What inspired you to start writing?
It was a short journey from comic books to science fiction novels. My mother used to read comics to me along with Dr. Seuss and all the rest. Spinner racks for comics at local drug stores eventually led to bookstores and the sci-fi/fantasy/horror sections. Crazy covers!
What inspired you to start writing?
I’ve always been interested in telling stories, be it verbally or through poems, I even wanted to do comic books at one point. I wasn’t huge on reading outside of comics when I was growing up, so a lot of my horror and storytelling intake came from movies and TV shows. I never really thought of books as a medium for me to tell my stories, until like 2010, I was kind of overwriting poems and I thought about writing a book, but that intimidated me so I just told myself I’d treat each chapter like a short story and tie them together and that’s how I started. If anything really inspired me, it would be shows like Tales From The Crypt and people like Kevin Smith who just showed me you can create all the weird little stories you have running through your head and put them out in the world, because there’s someone out there just as weird waiting for them.
What inspired you to start writing?
Reading. I read a lot. And eventually, I started wondering if I could recreate the things I loved so much about reading. My earliest writing was just for fun—meant for myself, friends, and family. I didn’t start thinking about writing for a broader audience until well after college. Turns out, I had things to say.
What inspired you to start writing?
I started writing as a kid. While there was no single catalyst, I was largely inspired by online writers posting their stories to personal blogs (all the way back in the Angelfire era). I was a voracious reader but only gained the courage to try writing after seeing other passionate story-lovers sharing theirs without expectation of money or exposure. I subjected my parents to my first terrible attempts and with their encouragement have spent the last two decades honing my craft and trying to remember to write without expectation.
What inspired you to start writing?
It was simply fun. I was young when I first started making up stories, maybe 7 or 8 years old and when I won a writing contest in 4th grade and was encouraged to keep going. It just felt like something I could do well the same way other kids might be good at shooting a basketball or science. I loved stories and consistently oscillated between reading them and trying to make up ones that were as good as what I was reading.
What inspired you to start writing?
I got started in fourth or fifth grade and had some teachers encourage me as I got older, letting me know in one way or another that I was good enough to get better at it and that I just wasn’t trying hard enough. I didn’t pursue it in earnest until my largely fruitless first year of college when I spent more time in the computer lab working on a fantasy script idea than studying.
What inspired you to start writing?
I’m from a storytelling family and culture. Exchanging stories at family gatherings, as we go about our chores, as we’re spending time together at the end of the day. We’ve always shared stories this way, and it’s a deep part of me. Also, I’ve always loved reading. It’s been one of my favorite pastimes for as long as I can remember. The desire to write my own stories grew naturally out of that. Sometimes it was because I wanted a different ending for a book I otherwise loved, and other times because I wanted to see more of my community, culture, and people reflected in the books I read. So, as Toni Morrison said, I had to write the book I wanted to read.
What inspired you to start writing?
I was inspired to start writing by seeing the 1999 movie The Mummy. I had made two horror movies but, they were low-budget and nowhere near the scope of the story in The Mummy. I decided that I could only afford to tell a story that big in a book. So, I wrote my first book Thug Angel Rebirth of a Gargoyle.
What inspired you to start writing?
Probably my love for reading! I’ve always loved books and learned to read at age four. I was one of the kids who read every book in the classroom library and got special permission to read at advanced levels. So, when my elementary school held a writing contest, I was eager to enter a story that I’d handwritten about a cricket astronaut who wanted to go to the moon (I’ll never forget that!). I won the contest and went on to enter each year – usually winning at least 1st or 2nd place throughout my school years. My first adult piece was the short story “Patchwork”, which I typed (on a typewriter) one day at work. I snail-mailed it to my retired high school teacher in Arizona and she gave me valuable feedback and lovingly kept it in her files for over 25 years. When we reconnected on Facebook, she sent it back to me and I published it as a “novelette” back in 2013. It now resides in my collection titled The Mixtape (2016).
What inspired you to start writing?
When I was a kid, I used to sit at the feet of my great-grandmother, Sallie, and listen to her tell stories. She had a way of captivating the listener with her tales of growing up down South, protecting her property from the Klan with a nine-shooter Winchester rifle she called Ole Betsy. I developed a love for storytelling by osmosis, just absorbing the colorful language and the joys and horrors of everyday life she shared with me.
What inspired you to start writing?
My inspiration to write came from just growing up and aching to see myself reflected in the stories that I loved. I used to have to do a cognitive dissonance as a child where I’d replace the white characters with BIPOC and myself because I became over-saturated with being given stories about children who did not look like me. It also didn’t help that I loved books so much that I was reading out of my grade level. This led to me developing my own stories In my mind. As I grew up, I continued that same pattern into my teens until more books by authors of color in my age range at that time came about which fueled my inner storytelling.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
Photo Credit: Misha Stone
Nisi Shawl’s debut novel Everfair, an alternate history of Africa’s Congo region, was a Nebula Award finalist. They’re the author of the Otherwise Award-winning story collection Filter House. They edited both volumes of the acclaimed New Suns anthology series, winner of the World Fantasy, Locus, and Ignyte awards. With Cynthia Ward they co-wrote Writing the Other: A Practical Approach, a standard text on inclusivity for over a decade. Recent publications include the horror collections Our Fruiting Bodies and Exploring Dark Short Fiction 3: A Primer to Nisi Shawl, as well as Speculation, a middle grade fantasy novel about redeeming a family curse.
Paula D. Ashe (she/her) is an author of dark fiction. Her debut collection — We Are Here to Hurt Each Other — was released in early ‘22 by Nictitating Books. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association and an Associate Editor for Vastarien: A Literary Journal. She lives in the Midwest (which is best) with her family.
Photo by Mig Dooley
Tracy Cross’s work has been featured in several podcasts and mass market anthologies. Her first book, Rootwork, was published by Dark Hart Publishing in 2022. She lives in Washington, DC, and is an active member of the HWA. She loves disco and shares her latest exploits and information on my blog: tracycwritesonline.com. She is on instagram as tracycrosswrites and twitter as tracycwrites.
Candace Nola is an award-winning horror & dark fiction author. Her work includes Breach, Beyond the Breach (2021 novel of the year from the Horror Authors Guild), Hank Flynn, Bishop, and Earth vs The Lava Spiders. She curated and edited The Baker’s Dozen, the Splatterpunk award-winning, extreme horror anthology, in Dec. 2021. She has various poems and short stories published in several magazines and anthologies with more set to release in the next year.
Ashon Ruffins is a native New Orleanian and a military Veteran. He earned a Master’s Degree in Business Administration, while also holding certifications for several other pro-fessions. He loves the art of storytelling in all genres and believes the best lessons in life can be told through fiction. Descent of a Broken Man is his debut novel. Ashon is also a huge mental health advocate.
Tonia Ransom is the creator and executive producer of NIGHTLIGHT, an award-winning horror podcast featuring creepy tales written by Black writers, and Afflicted, a horror thriller best described as Lovecraft Country meets True Blood. Tonia has been scaring people since the second grade, when she wrote her first story based on Michael Myers. She’s a World Fantasy Award Winner, and This is Horror Award runner-up. She lives in Austin, Texas. You can follow Tonia @missdefying on all the socials. Risen is her debut book.
While John Edward Lawson has been called “The forgotten black man of horror” he also regularly publishes science fiction, nonfiction, and literary fiction. His work has been nominated for the Dwarf Stars, Rhysling, Stoker, and Wonderland Awards in addition to the Pushcart Prize. For his work as an editor John received the 2018 HWA Specialty Press Award. He currently serves as President of the Horror Writers Association.
