Tell us a bit more about you and where you’re from.
McCarthy: I was born and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan before going to Indiana University to study journalism. I was a sports reporter for a few years before moving to Juneau, Alaska to be a newspaper reporter. I then moved to Virginia to be with my then-girlfriend, now-wife who was a newspaper reporter there. She and I moved to St. Louis, Missouri where she attended law school, and we just moved back to Indiana this month where she has a job at an Indianapolis law firm. I’ve been a communications professional since leaving the newspaper world, and have worked on the side as a freelance magazine writer and part-time advisor to IU journalism students. My wife and I have three cats and one 12-foot pumpkin skeleton that we park in our front yard for all of September and October.
What inspired your winning story? Why did that particular theme resonate with you?
McCarthy: I love unconventional story forms, including found footage style writing, so Mystical Listicles was right up my alley. The title for the story immediately popped into my head when I read the theme, but I took a few days to come up with the specifics. I love an unreliable narrator, or in this case, an unreliable listicle writer, so I knew I wanted the “voices in your head” to be the writer(s) of the piece. Everything else fell into place when I started writing. And my wife’s hatred for bitter IPAs found its way into the piece, which seemed to really resonate with many of you!
Unrelated but kind of related: I love this monthly contest, and I have grown so much as a writer from experimenting with different approaches as I come up with stories for this. This is such a positive, passionate community and I am seriously so honored to be in this position.
When, and why, did you start writing?
McCarthy: The earliest time I remember writing fiction was in elementary school (maybe fifth grade?), when I checked a book out from the school library and made up my own story about the characters in the book. I had a whole story worked out in my head but only ended up writing one page (front and back) of an intro. The opening line was something like, “A little girl walked into a village, covered in blood.” Clearly I’ve stayed in the same vein (so to speak) since then. I hid the sheet of paper under my bed and my dad found it and said it was good. So it began.
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