A.Z. Rozkillis is joining us today to talk about her novel, Space Station X. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Will the space station bring them together or destroy them?
Engineer Jax ran away to the farthest space station from Earth in the galaxy. It’s nothing more than a pitstop, frequented only by those looking to get away, and there she wanted to live in peace. It’s a mess, but it’s her Station.
But peace was not in the cards once Saunders came on board, a chipper security officer with an infuriating habit of sneaking up on Jax and being friendly. Jax has no interest in attractive security officers reminding her of her stupidest mistakes.
Now residents are being killed. There are sounds coming from the walls, ghostly footsteps and murderous, ravenous threats that can’t possibly be there. Can they?
Deep space is unforgiving. The Station is dying. The residents are going bonkers. Jax discovers there are some problems that can’t be fixed by swinging an absurdly large murder-wrench.
What’s A.Z.’s favorite bit?
“Was that a f——g pun? On a Space Station full of murderous invisible monsters?” I wanted to write a book about a space station, lesbian romance, and the horrors of the unknown and vastness of the endless cosmos. And I couldn’t help myself, but it wound up full of puns and innuendo jokes. I have always been the friend who defaults in awkward situations to a misplaced pun or wordplay. Even when I don’t realize I’m doing it. And so, while writing a story that pulled from my own darkest fears, featuring ravenous insectoids, and cannibalistic murder sprees in space, I caught myself snickering at one teeny tiny harmless joke. And then, I figured, hey its my cosmic-horror-romance on a haunted space station, why not one more? And maybe another?
But as that opening line indicates (quoted from my main character) of course there are going to be some instances where a terribly placed pun just does not lend itself to the atmosphere of the current environment. It was supposed to be horror. My characters are marooned on an isolated space station and all hell is creeping loose. Or, maybe it’s the perfect time to let loose some tension snapping double entendre. These space denizens are fighting for their sanity and then Saunders, the Station Security Officer, and love interest of my surly Space Station Mechanic, Jax, quips about her relief that Jax is willing to “turn her on” or, at least turn her radio on so they can keep in contact. Jax is already grudgingly aware of her growing affections, so this just throws a little more rocket fuel on the fire.
I was never really aiming to be comedic, but it has always been my way to deflect in difficult situations, metering the stress with gallows humor, or just awkwardly interjecting myself into a conversation just to hear everyone groan. So before I knew it my cosmic horror lesbian romance was becoming funny on top of being terrifying, exhilarating, and full of commentary about the reasons people want to fly so far away through the stars they can never come back. And that’s when I realized it couldn’t just be me inserting tiny inside jokes to make me chuckle, it needed to become part of the story. I was digging really deep into my own nightmares to just absolutely terrify my characters, so I took that as an opportunity to lighten the dark moments and put contrast on the heavy ones. I started to ask myself “if I were facing something this horrific, what off-putting and disarming bulls—t would I start mumbling about to giggle in the face of death?”
This meant the jokes needed to be part of someone’s character, and not just tossed into the story. While I relate more heavily to the main character Jax, it was Saunders who was blessed with this curse of always finding the exact off-putting thing to say. She is friendly and chipper, and pretty quick with a comment that just absolutely throws Jax off her game. And Jax gets to be every person I have ever made groan with my well-timed awful puns. She whines, and complains, and throws plenty of “did you really just say that?” around until she catches on that it might just be Saunder’s love language.
However it worked itself into the story, the puns, innuendos and word play became my favorite part of writing this. I would be deep into beta reading, send out a copy of the manuscript to someone only to drag it back with a “just kidding, hang on, read this one!” all because I thought up an even better innuendo response for a scene while in the shower, or driving in to work. My wife (who I am pretty sure married me for the puns, though she will deny it) would hear me giggling as I typed, only to get force-fed a chapter she had read a dozen times, just for the new word play I had filtered in there. In all honestly I figured most of it would get cut if it ever went to print.
But its still all in there. I would like to think that it became as much a part of my characters as it became a part of me. And much like I cannot make it through a haunted house without laughing at the actors (I’m sure they hate it), or how I can hardly have a serious conversation without capitalizing on the opportunity to make a bone joke, I can’t imagine this story without the humor in it on top of the horror as well. Maybe it’s a way to break the tension, maybe it’s a defense mechanism, maybe its just how I connect with the story, but in all, it’s probably my favorite bit about this whole book.
LINKS:
BIO:
A.Z. builds spaceships in her day job. She teaches about spaceships on the side. And now she apparently writes about spaceships in her spare time. Where she finds the spare time is still a mystery. Having been raised on a steady diet of classic science fiction and horror—consumed mostly through the staircase railing after bedtime while her father was asleep on the couch—A.Z. has always maintained a love for space travel and the unknown. This has largely fueled her career in aerospace engineering but originally fueled a passion for writing science fiction stories when she was very young. After a long quantity of months cooped up inside, A.Z. finally returned to her storytelling origins. A.Z. lives in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US with her wife and son, their dogs, several thousand honeybees, and way too many Legos.
