my work, what I’m going
to work on next, I follow my nose, my instincts and interests; for every
writer, there must be a thousand possible projects out there, waiting to exist.
And since everything I write starts with someone I see in my mind’s eye, that
person ends up bringing the world of that story in with them. Then I start
researching, then writing.
That said, the club scene, any club, is such a rich landscape
to reimagine and write about, it’s nighttime, it’s playtime, everyone is trying
to present their most engaging persona while the atmosphere, the drinks and
drugs and whatever, open up all the inner doors. And everyone is there hoping that
something amazing will happen. The dancefloor is very much like life.
Q: Is an immersive
novel still 100% fiction, or is it closer to a creative documentary? Or is it
something else?
A: The whole concept of immersion—and I learned this making
all kinds of live events, in all sorts of real-world settings, in a Victorian
mansion, a historic church, in art galleries—immersion means going so deeply
into the story being presented to you that it becomes your minute-to-minute
reality, it is the world you’re
living in. And readers have been achieving that experience forever with books.
So making a novel that expands its narrative into the real world seems like
something that always should have existed, and now it can.
Q: Then how do you
define reality?
A: Reality defines us, I think.
Q: That’s a pretty
easy answer to a pretty hard question. Elaborate, if you can.
A: Reality has been operational long before human beings
arrived on the scene, and will operate long after we’re gone. Asking for our
definition, my definition, of reality, is like asking a word what it thinks of
the dictionary.
Q: Does this story
have an end, then?
A: That’s for its readers to decide.
DARK FACTORY by Kathe Koja
Out May 10, 2022
Speculative Fiction | SciFi | LGBT | Literary
Welcome to Dark Factory! You may
experience strobe effects, Y reality, DJ beats, love, sex, betrayal, triple
shot espresso, broken bones, broken dreams, ecstasy, self-knowledge, and the
void.
Dark Factory is a dance club: three floors of DJs, drinks,
and customizable reality, everything you see and hear and feel. Ari Regon is
the club's wild card floor manager, Max Caspar is a stubborn DIY artist, both
chasing a vision of true reality. And rogue journalist Marfa Carpenter is there
to write it all down. Then a rooftop rave sets in motion a fathomless energy
that may drive Ari and Max to the edge of the ultimate experience.
Dark Factory is Kathe Koja’s wholly original new novel from
Meerkat Press, that combines her award-winning writing and her skill directing
immersive events, to create a story that unfolds on the page, online, and in
the reader's creative mind.
Join us at DarkFactory.club. The story has already begun.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR: Kathe Koja
writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces immersive fiction
performances, both solo and with a rotating ensemble of artists. Her work
crosses and combines genres, and her books have won awards, been multiply
translated, and optioned for film and performance. She is based in Detroit and
thinks globally. She can be found at kathekoja.com.
