TCR Talks with Nicholas Belardes, author of The Deading
By Daniel J. Collins
Multi-hyphenate author Nicholas Belardes writes what he knows—the ecological landscape of Central California, the study of climate change and crisis, birds, the Chicano experience—and then blends and turbocharges it with the unknown, crafting energetic and complex works that combine the best elements of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. A graduate of UC Riverside Palm Desert’s Low Residency program with an MFA in fiction, Nick studied under horror writer Stephen Graham Jones and crime writer Tod Goldberg. His new book, The Deading, is an eco-horror tale that blends the sensibilities of both genres while also grounding the work in our present predicament. The Coachella Review sat down with Nick to discuss birding, writing, and what’s next for this prolific author.
The Coachella Review: Can you discuss the origin story for how/why you created The Deading?
Nicholas Belardes: I wanted to write eco-horror. I knew that much. I’d been in all kinds of weird swampy areas, etc., while birdwatching. So, I kind of married the two while also considering ecological problems and dangers going on locally because of climate change. I didn’t outline much, just some brief sentence arcs, then started writing, then put it down for two years, then picked it back up once I was in the UCR Palm Desert Low-Res MFA Program. It wasn’t my thesis, though the [MFA program] director wanted it to be. I had loftier goals. Thing is, while we all need to invent ourselves, or reinvent, that can happen through a specific genre, but doesn’t have to. I write in multiple genres and see myself as someone who experiments with the horror genre.
TCR: Thanks to you, I now have a latent phobia of snails. What caught your attention about eco-horror, and are there any books in the genre that you would recommend?
NB: I know—or hope—you’re joking, but don’t think anyone should have a phobia of snails from reading The Deading. If anything, more people should develop a phobia of people ruining the planet, of pushing our environments to breaking points, and of the disaster that can result from our collective stupidity. A dystopian reality is unfolding before our eyes, with heated ocean blobs; mass sea-bird, whale, and fish die-outs; toxic waters; melting sea ice; overuse and abuse of coastal environments . . . This ongoing disaster is what caught my attention. Jeff VanderMeer’s Hummingbird Salamander and Audrey Schulman’s Theory of Bastards are two great eco-thriller/eco-horror tales, while Charlotte McConaghy’s eco-horror/climate fiction masterpiece, Migrations, is off-the-charts good. Those stories are all in the same wheelhouse.
TCR: Outside of an Audubon field guide, I don’t know that I’ve read as many bird names in a single book. What drew you to birding in the first place?
NB: The need to see what was living around me at all times, to study the unknown, to be with nature, to experience what is being lost, what is dwindling, what most don’t notice is happening to our immediate world. Birds are going extinct. Last I heard, there is only one ‘akikiki left in the upland mountains of Kaua‘i. Down from hundreds just a few years ago. There are many stories like this happening all over the world from dwindling and destroyed habitats, from cat [predation] (billions per year), etc. Other than that, birds are cool and beautiful and teach me so much about my own life. They’re the world’s greatest travelers. They know no borders. Many species migrate twice per year in the greatest event I can even think of that goes unnoticed by much of the world—it’s literally happening around us. The rest is a rabbit hole of knowledge and wonder, and was sparked by a Vermillion Flycatcher.
TCR: Your author’s note to the book included a discussion surrounding some of the conflicts and inequities in the birding community, where one group claims ownership over this segment of nature and the proper way to experience it. The inciting incident of the book, involving a oyster bed, rises out of a similar situation, where one assumes their claim to interactions with nature rises above any others’. Is there a connection and if so, is it a critique? A warning?
NB: You’re right, it’s both a critique and warning about climate change. A critique also of how the world does and does not have a handle on the over-arching climate crisis as well as localized ecological trauma (too many to count, just start googling your own area, see what awful things you find). The Deading is a warning of what is literally happening to the estuary near where I live, and provides a warning that if we don’t start caring about things like oyster consumption, and the over-production and damage that goes with it, and more about the estuary in which they grow, then we run the risk of that specific estuary simply dying. In the case of The Deading, nature fights back with the help of a hive mind. But that’s just the science fiction within the horror talking. What can really be done? More regulations, yes. No expansions of said oyster farm, please. Along with that, horror and sci-fi do go hand in hand as a warning. Alien, anyone? Aliens? Seen those? Colonization, habitat destruction, angry, unpredictable alien life forms that can easily defeat humans . . . As for the birding community, there is a warning and critique here too, yet another rabbit hole for readers to google.
TCR: What birds are currently missing from your Life List that you hope to add in the near future?
NB: I don’t have a list of what I want to see, just an overall goal of experiencing a tenth of the world’s species. I’m almost halfway to that goal. A few trips to Costa Rica could fix some of that, as well as some trips to other parts of the U.S. Florida, Alaska, and southern Arizona come to mind.
TCR: How would you describe your method of getting through the first draft? And does it vary between different works?
NB: I set weekly goals, and then I break that down into daily goals. Page counts, usually. Sometimes I take a day off, sometimes even a week in a row to let ideas cook. Sometimes I set a book down to work on another book. But usually, it’s one book at a time, meeting page counts, with that predetermined idea of when I want/need to finish. Getting through that first draft is painful. Motivation can easily get lost—this goes the same for revisions! So, my personal challenge is finding all those ways that keep my motivation at a high level. And lately, that means eyes on a finished product, something I might be able to sell. Can’t sell a book if the draft isn’t done. I think what motivates creativity is very different from writer to writer. You have to find what motivates you and stick with that. Time is never on our side. We’re mortal. I see my time as very limited. This motivates me more than perhaps [it] would a twenty- or thirty-year-old writer.
TCR: One element of the book that stood out to me was the amount of time given to the internal world of the characters, especially Kumi Sato. Please talk about your decision to give space to these internal journeys.
NB: There’s truth in writing what you’d want to pull off a bookshelf. The stories I read tend to have lots of internality. Whether Jeff VanderMeer’s sci-fi Area X novels or Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, I prefer deep character internality dives. For me, that’s where the heart of the story lies. Not in plot points. Not in car chases. Internality is where we can really dig into psychological motivation, desires, fears, hearts. Internality, more than anything else, makes me turn the page. So, it’s a no-brainer for me to use that kind of craft, or at least attempt to.
TCR: Having read some of your other work, I’ve observed your characters never operate in a vacuum. They are always embedded in a community, be it family, neighborhood, hobbies, etc. What in your own experience influences that choice?
NB: Let me just set the record straight that the word “hobby,” though not the primary word you’re using here, is the worst word I hear in relation to birdwatching. The word hobby, according to Oxford Languages, means “an activity done in leisure time for pleasure.” I don’t birdwatch for pleasure. Nope. I don’t do it in my leisure time. It’s my research time. I work hard at studying birdies. I hit trails, climb hills, enter deserts, dodge snakes and ticks and cactus needles. I explore for hours, often in deep isolation, sweating, getting hungry, getting disappointed, sometimes feeling that adrenaline rush of seeing a rare bird. Recently, I found a rare Gray Flycatcher in Carrizo Plain National Monument. I was on a partial trail, then in scratchy scrub. I suddenly heard the tiniest of “whit” calls, then found that bird on the edge of a bush, flicking its tail, then documented the bird with a photo, which was difficult because the bird flew; I had to re-find it a few times.
Birding informs my life; it is a research experience that has threaded itself through my being. Many of the birds in The Deading were pulled from real experiences out in the field. Call any naturalist a hobbyist, and it deflates everything they do, including the entire climate crisis itself, into a bubble that can easily be dismissed. For me, there is very little leisure or pleasure when climate change hangs over this world like a dark curtain. Birds are part of the ongoing crisis; they need the entire world’s help. This includes the tiniest of hummingbirds in North America, like the Rufous Hummingbird, a most crucial pollinator now with decreasing populations.
So, in further answering, for me to make characters, as you suggest, feel real and a part of something greater than themselves, is to live life, experience life, and read read read about those things you mention, studying, researching, trying to unlock codes because, guess what, writing for me ain’t no hobby, either. It’s hard work and takes pretty much all of my being just to write a half-decent sentence about community, family, neighborhood, climate change . . .
TCR: What part of the writing process do you struggle with most?
NB: Beginnings. Tough to get them right.
TCR: What lessons about the writing process and the industry have you learned in the writing and publishing of The Deading?
NB: Not really a lesson, but there’s this: Erewhon Books Executive Editor Diana Pho writes gorgeous editorial letters. Not only is this helpful in the critique portion, but her all-seeing-eye letters are a sort of crystal ball that helps me peer into my story, into its heart, into all the working parts—and not-so-working parts—and in her magic, because to be an editor like her requires divination and clairvoyance. She presents an in-depth view of my story as if she’s climbed inside, or used a potion of story knowledge, and pulled apart all of its anatomy, and found all of its organs and bones and vessels . . . and in doing so, reveals to me a detailed aboutness I might never have otherwise known. She has uncanny insight. Potions, I’m telling you. She uses potions. She is part of a secret magical society.
TCR: What’s next? Do you plan to continue exploring eco-horror in future works?
NB: Ten Sleep, another eco-horror, is due from Erewhon Books in 2025. Deep in revisions right now. It is an unsettling cattle drive on quads set in Wyoming, and lanced through with a deep, haunting sensibility about ancient truth and the stories we construct around ourselves in order to bring an illusion of harmony between oneself and the greater world. While The Deading talks about isolation and entrapment in a small town, Ten Sleep sweeps us out into the open prairie that fosters secrets deep inside the earth. I also just submitted my Chicano literary work American Fade to my agent, so now we’ll see if I can be a two-genre writer and actually get paid for it. After that, I plan on finishing Taffy, a Chicano clown horror slasher. I’ve got more stokes in the fire, but, damn, we never really know what will sell, or not, or what will happen, and have to just embrace any positives, and remember to write for the satisfaction of our own hearts.
Daniel J. Collins is a writer from Southern California. He is a graduate of U.C. Riverside’s Palm Desert Low-Residency MFA program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts. In addition to writing, he teaches English, journalism, and theatre in Corona, California. You can find him online at danieljcollins.com.