Gina Ranalli
D. Harlan Wilson

www.myspace.com/ginaranalli

Gina Ranalli is a Seattle-based author whose works include a Bizarro novel, Chemical Gardens (2005), and novella, Suicide Girls in the Afterlife (2006). Reviewers and blurbists have used these words in reference to her writing: “weird,” “fun,” “strange,” “entertaining,” “surreal,” “hauntingly bittersweet,” “fucked up,” “delightfully interesting,” “delightfully unpredictable,” “creative,” “incredible,” “flipping sweet,” “dark and 'kreepy,’” “hilarious,” “edgy” and “greater than Gatsby.”

While Suicide Girls in the Afterlife is currently available from Afterbirth Books, it was originally published in The Bizarro Starter Kit (2006), Eraserhead Press’s collection of stories and novellas by ten leading Bizarro authors. Each author has their own strain of writing. Gina’s is “chunky absurd.” She aspires to leave her readers confused between the desire to have a moralistic temper tantrum and to cry for their mothers.

To read a review of Chemical Gardens in this issue of The Dream People, click HERE.

DHW: In The Bizarro Starter Kit, you call your writing “chunky absurd”? What does that mean?

GR: You remember those candy bars called Chunky? They were really fat and had pretty much everything you could think of thrown into them: raisins, nuts, bits of shoe leather, marbles, rubber … I think my stories are like that. Their main ingredient is absurd, but you can still taste the other chewy things, like horror and sci-fi.

What is your impetus for writing and when did you start?

When I was a kid, I used to write stories for no other reason than I had nothing better to do. I found myself being punished a lot, forced to stay in my room, but not allowed to play the stereo and whatnot. If I had nothing to read, I would write. I was just entertaining myself, passing the time. Eventually, I got pretty good at it, teachers would compliment my stuff, that kind of thing. At first, I blew off the compliments but by the time I entered high school, I started getting the idea that this could very well be the only thing I was really good at. And, as it turns out, it is one of the few things I’m good at.

The protagonist of Chemical Gardens is a punk rock band. What is your experience with the music industry? Have you ever been in a band or are you just a fan?

I have no experience with the music industry at all, but I love both guitar and bass and occasionally get together with friends and play. I’m in a couple of joke bands. We play “freakcore.” But beyond just messing around, yeah, I’m a huge fan of punk. Old-school punk. We must clarify that.

To what degree does real life inform your fiction?

To very little degree. Once in a while, my dog will do something amusing and I’ll think, "Wouldn’t it be funny if a person did that?" And I might throw it into whatever I’m working on.

To what degree do dreams inform your fiction?

Dreams play a huge part in my writing. I have really crazy, surreal dreams. But, oddly enough, what I mostly use from my dreams is titles. I’ll wake up and there’ll be this title in my head and then I’ll spend the rest of the day wondering how to build a story around that title. An example of this would be my Dream People story “Funeral for Night Waste.” No idea where it came from, but I think it turned into a pretty cool little story.

You are an artist as well as a writer. Would you call your artwork Bizarro?

I never really thought about it as Bizarro. It’s mostly just splashing colors around, usually when a writing project has me frustrated. Painting is so much easier than writing, I think because it’s something I do entirely for myself, as a release. I think if it was going to be called anything, it would be abstract expressionism, which I suppose could also be referred to as Bizarro.

Do you make your living painting and writing or do you subsidize your income doing something else?

This isn’t something I would normally share, but I’m actually an heiress to a huge penis-pump fortune. My dad invented it, God rest his soul.

Describe your ideal breakfast.

Beer. Lots of beer.

Are print-on-demand books an ephemeral phenomenon or are they here to stay?

I think print-on-demand is here to stay. I see it as a natural evolution of the publishing industry.

Whether you hook up with a small or big press, publishing books is increasingly difficult to do. What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Contrary to popular belief, writing is a hard gig and no one succeeds overnight. The best advice is always “just write.” Write your ass off and read everything you can lay your hands on. It’s a cliché, but it’s absolutely true.

There seems to be a patriarchal undercurrent that runs through a lot of Bizarro literature (and literature in general). As a female writer, do you find yourself subject to this undercurrent or do you write against it?

Well, unlike mainstream literature and most genre fiction, I see Bizarro as far more accepting of women writers, at least at this point in time. Think about it: of the six people running the three leading Bizarro presses, four of them are women. This is a perfect time for women to stake their claim and even the playing field. Unfortunately, there just doesn’t seem to be a lot of women interested in writing Bizarro and I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because with Bizarro, you have to be more willing to kind of make a monkey out of yourself, let the lizard brain roam free. Maybe women in general aren’t as comfortable with that as men are. Or … I could just be talking out of my ass. I really have no idea.

Who are some of your favorite writers and/or filmmakers?

I love Tom Robbins, Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, Hunter S. Thompson, Kerouac, Camus, Poe, Lovecraft, Henry Miller. Most of the usual suspects. I love Tim Burton’s films. Miike, of course. Waters, Lynch. My absolute favorite movies though are the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s. Bringing Up Baby is an all-time favorite.

There are two Ranalli books on the horizon: 13 Thorns and Wall of Kiss. Are both forthcoming from Afterbirth Books? Tell us about them.

Yeah, they’ll both be coming out through Afterbirth. 13 Thorns is a short story collection/ collaboration between myself and outsider artist extraordinaire Gus Fink. I’d been collecting Gus’s art for years and when I met him at an art show here in Washington last year, I broached the subject of us working together on a book. He was really receptive to the idea and, initially, it was going to be a novel, but we quickly scrapped that idea. Gus tells these amazing little stories to go with these weird little paintings he does. I thought it would be so much fun to expand on some of those stories, flesh them out and lengthen them, and have Gus illustrate them. So, that’s what we did. He gave me these wonderful little nuggets as a springboard and off I went. The result is this book of 13 dark, disturbing stories, each with a vein of Bizarro running through them. It’s been a long road but I’m really happy with the result and I think he is as well.

Wall of Kiss is a strange little novella I wrote about a woman who falls in love with a wall. It’s the story of their relationship: the courtship, the romance, the fights, the whole ball of wax. I wanted to see if I could maintain an entire story with essentially only one character. I think it’s pretty funny and I’m anxious to hear what readers think. Hopefully, they’ll dig it.

What would you say in ten words or less if you could say anything?

”Shit, why did I say that?”

Lastly, who do you think was Jack the Ripper?

An excellent question. I have no idea, but you can be sure it was someone who would have benefited from the use of one of my dad’s penis-pumps.