Category: Interviews

Matt Blairstone, Terrestrial Horror & his Green Inferno

By Angelique Fawns

 

What happens when you find a horror writer/ indie comic creator with a passion for saving the planet? You get Tenebrous Press. Matt Blairstone is launching a new anthology this summer called Green Inferno: The World Celebrates Your Demise and it will be chock full of horror stories and unique comics. Blairstone explains, “Literary Horror and Underground Comix collide in a terrifying miasma that we call Terrestrial Horror: tales of terror bound only by the constraints of our angry world.”

Blairstone has created his own pulp comic series Mad Doctors, but this is his first foray into producing a full anthology featuring international writers. I thought it would be interesting to learn more about this green (yet potentially gory) project.

 

AF – How did Tenebrous Press get its beginnings? (more…)

The Horror Tree Presents – An Interview with R.B. Wood

By: Ruschelle Dillon

 

Ruschelle: Thank you for taking time from celebrating the release of your forthcoming novel from Crystal Lake Publishing, Bayou Whispers, on April 29th.  How about we pour ourselves a finger (or two) or bourbon and chat about all things booky, beasty, and boooozy, shall we? Your novel, mostly, takes place in New Orleans. Did you set out to write a story set in NOLA or did the story come first and NOLA just seemed to be the perfect backdrop?  

 

R.B.: NOLA was always going to be the setting, but what I started with was a very different idea for Bayou Whispers. Initially, I was going to write a more historical, purely Southern Gothic Horror story. Some of the horror elements are still there, as are some of the initial characters (modernized, of course). But there is something so special about New Orleans that I had to make it my “locale of choice.”

 

Ruschelle: Many authors would love to visit the locales of their novels or they write what they know and pen their tales from a view from out their own backdoor. Were you lucky enough to hang out with Papa Legba while researching the bayous, culture, parishes and beignets? Mmm…beignets. 

 

R.B.: Sipping a Blackened Voodoo while enjoying some of the best seafood is not a wrong way to research a novel. I spent a lot of time in New Orleans back in the days I traveled for business. Work hard and play hard was my motto, and if I was anywhere near a good airport, playtime meant NOLA.
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Interview with Mat Clarke, founder of The World Writer’s Collective
By Angelique Fawns

Mat Clarke is providing a place for new writers to learn, share, and get involved in a supportive community. The best part? Much of it is free, or costs only a nominal fee. Based in Melbourne, Australia, Clarke is creating an international destination for contests, editing, and writer promotion. His community provided me with my first contest win, my first author webpage, and my first taste of helpful short story feedback. Contest winners can have their work published in an anthology. The first edition is available on Smashwords called Melbourne Writers Social Group Anthology: A Winter Selection of Short Stories.
I sat down with Clarke to learn more about his vision and future plans.
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Welcome to The Horror Tree, and thank you for participating in Women In Horror Month. First, tell us a bit about yourself and your interest in horror.

I came to horror early and late lol – I was 18 before my interest really cemented. I was into the romantic Anne Rice type vampire when I was a child but that was to escape from bullying into a place where I couldn’t be hurt. Though Rice is a type of horror, the first book to make me want to explore the genre was Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite. I followed up with their Exquisite Corpse and there was no going back. I felt alone in the world- I was female, bisexual, and very mentally ill. The world felt not built for me. Lost Souls gave me the character of Ghost – someone who is different in every tiny way possible but who has a special way about him that made him completely at ease with himself but also deeply compassionate and loving. I could work with that.

Why is Women In Horror Month important, and what do you say to someone who says ‘Oh, I don’t care if it’s by a man, a woman, etc., as long as it’s a good story’?”

I’d say that if their first priority is to read good stories then they will only achieve that goal by ensuring diversity in their reading habits. Every good writer has good stories but the richness of any particular author’s life experiences can never be replicated. If you don’t read books by women, POC, or LGBTQIA+ folks you will only hear the language of the straight white male. No matter how wonderful their stories are – and they are – you will never know the good stories that come out of women and minorities. So if you care about a good story, care about the stories of all people. And the fact that people make statements such as those are exactly why women in horror month is important.
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Loren Rhoads is the author of a space opera trilogy, a duology about a succubus and her angel, and 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die, a cemetery travel guide. Her most recent book is a collection of short stories called Unsafe Words. Find out more at lorenrhoads.com. 

Welcome to The Horror Tree, and thank you for participating in Women In Horror Month. First, tell us a bit about yourself and your interest in horror. 

I fell in love with Count Dracula as a kid, watching Sir Graves Ghastly on TV on Saturday afternoons. My mom, who was a librarian, pointed out that a lot of the movie monsters I liked had started out as characters in books. I started reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula and never looked back.

 

Why is Women In Horror Month important, and what do you say to someone who says ‘Oh, I don’t care if it’s by a man, a woman, etc., as long as it’s a good story’?”
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Welcome to The Horror Tree, and thank you for participating in Women In Horror Month. First, tell us a bit about yourself and your interest in horror.

Great to be here! I live in dreary Ohio. I think we’ve had two days of sun in the last month and it’s currently fifteen degrees outside, which is great for a horror-writing mindset, but not so great for going outdoors, which is another thing I love. I have a menagerie of pets and am currently fighting my cat for keyboard rights.

I’ve been into horror since I discovered my first Goosebumps book. It was a love affair from then on. As I got older and read more mature horror stories, I started to realize horror wasn’t all about jump scares and spooky things. Most horror has an underlying theme and points out some seedy underbelly of society that needs to be changed. I try to keep to that in my stories.

Why is Women In Horror Month important, and what do you say to someone who says ‘Oh, I don’t care if it’s by a man, a woman, etc., as long as it’s a good story’?”

To anyone who just looks at how good a story is, I say good for them! It’s refreshing. Though I also wonder if it’s quite true. There’s bias when you look at book covers, whether you know it or not. Female authors are less likely to be successful in the more “male” genres, like horror. I know quite a few women who use pseudonyms or their initials for their byline so as to not advertise they’re female. Luckily, I’ve seen some change in this in the past several years. More women are refusing to hide their real names and forcing people to get over the fact that a woman wrote a horror story. That’s one of the reasons it’s important to celebrate women in horror: to support these women and to acknowledge that gender plays absolutely zero role in producing a good story, no matter the genre.

The other reason I love Women in Horror Month? It showcases horror in an empowering light. Unfortunately, there’s a bias against horror writers in general. People tend to think we’re going to hex them or somehow associating with us is going to get them a one-way ticket to hell. Seriously. At least a dozen people have told me this. Some members of my husband’s family doesn’t acknowledge that I write at all because they don’t want to discuss the fact that I write horror. We’re “icky” and “weird’ and I’ve heard the line “why would a nice girl like you want to write that trash?” more times than I can count. I love what I do and the bad rap horror gets really bugs me. So this month is a time to say “hey, I write horror and I’m not a horrible person.”

Who are some Women In Horror (or other women) who have influenced your work, and why?

Mary Shelley, Ania Ahlborn, and Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire). I remember reading Frankenstein in 10th grade and getting so furious at how the monster was treated. I wrote an entire book report on it that was basically just four pages of ranting about how people are the worst. I don’t think a book has ever affected me that much. I don’t necessarily write my stories to make people jump up in a fury and march into the street, but I do try to add a bit of that injustice in there when I can. And Ania and Mira/Seanan are just amazing and their books scare the crap out of me. There aren’t many things that can get my heart racing, but these ladies’ books can.

2020 will probably be remembered as a TERRIBLE year for many of us; tell me something GOOD that happened in the past 12 months.

My dark fantasy book, Surviving Death, was published! Which was stressful and scary, but overall a great thing. It was a #1 New Release for over two weeks!

What have you got planned for Women in Horror Month, and the coming months of 2021?

I normally do giveaways and things like that, but I’m super busy at work this month, so I don’t have a ton planned for my readers. I am sharing any work I see from women in horror to my fans. I have very loose plans for the rest of 2021. I made a ton of plans for 2020 and that was a bust, so I’m toning it down a bit this year. Lower the bar, you know? What I do know is I’ll be finishing two books this year, and one’s a gothic horror novel.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers? Thanks for participating in Women in Horror Month!

I’ve been following Horror Tree for years now and I’ve become friends with a lot of you that lurk around here. I’m so happy to be part of this awesome community! Keep reading and writing horror and don’t let the naysayers get you down. Oh, and go buy a book by a female horror author you’ve never read. (And leave a review!)

Bio:
Sarah Gribble is the author of dozens of short stories that explore uncomfortable situations, basic fears, and the general awe and fascination of the unknown. She released Surviving Death, her first novel, in 2020 and is currently working on her next book. Follow her on Instagram or join her email list for free scares.

Website: https://sarah-gribble.com.

As the month for Women In Horror comes to a close I was able to catch up with Grace Kimball. Her latest collection Twisted Anatomy, which she co-edited with Sam Brunke-Kervin, Tracy Robinson, Lilyn George, and Oliver Clarke, was released on February 19th. You might recognize her work from Sci-Fi and Scary where she does reviews on horror books, movies, and games.

JG: Hi Grace! Thank you so much for taking the time to do the interview! I was so pumped when I found out that not only were you a horror writer but you also had a collection coming out! Congrats on that!

GK: We have a great team of people in the Kali Krew, and several of them pulled together and pooled resources to make twisted anatomy happen. It has been an interesting experiment, considering the only thing we outsourced was the cover design.

Well, I’m not actually an author, lol. I write for Sci-Fi and Scary and have a reoccurring series called Focus on the Frightful where I talk about all things horror-related.

JG: How long have you been in horror?
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Welcome to The Horror Tree, and thank you for participating in Women In Horror Month. First, tell us a bit about yourself and your interest in horror. 

Hi! I’m Scarlett R. Algee, and I’m the managing editor of JournalStone Publishing and Trepidatio Publishing—you may know us from our releases such as Gwendolyn Kiste’s The Rust Maidens and Sarah Read’s The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, both Bram Stoker Award® winners. I’m also an executive producer and writer for the podcast The Wicked Library, and I write the odd bit of fiction in my spare time.

 

My interest in horror goes back a way, though I was a college student when I first started seriously reading horror fiction (I had a fairly conservative upbringing, and horror wasn’t really a part of my childhood). I have a deep fascination with the visceral and the disturbing—I was that biology student who actually enjoyed dissection!—so it’s been really nice to discover first the genre of horror, and then the community.

Why is Women In Horror Month important, and what do you say to someone who says ‘Oh, I don’t care if it’s by a man, a woman, etc., as long as it’s a good story’?”
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