An Interview With Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane On Death Comes at Christmas

Death Comes at Christmas is mystery anthology edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane. It is a wonderful seasonal piece that has everything from locked room mysteries to cozies to real mind benders. It’s an anthology worthy of a good binge read with several cups of hot cocoa (make sure you prepare that cocoa yourself).

 

JG: You both have a big background in horror. Why a mystery anthology? Do you have a genre preference? Why these authors?

MO/PK: As much as we love horror, we also both grew up reading fantasy, SF and crime – and are big fans of the latter. We’ve both written crime fiction before in the past, and of course co-edited the Titan anthology Exit Wounds, featuring Lee Child, Val McDermid and Jeffery Deaver. The Times called that one ‘impressive’ so we must have been doing something right. All of which made us want to dive into another one. The authors we approached had either worked before in this kind of area, or we thought would fit the brief very well. It helps that they’re all superb writers at the top of their game, of course. Each one delivered something unique that just went together as a whole. As for which we prefer, we love them both – and of course the other genres we mentioned too. It’d be hard to choose between them, frankly.

JG: What brought you two together? I see that you have worked together several times.

MO/PK: Well, we’re a married couple who’ve been working together for over twenty years. We met online and became best friends, then in person at a convention. We started working on various things together – especially at the British Fantasy Society – then began going out in 2005, so next year marks our 20th anniversary as a couple. We found we worked particularly well together on the editing front, which is handy as it spreads the workload. Now it just seems like second nature; we have our own shorthand for working on them and our own way of collaborating. It just works and we don’t question it!

 

JG: Do you prefer writing your own work or editing? Why? How long have you been editing?

MO/PK: We’ve been editing for around a quarter of a century now, but writing since we can remember. Both are fun and very rewarding, so it’s hard to choose and it depends which day you catch us on. Writing your own material is much more immediate and personal, of course, because it’s just you and a blank page. And you know exactly what you want to say yourself, whereas someone else’s meaning might not come across on the first draft when you’re editing. Usually this only takes a little tweaking to get there. There might be days when the writing isn’t going too well, so a switch to editing can help. Or the other way around. It doesn’t make one better than the other, they’re just different.

 

JG: How long have you been writing?

MO/PK: We’ve both been writing since we were little, since we figured out how to tell stories. Professionally, Paul started off in journalism when he left university in 1996 and then began penning short stories after that. Marie sold her first short story in 2001, so we’ve both been doing this a long time. You never lose the thrill of doing it, although sometimes it’s hard when the words aren’t flowing. And you never stop learning or striving to get better, or make your writing better. What keeps it fresh is doing different things with your writing, like film and TV scripts, audio work, plays or whatever. It’s exciting to write in different areas because they each have very different ways of presenting stories. You can take a story and turn it into a comic script, an audio, a feature or whatever and they’ll all be very different beasts. That’s what makes it so interesting.

 

JG: Do you prefer writing short stories or novels? Why or why not?

MO/PK: If we’re writing a short, we’ll probably want to be writing a novel and vice versa. They are wildly different disciplines, not many people realise that. You have to get in and get to the point with a short story, whereas with a novel you can take your time and build things up. Shorts are quicker, they’re less of a time commitment, but if you can get it right they can be just as satisfying to write as longer works. All of which is to say, it’s hard to come down on which we prefer as we love doing both. Again, they’re both very different.

 

JG: What got you to branch out into other genres?

MO/PK: The fact that we’ve always loved reading them, as mentioned. We both grew up reading widely, although gravitated towards the more imaginative genres, obviously – especially horror. And that’s continued to this day; we might read a crime novel, then a horror collection, then next an SF book… The same is true of our viewing habits as well. We have marathons at the weekends, sometimes it’s horror, sometimes thrillers, sometimes something really out of left field. At Christmas we’re planning on doing our usual Hobbit/Lord of the Rings rewatch, which’ll take a while… So, it was just a logical next step to end up writing and editing in those fields. Authors, editors and screenwriters tend to work in the genres they enjoy, you’ll find.

 

JG: What is the basis of a good story for you?

MO/PK: The usual. Well-rounded characters coupled with an engaging narrative. Excellent description, though again in a short story you don’t have the time to do this too much. But also that certain something you can’t really put your finger on which makes it special, that gives it the wow factor and makes it more than just the sum of its parts. Everyone knows when they’ve read a tale like that. Essentially, a great story well told. Oh, and the author’s own voice – that’s incredibly important in a short story. You can read certain pieces and absolutely tell who did it.

 

JG: What else do you have coming out? Novels? Anthologies? Collections?

MO/PK: We’re always working on multiple projects, all the time. Paul just finished writing a short novel a couple of weeks ago and is now working on a few short stories, as well as doing some editing. Marie finished a short story for a mass market anthology, has a novel on submission and is editing – specifically at the moment the latest Absinthe books for PS which she is managing editor for. In terms of what we’ve got coming out, our next book for Titan was recently announced: our hardback anthology The Secret Romantic’s Book of Magic, which hits the shelves next summer and has contributors like Olivie Blake, Kelly Andrew, Katherine Arden and Hannah Nicole Maehrer. We just handed that in and are very excited about it, because the stories are simply stunning. Marie is putting together a new collection and Paul has a couple of collections due out, plus a comic, but nothing we can tell you too much about just yet. Keep checking our socials and websites for more details.

 

Marie O’Regan is a Shirley Jackson, Australian Shadows and British Fantasy Award-nominated author and editor, based in Derbyshire. She was awarded the British Fantasy Society ‘Legends of FantasyCon’ award in 2022. Her first collection, Mirror Mere, was published in 2006 by Rainfall Books; her second, In Times of Want, came out in September 2016 from Hersham Horror Books. Her third, The Last Ghost and Other Stories, was published by Luna Press early in 2019. Her short fiction has appeared in a number of genre magazines and anthologies in the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Germany, including Best British Horror 2014, Great British Horror: Dark Satanic Mills (2017), and The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories. Her novella, Bury Them Deep, was published by Hersham Horror Books in September 2017. Her first novel, Celeste, was published in February 2022 by Encyclopocalypse Publications. She was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Short Story in 2006 (‘Can You See Me’), and Best Anthology in 2010 (Hellbound Hearts), 2012 (Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women), 2019 (Wonderland) and 2023 (The Other Side of Never). Wonderland was also shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson award for Best Anthology. Her genre journalism has appeared in magazines like The Dark Side, Rue Morgue and Fortean Times, and her interview book with prominent figures from the horror genre, Voices in the Dark, was released in 2011. An essay on ‘The Changeling’ was published in PS Publishing’s Cinema Macabre, edited by Mark Morris. She is co-editor of the bestselling Hellbound Hearts, Mammoth Book of Body Horror, A Carnivàle of Horror – Dark Tales from the Fairground, Exit Wounds (four stories from which have been shortlisted for a CWA dagger for Best Short Story), Wonderland (nominated for a Shirley Jackson award and BFS award), Cursed, Twice Cursed, The Other Side of Never (nominated for a BFS award), In These Hallowed Halls, Beyond & Within Folk Horror, and Death Comes at Christmas, as well as the charity anthology Trickster’s Treats #3 (nominated for an Aurealis award). She is also the editor of bestselling The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women and Phantoms. Marie was on the British Fantasy Society Committee from 2001 to 2008, editing both Prism and Dark Horizons before becoming Chair in 2004, and worked on several FantasyCons over the years, sometimes as Chair. She also ran ChillerCon UK, which took place in Scarborough in May 2022. Two further anthologies are currently slated for release in 2025, with more in progress beyond that. Marie is also Managing Editor of PS Publishing’s novella imprint, Absinthe Books. Absinthe has so far published novellas by SJI Holliday, George Mann (twice), Laura Mauro, Cavan Scott, Jen Williams, Angela Slatter (winner of a Shirley Jackson award for Best Novella), M.R. Carey, Louise Carey, Priya Sharma (winner of a World Fantasy Award for Best Novella, nominated for a BFS award and a Shirley Jackson award), Alan Baxter (nominated for an Aurealis Award and a Ditmar Award), Tracy Fahey (nominated for a BFS Award), Lee Murray (shortlisted for a Bram Stoker™ Award for best Long Fiction), A.C. Wise, Premee Mohamed, Conrad Williams, Ian Rogers and Paul Finch, with the next three titles being released in Spring 2025.

 

 

 

Paul Kane is the award-winning (including the British Fantasy Society’s Legends of FantasyCon Award 2022), bestselling author and editor of over a hundred and fifty books – such as the Arrowhead trilogy (gathered together in the sellout Hooded Man omnibus, revolving around a post-apocalyptic version of Robin Hood), The Butterfly Man and Other Stories, Hellbound Hearts, Wonderland (a Shirley Jackson Award finalist) and Pain Cages (an Amazon #1 bestseller). His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark, and his genre journalism has appeared in the likes of SFX, Rue Morgue and DeathRay. He has been a Guest at Alt.Fiction five times, was a Guest at the first SFX Weekender, at Thought Bubble in 2011, Derbyshire Literary Festival and Off the Shelf in 2012, Monster Mash and Event Horizon in 2013, Edge-Lit in 2014 and 2018, HorrorCon, HorrorFest and Grimm Up North in 2015, The Dublin Ghost Story Festival and Sledge-Lit in 2016, IMATS Olympia and Celluloid Screams in 2017, Black Library Live and the UK Ghost Story Festival in 2019 and 2023, plus the WordCrafter virtual event 2021 – where he delivered the keynote speech – as well as being a panellist at FantasyCon and the World Fantasy Convention, and a fiction judge at the Sci-Fi London festival. A former British Fantasy Society Special Publications Editor, he has also served as co-chair for the UK chapter of The Horror Writers Association and co-chaired ChillerCon UK in May 2022. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for US network primetime television, and his novelette ‘Men of the Cloth’ was turned into a feature by Loose Canon/Hydra Films, starring Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, You’re Next): Sacrifice, released by Epic Pictures/101 Films. His audio work includes the full cast drama adaptation of The Hellbound Heart for Bafflegab, starring Tom Meeten (The Ghoul), Neve McIntosh (Doctor Who) and Alice Lowe (Prevenge), and the Robin of Sherwood adventure The Red Lord for Spiteful Puppet/ITV narrated by Ian Ogilvy (Return of the Saint), plus his plays have been performed at FantasyCon and by Hideout Theatre in London. He has also contributed to the Warhammer 40k universe for Games Workshop. Paul’s latest novels are Lunar (set to be turned into a feature film), the YA story The Rainbow Man (as PB Kane), the sequels to RED – Blood RED & Deep RED, all collected in an omnibus edition – the award-winning hit Sherlock Holmes & the Servants of Hell, Before (an Amazon Top 5 dark fantasy bestseller), Arcana and The Storm. In addition he writes thrillers for HQ/HarperCollins as PL Kane, the first of which, Her Last Secret and Her Husband’s Grave (a sellout on Waterstones.com and at The Works) came out in 2020, with The Family Lie released the following year (all three novels were Amazon sellouts). His books have been translated into many languages, including French, German, Spanish, Ukrainian, Turkish, Czech, Bulgarian and Polish. Paul lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Charlaine Harris, Robert Kirkman, Catriona Ward, Dean Koontz, Olivie Blake and Guillermo del Toro.