Today we’d like to introduce you to Corey Croft

Hi Corey, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I began writing because it was cheaper than therapy.

I was going through a prolonged stretch of anxiety and depression that was not getting better. I had become used to those feelings coming and going my whole life. Sometimes for a day, sometimes a week. Sometimes longer. This particular episode was very intense, getting worse, and impossible to shrug off. My usual (self-prescribed) medicines and coping mechanisms weren’t helping. I was breaking apart. I tried to get help, but I was paranoid and sceptical of the process.

I was also bored. To the point of malaise and frustration. I’d finished grad school and discovered that the time I’d spent on schoolwork and dreaming about what the future might hold had been replaced by ennui and consumption and the realization that I things were not working how I’d envisioned them. Reading, alcohol, anything I could consume to provide me with momentary distractions.

Writing had been something that I’d always wanted to try. I thought I’d be good at it, since I read so much. I’d often put it off and say to myself: “when I have time.” One day, it dawned on me that I did have time. More than enough. And it was being wasted. Whether brooding about my degree not serving me, dwelling on all the unhappiness I felt, things that weren’t going to do anything to change my life or heal whatever was going on with me.

I set out to write 1000 words everyday for a month. For all the ‘genius’ story ideas that I’d cooked up, nothing was jumping out at me. But, I wrote whatever came into my head. I enjoyed it. I began to spill all kinds of personal and vulnerable information to a blank page. Anecdotes, innermost feelings, musings, real and imagined scenarios. I loved it. It felt good. It felt like I was doing something productive and it felt right.

New story ideas started flowing. It was exciting. I was unearthing aspects of myself, memories, and true sentiments about topics that I never stopped to appraise with any sincere thought. I had no idea most of what was coming out had been living inside me. It was overwhelming. Mostly in a good way. Some of it was difficult and stung. I then worked on making what I was writing coherent. Less a diary and more a story. Forming narratives, creating systems and structure, and took feedback from those select few I began to share my writing with.

It was only when I had a few stories completed that I reached out to a seasoned author to critique my work and help me edit. She said that it was raw, perhaps too absurd and dark for commercial audiences, but showed talent and creativity. With a equal measures of ego and ambition, I decided to start my own publishing company. Control the content, find my niche audience and not to sacrifice a drop of what I believed made my work unique. The goal was to drop a few bestsellers and then start selling the work of other weirdos.

Those goals haven’t been met. That ego has been shaved down to the marrow. However, the ambition is still there. My company is called Fly Pelican Press and we recently released Scumbag Rehab, the first book in a noir, bizarro series.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

The road has been full of bumps, pot holes and especially wrong turns. To the extent that if struggle builds character, than mine should be a skyscraper that reaches space.

I didn’t go to school for business or marketing. Those have been difficult and cost a lot of time and money. There has been a lot of learning on the fly and experimentation. I focus on learning from any unsuccessful attempt and experimenting with new approaches. I think that’s integral in finding out a strategy that works. Learn from mistakes, see what makes ground. Trial and error.

Every creative endeavour requires the artist to stick out. Self-branding is essential and at times feels more important that the art itself. I’ve always found it difficult to reconcile the business side with the love of the craft. The push-pull. Time management and compromise are vital to getting eyes and ears on the thing that you spend your life committed to.

There are tactics that have worked, or work, for some. There’s a likelihood that most of what has worked for many will not land for others. It feels as though chance plays just as large of a role as any supposed winning formula. Everything is a gamble. Expectations, therefore, are important to manage. Hope and optimism can suffer greatly when an objective isn’t met and that can kill a person’s drive. Even when the expectation is kept at a low heat, you can still be underwhelmed and feel the burn in your spirit.

People will tell you to ‘keep your head’ and to ‘keep plugging away.’ It gets tricky sometimes. When who you are and what you do become so intertwined that, even up close, a parent or partner, even you can’t tell the two apart. Then come the wolves. The doubt sets in. The fear it won’t ever work out in your favour. Hope and optimism dissipate and threaten to undermine your work and your life. For this, I can only speak for myself, but the passion must be there. The desperate heart that can’t stop loving. Even pitted against logic, with anxiety and depression abound, the zombie-like trudge forward must continue. The death before defeat and willingness to sacrifice whatever it takes to see it out to the end. If you weren’t crazy before, it will take you there quick-fast.

Keeping the fire going, in harsh winds and brutal conditions, can be a very challenging exercise. I’ve come to realize the image of the starving artist isn’t necessarily something physical.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

I’m recognized for writing books, short stories, poetry and having red hair. However, I believe that I’m best known for creating darkly humoured, absurd fiction. At the time of publication I have four books available to the public. Each one is quite different from the next. For better or worse, I genre-hop, and tell a story in the way that it desires to be told. It’s not my choice, I just listen.

My writing is character driven, focusing on change and growth instead of a gimmick based plot and a+b=c narratives. My stories have been described as bizarro for the oft-eschewed or disfigurement of tropes and ‘warm bath’ prose. My work can be jarring as it is entertaining. Due to the nature of my writing, the reader is generally uncertain of what they are getting into. Be it a psychological thriller, a young-adult urban-centered drama, or a gritty hardboiled dose of dirty realism. Defining both my genre and fanbase has been a challenge. I believe it has been a sort of impediment or obstruction. And the reality is that it rests entirely on my shoulders.

Yet, despite subject matter and genre playing duck, duck goose, I have a style that is discernable in every book. There is black comedy, socio-cultural philosophizing and taboo battering that carries through every novel. Topics of mental health, personal struggle, the individual in the world and a world full of individuals. My prose and the themes that are found in my writing are always unique, and the use of metaphor is abundant. I write with the intention to entertain and educate myself and hope that it resonates with the reader. Essentially, I’m trying to figure things out, solve a riddle, or say some thoughts out loud so that I can hear how they sound, and use that as fodder or a dramatic and well-structured story.

Alright, so to wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

It’s important to support the creation of independent, boundary pushing and non-traditional art. In theory, it’s easier to provide support when those those artists are people that you know, care about and believe in. However, even that is not guaranteed. Where I believe the true need for support lies, and where it is perceived as the most difficult, is in taking a chance on the creators and artists who are not next of kin or someone who you don’t have saved in your phone.

I have some wonderful people in my life, thankfully. I can’t relate how thankful that I am for their care without it sounding corny and contrived. This is an isolating and individual pursuit, and knowing that I am supported and loved, regardless of my success, is the greatest solace. The major challenge is reaching out to new audiences and penetrating a largely faceless and ever-homogenizing market. With an easier ability to consume various kinds of media, and the speed and simplicity which anyone can create their own, there has been a proliferation of art and artists in all disciplines. Each with their own influences, identities and motivations. It’s a dogfight to wrangle eyes and ears to a product or brand. Many people rely on the comfort of what they’re already familiar with. While the tales of great, organic success may appear more plentiful, it doesn’t speak to the overwhelming number of people who struggle to find their place and cleave their path.

It can be lonely. Full of doubt. Give a cat the feeling like their shouting into a dark void at nothing and no one. That’s normal. But the scariest things to me are the advent of using AI to ‘make’ art, being subject to mysterious algorithmic overlords, the need to emulate and copycat the material of others, anxiously following trends instead of doing what’s true to the heart. All of this has led to a sterile, watered down and increasingly narrowing view of what is acceptable, marketable and worthy. The old: if you don’t have x amount of followers, you aren’t for real.

I fear that rather trying to break through the ceiling, artists will feel they must conform, bending to what’s hot instead of flowing with what’s foaming inside them and forcing the song or painting or poem out of them. Some were always destined to latch onto coattails and desire wealth or popularity. While others are at the end of the road and don’t want to dance at the end of a rope. Popular music and movies largely refuse to take chances and operate on a continuously shrinking bridge of what is considered mainstream. Fewer chances are taken. Much has become imitations of a something that was already an imitation. It’s as though everything must fit in the overhead bin of a plane or be left on the runway. If something does work, a new and refreshing idea, it’s then stripped down, sliced away of its sincerity, and replicated to death,

That becomes the goal. To do just enough to have your work carved apart and become the feed for a new army of tepid clones. Momentarily adding a touch of new paint to the still-tapering bridge of artistic and cultural conformity.

Look… there’s a lot of jazz flying at our faces in brief pops of sound and colour. It’s hard to find and then differentiate what’s different or new when the wolves have become so adept at throwing on the wool and baa-ing. And how fast they have learned to do it. I won’t rail on the disintegrating attention spans or the learned-need of instant gratification. It’s well documented. Art has had to adapt to in order to be noticed. It seems as though the only chance available is akin to creating an ad that you clock on a billboard from a speeding train. The need to pump out trivial stories and half-hearted projects on the daily is silly to me. But, that, as they say, is how the game is played.

I suppose I’m trying to say that people, artists and the consumers of art, have a choice. The artists can choose to stay true or or fold. (I didn’t say ‘sell-out’ because that feels unfair to people who have worked their whole lives to make it. I can’t hold it against them. I’ve never been in that situation. I don’t know what I would do. Probably move into a cabin in the woods and cut the phone cord.) The artist can try to bully their way in or chill in the vestibule and show the world what they ate for the next 24 hours. To try to change the world or let the world change them. Meanwhile, consumers can choose to brush past indie art and head straight to the Marvels and Disney’s world, conscientiously ignoring the art that may challenge them in favour of something gooey and soft. Or, they can take a chance. Go with their curiosity. Speak up. With their voices, their wallets, or whatever. Share that they stumbled upon with others who would otherwise never have discovered it.

At the end of the day: you like what you like. Some things are too weird. Some are too simple. Goldilocks porridge. In finding out the style of art you like, you can find out a lot about yourself.

As a side note, I always wonder how many Van Goghs Kafkas, and Winehouses are out there now, who aren’t attractive, who haven’t sunk a hook into the algorithm, who don’t have deep pockets to spend money like water on marketing and placement. How much of these underground artists can change people’s lives, even one person’s, if only someone took the chance.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.flypelicanpress.com
• Instagram: coreycroftauthor
• Other: Tiktok: ccroft23

Image Credits

Teagan Vincze, James Baker, Josh Neufeld, Winston Fong, Elora Kaye