We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Craig Higgins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Craig below.

Craig, appreciate you joining us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

My book ‘Artichoke Stars and Chicken Fried Shark’ began as a COVID-era, Christmas break attempt at generating a new story. In the original tale, a teen boy goes out to the beach and discovers this artichoke-like alien creature that, when he brings it home, turns into a girl. I got about two thousand words into this concept when a couple things occurred to me. One, it was a dumb idea. Two, it was a dumb idea worth developing into a manuscript. Gradually I began to add elements that made the story what it became – the setting is the same small Mississippi town I spent time in as a young teen; the time period was 1980, right on the cusp of a period of what for America then was tremendous upheaval politically and culturally; and the cultural milieu around our hero Mickey Finley is very religious in context. Once I set the time and place, it was a simpler matter to include all the elements of what I’ve branded Deep Fried Cosmic Weirdness: alien invasions; body horror; and angsty teen romance.

As to success, I believe it’s a book that speaks to our times in its own way. It asks questions about life and death and the nature of fanaticism in all its virulent forms; and, yes, it affirms teen love even in the direst circumstances.

Simply put, ‘Artichoke Stars and Chicken Fried Shark’ is a unique read. You may like it, or you may not, but you can’t accuse this book of not daring to do something completely different.

Craig, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Craig E. Higgins, and I’m a recovering Catholic school boy. I grew up in the New Orleans suburbs amid mundane tract housing, later replaced by the splendors of upper-middle-class suburbia. After high school I slummed my way through college while growing up fast in the French Quarter (which is a book all by itself). At the turn of the millennium I ditched NOLA for a long sojourn in Texas which included long stops in Austin and later Lubbock which, West Texas being what it is, often felt like a trip to Mars. Nowadays I live with my wife and two dogs in the desert north of Las Vegas, Nevada. From my room overlooking a picturesque mesa, I plot and pants my way through all sorts of adventure stories, from oddball sci-fi to sword-and-sorcery.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I think about my writing the same way I do running – get up early and get as much accomplished as often as possible, and you’ll make progress. When I run, it’s almost a ritual at this point – I get up around three in the morning, stretch, and then take my dog out to our track for a six-mile run. It’s tough to do that five days a week and then go to work teaching school. But I like to think that, when I do settle in front of the keyboard for a couple of hours in the evening, I’ve left it all on the table – the rest of the evening is mine to create and shape, which is something I’ve been doing diligently for about the last five years.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I think the main goal is to create the best, most compelling adventure stories I can dream up. The work will hopefully outlive me regardless of commercial success (although that, too, is a goal if I can accomplish it). But when I think of great fiction I think of my boyhood fascination with Robert E. Howard, a West Texan who somehow turned living out on the Plains into the lurid and gripping world of Conan the Barbarian and so many other thick-hewed, no-nonsense heroes. Howard never lived to see the impact his work would have. But if he hadn’t written it, how many people might never have plunked the keys of a typewriter or laptop? How many films, comics, and other media would have gone in a different direction?
The goal, then, is to create stories that people will pick up hopefully years from now, and find something of themselves in. If not that, then something that fuels their dreams.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.craigehiggins.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cehigginsauthor
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cehiggins.author/
• Twitter: https://x.com/CEHigginsAuthor
• Other: Threads: @cehigginsauthor

Image Credits

Professional headshot: Terje Riisnaes. Black-and-white picture of the shark was: Craig E. Higgins pencils; Stephanie Anduro, finishes. Book cover was done by Stephanie Anduro. Picture of myself holding the book under a blue tent: Craig E. Higgins.