Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Chloe Spencer

What inspired you to start writing? When I was a kid, I was a big reader. I used to check out 20-plus books from the library at a time. I read anything I could get my hands on across all kinds of genres, but the series that resonated with me the most were Erin Hunter’s Warriors, and Michelle Paver’s The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series. At a time when a lot of books revolved around familial conflicts or were otherwise dominated by popular titles, these stories stuck out to me for the dark themes they explored, the brutal violence, and the dynamic character relationships. I’d read Wolf Brother and wished I could write something like it, and try, try, try, I did. My parents weren’t a big fan of me wasting paper, so they didn’t give me notebooks for that sort of thing; instead, they let me use the family computer and I taught myself how to type. And I just never stopped.

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?There are so many things that I love about the horror genre. I love how it tries to terrify, disturb, and thrill readers. I love its versatility, and how it can so effortlessly blend together with other genres. But I also think I love horror because oftentimes, at the core of these stories, there’s some level of tenderness to it. Like yes, a slasher can be about a guy slinging around a machete and chasing kids through the woods, but it can also be a story about how love and friendship triumph in the face of violence—I think Kalynn Bayron’s You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight is a fabulous example of this. Horror is a genre that welcomes the uncomfortable, and as someone with PTSD, I enjoy having the freedom to explore my feelings, thoughts, and experiences in a “safe” environment.

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Lori R. Lopez

What inspired you to start writing? I suspect it had something to do with following Alice down the rabbit hole. And through the Looking-Glass. Maybe all of the times I checked out Where The Wild Things Are from the Public Library (starting before I could read). Maybe listening to the grimmest Fairytales, The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow, “The Raven” and “The Highwayman”. Maybe learning to read and finding my life transformed by books — each cover I opened, a doorway to someplace new and thrilling! Possibly my Frankenstein Book Report, which I read aloud in class, and the Principal led me down the hall so I could watch him post the paper in a glass case outside the School Office. Maybe winning Third Place in a scholastic competition with a Werewolf Play in Seventh Grade. But I was already writing stories, poems, and plays at home — all illustrated. You see, it was not any one thing, nor any single defining moment. Writing has long consumed me. I started a Horror Novel in High School and never finished. The pages are lost, yet I still remember the first line: “It was the total dark of the universe.” Teachers, Librarians too, told me since I was small that I should be an artist or a writer. And I believed them. So here I am. 

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? Childhood being a rather dark and murky place, a black-and-white world of intense shadows and the blinding glare of people who could not be trusted . . . the Horror Genre nonetheless appealed and consoled, whispered to me at night and told me that this was where I belonged....

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Kathleen McFall

What inspired you to start writing? First off, thanks so much for having me! I’m excited and honored to participate. Now, on to the question. I have written, in one form or another since I was a child. Early on, reactions from my parents, brothers, friends, and others to my little stories, poems, and (often non-sensical) snippets emerging from that long-ago child’s mind meant the world to me. I think those young experiences set a foundation for a creative life. Decades on, I’m still inspired by reader reactions, driven by imagining someone somewhere anywhere in the world reading what I’ve written and being moved by my words, shaping their world if even just for a few short minutes. It is such a high.

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? Horror allows for the exploration of thorny human issues within defined genre boundaries. Readers know, to varying degrees, what to expect. This means they can relax into the proxy paradigm knowing on a primal level that none of this is real—the monsters, vampires, zombies, the creepy humans are just enough removed from reality that scary (or controversial) topics can be addressed in thoughtful, memorable ways./p>

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Willow Dawn Becker

Willow Dawn Becker

What inspired you to start writing? I learned to read really young when I was just 3 or 4, and I had this huge imagination. I just wanted to create. The very first book I ever wrote and published, I did when I was just 5 years old. It was a book of poetry, which is funny because I don’t think I had even read any poetry at that time. I just loved words and using them to make pretty things. I guess I still do.

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? When I was young, I remember that we lived in a crappy trailer. At night, the wind would howl against my window screen and make this terrible howling noise.

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Colleen Anderson

    What inspired you to start writing? An abusive family life, fairy tales, and a need to ponder the universe. That, and my older brother left behind a large collection of SF books when he moved out. My angsty poems weren’t always about me but about infinity, the cosmos, life, and death. My first story, besides the one called “Gargantua Wolfgang” (which is naïve and truly horrendous), might have given some indication on the path I was headed for. It was the start of a novel along the theme of “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. Ray Bradbury,…

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Yvette Tan

Yvette Tan

What inspired you to start writing? I started writing the same way a lot of authors do: I couldn’t find stories that I wanted to read, so I had to write them myself. I grew up in a Chinese Filipino Evangelical Christian household and went to a Catholic all-girls school, which means I grew up more repressed than your average lady. I was made fun of for liking to read (a cousin actually laughed at me for spending my summers reading, for example) for wanting to write, and especially for wanting to write horror. It wasn't an easy journey, but it was also fun. I actually didn't know I was writing horror. I had an interest in the paranormal so I wrote what I wanted to write. A friend had to physically take me aside and explain that what I was writing was horror. When my first story was published in a national newspaper, my mom, a devout Christian, told everyone about it without knowing what I had written. Some church people actually read it and complained to my mom that it gave them nightmares. She was horrified that her eldest daughter would shame her in that way, to the point that on the day of the launch of my first book, she said, “Why can’t you write Christian books?” Those were the only words she spoke to me that day. She's proud of me now, sure, but only because everyone else is proud of me and not because she thinks I did anything noteworthy...

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with S.P. Miskowski

  What inspired you to start writing? In my case, it wasn’t a choice. Like a lot of writers, I started early. Before my older sister started teaching me to read, at about age three-and-a-half, I was already creating stories in my head and sharing them with my family. My mom bought writing tablets at the grocery store, probably thinking they would help me learn the alphabet. And they did, but first I filled a stack of them with loops and scribbles. Imagine how surprised I was to find adults couldn’t read the stories I was writing! So, in a…

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Pamela K. Kinney

What inspired you to start writing? I wanted to be a writer and began writing stories as early as age eight. Mainly for myself since there were no options for getting published as a child. Years later, when I took a writing class for science fiction, fantasy, and horror in my junior year at El Cajon Valley High School, the teacher encouraged me to submit a story of mine for a writing contest he knew of. I began checking the writers’ guide in the local library to find places to submit some of my poetry. Three poems of mine, “The Horse”, “Sands of Time”, and “The Leopard” were accepted, and after signing a contract to publish them in the poetry magazine Hyacinths and Biscuits, I received my first check. I was only 17 and a couple of months from graduating high school. I began writing more poetry and short stories, publishing more poetry, and even an article that ended up in True Story Magazine in the 70s. But I did not publish my first story, which happened to be a horror story, until 2000. 

What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I read horror stories; how can one not when Edgar Allan Poe and other writers of his era, Bram Stoker, Sir Author Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, Washinton Irving, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and J. Sheridan Le Fanu who wrote dark stories, were taught in the English classes I took from junior high to college.

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Megan Hart

    What inspired you to start writing? I’ve been a writer since childhood. Once I knew how to write, I started writing stories. I was about 12 when I realized that people actually wrote stories for a living, and I decided that was what I wanted to do. What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I have no idea, since in real life, I truly, honestly, genuinely, and sincerely do not ever want to see a ghost. Ever. I love watching and reading horror despite this. All I can say is that I’ve always…

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Linda Watkins

What inspired you to start writing? I’ve been writing in some fashion or other ever since I was a kid. My older sister and I used to write scripts (mostly parodies) for some of the more popular TV shows of the day. When I got older, I wrote poems or songs for my family or myself. In my work for the Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford, I used my writing talent to write “long forms.” These were documents that were used for appointments and promotions in the professoriate. My boss hated writing them, so I would draft…

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Jeani Rector

      What inspired you to start writing? In fifth grade, I loved both art and writing. My teacher told my mother, “Encourage her writing over her art.” Which meant I was no good at art, LOL. Also, fifth grade was when I began devouring books. But it wasn’t until I read Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot that I began to focus on the horror genre. I would be willing to bet that most writers today began loving the craft as far back as elementary school. Once they began writing in earnest, it became almost compulsive. Most writers today feel…

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with J.L. Delozier

What inspired you to start writing?  Burnout and boredom. Seriously, though, I always loved to write – submitted my first sci-fi short story to Asimov’s Magazine when I was in elementary school! (It was kindly rejected.) Then I got busy with my medical training and career, and only after I was nearing middle age and retirement did I decide I’d damn well get that book written – I wasn’t getting any younger!   What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?  I cut my teeth on sci-fi and Stephen King, so I naturally gravitate to horror.…

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Holly Rae Garcia

    What inspired you to start writing? I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember. During one particular book club meeting, I found myself criticizing a book and then saying, “But they wrote a book and I didn’t, so what do I know?”. So, in 2019, I wrote a book to see if I could. Readers don’t always comprehend how hard it is to actually write a book. And it is hard. I can almost hear the lifelong authors laughing at me for not realizing this. But it’s also immensely gratifying and addicting. I was hooked.…

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Gwendolyn N Nix

What inspired you to start writing? It’s difficult to pinpoint that definitive moment when the lightbulb went on, I picked up the quill, and I decided I was going to become a writer. But I do remember being very, very young, enamored with books, and was devoted to certain literary characters. There was a lot of inspiration building in the background, some of which seem quite obvious when I look back on it. Dragonlance books where the evil mage became my favorite; watching the film 13 Ghosts and loving what I perceived to be the tarot-esque identities of the ghosts;…

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Elana Gomel

    What inspired you to start writing? I have been a storyteller since I remember myself. I was an only child and I spent most of my time immersed in books, making up my own stories to share with my toys. I always wanted to be a writer. However, once I left my birth country (Ukraine) and realized I needed to have a professional job, I decided to study English literature to improve my knowledge of the language. It worked out well for me as I became a Professor of English literature and wrote a number of academic books…

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Eda Easter

What inspired you to start writing? Growing up an only child on an isolated horse farm in Texas, I amused myself reading and wandering in nature. The farm animals and barn cats became my captive audience, I’d either read stories to them or tell them stories I made up. Writing the stories down became the next step for me. What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? Horror for me was about the thrill of the jump scare, or the dread of creeping terror. But my love of horror has evolved. I don’t believe in true…

Women in Horror Month 2024: An Interview with Catherine Cavendish

    What inspired you to start writing? I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil so I think it must be in my genes. My late Mum used to write short stories so that may have been an influencer. What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I love the delicious scares and the fact that these are scares you know are all right. They’re not going to harm you, even though you daren’t raise your head from under the duvet when you’ve switched the light out. I love the compulsive storytelling, complex characters,…

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Kate Maruyama

What inspired you to start writing? I was telling stories, and acting out plays with friends before I could write. Then when I could write, my mom started paying me $2 a page to egg me on. I haven’t been paid so well since! Once I got to about four pages, she stopped paying. I never stopped writing.   What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it? I guess I always had a dark sensibility—I’d say the first horror I consumed was L. Frank Baum’s Oz Books (grislier than you remember) and The Blue, Red, and…

Holistic Horrors: Poetry & Wellness

This month on Holistic Horrors we take a brief look at the role of poetry in promoting well-being and connectiveness. Numerous studies suggest that this is the case. For example, in their 2018 study examining the value of writing poetry as a “means to help people living with chronic pain to explore and express their narratives in their own unique way”, researchers Hovey, Khayat, and Feig concluded that “to write cathartic poetry means bringing into presence our inner reflective thinking, emotions, and self-empathy to help ourselves and others who suffer alongside us.”

Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Introduction by Kathryn Ptacek

    The Journey is Never Done. Kind of Like Housework. Kathryn Ptacek We’ve come a long way, baby. Well, if you were alive many decades ago, you'd recognize that as the advertising jingle—somewhat altered—by a tobacco company for a cigarette that it geared toward women. That was back in the late ’60s and early ’70s when everything was bright and fresh and we could do anything. Except apply for credit cards and buy our own cars. But I digress. Yes, we—that is, women horror writers—have come a long way, but there’s no reason to sit back on our celebratory…