Celebrating Our Elders: Interview with Lucy Taylor
Lucy Taylor is the Stoker Award–winning author of seven novels and five short story collections. Her most recent work includes stories in Body Shocks (Tachyon) Horror Library, Volume 7 (Dark Moon Books), and the Western/horror novella Desolation (Poltergeist Press). Her work has been translated into Italian, German, Czech, Russian, Spanish, and other languages.
She lives in the high desert outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, and enjoys ballroom and Latin dancing, Pilates, hiking, swimming, and being a 24/7 concierge, chef, and dispenser-of-treats to her two rescue kitties.
Did you start out writing or working in the horror field, and if so why? If not, what were you writing initially and what compelled you to move to horror?
I started writing short stories very young. At about eight or nine, I read my first horror stories in an issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. I knew immediately I wanted to write stories full of blood and gore and monsters, both human and supernatural. I also had the dubious advantage of growing up in a household I can only describe as deranged Southern Gothic, so I learned very young to be fluent in the language of “crazy” and how to use those experiences creatively.
In my twenties and thirties, I freelanced for newspapers and magazines and published erotica under various pseudonyms. I began selling horror fiction after moving to Colorado, where there was a flourishing horror community in Denver. Becoming a part of that group, which included Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem, Edward Bryant, Connie Willis, Dan Simmons, and many others, helped me immensely.
Who were your influences as a writer when you started out and who, if anyone, continues to influence you?
I was thrilled by the work of Clive Barker, especially The Books of Blood and The Damnation Game. Other writers who influenced me were Peter Straub, Stephen King, Kathe Koja, Lisa Tuttle, Charles Grant, Kathy Ptacek, Lisa Morton, Jack Ketchum, Edward Lee, Elizabeth Massie, John Saul, many of whom, of course, are still writing and inspiring me to this day.
How have the changes in horror publishing over the past decades affected you?
When I started out as a writer, I wrote my stories on a typewriter and sent them out in manila envelopes with a SASE enclosed. (I feel ancient just writing that.) The sight of that SASE in my mailbox was always a painful moment, but occasionally there was a slender envelope with a check in it, cause for celebration. In those days, most of my market information came from Kathy Ptacek’s The Gila Queen’s Guide to Markets. My first sales were to small presses like Silver Salamander and Masquerade Books in the early nineties.
Of course, since then so much has changed. There’s the rise of e-books and audiobooks and print-on-demand, the proliferation of digital media and digital devices and programs. For me, social media has been a game changer in terms of expanding my connections to the world of writing, publishing, and marketing. The Internet and social media opened up so many possibilities. Suddenly I could reconnect with people in the horror field I’d lost contact with over the years. I could communicate with people I’d never met or met only briefly, follow podcasts and blogs and write blogs of my own, keep up with new publications and editorial changes. With the advent of zoom, it was possible to take tutorials and attend conventions online.
Do you think you’ve encountered ageism? If so, how do you counteract or deal with it?
We live in a world of subtle and sometimes blatant ageism, especially for women. I’m sure I’d get more attention if I were thirty years younger. On the other hand, I can’t think of any situation where I felt I was held back or disregarded because of my age. I do think that being an aging writer is a much kinder fate than that of an aging athlete, model, or actor. My hope is that with age, I am acquiring more wisdom and insight and that this enhances the quality and depth of my writing.
What do you wish you knew when you were just getting into the field?
I wish someone had drilled into me how vital it is to get out of my comfort zone and make connections, go to conventions, and become part of the writing world. Don’t say you’re an introvert and conventions are scary and then, when you do go to one, spend half the time in your room, which was what I sometimes did. You’ll not only cheat yourself out of opportunities to meet people older and more experienced in their craft, but you’ll miss out on the chance for friendships with some amazing, talented, and fascinating people.
Something else I wish I’d understood is that everyone, at one point or another, deals with self-doubt and the self-flagellation of negative self-talk. That voice saying This will never sell or Why did I ever think I could write? will paralyze your ability to create. I know because I’ve been there. So banish it!
Do you have any advice for writers just starting out?
Well, in addition to my response to #5, I’d advise having a clear idea of who your audience is and what market you hope to sell to. I often get asked for feedback on a project or manuscript, and I always want to know who you are writing this for and what market are you trying to crack.
Most of the time, the person has no idea. I’ve found this across the board, not just with genre writers, but with anyone seeking to publish. And I always say, well, if you’re writing this just for yourself and maybe your family, that’s fine, but otherwise, you have to have a target audience and a market you’re aiming for.
And secondly, take yourself and your work seriously. Keep a schedule of when you’ll be writing and for how long. Then stick to it. I’ve known several people who wrote novels by carving out one hour a day and keeping that hour sacred. And the work got done and the book got published.
Do you think older characters are represented fairly and honestly in horror fiction?
That’s difficult to say, because there’s a lot out there I haven’t read, but my gut feeling is that older characters are under-represented in most fiction. In horror, I think the “creepy old person” trope, particularly, is in danger of over-use. Until you become old yourself, it may be difficult to realize the depth and breadth of an older person’s experience, but I’d love to see more tales featuring the elderly as full human beings, not just frightening harbingers of illness and death.
What are some of your favorite portrayals of older characters?
When I think of some favorite older characters in horror fiction, I realize several that come to mind are people struggling with dementia or Alzheimer’s. So in addition to the normal fear of losing mental acuity, these characters suffer from the added horror of not being believed when they’re menaced by supernatural evil. In that regard, I think there’s a similarity between the elderly and children. Due to their ages, both sets of people have trouble being believed.
In Melanie Tem’s moving novel The Tides, elderly Marshall, confined to a nursing home and suffering from dementia, is bedeviled by the presence of a mysterious woman. Is she real or a trick of his muddled memory? How do you fight evil when you can’t trust your own mind?
Another favorite of mine is The Stars Are Not Yet Bells, by Hannah Lillith Assadi. In Assadi’s moving and lyrical novel, the protagonist Elle toggles back and forth between a confusing, sometimes frightening present life and more vivid recollections of the past. Watching Belle’s mental faculties degrade as the novel progresses is both poignant and terrifying. The horror here is very subtle, which in some ways, makes it all the more disturbing.
Yet another elderly character with dementia is Dennie Keeling in James Brogden’s Bone Harvest. Sinister newcomers have moved into the quiet village where Dennie lives, but are they really a threat or the product of her deteriorating mental state? And how can she get help for herself and those around her without having her sanity questioned?
Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, one of my all-time favorite horror novels, comes at aging from a very different angle: a quartet of astute, older men whose lifelong friendship apparently has stood the test of time as they enjoy camaraderie while telling ghost stories. On the surface, it’s an image of gentle conviviality that slowly reveals itself to be something very different—a secret the men share that will destroy them even more swiftly than their advancing years. I can’t help but think, though, that when the question is posed “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” (heinous acts aside) the most disheartening response of all would be “I got old!”
Do you have anything you’d like to add that we haven’t asked?
A couple of years ago, when writing the short story “If You Touch Me, I Can Cry” (Horror Library, volume 7), I decided I wanted the two main characters to be older people, grandparents, in fact, with very different libidos. One is too terrified by a raging pandemic to risk any form of physical contact, while the other, a less risk averse soul, reminds her partner of the necessity to satisfy that “carnal itch” once in a while. Older characters, like older people in general, are too often depicted as non-sexual beings. I’d like to see that change.
The viewpoints expressed in this interview are the opinions of the individual being interviewed and do not necessarily represent the views of the Horror Writer Association.
