A Point of Pride: Interview with Corey Niles
Corey Niles was born and raised in the Rust Belt, where he garnered his love of horror. His debut horror novel, Blood & Dirt, was released from NineStar Press in August 2022. His writing has appeared in over twenty publications, including issues, anthologies, and collections from Nightmare Magazine, the Horror Writers Association, Ghost Orchid Press, and Lycan Valley Press. You can keep up to date with his recent and forthcoming publications at coreyniles.com.
What inspired you to start writing?
From an early age, I loved storytelling. I think it was the escapism. Hanging up my problems for a couple of hours to be transported to another place or time. I struggled with reading when I was younger, so my first love was movies. I never slept well, and I often snuck down to my family’s living room at night to watch old movies that I was probably far too young to see.
My grandfather and brother read voraciously, and eventually, I became curious about what all the fuss was about. I quickly fell in love with reading. Books pulled me in even more than movies. No matter what was happening in my life, I could hide away in the pages of a story.
The next natural step was writing. Being the conductor of an adventure or entertaining my friends with a mystery story was intoxicating. I wrote comics, movie scripts, and stories. I fell in love with the process. I couldn’t think of a better way of passing an afternoon than looking up from my desk and realizing that hours had passed away writing.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
I loved the horror genre from as early as I could remember. The Monster at the End of This Book was my favorite bedtime story, and I waited all year round for Halloween. The thought that monsters, ghosts, witches, and magic were real made the world feel like it was full of possibilities.
I became more intellectually connected to it after a car accident. When I was in kindergarten, I was run over by a car. My leg was broken and my face skinned, and I grew up with the constant reminder that I was lucky to be alive. Consequently, I questioned the meaning of life and death far earlier than most.
I felt at home in the horror genre, which seemed to be rooted in these existential questions. My grandfather was a large Stephen King and Thomas Harris fan, and I grew up reading Carrie and Silence of the Lambs. That, coupled with a healthy pile of horror movie rentals from Family Video, cemented my love of the genre. When I started writing, horror stories felt like coming home.
Do you make a conscious effort to include LGBTQ material in your writing, and if so, what do you want to portray?
Queer characters were not the protagonists of the horror stories that I grew up on. More often than not, they were the early victims or the antagonists of the story. I often sought out fiction that merely mentioned homosexuality in passing because I craved some form of representation.
I feel like I mostly write from the perspectives of queer characters now for that isolated boy who was searching to see himself in fiction.
Over the past decade, many portrayals of queer people in fiction seem to be written to dispel problematic stereotypes, the resulting characters being geared toward a heterosexual audience and lacking the complexity and flaws of real queer people.
My goal as a writer is to write characters who feel real—as flawed and wonderful as queer people and as the heterosexual characters that have consumed the zeitgeist for as long as printing presses gave birth to the modern paperback that we know and love today.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
At its core, I believe the horror genre is an examination of survival. Can we make it past the unthinkable obstacles before us? In that sense, writing horror has taught me that there is a benefit to fear. Fear of the unknown or a monster is what predicates the fight for survival and the knowledge that we as humans are capable of surviving truly horrific trauma and carrying on in spite of it. I suppose in a roundabout way, it’s made me an optimist. My favorite horror to read and write is when the odds are stacked against the character, and still, they find a way to make it out the other side with perhaps a little more wisdom about themselves and the world.
How have you seen the horror genre change over the years? And how do you think it will continue to evolve?
The evolution of horror has been so exciting to be a part of, especially in more recent years. The genre, which has been largely ruled by a few large names in the past, has begun to expand and diversify. There seems to be a conscious effort to uplift and spotlight diverse voices in the genre, resulting in a wonderful array of stories that are rooted in cultures and perspectives that have altogether been sidelined in the past. I don’t think my horror TBR pile has ever been so tall.
How do you feel the LGBTQ community has been represented thus far in the genre, and what hopes do you have for representation in the genre going forward?
The relationship between queer representation and the community in horror is a unique one. Historically, queer characters tend to be portrayed as the deviant and deranged villains or the early victims of a monster who serve as a warning to the straight main characters. Yet, with themes of fear, otherness, and survival, the fact that so many queer people are drawn to the genre is hardly a coincidence. I think we have a long way to go with queer representation in horror, but as more queer voices are spotlighted, I’m excited for queer writers to hone and develop these themes.
Who are some of your favorite LGBTQ characters in horror?
Many of those queer-coded characters from my youth have stuck with me over the years. I have a soft spot for Eleanor and Theodora from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Regardless of what Jackson intended, the whole narrative read to me as the internal battle that many queer people experience when coming out. Eleanor’s struggle between queer life and the assimilation of heterosexual norms resonated deeply with me. When Eleanor and Theodora flee from a family picnic of ghosts with children, I felt Eleanor’s fight against societal expectations and what she wanted versus what she felt was the death sentence that society had planned for her.
Who are some LGBTQ horror authors you recommend our audience check out?
There are several dear friends of mine who I had the pleasure of meeting during my time studying genre fiction at Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction Program who are producing amazing work in the genre, such as Sara Tantlinger, K.P. Kulski, and Kourtnea Hogan. I also have so many more in my TBR pile that I’m excited to explore, such as Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca, and Gretchen Felker-Martin. I read at a far slower pace than I purchase books, so I’m looking forward to diving into these newer works.
What is one piece of advice you would give horror authors today?
I think the best advice I ever received was to fall in love with the process. While I don’t know a happier moment than receiving the acceptance letter for my debut novel, Blood & Dirt, what sustained me through the pandemic and sustains me through the many roadblocks that life put in my way is sitting down at my desk every day. I usually wake up a few hours before my day job and write with a cup of coffee. I then spend an hour after my partner falls asleep at night back at the computer, editing. The catharsis and escapism that those bookends to my day provide centers me more than any publication. As soon as I realized that, my writing production doubled, and my inner critic quieted significantly. Loving the process enabled me to get out of my own way and appreciate the pages that come from those early mornings and late nights.
And to the LGBTQ writers out there who are just getting started, what advice would you give them?
Keep up the great work. I’m so excited to read the queer fiction that has been coming out over the past few years. I think the horror genre is truly changing for the better, and I can’t wait to see what is coming down the pipeline.
