Today we have Justin Dill, author of the Aurora nominated short story: The Dust Bowl Café, available at Augur Magazine.
Writer, editor, and musician, Justin is an icon of Toronto speculative fiction.
Justin can be found at:
- Website: https://justindill.ca/
- Twitter: @JustinDill13
- Spotify: Bloo Burds
Don: Could you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into writing?
Justin: Well, I’m a copy editor (staunchly pro-Oxford comma); horror movie addict (scary movies aren’t just for October); independent musician (Bloo Burds, wherever music is streaming); and musicophile (it really is better on vinyl). I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember—in second grade, I wrote and illustrated a picture book, stapled the pages together, and brought it to my school library where they put it on circulation. I wrote my first novel when the ending of the sixth book in a series that shall not be named upset me and I decided I could do a better job.
Preach on about the Oxford Comma!
Now then, the Dust Bowl Café has terrible service, it’s in the middle of no-where, and has a logic-defying existence despite its awesome cuisine. Inspired by any places I’d know?
I wish! It’s mostly satirizing trendy gimmick restaurants and the idea of pop-up shops in general. Is anything ever really worth the hype these days? I’ll let the reader decide. I do want to shout out one of my favourite gimmicky restaurants, though (this is not paid promo—I swear!). It’s called the Poop Café. The seats are shaped like toilets, and even the desserts come out in little toilet-shaped bowls. I’d rate it four flushes out of five!
How did you create such an Alice in Wonderland-esque world, with its one part fairy tale, and one part fever dream? Did you have it all constructed in your mind at the start, or did you pepper the strangeness in as you went?
That’s just my style. I love me some good nonsense. Alice in Wonderland is one of my all-time favourites, and I’m very into psychedelia. The story was the result of weekly writing prompt sessions with a couple friends, where we’d generate 3 random words and then give ourselves one hour to write a story incorporating all three. The prompts for this one were “hour”, “intend”, and “dust”. Beyond that, all the weirdness was improvised. I don’t like going in with a plan, since it spoils the fun. And the great thing about writing something short-form is that I don’t have to hold back on the absurdism.
Done through a writing prompt, you say? So was written in only one session?
Two sessions. There was the initial writing prompt session, where I wrote the first half of the story (up until the description of the various dishes the narrator samples), and then the writing sprints session with my roommate where I finished the story. And of course there were revisions—mostly after it was accepted. Shout out to my editor at Augur, Sonia, who did an amazing job sanding down some of the rough edges.
Throughout the Dust Bowl Café, I was struck by the notion of some fleeting moment of wonder that, despite all the nameless critic’s determination, cannot be recaptured. Was this your sense of the Dust Bowl Café as well?
Yeah, in a way, all experiences are once-in-a-lifetime experiences; you bring as much to the table as the waiter (or, say, the author) does. There’s no way to recapture the magic of a moment because there are so many factors (read: ingredients) that go into creating a sense of joy or thrill or amazement. Think about even something like McDonald’s Big Mac sauce. You can make your own using a copycat recipe, but is it really the same? Besides, some things aren’t meant to last forever. That fleetingness is what makes them special. Does that answer the question at all, or am I just uttering pseudo-profound nonsense?
How did you come up with the phantasmagorical elements, such as the literal grapevine, the talking skeletons, living dust bunnies, and sphinxes?
It’s all wordplay. I love to have fun with language, and I don’t shy away from the occasional pun—think the Mock Turtle from Alice in Wonderland. One of my go-to methods for creating nonsenses is to take a common expression or phrase, say, “heard it through the grapevine”, or “dust bunny”, and make it literal. Or I take a saying like “two shakes of a lamb’s tail” and change it to “two twitches of a sphinx’s nose” to evoke a fantasy aesthetic. Funny tidbit—during the initial writing prompt session, I only wrote half the story. I had no idea how to finish it, so it sat on my hard-drive for about a year. During the pandemic, my roommate wanted to do writing sprints, so I dug up the file. I had no idea how to end the story, so I sat there thinking about dust puns. Then it hit me: dust bunnies. Of course that was the natural way to progress the plot!
So what the heck is the nameless critic? One eighth cat with a lion’s appetite? How did you go about creating their absurdly strong personality and voice?
I’ll leave the character’s biology to the reader to decide. It’s more fun that way. Their personality is part-critic, part-snob, and part-1800s-first-person-narrator. The narrative voice here is an amalgamation (or, should I say, stew) of influences: a broth of childhood favourites (C. S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Lemony Snicket), some trimmings of satirists and parodists (Jonathan Swift, Thomas Nashe, Terry Pratchett), two tablespoons of critic (think Ebert or Christgau), and garnished with a dash of classic English literature (Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, etc.). This type of narrator was a bit outside-the-bowl for me. It’s not my natural voice, but it is my sense of humour.
What do you think the future holds for The Dust Bowl Café and its new competition, The National Dust? Will the nameless critic and their compatriot at The Dust Bowl Café ever be able to contain the spread?
I can see someone donating a soap impression of their wife to The National Dust, which will then rebrand itself as the Poop Café. Sorry—that’s a joke only hardcore Beatles fans are going to get. For a more serious answer, I enjoy cyclical narratives—anything that comes full-circle. Have you ever listened to Pink Floyd’s The Wall? The end of the album loops back into the beginning, so you can play it in a seamless loop. That’s sort of what I imagine. The sequence of events just repeats ad infinitum.
How did you find working with Augur Magazine?
I’ll be forever grateful to Augur. My very first publication was with a Canadian magazine called Polar Borealis, while my first publication at a professional rate was with Augur. Kind of cool that they were both Canadian markets. Augur’s also special because they’re based in my hometown of Toronto. I had the pleasure of meeting Sonia, the editor I worked with, at a local event called Word on the Street. I later attended Augur Con, a writing convention hosted by Augur, where I met more of the team. As far as I’m aware, Augur is the only Toronto-based SFF market that pays professional rates, and I’d highly recommend supporting the magazine as well as submitting to them when they have an open call!
And last but not least, I want you to be honest: were you hungry when you wrote this?
Am I ever not hungry? I will tell you this much: I was at a café when I wrote it, most likely sipping on a matcha latte. Want to know the sad thing though? If The Dust Bowl Café were a real thing, I couldn’t even eat there—I’m allergic to dust!
Thanks for taking the time to share with us, Justin!
