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Tag archive: LGBTQ writer Archives - Horror Writers Association [ 35 ]

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with John Linwood Grant

What inspired you to start writing?

I’ve always written, mostly for my own amusement, since I was a small child. To me, it was something you just ‘did’ - invented stories and fancies – and I sometimes found it odd that others didn’t. My own breakthrough moment was when I stopped drafting endless convoluted novels and went directly into writing short stories, novelettes, and novellas, most of which sold immediately. So I kept doing that.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Lindsay King-Miller

What inspired you to start writing?

I’ve loved writing for so long I can’t remember starting! I was writing short stories at least as far back as second grade, maybe earlier. I’ve always been a voracious reader, and whenever I read something that I really love, I have to try to figure out how to do it myself.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Sofia Ajram

What inspired you to start writing?

My pre-teen years were limned to AOL chat room roleplays and Livejournal blogging. Role-playing has a kink connotation to it (unless you worked in retail, by which, it’s the hellish exercise you’re coached with to practice customer service scenarios), but before websites like FanFiction.net or AO3 were popularized, roleplaying was the sort of way you’d collaboratively generate stories.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Rory Michaelson

What inspired you to start writing?

Writing came to me in my teens because none of the mainstream media I had access to included people like me, so I started making up my own stories. That makes it sound like an inspiring turn of events but really it was section 28 in the UK (prohibition of “promotion of homosexuality”) which was a horror story in itself that did significant harm to many people, and one we’re currently seeing repeated.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Rob Costello

What inspired you to start writing?

I’m an only child. When I grew up, I spent a lot of time on my own making up stories. With my legos and stuffed animals, I would while away entire weekends in perfect bliss concocting elaborate dark fantasy worlds involving aliens, ghosts, and monsters. (Godzilla was a particular favorite.) Eventually, the toys disappeared, but the stories stuck around.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Pixie Bruner

What inspired you to start writing?

It’s a cliché, but some of my first friends were books and book characters. It’s still true. I was always creating stories and narratives in my head. Plus, they kept giving me crayons and pencils as a little kid and wanted me to use them. I was inspired by the power of words to take me places, to evoke emotions, to escape reality. I wanted to share my inner worlds and stories.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Nora B. Peevy

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What inspired you to start writing?

I was a quiet child and came from a family of readers. I was also a child who had really bad asthma and allergies at a time when medicine hadn’t advanced enough to be enough of some help for five-year-old little me, which is when I started to entertain myself when I was in bed sick by writing my own stories and drawing illustrations for them.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with M. Kate Allen

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What inspired you to start writing?

I began writing in a diary at age ten. Exploring my thoughts at length without the pressure of interacting with someone else appealed to me. Writing gave me a safe medium for exploring my thoughts and interests. In eighth grade, I wrote fiction in English class and found it intensely absorbing.

Point of Pride 2024: An Interview With Leanbh Pearson

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What inspired you to start writing?

I was someone who always wrote fiction and poetry from an early age as an emotional outlet. I was always ‘different’ as a child and bullied. So, the very act of transporting my mind into another story, character, and events was - and still is - a way to deal with emotions at the end of each day. It is escapism as its heart and telling a story that is uniquely mine.

A Point of Pride: An Interview with Laramie Dean

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What inspired you to start writing?

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, from the moment I first learned to read. After I realized I could (and then did, all the time, voraciously), I decided I wanted to write my own stories. I started reading Stephen King at an obscenely young age—it was the 80s; I think there are lots more kids like me who cut our fangs on It and The Tommyknockers—and when he sent me an autographed copy of the Cycle of the Werewolf/Silver Bullet screenplay when I was eight, that was it. I had to be a writer.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Michael G. Williams

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What inspired you to start writing?

I grew up in Appalachia in a family where storytelling was highly prized. I can’t count the number of hours I spent hearing relatives and neighbors tell stories, some true, some maybe not so true but entertaining all the same. From a very early age, I wanted to participate in creating and telling stories, and books were the form that I could practice in private.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview With Alex Kingsley

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What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?

I have really bad OCD. Most people misunderstand OCD. It’s commonly portrayed as an obsession with cleanliness, but that’s not how it manifests for me. My OCD is complicated, but to put it simply: I’m scared of everything all the time.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Eric Raglin

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What inspired you to start writing?

When I was a kid, I loved episodic fantasy adventures like Dungeons and Dragons (which I still play to this day) and the Deltora Quest book series. These experiences inspired me to write my own fantasy novel—something I never finished but had a great time working on. Nowadays, I’m not as interested in fantasy, but my love of writing carries into the present.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview With Christian Baines

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What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?

To be brave, ask questions, and trust my gut, particularly about people. People are hugely problematic almost by nature, and horror gives us this wonderful license to explore that and find out how we really feel about certain types of people or behavior. There’s an honesty to it because fear is incredibly honest. I suppose it helped me learn how to cut through bullshit.

A Point of Pride 2024: An Interview with Chad Stroup

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What inspired you to start writing? 

I was a lover of horror at a very young age (we’re talking like two years old and I was already obsessed with monsters). I was reading by age three, and by about year seven or eight, I found Stephen King, which led to eventually discovering Cabal by Clive Barker at age 11 or 12 (a very queer book not only because of its author, and still my favorite novel to this day).

A Point of Pride 2024: Introduction by Angel Leigh McCoy

LGBTQ+ — B Stands for Bisexual

By Angel Leigh McCoy

Our job as fiction writers requires us to step into the hearts, minds, and bodies of other people. For this reason, writers are some of the most empathic beings I know. We’re skilled at using our imaginations. We use that tool to choose the actions, thoughts, and feelings experienced by our characters.

A Point of Pride: Interview with Mae Murray

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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… Read more

A Point of Pride: Interview with Lee Mandelo

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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… Read more
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