Vincent Anioke

I don’t craft these stories according to some predefined formula of X% darkness and Y% light. Instead, I focus greatly on the emotional honesty of the characters’ journeys. And honesty is recognizing that, universally, light comes from love, that even as we exist in our most damaged, most intolerable versions, we can still be seen and held and considered worthy.

Perfect Little Angels is such a captivating and interesting title. What led you to choose it for your short story collection?

The titular story’s first draft was tricky to get right. I wrote and paused, wrote and paused, trying to really unknot what lay beneath the beating heart of its fraught and tense romance. When, finally, I wrote the section where one character narrates that his supposedly loving father burned his younger sister’s hands with an iron to punish her for her sexual curiosity–when he framed the father’s love as conditional on their being perfect little angels–the story’s missing shape became immediately clear. Afterward, I realized how much the fractured, often conditional nature of love powered many of my favourite stories. I knew then that I’d build a collection around that theme with the title.

As this is your debut collection, could you speak to the process of moving from early drafts to a published book? How did you decide which of your stories would make it into the book, and what order they should be in? 

Initially, I was landing individual stories in various literary journals, each with their own Primary Concern. I didn’t have a book in mind until writing the title story, which made me reflect on a) carefully choosing existing stories that fit its theme and b) writing new stories with the collection’s existence in mind. For the newer works, some of the longest in the book, I focused on widening the breadth of the stories’ settings and characters. I also focused on forging meaningful links between pieces, having them in conversation with one another. I quite like the cumulative effect on the book, which feels varied in its range despite its centralizing theme of conditional love. Selecting from existing stories included judging which ones I felt showcased the best of my capabilities. It also meant dropping stories I really liked because they covered overly similar ground. Finally, the order of stories was a matter of continuous experimentation. I played with various sequences, trying to break apart darker story stretches with lighter ones. A set of stories I felt were twins I paired side by side. I also liked starting with a young protagonist in the first story and ending with a much older, time-hardened protagonist in the final story.

Some might consider a background in software engineering quite different from creative writing. Does your background in this field have an influence on your writing, and how so?

They exist in this tangled ecosystem that’s simultaneously symbiotic and parasitic. A creative mind is often most fertile when not overburdened with worry. Thankfully, software engineering provides the kind of financial and intellectual fulfillment that minimizes worry. On the other hand, long engineering days translate to very little mental energy left for solid writing. I have to be intentional about how I pair my writing sessions with my ever-changing work schedule. There’s also an analytical rigor that’s baked into my job that I bring to editing my stories for line-level and overall cohesion.

At times, there are tragic moments in Perfect Little Angels that demonstrate the darker aspects of human nature. How do you balance these moments with humour and love, and why is it so important to have this balance?

The balance reflects the reality of lived experiences where pockets of light shine even in the darkest hours. I don’t craft these stories according to some predefined formula of X% darkness and Y% light. Instead, I focus greatly on the emotional honesty of the characters’ journeys. And honesty is recognizing that, universally, light comes from love, that even as we exist in our most damaged, most intolerable versions, we can still be seen and held and considered worthy. This beautiful fact also creates an undercurrent of hope and possibility so that we can imagine these characters pushing forward, never giving up. Of course, sometimes, a story’s tragedy does emerge from a certain kind of love. One that’s too stringent in its expectations of how the beloved should exist, or one that is so blinding that it blurs flaws, lets the beloved be consumed by their own worst tendencies.

Of the fourteen stories that make up Perfect Little Angels, is there one that you enjoyed writing the most, or one you’re proudest of? Is there a story that proved the most difficult to write?

That one paragraph that ends “The Stars Yet Undiscovered”, simple as it is, took weeks to figure out. After the whirlwind experience of its main character, I needed to subtly suggest the nature of his transformation, even as he clings to a kind of self-deception. I didn’t figure it out until one evening, sitting outside the steps of my part-time barber’s shop, waiting for his arrival. The sun was setting, the weather was lovely, a man wearing headphones and a smile walked past me, and I felt a simple contentment in that moment. It mirrored the underlying feeling this character had been searching for. This character who’d been living in the background of my mind for a while now (as characters of my works-in-progress often do). Suddenly, the ending, the final paragraph, struck me so powerfully that I rose from the steps in excitement and whipped my phone out to write a note down.

I’m most proud of the last story in the collection. Its concerns are very weighty, and I spent a lot of time trying to do them justice. I’m really satisfied with the story’s evolution, its role as a thematic and narrative climax in the book.

This answer is ever-shifting but in terms of sheer writerly joy, I most enjoyed writing “Mr. Yemi’s Revenge”. It let me excavate the wild memories and power dynamics of my all-boys boarding school days in a way that proved thrilling.

Ultimately, I’ve written many, many stories over the past several years, and the ones in this book reflect the best of them. With each tale, I hope readers find parts of their humanity reflected back at them.