Author: Willow Croft

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!)

Photo credit to Nicolas Laborie: https://www.instagram.com/nicolaslaborie_visuals/

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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I’ve brewed up my special hot cocoa in honor of this Spooky Six guest, Luisa Colón, and we set off to have a meandering chat while exploring some “silent and grey” abandoned buildings.

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

Before Luisa Colón embarked on the journey that would result in her first novel, Bad Moon Rising (Cemetery Dance Publications, August 2023), the born-and-raised New Yorker worked as a writer and artist in various mediums. Colón wrote for print and online publications such as The New York Times, Latina, USA Today, and many more; her illustrations have taken the form of comics, album artwork, and two murals currently on display at the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. And as an actress, Colón appeared as a suicide bomber in the 2006 award-winning independent movie Day Night Day Night, earning nominations for a Gotham Award and an EDA Female Focus Award. She also starred as the titular character in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s short film Anna.

But her primary creative focus for years has been writing the YA/horror/Latinx thriller Bad Moon Rising. “It’s been the most rewarding, revelatory, and fulfilling creative experience of my life so far,” Colón says. “I poured my heart and soul into it.” Before finding a home at Cemetery Dance, Colón was told by numerous agents and publishers that Bad Moon Rising was too dark to find an audience. “They told me they couldn’t finish it, that it was too upsetting,” remembers Colón. “But really it was just a matter of finding my people—readers who would understand and connect with the book.”

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For this edition of the Spooky Six, I’m sitting down with Ben Fitts for tea . . . and yogurt with some very unusual flavors!

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 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, 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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I’ve invited Cecilia Kennedy to join me for tea this week. Read on to learn more about her in her bio and in her interview!

A spooky “evil” oak tree sprouted up near the house where Cecilia (she/her) and her family lived in central Ohio. It formed the backdrop for hours of playing outside and fun ghost stories. Her parents loved storytelling, music, the arts, dance, books, and academic pursuits. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Cecilia earned a doctorate in Spanish from The Ohio State University, which is where she met her husband, Nathan. Together, they moved to Springfield, Ohio, which is where their son, Alex, was born. In 2016, they took a chance on moving to the Greater Seattle area, and Cecilia experimented with writing short stories of fiction for the first time after spending over twenty years teaching Spanish language and literature courses and English composition at the university level. She discovered that she enjoyed the horror genre the best. The mountains, the Puget Sound, and the dark evergreen forests were—and still are—daily inspirations that provide joy as well as that speculative, “spooky” backdrop. While writing, she worked for a publishing company training writing tutors and tutoring students in English composition part time. She also started proofreading for Flash Fiction Magazine (which she still enjoys) and serving as a concept/developmental editor for Running Wild Press, LLC (which she also still enjoys). Currently, she works full time as a copywriter for a pop-culture toy/collector company, but she still makes time to write flash fiction stories once a week, typically in the horror/speculative genre. Her works have been published in Maudlin House, Meadowlark Review, Rejection Letters, Tiny Molecules, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fiery Scribe Review, Potato Soup Journal, Pigeon Review, Idle Ink, Trembling with Fear/Horror Tree, Yellow Mama, Free Flash Fiction, Wrongdoing, Goat’s Milk, The Writing Disorder, Headway Quarterly, Open Minds Quarterly, Coffin Bell, Abandon Literary Magazine, Headstuff, Kandisha Press, Ghost Orchid Press, Potter’s Grove Press, and others. She is a 2022 Sundress Publications Best Of The Net (BOTN) nominee. In addition to writing horror, she enjoys writing humorous essays. Serving as the adult beverage columnist for The Daily Drunk (a pop-culture/humor literary magazine) has been an absolute joy. She also posts weekly on her humor DIY blog, Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks. When she’s not writing or editing or engaging in some kind of craft or cooking project, her favorite activities include running, dancing, listening to all kinds of music, reading and watching movies.

You can find her on Twitter: @ckennedyhola, Instagram: @ceciliakennedy2349, and Facebook.

Websites:

Author: https://ckennedyhola.wixsite.com/ckennedyportfolio

Blog: https://fixinleaksnleeksdiy.blog/

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