» Interview

Dreams and Daydreams: A Conversation with Christian Moody

Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds
Christian Moody
Dzanc Books
$17.95
Publication date: October 14, 2025

Poissant: Lost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds is a collection that has been in the works for a while. I’ve been watching from afar, as a fan and a friend, as these stories came together, and I was so glad to read the finished book at last. It’s a masterpiece, full stop. The stories are distinct, but they feel connected thematically or stylistically in a way that I can’t quite put my finger on. What do you see as the glue that holds these stories together?

Moody: I published the first story at thirty and handed in the collection at forty-nine, so I didn’t chase any current hot topics or consciously attempt to unify them by theme. But I do think they’re a good representation of some of my core obsessions: forests, magical strangeness, and humans in their private, unguarded, awkward moments.

I grew up deep in the woods—first in the redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains (looks like the Moon of Endor) and then in the deciduous oaks and sycamores of the Midwest. Very isolated. Few people. Lots of trees. People see climate change commentary in my stories because nature is often under threat—and those themes are there—but, more simply put, forests are the landscape of my childhood and heart.

How to explain the weird magic? As a kid, my younger brother and I would stand at the bus stop, shivering in the snow, and entertain ourselves with questions like: “What if you had a tiny extra head in your armpit that whispered to you? Would you keep it for life or pluck it? When would you tell your girlfriend?” Those semi-disturbing what ifs helped us laugh through divorce stuff, money problems, and all the usual growing-up stuff. We still fall back into what if mode when we’re together. So, to me, magical weirdness is where my mind goes to survive life’s harder parts, to find joy, to laugh, feel weirded out in delightful ways, and to connect with other people who like that too.

And, finally, I’m drawn to people in their private, unguarded moments—like the story with trees with eyes that record everything. Growing up in such isolated places, I get freaked out when someone rings my doorbell. It makes me want to hide. So, as cameras and social media proliferated, it did freak me out, and some of that ended up in my stories. I like to write about how people are when no one’s watching, when they’re alone with themselves, being weird, unafraid to whisper back to that tiny extra head in their armpit.

Poissant: You must have influences. George Saunders and Steven Millhauser spring to mind, but those might just be surface level comparisons. Who else do you read whose work creeps into your work, either at the surface level or at the sentence level?

Moody: This is a tough one. The metaphor that comes to mind is that writing a story is like building a house out of thousands of stolen parts. I’ll take a board from Kevin Wilson, a bag of nails from Aimee Bender, a few roof shingles from Haruki Murakami, some plumbing from Station Eleven or The Hunger Games. Little bits and pieces of everything I’ve read.

But those earliest, first reading experiences might count the most. My most honest roots go back to first grade, when a substitute teacher read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Lucy pushing through the wardrobe’s fur coats into snowy woods was elemental for me. I begged for the book, got it in my Easter basket, sat on a mossy boulder in the redwoods, finished it, and started it again immediately. I didn’t get the religious subtext and skipped over big words, but I loved the witch, werewolves, frozen statues, and talking beavers. I still have that copy, inscribed by the Easter Bunny in my mom’s big, loopy handwriting.

Poissant: While we’re talking influence, I couldn’t help thinking of the work of filmmaker Ari Aster, who often credits his love of literature as an influence on his filmmaking. Your stories are richly visual. I can see the worlds of your stories. Do you credit any movies or film language with the nod toward imagery that your prose evokes?

Moody: I had to look up Ari Aster—turns out I have seen Midsommar. Beautiful and super creepy.

My 1980s childhood left a mark: The NeverEnding Story, The Goonies, Labyrinth. None hit harder than Labyrinth—you had to be eleven, with a crush on Jennifer Connelly, and a confusing parallel one on David Bowie. One of my dreams was to work for Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop; I even wrote him letters, and his son wrote back a few times.

Later came The Royal Tenenbaums, Pan’s Labyrinth, and prestige TV like The Wire. More recently, I’ve admired Craig Mazin’s screenwriting on The Last of Us and Chernobyl. I didn’t even see Chernobyl, I just read the scripts. They’re so vivid in memory that I feel like I’ve seen the show. I even had two questions read on his Scriptnotes podcast, including one about puzzle box storytelling that ended up helping me finish the novella. He always mocks my question, then answers it really well.

When I write, I often start with an image—a landscape or scene. This seems somewhat cinematic, but I think dreams and daydreams are the real medium writers work with. I like the “waking dream” theory of fiction: the writer has a vivid daydream and uses text to give someone else a similar dream.

Poissant: The collection is anchored by a novella: Ray of Golden Yolk. Without offering any spoilers, I think it’s fair to say that Ray, your protagonist and viewpoint character, gets put through the wringer. But the story never treats Ray as a punching bag. How do you negotiate your compassion for your characters with your need to riddle them with conflict?

Moody: Raising the stakes was central to Ray of Golden Yolk. I’d put Ray in a tough spot, then try to find a psychologically true reaction. I liked him, didn’t want to hurt him, but I wanted to see how he’d react.

I started the story at twenty-five and left just about every mystery unsolved. My editor, Chelsea, asked me to solve those mysteries. Dealing at age forty-nine with the consequences of decisions I made at twenty-five was some of the hardest writing I’ve ever done.

I dodged Chelsea’s emails for months, rewrote the beginning, broke open the original premise and scattered the pieces, failed over and over, then wrote that letter about puzzle box storytelling to Scriptnotes for advice. I almost gave up, thinking maybe I’d just go into hiding and never publish another book.

Then, just as Chelsea said maybe we’d go with the original version if I couldn’t deliver, the solutions came. It was easier than I’d thought. I kept the heart of the original story, wrote over twenty new pages, cut a bunch of the middle, and gave the novella a new ending. I didn’t have a daughter when I began the story, but my daughter is now close to the age of the daughter in the story—that might have helped.

Poissant: The story “The Babycatcher” feels almost like a fairy tale. Have any fairy tales informed your fiction?

Moody: Fairy tales are in my fiction at a deep level.

My parents were divorced. At my mom’s, we lived in a shack-like cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains, surrounded by redwoods. I could walk outside and wander for miles through forest. At my dad’s, down in Santa Cruz proper, the yard was dug up for years for a project, just dirt and sun, which I hated, so I’d retreat to the garage for shade.

That’s where I read fairy tales. Brothers Grimm, library finds, garage sale paperbacks. I loved how the same fairy tale could be totally different in another book—translation differences, alternate versions. Fairy tales were an escape from one physical space into another, especially if a story featured woods and weirdness.

Poissant: “Horusville” is the quintessential coming of age story. It’s very funny and very sad, sometimes at the same time. In terms of craft, how do you juggle such tonal shifts?

Moody: I tried to see each scene as vividly as I could in my mind’s eye and get the reader to see it too (that daydream theory of fiction I mentioned). I often like my own sadness—not full-on depression, but that gentle, pleasurable melancholy of a sad song.

As I mentioned, I also love jokes and what if thinking. The kind of sadness in this story and the kind of funny in it are both joy to me—just toggling between stuff I love. So, to me, those tonal shifts never felt far apart.

Poissant: For a long time, you taught creative writing. What is your best craft advice for emerging or aspiring writers?

Moody: Early on, balance two opposite perspectives: be honest about the kind of work you love and want to write, while staying open to work you might initially dislike because your taste could change—the way maybe you once hated coffee and now love it.

At a certain point, though, just write the work you most want to read. I spent years writing stories to please my teachers—competent but without duende, without heart. Eventually, I said eff it and wrote about magical mechanical birds, expecting mockery. Instead, people liked it best. I like cooking/taste metaphors for writing: Just because your teacher or friend is a renowned master chef of French cuisine doesn’t mean they won’t enjoy your awesome scrambled eggs.

My list for what I truly want from a story, and a quick, oversimplified tip for how to get there:

• Momentum—to write a page-turner, open the story with a problem or goal for your character, then place obstacles in the way to create structural suspense by delaying the goal or solution.
• Immersion—to make the world around the reader disappear, write in scenes, and use precise, vivid descriptions (harder than it sounds).
• Feeling—one way to break a reader’s heart is to give a character something important and then take it away. But don’t label the feeling (e.g. “she was sad”). Leave the feeling unstated in the scene, and let the reader empathize and provide the feeling themselves (a spin on the classic “show don’t tell”).
• Meaning—I like stories to feel meaningful, but I don’t want them to be didactic or to play that marketing game of “important issue of today.” All topics are meaningful, you just need to be honest with yourself about what you really care about (a difficult, lifelong journey).

Poissant: In closing, what’s next for you? Would you care to share any details about what we might expect from you in the coming years?

Moody: As I’ve revised my answers to these questions, they’ve all stayed the same except for this one. I’ve accumulated a big pile of unfinished work. Sometimes, on walks with my wife and daughter, I’ll describe a story or novel I’ve started to see if they like it. There’s a father-daughter time travel novel that they seem keen on, so maybe I’ll finish that.

At age forty-nine, with my first book coming out, there’s not much chance of an auspicious debut. It’s too late to build up the long career that makes a writer famous or leads to academic stardom. The money math from writing definitely isn’t mathing for me. These career-related things are all in the rearview mirror. And it feels great!

I have zero self-induced pressure. Zero expectations. I just get to think: what kind of story, if I were reading it, would bring me the most joy and meaning? How can I make something with as much honesty and authenticity and generosity as possible? Spending time with my family is more important than writing and dealing with these questions, but if I can steal a little quiet time to write and reflect on some of this stuff—that’s not such a bad use of my time.

Christian Moody

Christian Moody’s stories have appeared in Esquire, Alaska Quarterly Review, and in the anthologies Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. He received his MFA from Syracuse and PhD from the University of Cincinnati, and spent years as a creative writing professor. He now works as a brand director and lives in Indianapolis with his two kids and his wife, memoirist and illustrator Margaret Kimball.