Ask The Author: Molly Laich

Molly Laich’s riveting story “The Sting” appears in the August issue. Her answers to our questions, here, are just as amazing.

1. How would your career begin at Smith & Wesson?

I will never ever ever work in an office like that again.

2. How would you fall in love with me if we worked together?

Thank you for preserving my dignity by posing the question as a hypothetical. When I fall in love I tend to be way smooth in the beginning, so I would get your attention by being clever or funny. Then once you noticed me I would get super weird and blow it. I act like a confused little kid. I hit. Moving courtships to the Internet is my best and only hope, but it’s awkward. “Hey sailor, do you tweet?” In all seriousness, if we worked together I think we would probably date, until something monstrous happened between us, making further employment impossible.

3. Would you ever love someone who had a spike through their chest?

I shouldn’t have to explain my art to you, but duh, the spike is a metaphor for existential pain. I’m not interested in men who don’t need to be saved. If he doesn’t have a spike through his chest, then his is an unexamined life, I probably don’t remind him of his mother and it would never work out.

4. How is a martini fattening? Which are better martinis: cheap or expensive?

Something about the high sugar content converting to fat in your belly, I don’t know. Pick up a Cosmo for further details on the science. I don’t drink martinis. Drinking olive juice? That’s gross, who would do that. I drink whiskey. Here in Montana the well is usually Evan Williams. On the specialist of occasions, I’ll allow myself a nice scotch, maybe Johnny Walker Black. But cheap is best. Women like Gwen carry around Martinis as an accessory to match their outfits. I drink to get drunk.

5. Where did “The Sting” come from? How much of you is in this story?

Gwen, c’est moi, more or less, except she’s more polished. The martini thing is a good example. She’s not a tomboy. To punish her for being pretty, I gave her a terrible job and made her a little less smart. We both love radishes and weed. Of course there’s a copy of Dennis Rodman’s Bad as I Wanna Be on a bookshelf in my mother’s house; you can’t make something like that up.
The story came out of my real-life experience of burning, devastating unrequited love. It took about a year but I’ve recovered. “Jacob” is alive and well and a great friend of mine today. He’s been understanding or indifferent to the many indignities I’ve put him through in my stories. The real life Jacob is a thousand times more complex and interesting than how I’ve written him, but god damnit, the bastard broke my heart. He had to die. In another story I shot him, but he lived. There’s an army of Jacobs stumbling through alternate literary realities, pierced, bruised or dead, and I hope they’ve learned their lesson.

6. Would you accidentally murder someone for good sex?

I’ve done worse, on purpose.