It's the weekend. The weekend is when the real crazies come in. Oh, hi, you! What's your name?

Clifford Scott Jones, Jr.

Hey there, Clifford. I hope you don't think I was talking about... Ahem...Where are you from?

Magnolia, Texas. A little cow town about an hour north of Houston.

Is that where they make the gloves? Oh no, that's Marigolds. My mistake. Do you like living there? If not, where would your favourite place to live be? Is yes, where would you least like to live?

Nah, I had to move out of there as soon as the opportunity presented itself. I like a lot of things about the country, but Magnolia's growing fast, so it's sort of the worst of both worlds right now. I'm not sure I want to pick one place to live. I'd like a home base in the country (preferably an underground bunker in the middle of some private woods), but I'd like to travel to a new city every year or so: explore the area, eat the food, learn the language...

I wonder how far you've got? A bunker in the woods sounds cool. It'd be like 10 Cloverfield Lane but without the alien invasion. Or the death. So, nothing like that really. Do you live at number 10 by any chance? As you're a writer, is this your 'day job'?

Unfortunately, no. I started off doing computer stuff like web development in high school, and that's what I'm doing currently to pay the bills. I studied linguistics in college and taught English for a while (both writing and as a second/foreign language), but academia doesn't seem to pay very well. A couple more years of school and I could have a Ph.D., but I'd probably wind up going back to coding even with that under my belt.

Those bills are a pain, ain't they? Always getting in the way of the good stuff. Tell me about your latest project.

I'm just finishing up book two of Adaleide in Ozghard. I'm calling this one Adaleide Over the Bridge on Wattpad, but I'm planning to pitch both books together as a single novel when I go agent-hunting. This story is a fairly fast-paced journey through a Martian world I've created that connects to Oz, Wonderland, Neverland, and the Cthulhu mythos. There's a lot packed into 24 chapters. I've even got a couple of languages constructed for this, one of which is split into four dialects.

That sounds fab! And the languages and dialects really add to the authenticity. I like the idea of the world you've created – linking those fabulous places together! Very cool. How do you feel about bacon? A crazy person once said it was the food of the gods. OK, I admit that person was myself...

I'm no vegetarian, but I am rather conflicted about eating pigs. They're so smart and human-like. But why does their bacon have to taste so good?! So yes, I eat bacon, and with gusto! It's the food of the gods, after all.

It certainly is. Pretend it doesn't come from pigs. It's just in those vac-sealed packs already. What is your favourite film?

I'm a little divided on this. I have two favorite movies corresponding to my two parents and the two hemispheres of my brain: Raising Arizona and Joe vs. the Volcano. I watched both of these repeatedly as a child in the way that defines my generation more than any other. Almost everybody had a VCR and a modest collection of tapes to watch over and over. Before this situation arose, kids had to watch TV or go to the movies. Later generations had streaming video on demand, so there was no real need for extreme repeat watching. It's a brave new world with such people in it.

I know what you mean. TV and film have become so diluted now. They used to mean something to people. Now you can binge watch a series in a day or so. Things don't seem to have the same impact anymore. Oh, good choices by the way! Have you always wanted to be a writer, or is it something you found yourself doing one day?

I've always wanted to be an artist of some sort, but I gradually settled on writing as the best fit. It seems that both my parents went through this process themselves. They're writers too, though like me they've yet to get much out of it financially. Too many distractions, I suppose. We're a family of aspiring polymaths.

It sounds as if you're more than simply 'aspiring'. Seems you're pretty close already! Do you have so many ideas they dribble out of your nose if you don't get them down, or do you have to hunt around the floor and the back of your sofa to find where your Muse is hiding?

My muse chatters away so incessantly that I've had to put up mental blocks to keep myself from hopping from project to project without ever finishing anything. For me, the hard work that goes into finishing a project isn't the work itself but resisting the oh-so-tempting work that I could be doing on another project. I'm always scribbling down notes that feel like the most important thing I could possibly be working on, and then out of necessity, I file them away and forget about them. Someday, I'll start digging through these notes, but not until things calm down a bit.

This is a similar problem to what Shaun has. He gets so many ideas and keeps trying to work on multiple ones at once. This is why he takes so long to get my story finished! Or worked on. Or looked at! Anyone would think I'm not real, the way he drops me! If you were in an asylum, what would your particular delusion or psychosis be?

I'd probably just lose my faith in objective reality. If I trust only my senses, why should I imagine the world as anything more than a persistent dream? And then of course, some smartass says, "Ah, but whose dream?" If it's a dream, then of course it's mine, though I do play all the characters without quite realizing it. The world exists as long as I keep imagining it to. Will it go on after I die? What an absurd question. I already told you I play all the characters, so why should I die just because one of my characters does?

Have you watched the film Identity? Are you sure you're not just in a mental home? Oh, saying that, you actually are – sitting here with me... What genre(s) do you write?

I aspire to write slipstream, an underdog genre that never earns a shelf in bookstores. Like comedy or horror, it's defined not by common tropes like robots (sci-fi) or dragons (fantasy) but by the effect it has on readers. My goal is to lead readers along with an entertaining story, and then at some point they say, "Wait, what?" I want them to question my sanity, their own sanity, and most importantly, the sanity of the world around them.

That's definitely a man after my own heart. Questioning one's sanity and that of the world around you is something which should be done by default! What genres(s) do you read?

I've been reading quite a bit of sci-fi and fantasy lately. A lot of that is research, but they're also damn entertaining! I like it when the world of the story is somewhat like our own but disconnected in obvious ways. I don't see this as escapist exactly, just a way to work out the consequences of what-if scenarios. In this way, fiction functions a lot like dreaming.

That's an interesting outlook. Liking it. If these are the same, what attracts you to them. If they're different, why do you think that is?

It's hard to find good slipstream that's actually labeled as such, so I go looking for it in sci-fi and fantasy. My literary hero, Philip K. Dick, is known as a sci-fi writer, but the guy wrote slipstream all the way. Haruki Murakami is another writer I'd label that way, though his stuff is called "literary fiction," whatever that's supposed to mean. Kafka, Borges... I'd say if it feels like a Twilight Zone episode, it may be slipstream.

Dick and Murakami are legends! They definitely cross the boundaries between genres. Bacon – just cooked or crispy?

Crispy as hell! Burned even. I love it when the fat is almost completely rendered and what's left is this delicate substance that melts in your mouth like a Violet Crumble.

I've never had a violet crumble, though I'm partial to a homemade apple crumble. I'm not sure which tree violets grown on or how many you'd need to bake. You're entering your work into the Wattys for 2016. Watt story (do you see what I did there?) are you entering? Tell us about it!

This year, it's just a couple of short stories: "The Undoing of Flip Foster" and "Sacred Geometry." The first is a surprisingly realistic (non-fantasy) retelling of the Faust myth where a guy (in this case, a lonely hacker) sells his soul to the Devil (the organization behind an overly invasive social shopping app). The second is a very short tale about meditation, demonic possession, and multi-dimensional physics. Both are meant to be educational as well as horrifying.

I can see why the Devil would be associated with shopping apps. Definitely. I'm going take a peek at them. Don't tell Shaun. He sometimes tries to tell me what to do. How dare he? Now you're in the asylum with me, how do you aim to get out? Do you have an escape plan?

Transcendental meditation. We'll detach ourselves from our earthly bodies and focus our combined energy on a particular guard. We'll get the guard to leave us a clear path for exit, and then we'll simply walk out when the time is right.

Well, that might work. You try and I'll follow in your 'slipstream'. Don't the orderlies have to have something about them, some spark of intelligence for you to grab hold of? Good luck finding that.

Cliff Jones is a coder by trade, a linguist by training, and a writer by calling. He's written instructional books on programming, taught English at home and abroad, and managed a college writing centre. Growing up with a severely autistic younger brother has given him insights into abnormal psychology and a passion for devising alternative modes of communication. Cliff and his wife of 12 years are currently raising a very precocious 10-year-old girl.

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