Ian Chorão

Ian Chorão is a writer and psychotherapist in private practice in Brooklyn, New York. He lives with his wife, who is a filmmaker and professor; they have two children.

Chorão's new novel, When We Talk to the Dead, is his first book of horror.

Like his main character, Chorão appreciates that the space between feeling and creation, reality and imagination is often ambiguous at best.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

My book’s title, When We Talk to the Dead, was a last-minute decision. For the longest time it was called, She’s Not There. Both titles work, but are wildly different, vibe wise. She’s not there is a refrain said several times in the book; it has multiple meanings (no spoilers but trust me).

But alluding to what the book’s about isn’t enough. A title needs to capture more: tone, genre. My book is a gothic, psychological horror. I needed a title to speak to that. When We Talk to the Dead instantly tells you the type of story you’re about to read. This is a scary book, a story of darkness. This is the tale of 19-year-old Sally da Gama, so haunted by tragic loss that she will follow a path that might offer release or might plunge her deeper into madness.

The title also has an energy and action I really liked. It sets up a dynamic. When we talk to the dead, what then happens? Get ready. Once you enter the book, you will find out.

What's in a name?

A character can’t feel alive and dimensional until I have their name. Personally, I shy away from their names being overly symbolic—for me that feels too pushy. I name them more the way people often name their kids. A name you like, a name that reflects some aspect of their background, culture, region. For me, it’s less about being meaningful and more about being naturalistic. Finding a name that feels like their name.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

I didn’t read much horror or gothic literature when I was a teenager. I loved existential books, like The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and books that explored the ills of society, like Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, and I was also into intense emotional books, like The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. At first blush, my teenage self might think: “Older me, you wrote a horror novel?” But in truth, the differences between genres is maybe less than we think. Horror simply offers an extreme and active landscape to explore all the things I have always loved: the deeply complicated and emotional experience of being a flawed person living in a very imperfect world. Once my teenage self began reading this book, I’d like to think he’d be hooked.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

For me, neither is harder, just different. The beginning always just appears. There’s some situation or person I’m curious about, a memory, a stranger I see on the street, an image, an issue, and suddenly my curiosity has morphed that into a character or fictional situation.

I’m a psychotherapist. I work with a lot of traumas, anxiety, fear. Another thing that comes up is how variable people’s memories are, particularly as it’s been affected by life events: some have very detailed memories, some very impressionistic, some people have no memories, whole sections of their lives lost behind a big blank. One day, these culminated into a character in my head. A young woman who had endured a tragedy in childhood. A traumatic event she has no memory of that has, nonetheless, haunted her life since. A beginning was born.

Having a character and situation is one thing; finding the right entryway into the story is often a lot of work of going down many dead ends until the right path is found. It’s time consuming but doesn’t feel hard because even writing you toss out helps you get to know your character.

The ending is different from the beginning. Where the beginning just appears spontaneously, the ending reveals itself once I’m deep into the writing, but well before I’ve gotten to the end. Once the life of the character is set in motion, I know them well enough to see exactly where they are going. And once I know the ending, it tends to be set, almost like fate.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

There is a diverse cast of characters in the book, of varying ages, races, ethnicities, genders, cultures, economies. I am closer to some than others. There is a therapist—obviously I know what it is to be a therapist; likewise, the main character’s father taps into me being a father. I’m a different age and gender than the main character, but we share a lot in common. Though I don’t have the traumatic background she has, we are similar temperamentally, ethnically, the ways we both have felt like “the other” in different situations. She makes little films to try to understand the things she doesn’t understand, or to at least find some expression for what churns inside her—for me writing serves a very similar function. I feel I know her very well.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Like an archipelago, a group of seemingly distinct islands that are connected beneath the water, there’s an interconnection across creative fields; they commingle. I get inspiration for my writing from so many art forms beyond other writing.

Music is huge. I always have a playlist for my characters. How music folds around you, moves through your body, transports you, how it conjures emotions: these are so helpful when trying to occupy the sensation of the written character. A song like "Depreston" by Courtney Barnett is as good as any Raymond Carver story.

I studied visual art, and my writing tends to be visual. I will look at art, colors used, how a hand is painted, and it taps me into a wordless visual relationship to things that I then try to put into words.

Films, for the story, for the tempo, how scenes are cut together. A favored movie of my childhood, Over the Edge, had a huge impact on how it felt to be a teenager, and in my book, I have an ode to it if one cares to look. Or a movie like The Witch captured an unnerving menace that inspired the atmosphere of my book.

Lastly, spending time outside, in nature. The book has an island that’s another character. I wanted to let the island speak in its language of wind and plants and sea. I also wanted to capture the embodied experience of being a person in the physical world. The felt experience of running, of hyperventilating; feeling the elements of air and water on the skin, the physical nature of fear. I spend time in nature, with the elements, so I can try to write those elements in a way that the words might fade, and the reader forgets they’re reading because they’ve been plunged into a world of sensations.

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--Marshal Zeringue