World of Horror: Interview with Somto Ihezue

  Somto Ihezue is a Nigerian-Igbo editor, writer and filmmaker. He was awarded the 2021 African Youth Network Movement Fiction Prize. A British Science Fiction Award, Nommo Award and 2022 Afritondo Prize nominee, his works have appeared in Tor: Africa Risen Anthology, Fireside Magazine, Podcastle, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, POETRY Magazine, Cossmass Infinities, Flash Fiction Online, Flame Tree Press, OnSpec, Africa In Dialogue, and others. Somto is Original Fiction Manager at Escape Artists. He is an acquiring editor with Android Press and an associate editor with Cast of Wonders. He is an alumnus of the Milford SF Writers ’22, and Voodoonauts ’22, and…

World of Horror: Interview with Erica Couto-Ferreira

Erica Couto-Ferreira is a historian, writer, and translator. She is the author of the horror novelette Hemetia (Arima, 2022) and a bunch of horror and fantasy short stories that have appeared in magazines and anthologies over the years.  As a non-fiction writer, she has published in Spanish the essays Bodies. The other lives of corpses (Kalandraka, 2023), Hell. The underworld in ancient Mesopotamia (Aurora Dorada, 2020) and Infestation. A cultural history of haunted houses (Dilatando Mentes, 2021), which was a finalist of the Ignotus Awards 2022 in the category Best Essay. She has also translated W. G. Pugmire’s book Bohemians…

World of Horror: Interview with Kaaron Warren

Shirley Jackson award-winner Kaaron Warren has published five novels and seven short story collections. She’s sold over 200 short stories to publications big and small around the world and has appeared in Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best anthologies. Her novel The Grief Hole won all three Australian genre awards. She has lived in Melbourne, Sydney, Fiji and Canberra and her most recent books are The Deathplace Set in Vandal, and Bitters, a novella from Cemetery Dance. She won the inaugural AsylumFest Ghost Story Telling Competition in 2022. What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? Even as…

World of Horror: Interview with Ross Jeffery

Ross Jeffery Ross Jeffery is the Bram Stoker Award-nominated and 3x Splatterpunk Award-nominated author of The Juniper Trilogy, The Devil's Pocketbook, I Died Too, But They Haven't Buried Me Yet, Only The Stains Remain, Beautiful Atrocities and many more. He has been published in print with a number of anthologies and his short fiction has appeared in various online journals. Ross lives in Bristol with his wife (Anna) and two children (Eva and Sophie). You can follow him on Twitter here @RossJeffery_   What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I think what first drew…

World of Horror: Interview with Greg Chapman

  Bram Stoker Award® nominee and multiple Australian Shadows Award nominee Greg Chapman is a horror author and artist based in Queensland, Australia.  Greg is the author of several novels, novellas, and short stories, including his award-nominated debut novel, Hollow House, and collections, Vaudeville and Other Nightmares and This Sublime Darkness and Other Dark Stories. His next book is the collection, Midnight Masquerade, coming this Halloween from IFWG Publishing. He is also a horror artist and designer and his first graphic novel Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times, (McFarland & Company) written by Rocky Wood and Lisa…

World of Horror: Interview with Alan Baxter

Alan Baxter is a multi-award-winning author of horror, supernatural thrillers, and dark fantasy liberally mixed with crime, mystery, and noir. He’s also a martial artist, a whisky-soaked swear monkey, and dog lover. He creates dark, weird stories among dairy paddocks on the beautiful south coast of NSW, Australia. Find Alan online at: https://www.alanbaxteronline.com/. What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? Honesty. I’ve said many times that horror is the genre of honesty. It doesn’t shy away from harsh truths, it follows the rabbit hole all the way down. No manufactured happy endings, you find truth…

World of Horror: Introduction to International Horror Month 2023 by Alan Baxter

By Alan Baxter It has long been recognised that the USA is the main focus of attention when it comes to horror fiction. If that hasn’t been noticed by people in North America, it most certainly has by everyone outside the country. But there is a growing interest in horror set beyond America’s shores, and for stories written by authors from other countries and other cultures. One of my most successful books is The Gulp, an unashamedly Australian collection of horror stories set very much in rural New South Wales, Australia. We’ve seen a surge of successful horror from European…

NUTS & BOLTS: INTERVIEW WITH “THE HORROR ZINE” JEANI RECTOR

By Tom Joyce If you ever get despondent over the state of the publishing industry, think of Jeani Rector. Alarmed about all the publications closing after the economic collapse of 2008, she decided to start The Horror Zine—now in its 14th successful year. In this month’s edition of Nuts & Bolts, Jeani talks about how she got started, what makes for a good author/editor relationship, and what she looks for in a submission.   Q: How did The Horror Zine get started? A: Back “in the day”, I used to write fiction and submit it to various magazines and ezines.…

Nuts & Bolts: Interview With Screenplay Writer John Penney

By Tom Joyce Even literary legends can make a bad call sometimes. John Penney discovered that when he disregarded some early career advice from famous author Ray Bradbury, to the effect that he should give screenwriting a pass if he wanted to be a serious author.  Fortunately, John proved Mr. Bradbury wrong, and has spent the past 30 years producing horror in one form or another as an award-winning screenwriter, director, novelist, and short-story writer. In this edition of “Nuts & Bolts,” John shares some of his insights on novel and screenplay writing.    Q: What are the main differences between…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Robert Levy

ROBERT LEVY's novel The Glittering World was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award as well as the Lambda Literary Award, while shorter work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nightmare, Black Static, The Dark, Shadows & Tall Trees, Autumn Cthulhu, FOUND: An Anthology of Found Footage Horror Stories, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year's Best Hardcore Horror, and The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction, among others. His debut story collection No One Dies from Love: Dark Tales of Loss and Longing was published by Word Horde in May. A Harvard graduate subsequently trained…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Mae Murray

Mae Murray is a writer and editor hailing from Arkansas, now living in eerie New England. She contributes essays and criticism to horror-centric websites, including Fangoria and Dread Central. She is the recipient of a 2022 Brave New Weird award for the Superior Achievement in Short Fiction for her story “The Imperfection” (Shortwave Magazine) and has been published in horror fiction anthologies and nonfiction collections. The Book of Queer Saints Volume I was her editing debut. Volume II is set to be released Halloween 2023. Her debut novel I'm Sorry If I Scared You is due Spring 2024. She owns…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Lee Mandelo

Lee Mandelo (he/him) is a writer, critic, and occasional editor whose fields of interest include speculative and queer fiction, especially when the two coincide. His debut novel Summer Sons, featured in publications ranging from NPR to the Chicago Review of Books, is a contemporary Southern Gothic dealing with queer masculinity, fast cars, and ugly inheritances. His most recent book, Feed Them Silence, is a near-future science fiction novella—and there's also a t4t historical Appalachian horror novella in the works. Mandelo has been a past nominee for awards including the Nebula, Lambda, and Hugo Awards, and is currently living in Louisville…

A Point of Pride: An Interview with Lor Gislason

Lor Gislason (they/he) is a non-binary homebody and the author of Inside Out. They are also the editor of Bound In Flesh: An Anthology of Trans Body Horror. Find them on Twitter @Lorelli_ and their blog lorgislason.wordpress.com What inspired you to start writing? During the early days of the Covid lockdowns, I lost my job and suddenly had a lot of free time. I decided to catch up on horror movies, fill in my blindspots for classics, and that kind of thing. I watched Daniel Isn’t Real and it stuck with me—I texted my friend “Why isn’t anyone writing about…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Andrew Robertson

Andrew Robertson is a queer horror writer and editor. He recently released a dual-author short story collection with Sèphera Girón, Dearly Departed, available from the Great Lakes Horror Company. The collection represents their favourite frights and gravest hits published over the past decade. Andrew has three short stories heading to the Moon as part of Lunar Codex. A project by Samuel Peralta, Lunar Codex is archiving the works of over 30,000 artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers from 156 countries in tandem with NASA's Artemis program and the Writers on the Moon project. These stories will be part of the largest single…

A point of Pride: An Interview with Wendy N. Wagner

Wendy N. Wagner is a writer and Hugo award-winning editor. Her books include the forthcoming cosmic horror novel The Creek Girl (Tor Nightfire, 2025), The Deer Kings, The Secret Skin, and the Locus best-selling An Oath of Dogs. Her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared in seventy-some publications, running the gamut from horror to environmental literature. She is also the editor-in-chief of Nightmare Magazine and the managing/senior editor of Lightspeed. She lives in Oregon with her very understanding family, two large cats, and a Muppet disguised as a dog. You can find her at winniewoohoo.com. What inspired you to…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Joe Koch

Joe Koch (He/They) writes literary horror and surrealist trash. Their books include The Wingspan of Severed Hands, Convulsive, and The Couvade, which received a Shirley Jackson Award nomination in 2019. His short fiction appears in publications such as Vastarien, Southwest Review, PseudoPod, Children of the New Flesh, and The Queer Book of Saints. Joe also co-edited the art-horror anthology Stories of the Eye. Find Joe online at their website and on Twitter.   What inspired you to start writing? Writing evolved from the same need that drove me to do visual art fifty years prior. I need to make things,…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Michael R. Collins

Michael R Collins was born at a very young age in the wilds of southern Idaho. After a few decades, he finally got his fill of all the sagebrush and rattlesnakes he could eat, so he struck out into the world. After slinging some bass guitar and general shenanigans in Austin, Texas, he currently lives in Pennsylvania with his partner Mel. He is a Bi author who has published four novels. His most recent novellas are Verum Malum, Miracles for Masochists (with James G. Carlson), and Dick Wiggler and Other Useless Superpowers (writing as Mick Collins) as well as penning…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Ruth Anna Evans

  Ruth Anna Evans is a writer, anthologizer, and cover designer who lives in the heart of all that is sinister: the American Midwest. She has been composing prose of all types since childhood but finds something truly delightful in putting her nightmares on the page. She has self-published the horror collection No One Can Help You: Tales of Lost Children and Other Nightmares, along with novellas, novelettes, and several short stories. She is the editor of Ooze: Little Bursts of Body Horror. Her work has also appeared in Livestock: Tales from the Un-herd, Deadly Drabbles by Hungry Shadow Press,…

A Point of Pride: Interview with Eboni J. Dunbar

Eboni J. Dunbar (She/her) is a queer, black woman who writes queer and black speculative fiction. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner. She received her BA from Macalester College in English and her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is a VONA Alum and the former managing editor for the Hugo Award-Winning FIYAH Literary Magazine. Her work can be found in Stellium Literary Magazine, FIYAH Literary Magazine, Drabblecast, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Nightlight Podcast, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She also has a novella, Stone and Steel, out from Neon Hemlock Press. Eboni…

A Point of Pride: Interview with L. Stephenson

Out to his family and friends since he was sixteen, L. Stephenson’s short stories and poetry have been haunting horror anthologies and online magazines since 2018, the best of which can be found in his recently-released mini collection, Candles, Bullets, & Dead Skin. Graduating university in 2010 with a degree in Film & TV Screenwriting, Stephenson released his first novella, The Goners in 2021. Originally the beginning of a trilogy that has now fused into his debut slasher novel, The Boatmore Butcher, due out in September of this year through Dark Ink Books. What inspired you to start writing?  I…