Fresh off a Fantasy-category win at the Small Spec Book Awards, Evan shares insights into their worldbuilding, influences, and writing journey
Evan J. Peterson is a boundary-pushing voice in contemporary speculative fiction and game writing, blending dark fantasy, horror, humor, and queer creativity into something unmistakably their own. Winner of the Fantasy category in the 2024 Small Spec Book Awards, Evan has built a body of work that spans fiction, poetry, and interactive storytelling and their debut novel Better Living Through Alchemy.
With work appearing in Weird Tales, Nightmare Magazine, Queers Destroy Horror, and numerous anthologies, Evan continues to champion stories that challenge genre expectations and celebrate the wonderfully strange. In today’s conversation, we commemorate Evan’s recent award win in the Fantasy category at the Small Spec Book Awards and explore the ideas, inspirations, and worldbuilding behind their writing and creative life.
I wanted the book to look like the Seattle I see around me: a community of immigrants and children of immigrants, of Indigenous people who never disappeared, of trans people and queer people and witchy people and weirdos.
Evan J. Peterson
How did you begin your writing journey?
My parents always read to me when I was a kid. Once I learned how to write, I just started writing stories and didn’t know where to stop. I suppose I still don’t. I always wanted to be an author, especially of SFF and horror.
Better Living Through Alchemy mixes occult noir with urban fantasy in a very Seattle-specific way. What aspects of the city’s culture or atmosphere most shaped the book’s tone?
Seattle is a city full of misfits. The rock n roll history, plus the tech boom, plus some other elements has made this a great city to be queer, to be an artist, etc. There’s also autistic spectrum people everywhere, which creates an interesting chemistry. I wanted the book to look like the Seattle I see around me: a community of immigrants and children of immigrants, of Indigenous people who never disappeared, of trans people and queer people and witchy people and weirdos.
Kelly Mun’s heightened sense of smell is such a unique detective trait. How did you develop that ability as a narrative tool, and what does it allow you to explore that a traditional detective story wouldn’t?
Thanks! There’s a degree of synesthesia to claireolfaction that is missing from the other “claires.” Kelly has her detective practice, and the addition of her psychic smell is two-fold. On one psychic level, she can smell the actual chemical scents connected to an event–blood where violence has occurred, cash where money is a central element of the case. But on another level entirely, she gets synesthetic impressions of ideas-as-scents. Lies smell acidic, etc.
Your work often blends multiple genres. What draws you to hybrid genres, and how do you balance them in your storytelling?
I’m pretty antigenre in general. I did a lot of club kid drag in the past, and the concept of “genderfuck” is something I started translating into “genrefuck.” I don’t try too hard to push something outside of a form or genre; rather, I let the story grow and be whatever strange little genre/gender/form it needs to be to express itself fully. The stories are genre-queer, and I try not to enforce a genre on them.
Non-Linear Investigations uses psychic and esoteric methods to solve crimes. How much of that comes from your own research into occult traditions versus playful invention?
Most of the esoteric tools used in the book are not my own invention. I love real world folk magic, hoodoo, and such. I also love the absurdity of imperialist cultures mistranslating native ideas, then believing this new mutant fakelore they’ve created is the authentic folk belief. Ti Kitha Demembre is a real thing, though she isn’t a real goddess or spirit. Hot foot powder and book-and-key are also real folk traditions. The dreamachine is real. The playfulness comes through the monsters and the magical phenomena, but the tools and practices are mostly real.
The drug ‘bardo’ sets off the central mystery. How did real-world conversations about harm, transformation, or altered states inform your worldbuilding around this substance?
I love speculative drugs. I’m a huge fan of William Burroughs, David Cronenberg, and other weirdos who explore fusions of magic, psychic phenomena, urban legend, and sci fi technology. As with the ethnic folk magic I reference throughout the book, there’s also a deep folklore to addiction culture and recreational drug culture. I wanted to treat my users as human beings, with the same respect I try to give to the folk practitioners I write about. And as Burroughs and Cronenberg would probably agree, one person’s recreational drug is another person’s intimate religious tool, and yet another person’s psycho-pharmaceutical medicine. That’s the fusion I’m really interested in: the artifact that can be magic and sacred and recreational and clinically tested, all at the same time.
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