Know a Nominee, Part two: Rena Mason

   Welcome to today’s entry in “Know a Nominee,” the interview series that puts you inside the minds of this year’s Bram Stoker Awards nominees.

   Today’s interviewee is Rena Mason, who’s nominated in two categories: Superior Achievement in a First Novel for The Evolutionist (Nightscape Press) and for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction, for East End Girls (JournalStone).  

DM: Can you 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.

RM: For The Evolutionist, I’d just moved to Olympia, Washington from a master-planned community in Las Vegas. It was an extreme lifestyle/geographical area change that made me think about some of the people I knew in Vegas and the mental and social detachment issues they chose to see/believe versus what I saw in the people I was getting to know in a small, mostly blue-collar town. I felt very strongly about the differences and knew I wanted to write a behind-the-scenes story of what others on the outside didn’t see about who they might think are the “beautiful” people in Vegas, but it had to have a darkness. Twists that would turn someone in their world upside down. Then I watched the movie THE FOURTH KIND and thought, what if the psychiatrist was one of them? The story came together in my mind after that, and I wrote nearly 60,000 words of it during a NaNoWriMo. Living in Olympia for nearly three years, I realized that my Vegas characters weren’t regionalized. There are people who choose to wear blinders through life in every community.

For East End Girls, the idea came from nowhere, except that maybe I’d seen FROM HELL again or something. One day I thought, What if Jack the Ripper got his reputation because of someone else, a woman, who had good intentions but was horrible at medicine? I immediately Googled medical schools in London for women at the time of Jack the Ripper and found only one. I ran the “short” story idea past my editor, R.J. Cavender, and he liked it, but said it should probably be a novel or novella. I jotted down some notes and put it away, but every now and again would try to think the story through in my head. I bought many Jack the Ripper books and researched for about three years until the opportunity came from Gene O’Neill, Gord Rollo, and JournalStone for a Double Down series putting together a novice writer with a more experienced one. They were looking for novellas, and the only one I’d even thought about ever writing was East End Girls. I had a deadline, which is a big motivator, so I gathered my notes and also wrote it during a NaNoWriMo. (I suppose my thing about NaNoWriMo is that I feel like I’m not alone in my struggles to crank out a story in 30 days. Like a deadline, it’s a tangible thing I can dedicate all my time to for a month and finish. Or lose.)

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

RM: For The Evolutionist, the most challenging part of bringing the idea to fruition was making all the ideas work together. It’s definitely a mash up of genres and making everything jive and still make sense took a little bit of creative juggling. The most rewarding part of the process was when it worked.

For East End Girls, the most challenging part was trying to get in as much of the actual recorded history and case files information into the story while still maintaining a fictional piece with fictional characters that would still fit into the work and be believable. The most rewarding part of the process was that an idea I jotted down on an index card became a work that’s teamed up with a story by Gord Rollo.

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

RM: In my opinion, good horror/dark fiction should elicit an uneasy mood or feeling within me when I read it. It should disturb or upset me in some way, make me wonder what I’d do if I ever found myself in the situation the main character of what I’m reading is in.

For The Evolutionist, what I intended to be disturbing to the reader was a main character who lives a life of mundane, suburban daily routines that suddenly gets not only turned upside down, but flipped backwards, and sideways, too. I meant it to be a gradual build that might make the reader wonder whether or not the main character was actually having a mental breakdown. We all handle stress differently, and although I may turn into an emergency robot nurse in a hospital setting, something like having a flat tire during rush hour traffic would bring on a panic attack. Just the thought of it is knotting me up right now.

For East End Girls, I took a young girl in high society who wanted nothing more than to make her father happy by also becoming a physician turn into a serial-killing monster because of her failure to do so and the stress of living up to those high society demands expected from her.

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? Where do you often find yourself getting stuck, and why?

RM:I get an idea and talk about it to a couple people. Then I work the story all the way through in my head before ever typing a word. If I can’t think it through, it doesn’t get written. The only thing that moves things along for me are deadlines. Where I get stuck is in my own laziness (I don’t know what else to call it.) When something is well thought out, I can write it quickly if I’d just sit down and do it. There are a few stories I’ve written that need some work. I try and think about them when I can, but now, my head is full of other stories, and I would have to open the files and re-read them in order to fix them. The why is just me—my personality—my choices and decisions as of late. It’s been difficult for me to schedule a specific time to write and maintain it, but I’ve noticed that this hasn’t only been with my writing. I used to keep a daily schedule and have found myself unable to get back on it after moving back to Las Vegas. Once I do though, I’ll be focused and more productive.

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?

RM: Don’t write for any other reason than because you have to. It’s changed my whole life, which was pretty easy-going before. I’ll admit, I’ve thought about quitting just to get the stress I put on myself off of me. But now I have all these stories in my head, they’re all I think about, and I absolutely have to get them out. It’s madness.

DM: What are you most looking forward to at this year’s Bram Stoker Awards/WHC?

RM: I can’t wait to see all my friends, meet new ones, and have a drink, or two, or three.

About Rena Mason

Rena Mason is a Sin City resident and longtime fan of dark fantasy, mysteries, horror, sci-fi, and history. She loves mashing these genres into stories of everyday life for unexpected twists. She’s the author of The Evolutionist, East End Girls, and a handful of short stories. Rena is also a member of the HWA, an Active member of International Thriller Writers, the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and serves on the Literary Committee for the Vegas Valley Book Festival.