What are you working on lately? Any upcoming publications readers should look out for?
I’ve spent a lot of time proofreading the ebook editions of my collections The Dark Country, Red Dreams, The Blood Kiss, and The Death Artist for Dave Wilson’s Crossroad Press. They’re available now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other websites, and should stand as the definitive versions. It Only Comes Out at Night, a massive career retrospective edited by S.T. Joshi, will be published later this year by Centipede Press. Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone are bringing out a collection I’m assembling for Borderlands Press, called A Little Black Book of Dark Stories. Peter Atkins and I are putting together a reprint anthology of dream stories, A Long Time Till Morning, and I’m working on an all-new collection of my own, but no publisher has been set for either of those yet. My most recent stories can be found in Stephen Jones’s anthology A Book of Horrors and in Jason V. Brock’s forthcoming Darke Phantastique. Meanwhile, my nonfiction book from last year, Matheson on Matheson, should still be available from Bad Moon Books. And of course more ebooks will soon be ready.
When you’re reading a horror story or novel, what kinds of things delight you? What kinds of things scare you?
It’s always a pleasure to be surprised by something new and fresh, something unlike anything I’ve read before; that’s the goal, but it doesn’t happen very often. Still, I hold out hope. What scares me? It’s purely subjective. Something that’s frightening to some is a joke to others. It all depends on who you are. Ray Bradbury’s “Zero Hour” and “The Veldt” and “The Small Assassin” scared me when I was young, as did Algis Budrys’s “The Master of the Hounds” a few years later, along with many of Ramsey Campbell’s stories and novels. Like Ramsey, I’m particularly visual in my own stories, at least in the way I imagine them in my mind, so—or perhaps because of that—I can’t avoid being influenced by what I see in movies. Karl Edward Wagner thought that the end of this one was a direct reference to “Don’t Look Now,” based on the Daphne De Maurier short story, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it, though Nicholas Roeg’s film certainly affected me deeply.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in Honolulu, Lisa Nohealani Morton lives in Washington, DC. By day she is a mild-mannered database wrangler, computer programmer, and all-around data geek, and by night she writes science fiction, fantasy, and combinations of the two. Her short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, the anthology Heiresses of Russ 2012, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter as @lnmorton.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: MARI NESS
Caroline Ratajski
What was the inspiration behind this story?
Undergoing medical testing.
You chose not to name your characters—why?
From a plot and story point of view, at this point, the narrator can’t even remember his own name, let alone hers. She has no real need to tell him her name—in fact, it’s in her interest not to tell him, in the extremely unlikely event that he manages to escape.
From a deeper point of view, I’ve encountered several medical people who get my name wrong even as they are running medical tests on me or having problems drawing out my blood. I think that was probably playing a bit of a role as well.
And from a writing process point of view, getting the right name for a character is really not one of my strengths as a writer, so if I have a good reason to skip this part, I do.
The killer refuses to believe her victim’s answers regarding the nature of the afterlife. What makes her so skeptical/reluctant?
I think she wants to believe that what she’s doing does have a point, that she’s going to get something out of all of this, that she isn’t just killing the guy for no reason. And she has good reason to believe that the guy resents her and hates her—look at what she’s doing to him, after all—so he could well be lying just to frustrate and anger her.
And I think it’s possible that he lied to her in the past—or that she thinks he did. And he just can’t remember it.
What made you decide to tell the story from his point of view instead of hers?
I don’t know what doctors are thinking when they order more tests. I do know what I’m thinking. “Why? Why? WHY?” Which led to this.
While you highlighted that they were never lovers, as far as the narrator believes, you don’t further define their relationship. Why not?
Two reasons: First, I was more interested in what was happening just then—after all, whatever did happen in their past is, I think, less interesting than what she is trying to do now.
Second, all of this has really done a number on the narrator’s mind. Many of these deaths are painful; all of them are disorientating. So even if he could remember their original relationship, I’m not sure we could trust his version of it. So she’s the only person who could define their relationship—and she’s not interested in their relationship. She’s interested—I’d say obsessed with—what happens afterward.
Which horror author(s) would you say inspired you the most? How have they influenced your work?
You know, I can’t really say I’ve ever been inspired by any particular horror author. I have been a bit more inspired by some horror movies, especially those that focus on psychological horror instead of blood and gore. I was mesmerized by Pan’s Labyrinth, for instance, and I thought both the Japanese and American versions of The Ring were brilliantly done even if it meant I had to side-eye videos and DVDs for a while.
But the inspiration from those films tends to show up in my other work—the dark fantasy, retold fairy tales, and science fiction. Horror is different. When I write horror, like this piece, and I don’t do this often, it is almost invariably in response to some mundane horror, some minor hell that I feel I can’t get out of. It’s the mundane horrors of real life that brings forth the monsters.
What work do you have out now or forthcoming, and what are you working on now?
I have a few more new stories and poems coming out this year from Daily Science Fiction, the Upgraded anthology edited by Neil Clarke, Goblin Fruit, Papaveria Press, and a few other places I can’t talk about just yet. And one of my short stories, “Twittering the Stars,” is about to be reprinted by Upper Rubber Boot Press. I’m very pleased, since that story—one written entirely in tweets, that can be read either backwards or forwards—has been a bit difficult to track down in the last couple of years. There’s a more or less regularly upgraded list of my publications over at my blog, marikness.wordpress.com.
Regarding what I’m working on now—well, I’ve been using this interview to procrastinate on a story. Bad writer! Bad writer! I do have a few more stories to finish up beyond that one, and then it’s back to working on a couple of novels that keep stubbornly refusing to write themselves. Maybe I should write a story about that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Caroline Ratajski is a writer and software engineer currently living in Silicon Valley, California, USA. Previously published as Morgan Dempsey, her fiction is available in Broken Time Blues and Danse Macabre, as well as at Redstone Science Fiction. She is represented by Barry Goldblatt of Barry Goldblatt Literary, LLC.
AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: TOM PICCIRILLI
Britt Gettys
In On Writing Horror: A Handbook by the Horror Writers Association, you discuss your short story, “The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair,” saying that you didn’t want to explain the more fantastical details of the story, such as the existence of a town within your protagonist’s gut, because doing so would take away from the story’s impact. How much of horror do you believe comes, not only from the unknown, but the reader’s own sense and justification for what is occurring in the narrative?
Well, I don’t think that readers really need to know every detail and bit of info about a story. They’ll come to their own conclusions about the nature of the piece one way or another. Perfect example is, “What is haunting Hill House?” when we read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Is it a gho
st? Is it many ghosts? Is there no ghost at all? We never find out and so the book is that much more powerful because of that. Some people like to guess at the answer. Some just let it roll off their backs.
There are moments in “The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair” where the writing and content can be read as amusing, yet this doesn’t distract from the overall eeriness of the piece. How do you balance the comedic and the horrific in your work, and is comedy something you believe can emphasize horror?
I do believe that horror and eeriness are underscored more by humor, and vice versa.
In the story you toy with the convention of the stoic hero, setting up your protagonist, John, as someone who might jump in and thwart the bank robbery, but instead the narrative takes a much darker turn. What led you to write this kind of story, and what was the genesis of John as a character?
Those kind of funky twists just happen at the moment. I lean one way for the sake of story, and then dodge a different way when it feels right. So having John something of a hero in the opening pages and then learning he’s something of a psycho in the end is spooky and freaky.
Your first novel, Dark Feather, was the first piece of writing you ever sold. Had you written many short stories before that, or was short fiction something you got into after writing the novel? Do you find one form to be more suited to you than the other?
I had written a lot of short fiction but couldn’t sell much. After Dark Feather, I wrote a couple more novels that were rejected all across the board. I finally decided to go back to square one and learn how to do short stories, learn how to edit myself, and then when I started selling stories regularly, I re-edited all those unsold novels and they began to sell, too.
You once said in an interview with LitReactor that writing must come first, second, and third in an author’s life. This can be interpreted in a variety of ways, so what’s your interpretation?
Writing takes precedence over just about everything else. Ray Bradbury said that he wrote with thick drapes over his windows because he didn’t want to see when it was sunny outside because he had to stay in and write. I feel the same way. You need to prioritize writing at the head of your “things to do” list. So write, write some more, and then even more. To paraphrase Jack London: If inspiration doesn’t come to you, hunt it down with a club.
Are you currently working on any projects, and if so, could you tell us a bit about them?
I’m working on my next novel, Blue Autumn, which is due in December. It’s about an ex-con boxer who gets out of prison and returns to his small hometown to learn why a car with his best friend, his sister, his lover, and another passenger tried to outrace a train at a crossing and all got killed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Britt Gettys recently graduated from Pratt Institute, where she obtained her BFA in Creative Writing. She currently works as a freelance entertainment writer, reviewing and critiquing television shows despite the fact that she has no real qualifications to do so. Additionally, she illustrates graphic novels, and her work has been featured in two Pratt-sponsored exhibitions. Britt hails from Seattle, Washington, where she spends her time writing, cosplaying, and painting.
MISCELLANY
IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF
Coming up in August, in Nightmare . . .
We’ll have original fiction from Desirina Boskovich (“Dear Owner of This 1972 Ford Crew Cab Pickup”) and Ben Peek (“Upon the Body”), along with reprints by Tia Travis (“The Kiss”) and Simon Strantzas (“Out of Touch”).
In our column on horror, “The H Word,” Lucy A. Snyder will be discussing the intersection of horror and science fiction, and of course, we'll have author spotlights with our authors, a showcase on our cover artist, and a feature interview.
It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Nightmare!
Looking ahead beyond next month, we’ve got new fiction on the way from Sunny Moraine, Daniel José Older, and, of course, in October, we have our special double-issue Women Destroy Horror!, guest edited by the one-and-only Ellen Datlow.
Thanks for reading!
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ABOUT THE EDITOR
John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Nightmare, is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. New projects coming out in 2014 and 2015 include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Wastelands 2, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. He has been nominated for eight Hugo Awards and five World Fantasy Awards, and he has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed Magazine, and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.
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