Originally from Missouri, Sherry Morris writes prize-winning fiction from a Scottish Highland farm where she pets cows, watches clouds and dabbles in photography. She also presents Sherry’s Shorts—a short fiction show on Highland Hospital Radio. 

Her story ‘The Sound of Something Big’ features in THE BARE BONES BOOK OF HUMOUR. The anthology’s editor Ankit Raj Ojha describes it so: “A couple bickering over who would check that sound downstairs stumble upon a skeleton in the closet.”

Ankit interviewed Sherry to know more about her writing life.

Tell us about your perspective on humour and its place in writing and in life.

Oooh … an interesting question that made me think about the type of humour I like. Growing up, I really enjoyed reading columns by the US humorist Dave Barry, and comics like Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed and Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. 

I loved the irreverence and sharpness of this kind of observational humour and how very powerful things were said while also making a reader laugh. My beta readers often say my stories are a mix of wry humour and sadness which pretty much describes my story ‘The Sound of Something Big’. I guess I like stories that seem to be about something glib but then go deeper, into something more powerful and tragic. I also love poking fun at inane authority. Though, in this day and age, that can be dangerous. 

I also love slightly saucy and innuendo-laden humour—one of my own favourite funny stories is a Christmas tale that involves ‘non-standard’ Christmas lights… 

I present a spoken-word show of short fiction on hospital radio and I’m always looking for humorous stories. They’re not easy to find—there are a lot more sad stories out there—so I’m super happy to feature in a whole anthology of humour. 

What are the things, works, and authors that have influenced your writing? 

I’ve noted a few writers already who made an early impression on me. More recent writers I find funny are Miranda July and Lorrie Moore. July’s short story collection, NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU, is wonderful and a joy to read. Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, has an absolutely brilliant voice and a hysterically funny narrator. At the same time, it’s a terribly tragic novel. It’s a braided story, set in Ukraine, and weaves together past and present. Ukrainians are known for their black humour—having lived in Ukraine in the early 1990s, I experienced it firsthand. Their wry approach to life and saying the unexpected, for example, Why laugh when you can cry? influenced me a lot. 

Is there any image, phrase, idea, place, person, or memory that became the seed for ‘The Sound of Something Big’? 

I honestly can’t remember what inspired me to write this story. It may have been a prompt in a writing workshop? Something like, “Write a dialogue where two people want very different things and neither is willing to compromise.”

Initially, this story was very short—just a couple hundred words of a couple arguing about a ‘maybe-sound’ downstairs. I knew I wanted the female character to appear ditzy—a typical trope that drives me crazy, and then turn that trope on its head so by the end we see the characters in a different light. I hope readers enjoy the story and this whole wonderful book of laughs. Thanks so much for letting me be a part of it.