Conversation with Kate Maruyama about her new horror novel, The Collective
Pub day is here for The Collective by Kate Maruyama! We talk to Kate about her experiences in Hollywood that inspired the novel and about the different roles characters, big and small, play in driving a story.
chi: When did you first start on this book? Also when did you first start thinking about this book?
Kate: I carried a lot out of the film industry when I left that was stewing in my head. And I had written a realist book. But this was sort of percolating. There was someone I knew in Hollywood who was a terrible, damaging narcissist when I started who was doing quite well for himself. And I started thinking about the people that worked with him and what it must have been like. And I also had known this person when they weren’t as obviously horrible. So I think I started pulling at that idea a while ago. And this, I believe it was like 2012, I started writing. I remember Jack, my son, was in seventh grade. And we used to go for long walks while my daughter was at dance class up in the hills and it was dark around my neighborhood. And I was hammering out the plot with him. He was a really big help with that. He was really into it. So I started talking about the lore of Hollywood being run by demons and all of the world building and stuff.
chi: You said you first attempted to write a more realist story?
Kate: Oh, no, no, no, no. I had written Alterations, which is my other book.
chi: Ah! That just came out!
Kate: Before this one.
chi: Oh, you wrote Alterations before this one?
Kate: Mm-hmm. I wrote it in 2013. I wrote it after Harrowgate. And then I just wanted to do a splashy, fun horror novel that was very horror-y and, you know, I don’t know, big.
chi: Are there any books or movies or TV shows that you sort of like, not inspired by so much, but at least like it was like a resource there for you?
Kate: It’s hard to point to which one, because I am a real big fan of watching 10-part series while I’m writing a novel.
chi: Oh, because of all the arcs that it creates and everything.
Kate: Yeah, because, you know, movies, that little three-act structure are more sort of like novellas. They’re very like tight and small, but a 10-part series has a chance to ramble and you get to ramp up like how you know a character and how they change.
chi: Do you think you’re done exploring the world of Hollywood in your writing or is there much more to come?
Kate: Alterations was exploring my love of 1930s and 40s movies. And this one, I think, was sort of an exorcism of the time I spent in Hollywood in the fabulous 90s when everybody had all the money in the world and the parties were outrageous.
chi: You mentioned talking to Jack about the book. Is that a regular thing for you when you’re working on a book, like talk to your kids or your husband?
Kate: No, I think this one, it was really because when I’m writing novels, usually it’s from some funny thing in my head and they actually don’t see it until it’s done. But for some reason, this one, I was really trying to pick apart like it was a lot of world building. The first draft that I wrote was more world building than character. And then I went through it and wove the characters and it got tighter. So I really kind of wanted to see if it made sense. I had a reporter for Variety, and so that’s an entire world. A girl who moved out here to work in as an actress, that’s a whole world. Trying to cobble that together this giant world that Simon has created. I kind of needed somewhere to sort it out. So yeah, I think that’s the only book that I did that with.
chi: How was that experience?
Kate: Talking to a seventh grader who got all excited about the plot? Fabulous. Because honestly, we so often as writers, when we’re working on something, are just sort of, you know, there’s a lot of self-doubt. There’s a lot of what am I even doing here? But to have somebody who said, oh, wow, this sounds really cool, was really great. And you have to imagine he was really short then.
chi: I had an interesting experience reading the book, where at the end, I was really curious about what happens next to the characters. Like, I think growing up in LA, I’ve seen people in cults or near cults, when those things come to a screeching halt for whatever reason. Like, either the doomsday calendar thing passed and nothing happened.
Kate: Or they ran out of money.
chi: Or the leader dies or something. Anyway, like that, the aftermath of that was always fascinating to me. Like, where do these people go, you know? Do you think about the life of characters that survive the book, and where they go afterwards?
Kate: I addressed it a little bit in the epilogue, but yeah, it was a point, because I really think about the ripple effect and the damage that the narcissist I was referring to earlier had on people, actors whose lives sort of revolved around it, but then he wasn’t involved with them anymore, and there were a lot of shattered people around.
And, you know, for Curtis, I think Curtis goes through the worst stuff. Again, we can’t spoil. So how people find themselves after that is a really good question, and I felt myself worried about them, and I felt myself worrying about people who were all in and didn’t know what a huge cult the organization was.
chi: Other than the main character, whoever you think is the main character, was there a character that surprised you in the way you connected with them, or what they end up doing in the book?
Kate: Jonathan was a journey a couple times through, and I ended up really empathizing with him the most, because it feels like his, you know, I know that Sophia and Curtis are innocents, and so there’s a way you’re affected by evil there. But with Jonathan, he was in it all the way as it got more evil and he knew what was going on, but you still sort of feel for him because his best friend who had claimed to see him clearly was only using him for a certain part.
That’s not a spoiler. And so, because in the beginning he’s already feeling he’s on a shifting relationship with this person who had been his whole self definition. And so, getting into sort of his journey that way and how when I did have an experience of having the juice in Hollywood and then not having the juice. I worked for Sylvester Stallone’s company, and we got a deal at Universal and everybody was seeing us and giving us all this material and all these wonderful things.
They would go up and throw all the scripts and do a video presentation and it was a really intoxicating feeling to be like we can buy projects and we can develop them and we can make them happen and this is really great and we worked for an 800 pound gorilla. And then to lose that juice was really—when I quit, I was really astonished by how many people kind of disappeared from my life that those friendships were all, I have some dear friends I still have, but a lot of people they were just there for the juice.
chi: If you had to pick one character in the collective that you think is sort of the heart of it, who would it be?
Kate: That would be Jonathan. Definitely.
chi: This is for actually for either newer writers or writers who are still dealing with this question, especially writing fiction and stuff. Can you explain how a character who might not be the main character can still be the heart of a story?
Kate: Yeah, because I guess Sophia is more of the main character. I don’t know. I feel like the main character carries the story and is a good lens to see things through, and because she’s new to Hollywood, seeing the excitement through her eyes was a very useful thing, because then you could see how these other people got seduced into it, and she’s still starry-eyed.
But sometimes a secondary character comes up, and I don’t think you know it first, but I think letting them all live and breathe and getting into their mindsets really helps them sort of grow.
But I think for young writers, understanding that you’re exploring, and to keep at it instead of narrowing things down to an outline that you must adhere to, like really letting each character live and breathe, you’ll find points of view that really spring up, and you’ll also find ones that are unnecessary.
Alterations had a whole point of view that I actually ended up cutting, but I really needed that character, and I needed him to be there in his point of view to understand who he was, but then I ended up putting him through other people’s eyes.
So just let your story like overbloom, like, you know, I don’t know, rising dough, and then you can sort of pare it down. Leonard Chang always says that artists have clay or paints, they go out and purchase them; writers have their first draft, and that’s their clay.
