Lost Souls certainly meant a huge amount to me as a young goth–in post-Love and Rockets, pre-Marilyn Manson suburbia, all that "goth" meant to me was your work and the musicians you mention in Lost Souls; goths weren't all over the media like they are now. As I'm sure other people have told you, the chapters about Nothing seemed like you were perfectly describing my inner life, I really identified with that character (I even shared his real name, Jason). I still have my original paperback copy and you can still see these black fingerprints all over it from where I sat in the bath reading it as I dyed my hair black. So I just wanted to say thank you for writing Lost Souls--I don't want to gush about you being "the only one who understood" or something, but about some areas of my life, you kind of were.

PZB: Thanks for these kind words. I truly appreciate seeing those old, well-loved copies of my books.

JL: As a writer you've always been fascinated with subcultures and sub-subcultures–are any in particular on your mind right now?

PZB: Right now I'm really only interested in writing honestly about New Orleans, which I suppose you could say is a subculture in and of itself, made up of various sub-subcultures of race, class, occupation and such. But I think I'm writing about much more "ordinary" people than I have before–few people are really "ordinary," but I'm not currently interested in vampires, serial killers, goth musicians, or any of the other types I seem to be known for writing about. Many of my characters are still gay--which for me is rather like saying "many of my characters are still breathing"--but they're just regular folks, like most of the gay people I know. I'm not as fascinated with the raw outer edges of society as I once was. I guess I'm getting sedate in my old age. Most of my current characters are cooks, barflies, and other people who may be members of a subculture, but are not so interested in identifying themselves as such.

JL: Slash fiction has suddenly been getting an unprecedented amount of attention in the media. As someone who has written (thinly-veiled) Lennon/MacCartney slash and slash involving you & Matt Stone and Trey Parker of “South Park” fame, would you be able to pinpoint the appeal that this kind of fiction holds for you and others? Also, why do you think it's a mode of fiction used almost exclusively by women?

PZB: Is Plastic Jesus slash fiction? I'm not particularly happy with it in retrospect, but I don't think it is quite that bad. For one thing, it doesn't contain a great deal of sex. The South Park story was just a joke, not the sort of thing I'm ever likely to repeat. While the slash culture has a kind of icky fascination for me, I can't say the fiction holds any appeal, so I can't really comment on that--or why the form is almost exclusively used by woman, for that matter, since I don't feel that I write (or do much of anything else) from a female perspective.

I did read an interesting article on slash by Adam Parfrey in Apocalypse Culture II. An author of Star Trek slash commented, "When Kirk and Spock love each other, instead of the standard bitch brought on every couple of weeks, I still have them for myself." I don't know that I see this as a particularly admirable reason to write any sort of fiction--for one thing, it seems to imply that male homosexuality is a less valid (and therefore less threatening) form of eroticism than heterosexuality--but it is an interesting perspective.

JL: Here's some boring food questions: what are your favorite types of cuisine to get in New Orleans? Also, do you cook yourself, and do you watch any cooking shows on television?

PZB: These are not boring questions–these are some of my favorite topics lately. I tend to get obsessed with whatever my characters are obsessed with, and right now my characters are a couple of hardcore chefs--but as I say, I've always had an interest in food and restaurants. Dined at Commander's Palace since age 3, been a Gourmet subscriber since 1988 or so, all that.

I like all sorts of things--very few of which have much to do with crawfish, gumbo, or any of the usual cliches. I hate the fact that the national food press seems to think these things are all we eat, but sometimes we don't do a great deal to counter that impression. Anyway, my favorite high-end New Orleans restaurant is Marisol, about which I've written an entire short story (available to premium subscribers on Gothic.Net, it will also appear in my next collection, The Devil You Know). The chef is a mad genius likely to do anything from classical French to Korean to an entire meal featuring fungi. My favorite low-end places are Casamento's, an oyster bar that has changed very little since its opening in 1919, and Red Sea, an Ethiopian restaurant.

I can cook a little, but seldom get in the mood. Mostly I make simple stuff like jambalaya. My favorite food shows are "Iron Chef" and "A Cook's Tour." I have to admit Emeril holds a certain sick fascination for me, but a little of him goes a long way. And for some reason I love those shows about how different candies are made, though I eat very little candy myself.

JL: Also, on the topic of food, your previous work and Apocalypse Culture II, did you read the bit in there about how to prepare and cook babies?

PZB: No, but I'll have to check it out. I didn't finish the book--I got bored with all the crypto-political conspiracy stuff.

JL: Are you planning to stay away from genre work from now on? I've never really considered you a horror writer, but that is the way your books have been marketed–and right now that's a market that's dwindling out of existence. Stephen King is out of the genre now, Clive Barker is out of the genre, you're out of the genre. Even horror movies seem few and far between these days–certainly there's nowhere near the interest there was in the eighties. Why do you think this is?

PZB: I'll probably still write an occasional horrific story, but my work is going through such a period of mutation right now that I've almost entirely stopped accepting invitations to markets that demand a specific horror element. I don't want to promise something I can't deliver.

You're correct that the horror market is very depressed right now, but I think that's just the usual cyclical nature of publishing/Hollywood/whatever and it will rise again in one form or another. My move away from genre fiction had nothing to do with the marketing aspect–in fact, it would have been far easier for me to sell another horror novel than to it was to sell Liquor. I encountered tremendous skepticism from publishers who didn't understand that my core readership has never consisted of horror fans. I just found that, more and more, I was losing my passion for dark fiction. I told you I'm mainly interested in writing about New Orleans, and I've already written about many of the city's darker aspects ad infinitum (and ad nauseum, I sometimes feel).

JL: What's the dish you'd most like to eat but haven't yet?

PZB: Pretty much anything cooked by Thomas Keller, the chef/owner of The French Laundry in Yountville, California. It has become something of a mecca for us.

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.