The ancient philosopher Kellius Clarksius once declared that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
But not everyone listens to her. Which may explain why Dash, the lead character in Omar Hussain’s speculative / literary fiction thriller A Thousand Natural Shocks (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), is trying to forget something rather than imbue its negative energy in a positive way.
In the following email interview, Hussain talks about the things that inspired and influenced this story, and no, a certain power pop song is not among them.
To start, what is A Thousand Natural Shocks about, and when and where does it take place?
A Thousand Natural Shocks follows Dash, a crime reporter on the Monterey Peninsula of California, who’s looking for a way to forget one dark memory from ten years prior. In so doing, he becomes entrenched in a local organization that’s very cult-like. Dash knows its cult-like, but goes along with it anyway because they are offering a way for him to forget that one memory. In fact, he would be forgetting all of his memories and the organization would reboot him in a different part of the world under a new alias, with a new job, with a new life entirely. A complete fresh start.
In order to get this, Dash has to agree to carry out a series of nefarious missions on behalf of the cult. While this is happening, Dash is periodically stalked by a mysterious figure he soon becomes convinced is the Coast Killer, the Monterey Peninsula’s thought-to-be dormant serial killer.
As his dealings with the serial killer and the cult intensify, Dash’s grip on reality loosens. He’s losing his memories and with them, his sense of self starts to fracture. Weird things start happening. He begins to glitch — these short to intermediate periods of time that he has no idea what occurred while the glitch is in effect. And as he’s trying to make sense of all this, he stumbles onto the cult’s true intentions with its members.
It’s at this point that Dash has to figure out what he wants to do, which inherently deals with what it means to be good. What it means to be good in the face of the chaos he’s created. What it means to be good in the face of his past. And a big piece to this puzzle is Dash reconciling what happened ten years prior, because it might just be the key to undoing all the madness he’s created.
The book fundamentally seeks to address the questions, “If you could forget the worst, most traumatic experiences of your life or biggest regrets, would you? And if you did, how would it change you? And in the process of it changing you, would you have any control over what you might become next?”
Where did you get the idea for A Thousand Natural Shocks?
I wouldn’t say there was necessarily one thing that triggered it. I knew I wanted to tackle a story that wove together themes around memory and trauma, but did so within a high-concept thriller. I really sought out to create a book that works like the best Christopher Nolan movies. I wanted it to be heady, thrilling, smart, but accessible.
I love stories that allow people to consume it at different levels. If you want a hip thriller, this book might be for you. Prefer something with philosophical underpinnings, this book can scratch that itch. Want a story that unpacks a part of the human condition and the darker effects of trauma? This novel can do that. Just want to be entertained? Well, hopefully this meets that standard as well.
So, is there a reason you set A Thousand Natural Shocks in Monterey, California as opposed to Portland, Maine or Austin, Texas or West Orange, New Jersey?
Most people, when they think of Monterey or Carmel, California, think of beautiful ocean scenery and cute coastal towns. They’re right — at least for the most part. But I lived in Monterey for about six years, and there is a gritty side to the peninsula. It’s incredibly eerie at night, and some weird things do tend to happen there. It’s really similar to a beautiful, sparkling rock that you pick up off the ground and recoil at what you find living on the underside. So, when I was deciding where to set this novel, it started to make a lot of sense.
Similarly, why did you make Dash a reporter as opposed to, say, a cop?
Reporters are in charge of relaying the truth, which makes for an amazing juxtaposition for an unreliable narrator like Dash. It also opened up interesting plot developments vis-à-vis reporting on the Coast Killer as Dash thinks he’s being stalked. In short, it just felt more fun — and that’s what this is really all about, right?
It sounds like A Thousand Natural Shocks is a psychological thriller. How do you see it, genre-wise?
I see it as an exploration on grief and what it can do to the human psyche first and foremost. The delivery mechanism has thriller elements and speculative fiction elements. I think it’s a book that falls pretty evenly on the upmarket line: fifty percent literary fiction, fifty percent genre.
It’s literary because of its themes around grief and trauma and the role memory plays in aligning or dissecting those two experiences. The language is also more literary, particularly the last third of the book which required some serious work to capture Dash’s fractured state of mind. It’s a thriller because the book is written with elements of a noir atmosphere, and the plot contains common devices like cults and killers. At the end of the day, how the book is classified is probably a net result of how it makes you feel once you’re finished reading it.
Now, A Thousand Natural Shocks is your first novel, though I’m guessing it’s not the first thing you’ve written. Are there any authors, or stories, that influenced Natural Shocks but nothing else you’ve written?
I’ve joked that this book shares the same literary family tree as Camus’ The Stranger and Palahniuk’s Fight Club. That’s partially because the narrator of all three books shares similar personality traits, but also because each book riffs on elements of existentialism and / or nihilism.
How about non-literary influences? Was A Thousand Natural Shocks influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games? You mentioned Christopher Nolan’s movies earlier.
A lot of inspirations for this book came from music. I often thought of this book as a great “trip hop” album, something that Massive Attack or Portishead would release. That stayed with me as I wrote it. I would often pair music with other elements of the book. I leaned into Post-Punk Revival bands like TV On The Radio to help capture Dash’s start-stop-start thought process. I wanted the energy of the book to resemble different songs as well. In some cases, that meant “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. In others, it meant “Ideoteque” by Radiohead.
A Thousand Natural Shocks seems like it could be a stand-alone story, or the first in a series of bad times for Dash. So, I’ll ask: Is Shocks a stand-alone novel or the first book in a series?
I’m pretty comfortable where Dash’s journey took him. But maybe it can continue. It’s hard to say goodbye forever. It’s a lot easier to say goodbye for now.
Finally, if someone enjoys A Thousand Natural Shocks, what novel of someone else’s that’s in the same vein would you suggest they read next?
I don’t know about genre, but I think people should read Benjamín Labatut’s When We Cease To Understand The World. It’s a book that has haunted me for almost three years now. There’s nothing else like it in contemporary fiction.
