Tagged: WIHM 2022

Articles / Interviews

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WIHM 2022: An Interview With Jessica McHugh

The Horror Tree Presents… An Interview With Jessica McHugh!

Jessica McHugh is a novelist, poet, and internationally-produced playwright running amok in the fields of horror, sci-fi, young adult, and wherever else her peculiar mind leads. She’s had twenty-five books published in thirteen years, including her bizarro romp, “The Green Kangaroos,” her YA series, “The Darla Decker Diaries,” and her Bram Stoker Award-Nominated blackout poetry collection, “A Complex Accident of Life.” For more info about publications and blackout poetry commissions, please visit McHughniverse.com.


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Articles / Interviews

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WIHM 2022: Jane Lindskold: The Fantasy of Full-Time Writing.

Jane Lindskold: The Fantasy of Full-Time Writing

By Angelique Fawns

Is it your dream to be a full-time writer? What would that life be like? I had the opportunity to meet the New York Times best-selling author Jane Lindskold when she spoke to my Dreamcasters writing group this month. Lindskold is best known for her acclaimed Firekeeper fantasy series, and the Breaking the Wall fantasy series, but those are just the tip of her publishing iceberg. She has more than 24 novels and 70 short stories to her name. Other novels include The Buried Pyramid, Child of a Rainless Year, Changer and Legends Walking.  Her short fiction has found homes in magazines like Lightspeed, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and DreamForge. She got into the weeds with the Dreamcasters about her life in New Mexico and personal author journey. I decided I wanted to learn more…

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Articles / Interviews

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WIHM 2022: An Interview With Briana Morgan

The Horror Tree Presents… An Interview With Briana Morgan

Briana Morgan (she/her) is a horror writer and playwright.

As of 2021, Briana is the author of several novels and plays, including The Tricker-Treater and Other Stories, Unboxed, and more. She’s a proud member of the Horror Writers Association and a book review columnist for the Wicked Library. When not writing, she enjoys gaming, watching movies, and reading.
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WIHM 2022: Working with an editor: Six reasons you should swallow your fear and hire a professional

Working with an editor: Six reasons you should swallow your fear and hire a professional

By: Kate Nascimento

 

As speculative fiction writers, you’ve probably seen your fair share of ghosts, cryptids, and alien invasions. So this Women in Horror Month, I thought I’d write about something else that can strike fear into the hearts of even the most experienced author: the red pen of a professional editor.

 

But here are six reasons why swallowing that fear and working with a professional could be one of the best things you do for your book.

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WIHM 2022: An Interview With Cassie Daley

The Horror Tree Presents: An Interview With Cassie Daley

  1. As a part of the horror community, what does the community mean to you?

 

Oh, what a loaded question to start with, haha! The horror community means a great deal to me, and over the last five years, has become a big part of my life. Although it hasn’t always been sunshine and rainbows, overall I would say that my experience has been crucial to finding a lot of the inner strength I think I lacked before.

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WIHM 2022: Themes in Women’s Horror

Themes in Women’s Horror

by: Patricia Stover

 

Some of the things that make women’s Horror so terrifying are the themes that are being explored. Let’s look at Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic as one example. Garcia creates a strong, female main character named Noemí who challenges the social norms of 1950s Mexico. This was not only a time, but a place set under strict patriarchal ideals. The setting is a gothic mansion that reflects the dread and oppression that this patriarchal society has inflicted upon its women. Then Garcia presents us with this creepy family who reside in the mansion. The family seems to be made up mostly of men, aside of the mother. We watch them keep her cousin trapped inside this dreadful mansion, oppressed, and terrified. And it seems as if she is losing her mind. She reaches out to her beloved cousin and Noemí arrives at the house only to find that she too begins experiencing psychological distress. However, Noemí believes the house itself may be the cause of her hallucinations. 

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WIHM 2022: I Want to be the Woman in Horror!

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in his novel ‘Dracula’, Bram Stoker uses the word ‘voluptuous’ a lot. A LOT. If Lucy’s in the scene, she’s voluptuous. If the vampire brides appear, they’re all voluptuous. Even pure, sweet Mina, towards the end, gets the voluptuous treatment. There’s a whole undercurrent of purity versus sin in the novel, of course, and the Victorians loved to equate sexuality and sensuality with sin, so you can see what Bram was going for. And it’s a good, evocative word. But how many times have you ever considered yourself to be voluptuous? 

If you have, all power to you. Personally, I have never once considered myself to be voluptuous. Nor have I considered myself to be a pure, sweet paragon of virtue like Mina. ‘Dracula’ is one of my all-time favourite works of horror fiction. But I am not in that book. Nor am I in Mary Shelley’s classic ‘Frankenstein’. I don’t see myself in these women. While this doesn’t take away from the power of these works, it would be nice to see myself in the story sometimes.

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place? Let’s jump to more contemporary works of horror literature. Again, more often than not I don’t see myself. I’m not the dazzling Merrin in Joe Hill’s ‘Horns’. I’m not the enigmatic Eli in John Ajvide Lindquist’s ‘Let the Right One In’. I’m not Pandora or Gabrielle or Akasha in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. Sometimes I’d like to be – these women are powerful and driven and have an eternity to meet their goals – and while it’s entertaining and absorbing to enter these women’s minds and travel with them – while I absolutely espouse fiction as a means of escapism – I cannot tell you how exciting I have found it when I find a character I can truly relate to.

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WIHM 2022: Who’s Afraid of the Dark?

Who’s Afraid of the Dark? 

By: Rachael Tamayo

 

When I was a child, like most, I was afraid of the dark. Terrible nightmares haunted my dreams, making me afraid to sleep. I’d say my prayers and ask God to blot out my dreams, terrified of the visions that might come to me. Sleeping with my closet door was a must, as well, since the things that lived just beyond the door liked to tease me into terror that would send me running to my parent’s room in the middle of the night only to get kicked back to my own bed.

I learned to manage, I struggled alone with my fear of the dark. That and the nightmares that my parents swore were caused by demons and devils, I learned to manipulate my dreams and be terrified of sleeping until I was a much older adult. 
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