Chatting with Hayden Waller

Hayden Waller is a science communicator with a PhD in evolutionary biology. Their speculative fiction tends to be centered around class, ecological anxiety, and the surreal cracks in everyday life. Their Pushcart-nominated stories have appeared in Interzone, Honeyguide, and a handful of various anthologies.

Hayden is the author of “Cinnamon” from Issue 10.

Q: What was the seed (a particular image or idea) that started Cinnamon?

I wish I could say that I was riding my bike one day and it popped into my head fully formed and all I had to do was write it down. Hell, I wish I could say the idea for Cinnamon was even original. But alas, this story was inspired—quite unromantically—but a random tweet I saw like four years ago while doomscrolling my way through the pandemic. Credit for the idea goes to @HelloCullen for his all-timer: "Me and my friends would have killed ET with hammers, I can tell you that much."

I'm not exaggerating when I say that tweet had been rattling around in my head for the better part of four years. Despite being a shitpost, it unironically captures a very familiar type of "guy" that I grew up with in rural Idaho in the late 90s and early 00s and I felt like I wanted to experiment with turning it into a full story.

Q: Sean and his father’s brutality is juxtaposed against Ash’s protective inclinations and sense of wonder. What did you aim to explore through these characters’ differing reactions to vulnerability and difference?

I don't think I'm revealing some great secret here by saying that Cinnamon is actually a story about family dynamics. My goal with Sean and his father was not to portray them as brutal or heartless—in fact, both of them are somewhat tragic products of their upbringing.

Sean struggles throughout the story between defiance of his father and fealty to him, uncomfortable perhaps with being pigeonholed into a certain way of being but aware of the benefits of accepting his position in the hierarchy.

Ashley, on the other hand, is aware of the hand she's been dealt. She doesn't vibe with the men in her family and doesn't stand to benefit much from pretending she does. Sean and Ashley are both at an inflection point in their lives—Sean, in the end, choses to uphold the patriarchal family order while Ashley rejects it. This incident is symbolic of the rest of their lives' trajectories.

Q: The ending is emotionally devastating. Did you always know you wanted to end the story this way?

No, I didn't. I knew Cinnamon had to die, but actually in the version I submitted for this issue it was Sean and his friends who did the killing rather than Sean and his father. As the Radon editors were wise to point out, ending it this way felt extremely narratively unsatisfying for a story that to a large degree is about Sean and Ashley's relationship with their father. It seems so obvious in hindsight for the ending to be what it is in the final version, but I was blinded by a self-imposed allegiance to the source inspiration. Expert writers are surely well-aware of this pitfall, but this was a major learning experience for me.

Q: Your story feels rooted in strong fiction traditions such as ET and The Twilight Zone—alongside elements of horror, sci-fi, and domestic realism. Are there films or authors that inspire your voice and process?

I'm an acolyte of Keith Rosson and Stephen Graham Jones—not in the sense that I've been fortunate enough to have ever formally studied under them, but in the sense that both the stories they tell and how they tell them resonate with me in a way that few other writers ever have. I'm aware this is corny as hell, but I have framed cover art from Fever House and The Only Good Indians on the wall in my home office.

Q: How do you see your role as a fiction writer and science communicator working together?

I could spin a yarn on how knowledge about storytelling makes me a better science communicator—which it probably does to a certain extent—but the honest truth is that I see science communication as a job I like enough to do full time, while I see fiction writing as something I would very much like to do full time instead.

Q: How has your experience been navigating scientific publishing versus genre publishing?

The two honestly couldn't be more different. On the one hand, the scientific publishing industry is a heavily corporatized money-making scheme which charges scientists for the right to publish their own work. It charges readers for the right to read it, and exploits free labor from PhD students and professors for peer-review, all while turning multimillion dollar profits.

On the other hand, genre publishers (at least if we're talking about the online lit mag scene) make almost no money, do it purely for love of the game, and still often manage to give away the actual stories for free.

Q: How did you manage to stay writing speculative fiction while finishing your PhD thesis?

There were large portions of my PhD years where speculative fiction writing was the only thing keeping me sane enough to have a chance at finishing.

Q: What do you believe humans can do to help spur action regarding the environment and address the reverse feedback loops?

I'll try to avoid writing an essay for this one. The simplest answer is to work to dismantle capitalism and replace it with an economic system that prioritizes people and ecosystems over short-term profits for the richest people on the planet. The not so simple question is: how do we actually do that?

In some countries, workers have relatively strong labor laws and union membership rates, and in turn have a lot of power to influence lawmakers. These countries can (and are, in many instances) at the forefront of progress on environmental issues. In countries like my native United States, however, where both major political parties are completely captured by the corporate donor class and therefore structurally incapable of delivering for workers, it's a lot harder. In this case I'm in favor of the most aggressive forms of targeted, non-lethal property destruction that I'm legally allowed to publicly declare.

Q: Has it been easy to transition as an American living in Denmark?

Denmark may not have mountains or fresh jalapeños, but the free public healthcare and infinite bike lanes go a long way in making up for it.

Q: How is your debut novel coming along?

It's done. It's on the market. No takers yet. So, hey, if you're an agent out there and reading this, I'd love it for you to take a look at your portfolio and consider adding a gritty urban fantasy about spell crystal cartels, Southwest desert noir, and a protagonist who just wants her portal toad back.