Author: Willow Croft

J.H. Moncrieff is an award-winning author of seventeen dark fiction novels. Her City of Ghosts won the Kindle Book Review Award for Best Horror/Suspense. She’s also the on-air writer expert for three true crime documentary series: Cruise Ship Killers, Sunshine Slayings, and Targeted for Murder. This experience introduced her to screenwriting, and she’s written scripts for Sunshine Slayings and the HBO series Almost Unsolved. An avid traveler and ghost hunter, she’s spent time in the world’s most haunted places in order to write her GhostWriters series.

Moncrieff’s work has been described by reviewers as early Gillian Flynn with a little Ray Bradbury and Stephen King thrown in for good measure. She won Harlequin’s international search for “the next Gillian Flynn,” and her first published novella, The Bear Who Wouldn’t Leave, was featured in Samhain’s Childhood Fears collection and stayed on its horror bestsellers list for over a year. Monsters in Our Wake, a deep-sea thriller with Severed Press, hit the Amazon Horror bestsellers list, beating King’s re-released It to the top spot. Her GhostWriters supernatural suspense series has garnered rave reviews from Kirkus, Blueink, Booklist, and the Midwest Book Review.

Moncrieff began her writing career as a journalist, tracking down snipers and canoeing through crocodile-infested waters. Her articles have appeared in many publications, including Chatelaine, FLARE, Writer’s Digest, and The Globe and Mail.

When not writing, she loves exploring the world’s most haunted places, advocating for animal rights, and summoning her inner ninja in muay thai class. In her so-called spare time, she teaches writing, marketing, public speaking, and advertising classes at her local university. She still accepts select clients for developmental editing and career coaching. If you’re interested in working with her, contact her via https://www.jhmoncrieff.com/services/. To get free ebooks and take part in a chilling “choose you own adventure” story, go to .

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I’m definitely “starstuck” about this Spooky Six interviewee, Yawatta Hosby! After all, it’s not only amazing to learn about her skills as a writer and a comic book artist, it’s even more exciting to learn that as part of her outlining process, she also plots out her characters–all the way down to their zodiac signs. Which, as many of you may already know, is definitely Willow Croft’s cup of tea! (How cool would it be to go on an investigation with her to find “the truth IS out there”?)

Yawatta Hosby (she/her) resides in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. She enjoys connecting with other writers through blogging. With a desire to escape every day life, Yawatta creates short stories, novellas, and novels. She’s always had a fascination with psychology, so she likes to focus on the inner-struggles within her characters. Yawatta’s an avid reader, favorite genres: mystery, suspense, horror, and women’s fiction.

Her short stories have been featured in The Write Place At the Write Time online journal (2013), When the Lights Go Out anthology (2015), and Don’t Open the Door anthology (2019).

Since Yawatta Hosby loves drawing too, she decided to try her hand at creating a slice-of-life graphic novel/comic series called Unscripted–the best of both worlds.

Unscripted–sometimes being famous can be a pain in the arse.

In my slice-of-life comic series, Felix wants a private life. Not with her famous parents. Not with Me Cailinis touring. Not with the world dissecting her and Colm’s every move.

Keeping a huge secret, Felix has to decide what she’ll do with her life. Keep feeling stuck. Rebel against management. Run away from it all.

If only Felix’s decision affected her alone…It’s tough being famous, especially when your public persona is scripted.

In the meantime, Yawatta focuses on drawing mini-comics, zines, and comic diaries. Three of her mini-comics have been featured in I Don’t Do Comics, which is an anthology based in Canada. Yawatta also loves reading horror and slice-of-life graphic novels.

In February 2021, Yawatta Hosby created her company called Draw With Yawatta in the hopes of getting people curious about comic diaries. Her comic workshops are a safe place to learn about yourself as you experiment with drawing. A comic diary is just for you. Have fun. Have the courage to put your story down on paper. Have a desire to express yourself through words and drawings.

Yawatta loves drawing in her comic diary because it’s a great way to manage all of her hopes, fears, and quirky ideas in one place. Her comic diary tells her story, and her story has value.

Your stories have value too.

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Welcome to the first-ever “Fantastical Five” interview with speculative fiction author P.A. Cornell. Since this is the science fiction version (it also comes in fantasy flavour), we’ve taken our tea out to the far reaches of space!

P.A. Cornell (She/Her) is an award-winning, Chilean-Canadian, speculative fiction author who was raised on a steady diet of books. When she was five years old she learned where all these books were coming from and decided then and there that writing was the path for her. She penned her first speculative story as a third-grade assignment: a science fiction piece about shape-shifting aliens. Over three decades later, she still has this story, which she keeps in her writing desk to remind her of how far she’s come.

Despite her early interest in fiction, her first publications were in non-fiction as a journalist and copy editor in Toronto, Canada. Since 2016, she’s dedicated herself to writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror full time. Her stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in multiple genre magazines and anthologies, including Flame Tree Press’s Gothic Fantasy series, ZNB Presents, and Apex Magazine, to name a few. Her short story, “Splits,” first published in Cossmass Infinities, went on to win the 2022 Short Works Prize for Fiction. That same year she also published her debut science fiction novella, Lost Cargo, through Mocha Memoirs Press.

An avid collector of joyful moments, when not writing she can be found reading, drinking various varieties of tea in ridiculous quantities, building Lego sets (check out some of her builds on Instagram), hiking, making felt art, and watching movies, among other things. She also enjoys travel and hopes to do more of it in the future.

Cornell is a 2002 graduate of the Odyssey writing workshop, and full member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association. She has lived in six cities across two continents but currently lives in Ontario, Canada in a home she shares with her husband, three kids, and two cats. The cats are named after two of her characters: “Jax” and “Rebel.” (Bonus points for anyone able to name the stories they appear in.)

Website: https://www.pacornell.com/
Twitter/Instagram/Facebook: @CornellWriter
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17347884.P_A_Cornell
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/P.-A.-Cornell/author/B074G52MGD?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

All purchase links and information for my novella, Lost Cargo: https://www.pacornell.com/lost-cargo.html.

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For this Spooky Six tea with Ben Fitts, I sought out the most unusual and unique flavors of yogurt I could find, and we grabbed some very big spoons and dove right into the interview!

Ben Fitts (he/him) is a writer, musician and zinester from New York. Fitts is the author of the books My Birth And Other Regrets and Snailbutter, as well as over forty published short stories. He has been writing for fun since around the time he learned how to read, but began to taking the craft seriously as an undergrad at Hampshire College when he realized he wanted another creative outlet when the band he was in at the time broke up. His short stories soon began receiving publications in a variety of zines, anthologies, and other DIY publications that weren’t turned off by their oddball content and dark humor. Nineteen of these early stories were collected in his debut collection My Birth And Other Regrets, which was published by the press NihilismRevised in 2019 when Fitts was twenty-two years old. My Birth And Other Regrets has received praise from a variety of notable authors within the bizarro fiction movement, including Danger Slater, Sam Richard, and Ben Arzate, among others.

Grateful to the zine community that had given him his start, Fitts created The Rock N’ Roll Horror Zine in 2018, a DIY hand-stapled publication that published only rock, punk, and metal themed genre fiction stories. The Rock N’ Roll Horror Zine was published between 2018 to 2019 for a total of six issues that featured works from a wide variety of underground writers. In addition, he created the one-off zines Choose Your Own Death, A Beginner’s Guide To Bizarro Fiction, Ant Sniffing Zine, and A Beginner’s Guide To Witch House.

Following his graduation from Hampshire College, Fitts relocated to Brooklyn, New York where he co-founded the indie rock band War Honey and has since made a living as a working guitarist. War Honey released a pair of extended plays, including 2020’s Shard To Shatter which has received a colored-vinyl reissue from the label Handstand Records.      

His second book is the novella Snailbutter that was released by Hybrid Sequence Media in 2021. A work absurdist and bizarre horror-comedy, Snailbutter follows a day of school in the life of ninth-grader Doug, whose best friend had climbed into a giant snail shell that he found in his backyard and refuses to come out. As he tries to help his friend come out of his shell, Doug encounters monsters, robots, mutants, Nazi scientists, British girls from other dimensions, and other things you probably dealt with at that age as well. A second edition version of Fitts’ collection My Birth And Other Regrets featuring two brand new stories is set to be released in spring of 2023 by Hybrid Sequence Media.

Website: https://doomgoat666.wixsite.com/benfitts
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ben-Fitts/author/B07KFRJLKT
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18261823.Ben_Fitts
My Birth And Other Regrets New Edition Pre-Order: https://hybridsequencemedia.com/product/my-birth-and-other-regrets/

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For this Spooky Six interview, we’re sharing a dish of chile rellenos topped with New Mexico green chile!

(The Spooky Six interviews for the month of March will pay tribute to WIHM–Women In Horror Month!)

T.L. Bodine is a horror author living and working near Albuquerque, NM. A copywriter by day and fly-by-night novelist, she’s mostly interested in uncanny, fantastic things, and the way real people with real problems interact with them.

She has written two books of a trilogy about self-aware zombies struggling against a government that would strip them of their rights and a pharmaceutical company that wants to use them for its own ends. The first, River of Souls, was released by Trepidatio Publishing in 2019. That was followed up by House of Lazarus, and the proposed third book in the trilogy, Cage of Bones, is currently underway.

She’s also best-known on the internet for her work on Wattpad, and as the winner of the TNT Horror Contest, the largest writing contest hosted by the site. Her Watty-winning novel The Hound has been optioned for film, with an adaptation written by Angela LaManna of The Punisher and The Haunting of Bly Manor.

Bodine’s newest novel, Neverest, is a supernatural thriller set on the body-strewn slopes of Mount Everest. Appealing to fans of Ronald Malfi, Sarah Lotz, and Caitlin Starling, Neverest weaves a tale of grief, obsession, and the danger of conquest. It comes out April 25, 2023, from Ghost Orchid Press.

T.L. Bodine is an avid horror movie fan and frequently blogs about films on Tumblr. She also releases a monthly newsletter on Substack featuring deep dives and analysis on a breadth of horror topics, all voted on by her Patreon supporters. Patrons also have access to behind-the-scenes updates about her work as well as monthly writing guides laser-focused onto specific wordsmithing tools and techniques.

When not writing, Bodine can usually be found in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes, or else playing story-heavy video games with her husband. They share a home with three utterly spoiled fancy rats and two small dogs.

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I’ve lured Lauren McMenemy out for a (virtual) stroll in the wild desert frontier of New Mexico, where we chatted about all things middle aged…and dark fairy tales, of course!

(The Spooky Six interviews for the month of March will pay tribute to WIHM–Women In Horror Month!)

Lauren McMenemy (she/her) is a writer with various hats – journalist, copywriter, content marketer, fiction – and considers herself a storyteller at heart. She was that kid writing “books” and drawing “covers” for them, and it was only when she was encouraged to channel energies into a career that would actually earn a living that she moved away from books and into journalism. Does she regret that? Yes and no…

These days, aged 40-something, she’s back in the fiction world, writing gothic and folk horror. Her WIP is a novel set in the world of the Victorian occult, looking at an investigation into a spiritual guru. It’s the supernatural and the occult that really give her goosebumps, and she also has a developing fascination with folklore, the “old ways” and our fast-changing relationship with the natural world. All of this sneaks into her writing, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Lauren is also editor of Horror Tree’s Trembling With Fear weekly zine, and enjoys working with writers to help develop their craft – so much so, she’s now a certified coach, working as a coach/mentor to writers at all stages of their careers. She also works as an editor and proofreader in both the fiction and business worlds, and helps writers to brainstorm their marketing plans and personal brands.

Back in that Real World that requires money, Lauren has 25 years’ experience as a professional content creator across the media, agencies and in-house communications teams. She was the music editor for a daily newspaper in her native Australia (a good gig and the beach remain her happy places), and considered herself a has-been at 26 when she gave that up and moved to the UK – that is, until she caught her second wind, and rekindled her childhood love of creative writing. Lauren has been London-based for almost 17 years and works as an editor, proofreader, copywriter and marketer. She’s also a mental health advocate; her Substack, How to Be Self(ish), tracked her year of sabbatical and self-care, and she continues to write it (very) irregularly as a mental health companion.

You’ll find Lauren haunting south London, where she lives with her Doctor Who-obsessed husband (check out his podcast!) and their aged black house rabbit. You’ll also likely find her hosting Writers Hour sessions for the London Writers Salon a few times a week.

laurenmc.carrd.co/

twitter.com/novicenovelist

instagram.com/lozthewriter/

horrortree.com/category/trembling-with-fear/

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