We chat with author Daryl Gregory about When We Were Real, which is a madcap adventure following two friends on a cross-country bus tour through the mind-boggling glitches in their simulated world as they grapple with love, family, secrets, and the very nature of reality in a simulation.
Hi, Daryl! Welcome back! It’s been about four years since you last joined us for the release of The Album of Dr. Moreau. How have you been and what have you been up to?
I’ve been great! I’ve moved back to Seattle, the city of my heart, gotten remarried to the love of my life (it’s complicated, but the wonderful kind of complicated), wrote a bunch of things…. Life is very sweet as long as I don’t look outside the window and see how the world’s on fire. At this point, writing about how we are living in a simulation feels a bit like wish fulfillment. It means there are other sims where things are not quite as terrible. Or maybe they’re worse and that would let us feel better about this one?
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I can’t remember not wanting to be a writer. It seemed to go hand in hand with reading. Of course as soon as I finished a book I’d want to write my own. I couldn’t figure out why everyone else didn’t. But I will say I was helped along by one thing – I grew up in a religious family, where I was required to sit on a pew for hours and hours with only a notebook to scribble in. There’s no better training for a writer than extreme boredom.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The first book was a comic – a Marvel Double Feature with stories of both Captain America and Iron Man. The first chapter book I read on my own was a novel adaption of the movie Herbie the Love Bug. I bought it at school at one of the Scholastic Book fairs in the cafeteria.
- The one that made you want to become an author: Herbie the Love Bug!
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Jonathan Crowley’s Little, Big. That book is a masterpiece, and every time I read it I find small, magical moments that strike me differently from when I first read it in my twenties.
Your latest novel, When We Were Real, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
The Matrix: Innocent Bystanders Edition
What can readers expect?
Seven years after the world was notified we’ve been living in a simulation, two old friends decide after a terminal cancer diagnosis to take one last road trip, a tour of North America’s Impossibles—the glitches, anomalies, and miracles in the landscape that appeared on Announcement Day. Their fellow passengers on the bus include a nun hunting for an absent God, a pregnant influencer determined to make her child too famous to be deleted, horny octogenarians, an indignant skeptic… and a professor on the run from sociopaths who take The Matrix as scripture. It’s The Canterbury Tales, but with 21st-century pilgrims trying to figure out what really matters in an artificial world.
Where did the inspiration for When We Were Real come from?
Two real-world events and one movie. The movie was obviously The Matrix. I was annoyed with myself that I ended up cheering as side characters and non-evil security guards got mowed down by the heroes. What is life in a sim like for the people who can’t dodge bullets and will never be “the one”? Is the meaning of life changed when you know you’re made of ones and zeroes? If you’re religious, how does that change your relationship to God?
Then, in real life, years ago I went on a a cross-country drive from Chicago to California with my pal and fellow writer, Jack Skillingstead. He came with me during a tough time in my life. And then, more recently, a friend had a health scare that got me thinking about mortality, aging, and male friendships. I mashed all those together, along with The Epic of Gilgamesh, and Canterbury Tales.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
As for which characters I enjoyed the most, my job was to love them all. I loved writing banter for the two old friends, but it was a blast to write the young people who are still figuring things out, like the pregnant Influencer, or the twenty-something kid, Christopher, who has no idea what he wants to do with his life. And then there’s the rabbi, Zev, an analytical guy who can see three sides to every problem, and then finally takes a leap of faith. When I finally figured out the last step in his journey, I couldn’t wait to write it.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I had two structural rules for the book. First was that every character on the bus, including the driver, gets to tell their story, so each of them gets (at least one) point of view chapter. Second, when the shit hits the fan, every character on the bus plays a role in saving the others on the bus. It was both frustrating and tremendous fun to stick hard to those rules. I spent a great deal of time and energy getting the characters into position, setting up the fan just so, arranging the excrement… and I think I just went too far with this metaphor.
With a number of releases to your name, what are some of the key lessons you have learned about writing and the publishing world over the years?
Every book teaches you how to write the novel you just finished—and may be no help for the next one. But here’s something that’s always true, that I learned from my friend James Morrow: To be able to write a novel is a privilege. There are so many other times, circumstances, and alternate simulations—so many variant Daryls—in which a writing career would have been impossible. I grew up with parents who bought me a novel every time we went to K-Mart. What a gift that was! And now I live in a time where there’s (still) a market for novels and stories, where I have my health, where my wife and I made enough money that I could spend countless hours at a keyboard without any promise of making even grocery money. Luck is the biggest element of my career, and I’d say any writer’s career.
What’s next for you?
My next short story will be in the anthology The Book of Death, edited by Jonathan Strahan. I recently finished a novella about a haunted doll and her sister called The Porcelain Sisters, and now I’m writing the next novel, a “neuro-SF” book about free will and genetically engineered bonding. I have a hard time staying in one genre lane.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
I’m so far behind that I’m reading 2024 books! Sitting on the TBR pile are Jedidiah Berry’s The Naming Song, Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, and Emily Wilson’s translation of The Illiad. (Her translation of The Odyssey was fantastic.)
