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Articles / Interviews

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WiHM 12: Quick Six Questions With Jo Kaplan

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’m Jo Kaplan, author of the gothic horror novel It Will Just Be Us. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been drawn to horror. I used to scribble down my own scary stories, and I loved reading aloud the tales from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark to freak out other people. These days I teach English at a local college and write horror, both novels and short stories, which have appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, Vastarien, Fireside Fiction, and in anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow, Lisa Morton, and Jonathan Maberry. I also write under the name Joanna Parypinski.

 

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 don’t think there’s anything wrong with someone who doesn’t care whether the story is by a man, woman, etc., so I don’t know that I good have a response to that. Though it seems to me that sometimes the people who say that are just using it as an excuse against diversifying their reading… I’ve personally found horror helmed by women to be particularly provocative, emotional, beautiful, and potent. I also love horror by men! But because horror has for so long been a genre dominated by men—a genre which also has a history of blatant misogyny in the way women are portrayed both on screen and on the page—celebrating Women in Horror Month is a way of reminding everyone about the diverse perspectives that makes horror fresh and exciting. Reminding us that horror is not one-size-fits-all.

 

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

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WiHM 12: Iconic Female Characters in Horror

Iconic Female Characters in Horror

By Liz Butcher

 

This year for Women in Horror month, I wanted to give a shout out to some of the female characters that have both inspired and terrified me during my life. Either in literature, film or both, there are a handful of these characters that stayed with me long after I closed the book or left the cinema. These women made me want to sleep with the light on (if I could sleep at all) and yet I also found them inspiring as I strive to one day write a character that will impact a horror fan as much as these women impacted me.

Jennet Humfrye–Also known as The Woman in Black, Jennet would have to be one of my all-time favourite scary women. The whole gothic feel of this story adds to the depth of her tortured soul, as this bitter and twisted woman seeks revenge for the death of her son. Cloaked in black, Jennet would seep into the minds of the local children and convince them to commit suicide in horrific ways—a concept that always made me squirm with its terrifying simplicity. There was something about her tortured nature that made her so intriguing—if she wasn’t so malicious. 

Red Thomas–In my opinion, this character that made the movie, Us. Those wide, unblinking eyes staring at her doppelganger as tears trickled down her face. Then there was the way she spoke in that raw, inhuman voice that was truly creepy—then add that wide, maniacal grin… if that doesn’t give you chills, I don’t know what will. 

Samara–Who didn’t feel sorry for the young girl whose mother threw her down the well in The Ring? That is, until she starts crawling through television screens to literally scare people to death, seven days after they watched her mysterious video. I’m not going to lie, but the character of Samara freaked me out and I’m so glad that in today’s age of smart televisions, we no longer have that scary-ass static to make our hearts jump into our throats! For me, I think it was the way her long black hair hung over her face, as she spoke in that sing-song voice…

Annie Wilkes–Talk about iconic. You can’t go past Kathy Bates in the Stephen King classic, Misery. I have one word for you—sledgehammer. While not scary in the creepy sense like the preceding characters, Annie is a special kind of scary. The seemingly normal, albeit friendly, persona on the outside is only a smokescreen for the crazy person beneath the surface. I especially loved the way she would rant when unhappy about how his story unfolded.

 

Esther–Horror movies featuring children are always next level creepy, but the character of Esther in Orphan went above and beyond. I don’t want to give up any spoilers on the off chance there’s anyone who still hasn’t seen it, but suffice to say, the horror of this character lies in the very adult behaviour that your brain struggles to compute as you watch her. She messes with your head in true horror movie style.

So here’s a salute to these epic characters—thank you for keeping me scared and inspired!

Trembling With Fear

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Serial Killers: The Banquet Chef (Part 2) by Robb White

  1. Serial Killers: The Banquet Chef (Part 1) by Robb White
  2. Serial Killers: The Banquet Chef (Part 2) by Robb White
  3. Serial Killers: The Banquet Chef (Part 3) by Robb White

Serial Killers are part of our Trembling With Fear line and are serialized stories which we’ll be publishing on an ongoing basis.

Part 2: “The Banquet Chef”

Adoncia bagged Cinda’s head to keep from being bathed in the blood. Head wounds bleed a lot, she knew from past experience at hitting her head on the sharp corners of vent hoods. She wrapped the cellophane so tight that the girl’s facial features were distorted as if she’d posed for a funhouse mirror.  

Her contribution to the night’s menu took longer than her brother’s. 

Time was pressing Adoncia now. Julio had a late afternoon routine he wouldn’t budge from once he planted himself in her La-Z-Boy in front of the plasma TV with a cold beer in his hand. But she’d given more thought to his Achilles’-heel, however. 

“The game’s about to start, God damn it,” he blurted. He tried to mollify her with a whiny apology. 

“The insurance guy I told you about . . .”

“What insurance guy you talkin’ about, Adoncia?”

“You know, babe,” she said, sickened by the endearment she’d once used and meant. “The man said I had to get your signature today. It’s a law or something. Beneficiaries have to know how much insurance is on the policy holder.”

“You could have said something before you left—what beneficious are we talking about here?’

“You, cariño,” Adoncia said. “You get money if anything should happen to me and the policy won’t go into effect for another six months, like. But you gotta sign the form.” She hoped that sounded right, honied words to catch a fly. The situation had reversed completely, she thought. I’m the spider now, he’s the fly . . .

“I asked you how much?”

“A quarter-million dollars.”

Silence. A rapt silence. If Julio had done his homework on her, he would know her spousal insurance from the job was only five thousand. The number she just gave him should launch him from the chair.

“Julio, baby?”

“I’ll be right down.”

True to his word, Julio showed up at the back door at three-seventeen with a single flower in his hand. She glimpsed the limp-petaled, black-eyed Susan wrapped in green tissue—a discounted grocery-store bargain. She fortified herself with the instant knowledge that Julio was already concocting a plot for her own demise with that pathetic-looking object in his hands.    

“How sweet,” Adoncia said and took the flower in her left hand. 

She tossed the flower aside. Julio’s mouth opened and his eyes tracked the flower to the floor. She lunged forward with the kebab skewer in her right hand and rammed it into a spot just below his Adam’s-apple. 

Julio roared, flung himself backward, slamming into the wall, hands flailing at the skewer. 

She plunged her right hand into her apron pocket for the heavy-duty meat claw. Julio gurgled, a red geyser shot out from his throat and spattered the front of her. He jerked the skewer free and scrambled to get to his feet, slipping on blood, and banging his head into the door. She couldn’t let him get into the alley where a passerby might hear or see him. She could deal with another mess, not a witness. 

She tugged at his belt from behind. Julio whirled around, a gored but now savage bull. He threw punches at her, which she took high on her shoulders. He sailed another punch over her head while she gripped his belt tighter to pull him into the kitchen. He was a dog tugging at a chew toy in his master’s hand but this was no play.  When she felt she had room behind her, she aimed a punch at his jaw but only clipped the underside of it. More blood flowed from the wound and from his mouth. He thrashed with his arms, desperate to flee and kill her at the same time. Adrenalin flooded his system, giving him a crazy strength. If he didn’t choke on the blood, he’d get free.

Calmly, with her own tunnel vision taking over, she stepped inside Julio’s legs and launched another fist at his head. A clumsy uppercut but it did the trick. Like a grain silo toppling over, Julio did a half-turn like a drunken ballet dancer, and dropped straight to the floor.

She fell back against a table panting. Julio lay a few feet from her.  

Long minutes passed before she could recover, more valuable time wasted.  

She undressed him on the floor and tossed his clothes into another garbage bag. She sobbed, almost hysterical but knew what she had to do next. She dragged and rolled him onto the plastic tarp.  With the other two, she’d started with the head. This kitchen came equipped with a 12-amp Sawzall with a six-tooth-per-inch, rotating blade.    

With her sharpest filleting knife in hand, she approached his corpse. “A fish rots from the head down,” she said, “but with you I’m going for the other head, pendejo.” 

Afterward, she carefully packed dry ice around the head, testing all sides to make sure there were no leaks. Then she arranged the orchids skillfully around the center of gravity by pressing their stems into Styrofoam packing. These would go into her trunk at the end of the night. Twice during the business, Adoncia had to slip off to the staff lavatory to vomit from tension. 

Robb White

Robb White lives in Northeastern Ohio. Many stories and novels feature private investigator Thomas Haftmann or Raimo Jarvi. In 2019, White was nominated for a Derringer. A crime novel, The Russian Heist, won Thriller Magazine’s Best Novel of 2019 award, and a short story, “Inside Man,” was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2019. New Pulp Press is bringing out a second collection of Haftmann stories, including the novella of the title: The Dearborn Terrorist Plot & 4 Stories.

Anthology / Flash / Flat Amount / Ongoing Submissions / Reprints Allowed

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Ongoing Submissions: Shelter of Daylight

Payment: Original Stories: $25.00, Reprint Stories: $15.00, Flash Fiction: 1 cent/word, Poems: $5.00, Articles: $20.00
Theme: Original science fiction and fantasy stories that are upbeat and positive in their mood
Note: Reprints Welcome

Shelter of Daylight began with Sam’s Dot Publishing back around the turn of the decade. After some years, it was discontinued. Now, under Hiraeth Books, it has revived.

Shelter of Daylight is now published semi-annually, in January and in July, in print [and, eventually, as an eBook]. It presents original science fiction and fantasy stories that are upbeat and positive in their mood. It also presents a few original poems, again along the overall mood.

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Shelter of Daylight wants original stories with plot, tension, suspense, conflict, and character development. Remember, if readers do not care what happens to your main character[s], they won’t read the story. The narrative should maintain a sense of wondering what’s going to happen next; of what’s lurking just around the corner. Showing is better than telling. Frex, instead of telling the reader that it’s cold, show your character shivering, stomping feet, or having ice form on beard or hair. The inner thoughts and emotions of your character[s] are just as important.

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Stories submitted to Shelter of Daylight should be between 4K and 8K words long. Longer or shorter stories will be considered; however, anything less than 4K will be a difficult sell. Anything 1K or less will be considered flash fiction. We will consider reprint stories, provided they adhere to the guidelines; however, they are difficult sells.

Submit your stories as rtf or .doc attachments [NO .docx, please] to sdpshowcase at yahoo dot com [you must recombine this address for it to work. Sorry for the inconvenience. Blame spammers].

Please submit one story at a time, and wait for the response before submitting another. We hope to keep the response time down to two months. If you haven’t heard from us in three months, please query.

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Articles / Interviews

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WiHM 12: Quick Six Questions With Colleen Anderson

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.
Horror happened naturally for me, and was unintentional. In a chaotic home life, my mother would take me and my little brother to drive-in movies to escape my father’s drunken ways. In jammies, tucked into the back of a station wagon, at the ripe age of 6 or 7, I watched Vincent Price movies with gushing blood and gothic overtones. I’ve conflated Fall of the House of Usher and The House of Seven Gables into one but I believe it was the latter that first imprinted me.

Then I was reading Edgar Allen Poe and Ray Bradbury in my pre-teens, and watching Twilight Zone, and reading my older brother’s abandoned SF novels. That, coupled with a tormented childhood, left a residue. I didn’t seek horror per se, but it was already stalking me. When I started writing, I sold a few pieces but was sending out what I thought was a perfectly good fantasy piece and being rejected with notes that “we don’t do horror.”

When I realized that I sold better the darker I went, I then dove into the deep dark end, where tentacles and slow-moving dread lived. I guess it was natural all along, although it took a while for me to know it.
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Articles / Interviews

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WiHM 12: Quick Six Questions With Naching T. Kassa

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. 

Thank you for having me, Selene. Always a pleasure.

My name is Naching T. Kassa and I’m a wife, mother, and horror writer. I’m also an Assistant at Crystal Lake Publishing and Head of Publishing for HorrorAddict.net. Horror has been a part of my life since the age of three, when my dad showed me King Kong on TV. I was hooked on horror after that and was lucky enough to grow up during the Golden Age of horror in the 80s.

 

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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Articles / Guest Post

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WiHM 12: Taking Back Our Voices: The Necessity of Representation in Horror

Taking Back Our Voices: The Necessity of Representation in Horror

By Spinster Eskie

There’s a new thing I do before watching any movie I suspect will include a rape scene. I check the name of the director to see if it is male or female, and because the nuances of gender make names less of a giveaway, I then investigate further by reading the filmmaker’s Wikipedia bio before deciding if I am willing and able to stomach the content I am about to view. But why should I care? Why does the identity of the filmmaker matter so much? There are plenty of artists that imagine rather than experience. The reason it matters is that bias is inherent within the artist and any themes relevant to my gender and/or queer experience means that I expect to connect with the art.

Since the internet emerged well after I had already become a horror connoisseur, being able to diligently research filmmakers before watching their babies thrive upon my television screen, is a relatively new habit. In the 90s I couldn’t always cherry-pick to the extent that I do now and my options were limited, as far as gender identities went. Carrie and Rosemary were fabulously chilling and inspiring characters, but they were, of course, invented by men.

 

My father, a charismatic, sadistic horror fiend introduced me to the genre at my most absorbent age, but I liked the girls I saw the most. Lydia and Elvira dazzled me. Frankenstein’s Bride enticed me, and knowing that she was conceived by a female author was encouraging when I began to write, myself, and discovered that alongside Mary Shelley were Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Toni Morrison, and Shirley Jackson. All members of this beautiful, sinister club known as horror, but all names that were unfairly overshadowed by the white cis men that have ruled the genre, as well as the industry, for decades. (more…)

Articles / Interviews

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WiHM 12: Quick Six Questions With Suzanne Madron

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.

For me, horror has always been around. As kids, we would try to scare the hell out of each other with ghost and monster stories or by hiding and jumping out. The transition to adulthood didn’t change my love of a good scare.

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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