Q&A: Evansville author tackles city's 'monsters' and what it makes it 'super, super weird'

EVANSVILLE − If you're mourning the passing of the Halloween season, a new book has launched that dives into urban legends, folklore and anything spooky.

Kyle Darnell, a visual arts instructor at Signature School and an adjunct instructor at the University of Evansville teaching night courses, has written "Evansville Monsters II: The Book of Dark Days and Other Weird Tales," a collection of poems, short stories and illustrations based upon a slew of Evansville legends.

He heard many of the stories since moving to the city almost a decade ago.

The 243-page book is the second in the series and features topics and themes such as green creatures, Fall Festival horror, and what's hiding under buildings throughout the city.

The Courier & Press sat down with Darnell and talked about his career, the book and what led to its creation.

How different is writing this short story collection compared to the usual novel writing that you do?

So with writing a novel, it's that continuous narrative of keeping it going, keeping it pushing forward, and no wasted movement. That basically exists the same way in a short story.

A short story is a lot of no wasted movement. It's a lot of everything has to have a purpose, because if not, then why is it that the short story can be shorter? Because you're not really trying to pad length or anything like that.

Why this series?

So it started with "Evansville Monsters" one not as a book, but as an art print, like an art series of just kind of wanting to make like a 1950s movie / horror movie poster type of thing about events around Evansville. To just kind of showcase a little bit about what's happening in Evansville, especially historically. And then it made more sense to write short stories to kind of expound upon them.

As I was doing that, I was just researching more and more about the city and there are so many more stories to tell. So the second one came out of that there's just more stories to tell.

And why about the city? Because the city is super, super weird. I've lived in a lot of places and I'm not like a spiritual guy or anything. But there's a certain odd energy to this place. That anytime you see somebody living their day-to-day life, it's always slightly a little bit off than normal. But what I like about folklore and urban legend is it doesn't have to deal with facts and it gets to deal with the city telling the story of itself.

And I feel like Evansville has a lot of that in it. It has a lot of those untold stories and a lot of hushed whispers with a lot of explanations that go beyond simple.

How did you hear about these different urban legends or folk tales about Evansville?

Honestly, most of them happen at my book signings, especially for the second book. And no one ever wants to be credited because they heard it from somebody and they heard it from somebody. So it's just more of a general story about the area.

What drew you towards the horror genre?

I've just found that horror is a really nice medium for telling a multitude of stories because it can cross different boundaries and go into different genres easily while certain genres can't really dip into horror very easily.

So for a lot of these stories in the new book, they're horror plus "x": it's horror plus comedy, horror plus thriller, etc. It's a way of telling more diverse stories. And I find that just straight-up horror scares me. So if this is something that interests me, it makes it easier to work with because it's like I'm constantly engaging with it.

I've said at the book talks that I'm a very gullible person. So the idea of me sitting down and writing a story that's actively scaring me, that's just entertainment. I don't believe in ghosts, but I do believe that they believe in me. So the idea of writing horror stories that go out into the world that are eventually just going to scare me is kind of fun. Because ultimately I'm writing to show kind of a community perspective and engaging in community, showing off things that you hear kind of off the side in the bar, or at the park. But now it's kind of put forward like this. Ultimately I do horror because horror scares me and then entertains me.

How different is this book from the first version of it?

So this one's better. Writing is like practicing a sport. It's all about reps.

This one's just written better. I will say the stories in the first one are probably more interesting because I had like all that raw material that I can draw off of from green clawed beasts to (Willard Library's) Grey Lady. The fact that there are two malls on Green River Road, which I still find very weird.

This one is more clearly written and I also included a poem to go with each one as a way of kind of summarizing the story. Then in the back of the book is the gallery, where the first book stories also have a poem that ties them up. So it's kind of a way of getting both books for the price of one.

Why does Evansville need a book like this?

I think it's as important as any other horror or pulp fiction that's out there. It's not necessarily schlocky, but it's just another way of approaching a city. There's a lot of my friends that read it, and they're like "if this wasn't so menacing or if this wasn't a horror story, this would be a really good tourism advertisement for Evansville."

Because it really shows off all the sides of the city: different places to live, what's happening, and things like that. Could you imagine you move into a new city and someone just hands you a book that's full of urban legends and short stories about the city? Because I would love that.

What was that moment for you when you knew that you wanted to do art full-time as a career and passion?

I don't think I ever had a choice. There's something about artists, there's this innate weirdness that they experience. It's the one to display your emotions and your work in front of other people, which isn't a really normal thing to do. And this applies to all artists, so like, actors, dancers, writers, visual artists, movie makers, they all are kind of like in the need to express themselves in front of other people.

I've been making art since maybe 2004 and have been in exhibitions and displaying my artwork out there. And I genuinely don't think there was another choice. I can't imagine another thing I would be doing. I couldn't be an accountant even though I really like numbers and doing my taxes. It's not necessarily that I knew what I wanted to be this. It was more that I knew I couldn't be anything else.

What advice would you have for people who are getting into writing?

There's actually a really good book about this called "On Writing" by Stephen King. I remember I read it when I was in college and it really inspired me. But he had a very important thing: just start writing.

And I was, like, just do it. You can only do it badly for so long and you don't know what's bad until other people read it and they tell you their opinion on it. Because as far as you're concerned, you're going to think everything is great or terrible, depending on your mindset.

But until you actually write and write and write and get it out there, and other people actually tell you what they think of it, it doesn't really mean anything. So just always keep writing.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Evansville author tackles the city's 'monsters' and weirdness