Francine Cunningham’s first book of short fiction, God Isn’t Here Today, is a beautifully written book full of humour, death, resurrection, and human connection. It came out from Invisible Publishing in spring, 2022.

How did you come up with the ideas for these stories? A couple that stand out to me are the idea for the title story—about God being a very “human” entity who sits behind a complaints-department type desk eating sandwiches and reading Archie comics—or for “Spectre Sex,” where all dead people have ghosting jobs and move up the hierarchy from ghost sex to general hauntings, etc.?

These stories all came to me in such different ways, some from dreams, some from my real-life experiences, some from overheard tidbits of conversations, some from songs, and some from just endless floating on the internet. For the title story, I was riding the bus and looked out the window and saw a flash of graffiti with the word God in it, I had a boom moment of a boy riding the bus to go to god’s office and being absolutely desperate to talk to him and seek council. I spent the rest of the bus ride imagining the world of this story, and when I got home I wrote it. Spectre Sex came from watching an interview with the musician Keisha where she talked about having sex with a ghost. My first reaction was, what does the ghost feel about this? I then went online and read accounts from other people who would summon ghosts to do their sexual bidding. I was way more intrigued by the afterlife in which ghosts are forced to have sex with alive people and just wanted to explore what that would look like, it turned out to be great fun and the world to be very expansive.

There’s a focus on death throughout the collection. In some, the dead are reincarnated in various ways, for example through the donated organs of a dead man or through the art made with the chalk made from his cremated remains. What compelled you to focus on death and the afterlife, so to speak? Or maybe the blurring of the line between the dead and the alive?

You know, I don’t quite know. It’s just something that is endlessly fascinating to me. None of us truly know what happens after we die, which makes it the ultimate what if scenario, and also makes it one where someone can’t disagree with me, because who knows what the truth is. I love that. I was raised in the Pentecostal Church, and it was a very extreme experience to say the least. There was a lot of focus on death, on the afterlife, on your soul and what you do here in this life. After I left the church as a young person I spent years studying other religions and what they thought the afterlife was, I also read so many books on aliens, other dimensions, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It became an obsession of mine; still is I guess since I am writing my own versions of it. But I was searching, and I’ll never stop searching, and I love that I won’t know until I die what it’s all about, or if it’s nothing I won’t care because I’ll be nothing. So, until then, I am going to be exploring the afterlife in my stories. And isn’t that space of in-between a place that is so rich in story?

Now I have to ask: what is the deal with lemon and lavender? Haha. In each story, the scent of lemon and/or lavender are mentioned. What was that meant to represent?

Scent, it pulls us to memory, and can blur the past and the present together. It can be time, and a line that draws us through it.  Lemons and lavender is one of my favourite scent combinations, and I also love it as a flavour combination, and I imagine in this other realm that I am creating and defining my writing in, that lemons and lavender waft on breezes, and seem to appear when the moment of choice is most pressing on a person. It is a throughline that pulls my characters together across stories and across my page. It’s also a good way to establish the universe I am writing in.

I also wanted the reader to have this scent play on their memories that were created in the reading of the stories, to be able to pull to them the story, and instances in which the scent caught them and held them. And maybe forever, when they spot lemons and lavender in their own lives will be brought back, if only for a moment, back to the moments in the book that still hold them.

A lot of these stories hover around the idea of the impossibility of human connection (or maybe all of them do!). Some deal with intense loneliness, while other characters just want to be left alone—or they hate people but don’t want to be lonely. Is this how you see humanity? Are we doomed to never find ideal connection with a living human being?  

I actually think that a lot of these characters do untimely find connection. Some don’t, and don’t want to but the ones that do…it blows away everything else. Take Mickey and Doris from “Mickey’s Bar.” They come together so tenderly and wholly, it is only for moments, but it took years for them fall into that love, the moments were worth it. The connection may not seem like the expected version of connection often portrayed but it is still meaningful and just as wonderful as people who spend fifty years together. Some find connection in the unexpected, in “Love, Transparent,” the woman is wholly devoted to the skin of the man she loves with her soul, in “The Death of Him Came To Me in My Dreams,” the protagonist is connected to her gift, to the land she walks, both on this side of death and the other. So, they may not connect in traditional ways, but not everyone has that in this life, and that’s okay. There are a lot of love stories in this book filled with darkness hahaha.

Why did you decide to make this a collection of short stories and poems? Have you seen that done before?

The micro stories are in fact one short story that is split up and spliced between the other longer stories. I have realized since the release of the book that they read like poetry, from what people have mentioned to me, but in my mind, they are one of the many stories in the book, told in micro bursts throughout. But also love the idea that people are reading them as poetry, as I am also a poet, and love when I can get away with anything lyrical and beautiful.

And, finally, any plans for future projects?   

I have a kid’s picture book that will be published by the incredible Annick Press in the not too far future called What if Bedtime Didn’t Exist, which is a fun book of imagination. I am also working away on a young adult novel, a memoir, and my next short story collection. All in the writing, editing, endless revising stage. I am always working on multiple projects, some for years, but that’s what keeps the writing life interesting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One thing I ask authors to do is to provide me with a song list – either songs that are inspired by your book, or maybe songs that you listened to while writing the book.

This God Isn’t Here Today Playlist is like a small encapsulation of me and the music I like. Also, each song and story go together, in mind at least.

“God Isn’t Here Today”: “Trees” by Twenty One Pilots

“Asleep Till You’re Awake”: “Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean” by Explosions in the Sky

“Mickey’s Bar”: “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed

“In Rememberance”: “You and Me” by Lifehouse

“Thirteen Steps”: “I Hung My Head” by Johnny Cash

“Be My Forever, Ever”: “When You’re Gone” by Shawn Mendes

“Come and get Your Ice Crème, Motherfuckers”: “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie

“Last”: “If the World was Ending” by JP Saxe featuring Julia Michaels

“Pornorama”: “Stay Positive” by The Streets

“Starting a Religion”: “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine

“Spector Sex”: “Teardrop” by Massive Attack

“Who is Erik?”: “Creep” by Radiohead

“Complex 2675”: “Drinking in L.A.” by Bran Van 3000

“Love, Transparent”: “In a Week” by Hozier, featuring Karen Cowley

“Glitter Like Herpes”: “Rock You Like a Hurricane” by Scorpions

“The Death of Him Came to me in my Dreams”: “Adagio for Strings, OP 11” performed by Vienna Philharmonic, Samuel Barber

Francine Cunningham is an award-winning Indigenous writer, artist and educator. Her debut book of poems On/Me (Caitlin Press) was nominated for 2020 BC and Yukon Book Prize, a 2020 Indigenous Voices Award, and The Vancouver Book Award. She is a winner of The Indigenous Voices Award in the 2019 Unpublished Prose Category and of The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Award. Her fiction has appeared in The Best Canadian Short Stories 2021, in Grain Magazine as the 2018 Short Prose Award winner, on The Malahat Review’s Far Horizon’s Prose shortlist, in Joyland, The Puritan and more. Her debut book of short stories, God Isn’t Here Today, is out now with Invisible Publishing and is a book of Indigenous speculative fiction and horror. You can find out more about her at www.francinecunningham.ca