If you’ve read an Aimee Bender story, you likely haven’t forgotten her socked-in-the-gut surrealism and bittersweet characters. Case in point: In her latest novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, a girl named Rose has the unfortunate ability to taste emotions in food. From her home in Los Angeles, Bender talked to us about storytelling, freefalling, and an axe-wielding Jessica Alba. 

VENUS ZINE: I’ve read that you write organically, not knowing where your stories will end up. Having written both novels (An Invisible Sign of My Own) and short stories (Willful Creatures, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt), do you use that approach for both? 

AIMEE BENDER: Usually. It’s exhausting, and the amount of pages I cut is embarrassing, but I can’t do it any other way. I try to come up with a plan, but when I try to do that, I can’t. The story ends up really short, or I get bored—and then the story gets boring. It seems like the only way I know how to structure something is to write a lot of pages and start cutting. 

VZ: So you just freefall?

AB: Yeah, exactly! [Laughs] 

VZ: What’s the benefit of that? There’s a risk that you don’t know where it will end up, or if it will end up at all … 

AB: Right! It’s both terrifying and exhilarating to come up with some thing that surprises you as you’re engaged in the writing process. I’m kind of hooked on that thrill of discovery. It’s like picking up stones and looking underneath them. You don’t know what you’re going to find.  

VZ: Your characters often have surreal abnormalities (Rose in Lemon Cake, or the boy with keys for fingers in Willful Creatures, for example). What draws you to those themes? 

AB: I’m interested in making emotional or magical deformities physical. It becomes concrete, and then I can talk about it. There’s something about how feelings get tucked away that’s murkier and harder to explore—so I need to have feelings manifest themselves in a different way.  

VZ: An Invisible Sign of My Own is being made into a movie! How involved were you with that? 

AB: The film’s been made, but I don’t know what’s happening with it. [At press time, IMBD lists the film in post-production, to be released in 2010.] I’m sort of distanced from it, and the more it’s its own thing, the better for me—I think that’s how adaptations work best anyway. For now, all I know is that you can find a picture of [star] Jessica Alba holding an axe on the web! 

VZ: Alba was a surprising choice for the lead, Mona Gray. She doesn’t seem drab enough. 

AB: It’s funny, in the photos online she’s wearing what I think is a really nice outfit, and people commented, “She looks frumpy!” Well, for Jessica Alba, she does look frumpy. But for me, I thought, “What a great jacket!”  

VZ: Finally: Given how much thought you had to put into ingredients and food in Lemon Cake, do you actually enjoy cooking?  

AB: I’m not particularly good at cooking, but I enjoy it because it’s so different from writing. It’s nonverbal and it’s totally temporary—and I like to eat. 

CLICK HERE for our must-reads of summer 2010, featuring Bender's The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake