We chat with author Amber Sparks about Happy People Don’t Live Here, which is a darkly funny gothic tale and follows a reclusive mother and her saturnine daughter move into a haunted building brimming with eccentrics―and secrets.
Hi, Amber! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Sure! I’m an absolute weirdo disguised as a normal person, and I’ve written all my life. I’m obsessed with ghosts, even though I don’t really believe in them, I’m from the Midwest, I have a ten year old daughter, and humor is my favorite coping mechanism. I use it to hide all the sadness, like most good midwesterners.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve always loved stories, ever since I can remember. My parents always had books around when I was a kid – I used to read my dad’s old fairy tales collections over and over again, and just absorb those tropes. I can’t ever remember not wanting to create my own versions – I think I’ve written about twenty different versions of the Six Swans tale by this point in my life. Fairy tales are so great because they’re endlessly malleable and repeatable, like a game of telephone.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: the Dick and Jane and Spot books, my mom put them in my crib because I refused to nap and I taught myself to read with them
- The one that made you want to become an author: Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Little, Big by John Crowley, I’ll never stop being trapped in its magic
Your debut novel, Happy People Don’t Live Here, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Sad, funny, haunted, weird mystery-ish
What can readers expect?
Strange, strong characters, mother and daughters, miniatures, a former child prodigy, shitty men (but also a good one!) a scene set in an Olive Garden, a flapper ghost
Where did the inspiration for Happy People Don’t Live Here come from?
Oh gosh, where didn’t it come from? I think initially I just wanted to write a haunted house novel, abut since I was stuck in my apartment building during the pandemic, the idea of a haunted apartment building was stuck in my head. And I’ve always wanted to write about a 20s sanitarium and the ghosts of the patients there, so those two ideas ended up melding into one haunted building with a very present past.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Yes! All of them, honestly – I think it’s probably not shocking that Fern was my favorite to write, I’m sure it’s clear in the sheer amount of real estate she occupies. I’m a huge mystery reader and I always wanted to write one of those scenes where the detective gets everybody in a room and explains the whole thing, so I had an absolute blast writing that. Same with the seance – as much as anything this book felt like my way of just doing whatever the hell I’d always wanted to in a story but never quite had the space to.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Oh god yes – writing is so hard, it’s nothing but challenges! I think maybe the hardest thing was just sustaining my momentum, because I’m typically a short story writer, and I get so bored and twitchy working on one thing all the time. I had to write a short story collection in between just to keep myself going.
What’s next for you?
I’m finishing up my next short story collection and I’m working on the next novel, I am so sorry to say. Everyone always told me it’s like a disease, once you write one novel you have to write more, and it’s true.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
SO many books! Just recently, I adored Ilana Masad’s BEINGS, which just came out, and is so multi-layered and fantastic. I just read a gorgeous, fascinating book about murder ballads by Katy Horan called MURDER BALLADS, which I bought because in October, we really spooky stuff. I’m nearly done with MURDERLAND by Caroline Fraser, which I read because Maris Kreizman recommended it and it’s astounding in its intricacies, the lines it draws between serial killers and industrial pollution In the Pacific Northwest. Fraser does an incredible job with tone throughout the book, you can almost hear this low drone of dread.
Next up on my reading list: Erin Somers’s The Ten Year Affair. Erin is one of the funniest, sharpest writers I know and this book sounds like a kind of Sliding Doors but with parents of little kids. I also just picked up Shintaro Kago’s BRAIN DAMAGE, because it looked fantastic and because again, it’s October.
