Know a Nominee, Part 26: Sydney Leigh

Welcome back to “Know a Nominee,” the interview series that puts you squarely between the ears of this year’s Bram Stoker Award nominees. Our final update for this year features Sydney Leigh, nominated in the category of Superior Achievement in a Short Fiction, for “Baby’s Breath.”

Thanks for reading, everyone–and many thanks to all of the nominees who shared their priceless insights. It’s been a pleasure serving as editor for this series. 

–Doug Murano, HWA Communications Coordinator

DM: Please describe the genesis for the idea that eventually became the work for which you’ve been nominated. In the case of a work wherein you’ve written multiple stories (like a collection) please choose your favorite part and discuss

SL: “Baby’s Breath” actually stemmed from a hundred word piece called “Transference,” which was just the first paragraph of the story as it stands now. Micro-fiction calls for an idea with a strong enough impact to land in very few words, so when someone suggested I flesh it out into a longer piece for the Bugs anthology, I already had a lot to work with.

DM: What was the most challenging part of bringing the concept to fruition? The most rewarding aspect of the process?

SL: Well, for one, deciding to lead with the first paragraph meant giving away the ending, so I hoped that by using the pregnancy as a narrative timeframe and slowly coming back to the present, I wasn’t robbing the reader of the direct blow that last scene delivered.

Additionally, knowing this would be an extremely difficult story for certain people to read proved challenging—I even struggled with the idea of sending it to the editor of the anthology since he had a brand new baby at home. I worried it would be too much. Childbirth is an intensely personal, sensitive subject, and it was important to me that readers felt I handled that delicate balance successfully.

As far as the rewards, there are too many to list here—but having readers see Diane as a very tragic, very human character meant a lot to me.

DM: What do you think good horror/dark literature should achieve? How do you feel the work for which you’ve been nominated work fits into that ideal?

SL: I think it should stir a variety of emotions in the reader, and maybe that’s because I’ve always tried to use Doug Winter’s “Horror’s not a genre, it’s an emotion” line as a mantra of sorts. It should be compelling, unique, unsettling, and real enough to strike a nerve somewhere deep, and perhaps unconscious, inside of you, and resonate long after you’ve lifted your eyes from the page. Based on the feedback I received from both readers and writers, it seemed as though they felt “Baby’s Breath” had something important to say about the human condition. And that’s exactly what I was hoping for.

DM: I’m curious about your writing and/or editing process. Is there a certain setting or set of circumstances that help to move things along? If you find yourself getting stuck, where and why?

SL: As an editor, I have to dissuade myself from editing while I write so that things will move along. Sometimes I labor a bit too long over that process, which often comes after the story is told for most writers. If I can detach myself from my inner editor and allow the writer in me to simply sit down and tell the story, that helps a great deal. I always draw from my own experiences in my writing, as well—my characters are all real people and the settings real places. So while research is at times inevitable, it’s always much easier to write a story that isn’t contrived.

DM: As you probably know, many of our readers are writers themselves. What is the most valuable piece of advice you can share with someone who may be struggling to make their way in this life?

SL: Wow. Well, I think we’re all still struggling to make our way in this life, aren’t we? I know I am. Writing is hard, and at times an incredibly solitary endeavor. It takes courage, perseverance, patience, and a willingness to learn while putting your ego aside. I think it was Wilde who said, “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” My advice would be to keep looking at the stars…no matter how deep or dark the gutter.

DM: If you’re attending WHC this year, what are you most looking forward to at this year’s event? If not attending, what do you think is the significance of recognitions like the Bram Stoker Awards?

SL: I’m looking forward to everything! The close friends I made at WHC Portland became some of the most important people in my life—and my career. The social aspect of it is definitely a highlight. I’m thrilled to be sitting in on panels about dark poetry, flash fiction, making insane characters believable, and to launch The Library of the Dead. It’s such an honor to be a part of this organization, and beyond humbling to have work nominated for such a prestigious award alongside writers I so greatly admire.

One of my best friends is driving to the con to celebrate with me, and I’m thrilled about that. As with most of my stories, she helped me work out some of the ideas in its early stages, and I know she’ll be proud to see me signing my name on the chapbook for her a year later.

DM: What scares you most? Why? How (if at all) does that figure into your work?

SL: I can’t easily define fear in terms of how something effectively frightens me in a work of fiction—it tends to lean more toward the unknown, the supernatural, and psychological horror. But when I think of what scares me most in real life, I imagine animals being hurt, alone, neglected, abused…children being tortured, both physically and emotionally. Maliciousness. Overwhelming grief, loss, and helplessness. War, poverty, starvation, homelessness, mass extinction, genocide. Natural disasters. People suffering all over the world and my powerlessness to do anything about it. Insidious things like cancer. Even the inevitable, death.  A lot of things scare me, and I think the best way to explain how that figures into my work is to quote King: “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”

DM: What are you reading lately? Can you point us to new authors or works we ought to know about?

SL: Since I work for three different presses, I get to read a considerable amount of work that other people haven’t had the privilege of seeing yet. Between submissions and reading on my own time, I’ve been enjoying a combination of newer authors and masters of the craft: Kurt Fawver, B.E. Scully, Michael Bailey, Gardner Goldsmith, John Dixon, John R. Little, Aaron Sterns, Lansdale, Ketchum, Damien Angelica Walters, Graham Joyce, John Boden, Laird Barron…I could go on forever. I’m always reading, and I think we all should be. But if you haven’t read anything by someone on this list, be sure to check them out.
About Sydney Leigh

Sydney Leigh is a writer and editor native to Massachusetts. Her short fiction, poetry, and reviews have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Shock Totem, Shroud Quarterly, The Library of the Dead, and Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning. She currently works for Villipede Publications, as the Chief Editor of Eldritch Press’ Novel Division, and is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association. While she’s busy working on her first novel, drop into her website at http://thespiderbox.shawnaleighbernard.com.