Entropy is an intentional choice of words because it feels like entropy is the core and foundation of the entire novel. The disintegration of everything into a slow fire, time’s inevitable charge, how everything and everyone you ever knew will one day be forgotten and there will be nothing left to mourn; it’s bleak no doubt, but it’s through these people Yeager creates immense empathy for these characters and hints that entropy might not necessarily be negative and possibly even a transcendental process (as we see at the end of Lu’s arc and, to a lesser extent, Jill’s)

This book transcends feelings too by presenting you with imagery that can make anyone reading it experience synesthesia (Ex. "Arnie slurred his voice all alabaster when he really felt something").Our first impression tells us that the book switches between the perspectives of three characters: Ahmir, Jill, and Lu, not an unusual narrative technique, especially these days. Yeager even deceives us into thinking this is a transparent tripartite division of the narrative by writing each character’s name in bold ink as a heading once their voice begins telling the story. I’m really curious to know why other people like this book. I feel like I’m either missing out on critical information or maybe this genre isn’t for me. I do feel like a part of me is too used to horror movies, where there is usually a clear goal or objective, whether that’s surviving or escaping something for example. Overall I didn’t hate the book but I guess I just wanted something more to bite into. Ben:Anything you want to add before this end? Anyone or anything you want to plug? Anything you've been watching, reading or listening to that inspired you? Ben:See, I doubted myself because she seems like the first one who's breaking from reality. For entire chapters, she's just reciting screen and text colors. Ahmir felt to me like the more grounded one even if he's clearly in love with Tyler. Were the passages about gender and nonbinary sexuality planned from the start or did they happened organically? B.R:This might sound like a bullshit answer, but as a creator I don’t see my work as particularly extreme, especially compared to people like Blake Butler, or Gary Shipley, or Grace Krilanovich. Or especially someone like Kenji Siratori. Those people are operating at a level far beyond me—it seems like more of a mystical practice, text as peyote button, whereas I’m still in the physical plane, concerned with telling my little stories. Like, I get that my stuff might feel more extreme than plot-driven, 3 act genre fiction, but that’s only because I’m pulling from the real wild stuff. But ultimately, it’s still operating within familiar narrative traditions. When you get down to it, Negative Spaceisn’t that divorced from a Stephen King novel. But with something like 300 000 000, it’s hard to trace where that’s emerging from. It feels completely cut off from tradition.

I would love to work with someone who only really cares about the numbers and the candid aspects of things and then I just want to write all the flavor text. That’s one of the dreams there. As for the characters: they’re teenagers. I was an asshole as a teen, so were all my friends. It’s just an intense and volatile period where everyone is narcissistic and testing boundaries and still developing empathy. The people who think these characters are abnormally rotten either don’t remember what it’s like to be a teen, or know WAY nicer people. s hauntingly beautiful prose made every reading moment feel like it streamed away, ceaseless, like waves that keep on seeking the shore when the light of day is fading and a darkened sky gathers. Yeah, this is not just a book to read. It's an experience to be immersed in. A dark one, yet magical nonetheless. Ben:I hear you. Tell me about Lu's character. It's one of the parts in Negative SpaceI'm not sure I actually understood. At some point I was convinced he/she was the narrator telling the overall story. At some other, I doubted myself. Were there ideas your were trying to get across through him/her?I wasn’t there but I can see it in my mind. I know what it was like. I know it like a dream. In that way, it’s still happening, and always will be.” Echoing, contradicting prose like this haunts every crevice of B.R. Yeager’s 2020 horror novel Negative Space. Published on March 1st, 2020, the epidemic of teen suicides in the small fictional town of Kinsfield, New Hampshire directly mirrors the pandemic in which the real world would soon find itself. Negative Space blurs the lines between different realities and timelines. Through the daze of a new illicit hallucinogen, cryptic 4chan posts, and the general musings of chronically online teenagers, memories transcend the traditional boundaries of bodies to a shared identity amongst the residents of Kinsfield, NH. I read aloud many parts of this book because they were so disturbing and intriguing to me. There is one section where a book is being read by one of the characters and the excerpt pertains to corn seedlings releasing a pheromone when they are being eaten by caterpillars, which draws in wasps to eat the caterpillars. So it is forcing the wasps to do the bidding of the seedlings without the wasp being aware that they are being manipulated. Then it asks the question of what that means for humanity and how people can manipulate other people for their own ends, making the person being manipulated think that the idea came from their own head and not some external source. Can you think of anything more terrifying than realizing how easily we can become the puppets of external sources, both human and supernatural? B.R:Yeah, I definitely saw this and my previous book as being horror from the outset. Or I was at least purposefully trying to occupy that space. It’s a form that has always captured my imagination. That came out of enjoying other card games, like Magic the Gathering. How that kind of rations out lore and world building. Or games like Dark Souls or Blood Borne and that where the entire narrative is conveyed through object descriptions. Along similar lines of writing and design intersecting, Run Off Sugar Crystal Lakeby Logan Berry is really terrific too—this kind of psychedelic reenvisioning of Friday the 13th.