Kevin Wilson’s story “Excerpt from The Big Book of Forgotten Lunatics, Volume 1″ appears in the first issue of The Collagist, published August 15, 2009. He is the author of the story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth (Ecco/Harper Perennial, 2009). His fiction has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, One Story, and elsewhere.

Here, he speaks to The Collagist’s Lauren Walbridge about the inspiration for this story, as well as why the title of his novel-in-progress may have to change.

1. Can you talk about the inspiration for “The King of Sinkholes”? What was on your mind while you were writing this story?

I have a group of friends from the MFA program at Florida and we have a contest where we are given a prompt and then have to write a 1,000-word story using this prompt by the end of the month.  Then we read the stories and pick the best one.  The winner gets to choose the prompt for the following month.  The prompt for this story was “Sinkholes”.  I modeled the story after entries in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not paperback, but I really just wanted to use the line about pronouncing “sinkholes” in the Spanish way.  Our teacher, Colonel Padgett Powell used this line in an interview with The Believer, but I think Lawrence Wood was the first to say this.

2. I was once told that when writing a story, one only has to know more – whether it be a little or a lot – about a certain subject than one’s audience.  So my question is: why sinkholes?  Have you too had a lifelong fascination with them, or did you do specific research? And on that note, exactly how does one go about researching sinkholes?

I’ll answer the last question first.  I went about researching sinkholes in the same way I now go about researching anything.  I go on Wikipedia.  I read the entry.  I do not care about verifying any of the information.  I use that information.  Sometimes I also go on Google Books and search for mention of that item in books from before 1950, which gives you amazing information that is almost certainly outdated and wrong.

I am obsessed with sinkholes only because Colonel Powell was obsessed with them and then the MFA program became obsessed with them.  The UF MFA softball team was called The Sinkholes.  There is a sinkhole called the Devil’s Millhopper Sinkhole in Gainesville and I went there a lot.  Peoples started pronouncing sinkholes in the Spanish way and so it seemed like it was important.

3. How does this excerpt fit into The Big Book of Forgotten Lunatics, Volume I ?  And what can we expect from the rest of it?

There are no shortage of forgotten lunatics, so I have a few more finished.  The monthly prompt for April was “momo”, so I wrote about Moses Cage, the vanishing baseball player, for the same volume.  I imagine that it will be a series of fifty biographies, each 1,000 words.

4. Your collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth was just released this year by Ecco/Harper Perennial.  How does it feel to have your first book published?

It was a relief to see the finished book, something that I had wanted for a long time.  I had to deal with the worry that people would hate it, but I was just so happy that it existed.

5. What other writing projects are you currently working on?

I’m working on a novel, which I am supposed to deliver to Ecco at the end of October.  It’s called Fangs.  It’s not about vampires, which is why I’m sure I’ll have to change the title at some point.

6. What great books have you read recently? Also, are there any upcoming releases you’re excited about?

I’ve recently read Nami Mun’s Miles From Nowhere, Josh Weil’s The New Valley, and Kelly Link’s Pretty Monsters, and they are all amazing books that I can’t recommend enough. I’m really looking forward to reading Girl Trouble by Holly Goddard Jones, The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris, and What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us by Laura van den Berg.