Clark Blaise

Hey there, fellow wanderers of the strange and unsettling. I'm Clark Blaise, and I write about the dark underbelly of seemingly normal American life – you know, the stuff that keeps you up at night wondering what's really lurking beneath the surface.

I came into this world as a cultural misfit (aren't all the interesting people?), born to Canadian parents but raised as a perpetual outsider across the American South and Midwest. That constant sense of being slightly out of step with everyone else? It became my superpower as a writer. Moving around so much as a kid taught me to be an observer – the kind who notices all those deliciously disturbing little details others prefer to ignore.

My journey into writing wasn't some neat and tidy path. I spent years teaching creative writing (including founding the post-graduate program at Concordia University in Montreal – yes, I eventually made my way back to my Canadian roots), but I was always drawn to stories that made people squirm a little in their seats. You know the kind – the ones that start in familiar territory but slowly peel back the layers until you're face-to-face with something unsettling and profound.

"Lunar Attractions" (1990) is probably what most readers know me for. It's the story of David, a boy who's different in all the ways that make adults nervous. He sees things others don't (or won't) see, drawn to the mysterious undertows of American life like a moth to a flame. Sound familiar to anyone? (I may or may not have drawn from some personal experience there...) The book explores those awkward, beautiful, terrifying moments when childhood imagination crashes head-first into adult realities.

Here's the thing about my writing: I don't do neat categories or easy answers. Life is messy, weird, and sometimes downright disturbing, and I think literature should reflect that. I write about the spaces between things – between childhood and adulthood, between what's real and what might be, between what we show the world and what we hide in our darkest corners.

When I'm not writing or teaching, you might find me wandering through small towns (they hide the best secrets), collecting odd historical facts (did you know...actually, I'll save those for my books), or contemplating the strange ways memory and reality intertwine. I've lived in enough places to know that every location has its own kind of darkness, its own particular brand of weird that's just waiting to be explored.

To my readers: expect to be challenged. Expect to find yourself in uncomfortable places, thinking uncomfortable thoughts. My stories aren't about providing escape – they're about diving deeper into the human experience, even (especially) the parts we'd rather not look at too closely. If you're looking for neat resolutions and happy endings tied up with pretty bows, I'm probably not your guy. But if you want to explore the shadowlands of American life, to question what's real and what's imagined, to walk the line between ordinary and extraordinary – well, pull up a chair. We're going to have some interesting conversations.

I believe the best fiction is like a mirror in a dark room – it shows us things we might not want to see, but need to anyway. My characters aren't heroes or villains; they're complicated people trying to make sense of a complicated world, just like the rest of us. They just happen to be better at noticing the monsters under the bed.

Fair warning: reading my work might change the way you see the world around you. You might start noticing the odd little details, the strange coincidences, the way reality sometimes seems to bend at the edges. Don't worry – that's completely normal. (Or is it? That's the kind of question I love to explore.)

So if you're ready to question everything you think you know about reality, memory, and the thin line between ordinary and extraordinary, my books are waiting for you. Just remember: once you start seeing the strange in the everyday, there's no going back. But then again, would you really want to?