Women in Horror: Interview with Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia “Cina” Pelayo is an International Latino Book Award-winning and two-time Bram Stoker Awards® nominated poet and author.
She is the author of LOTERIA, SANTA MUERTE, THE MISSING, and POEMS OF MY NIGHT, all of which have been nominated for International Latino Book Awards. POEMS OF MY NIGHT was also nominated for an Elgin Award. Her recent collection of poetry, INTO THE FOREST AND ALL THE WAY THROUGH explores true crime, that of the epidemic of missing and murdered women in the United States, and was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award and Elgin Award.
Her modern-day horror retelling of the Pied Piper fairy tale, CHILDREN OF CHICAGO was released by Agora / Polis Books, and won an International Latino Book Award for Best Mystery (2021).
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Columbia College, a Master of Science in Marketing from Roosevelt University, a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is a Doctoral Candidate in Business Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
Cina was raised in inner-city Chicago, where she lives with her husband and children.
Find her online at www.cinapelayo.com and on Twitter @cinapelayo.
She is represented by Lane Heymont at Tobias Literary.
What inspired you to start writing?
I was in the sixth grade when I wrote my first horror story. It was an adaptation of the “Lover’s Vow” from Tales From the Darkside: The Movie. I remember getting a B on it but I didn’t write another horror story until 20 years later. I recall people were not encouraging of my fiction or creative writing. My teachers and parents told me not to waste my time writing horror, that it would never translate into a financially stable career. They instead encouraged my non-fiction writing, but that tug to want to write fiction and poetry never left me. So about 12 years ago I started writing fiction again.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
Watching horror movies, reading horror, for me has been a way for me to process heartache and pain, and a way for me to understand fear. What is fear? How does it manifest? And most importantly how do we work through fear under a stressful situation?
Do you make a conscious effort to include female characters and themes in your writing and if so, what do you want to portray?
Most of my protagonists are women, adult women, and very often very young girls. Recently I’ve been including young boys as protagonists in some work I’ve been experimenting on, as they are reflective of my children. I’ve written a few male protagonists, but I generally gravitate toward women as my main characters.
I don’t want to portray women as passive or weak or in need of saving. That’s certainly not who I am and I’m not writing that or reading that quite honestly. I’m sick to death of the woman who needs to be saved storyline.
I want to portray the range that women can offer. Women can be the hero. Women can be the villain.
I absolutely love writing women as villains, because why do we have to be the final girl? Why can’t we be the hunter? I don’t want to be the final girl. I want my female villains to be the ones you better get away from because they are merciless.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
I was born in Puerto Rico and raised in inner-city Chicago. Writing horror has taught me 100% that some people in some communities continue to be closed-minded and I don’t have time for any of that nonsense. I’m going to keep writing what I want to write and how I want to write it. There’s definitely some perception that a creator needs to please their audience and some of that philosophy was recently thrust on me, and people are confused as hell as to who I am. The more you push me to do something the least likely I’m going to do it. I’m not writing to please anyone. I’m not doing anything to please anyone.
I’m writing the way I want to write. I’m telling the stories that I need to tell.
Growing up, I wasn’t the quiet, well-behaved kid in the library. I was the kid sitting in the disciplinarian’s office for my 10th suspension (Granted with a copy of Faust probably in my backpack). I’ve always done things my way and I will continue to do things my way.
How have you seen the horror genre change over the years? And how do you think it will continue to evolve?
When I started writing, and it wasn’t even that long ago, over a decade ago, minority representation was slim. Women horror writers were on the rise as well, but still were still minimally represented.
The landscape has changed considerably, and that can be because of social media and people connecting and advocating for representation.
I think we’ll continue to see more diversity, of course. I want to see more women writers and writers from marginalized backgrounds, but I also want to see more neurodiverse and disabled voices represented in horror. I do feel that this is one area in which we are lacking, and as a disabilities rights advocate it’s extremely important for me that we bring disabled voices into our fold.
How do you feel women have been represented thus far in the genre and what hopes do you have for representation in the genre going forward?
I feel like we have a wide range of women horror writers represented, especially across the subgenres of horror.
I do feel like we need to start seeing more of our properties developed into television and film. Horror television and film content continues to be male-dominated. Isn’t that boring? How many more Stephen King small town horror adaptations do we need? I get it. Small town monsters written by a man from a small town. I’m over it.
Who can better speak to horror than a woman? Who can better speak to horror than a woman of color? We know horror. We know what it’s like to be terrified to walk to our cars in a parking lot at night. We experience the brutal body horror of our forms being torn open during childbirth.
It continues to be wild to me that our stories aren’t widely represented on the screen. Talk to your mothers, sisters, daughters, partners, any of them. Ask them to tell you the scariest encounter they experienced? I’m sure they can tell you a terrifying story. Women in America, women period, know what it’s like to live with fear and how to process fear. Let us tell you those stories. Sometimes I feel like men just aren’t ready to hear what we have to say, because we’ve got some messed up horror stories to tell that men probably can’t even deal with.
So going forward, I want to continue seeing more of our voices represented, including a wide range of BIPOC voices.
Who are some of your favorite female characters in horror?
A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy Thompson
Ofelia, Pan’s Labyrinth
The Babadook, Amelia
Carrie, Carrie White
The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling
Hellraiser, Kirsty Cotton
Belén, El Orfanato
Who are some women who write horror you recommend our audience check out?
R.J. Joseph
Gaby Triana
Nicole Givens Kurtz
Diana Rodriguez Wallach
L. Marie Wood
Donyae Coles
Erika T. Wurth
What is one piece of advice you would give horror authors today?
When you get into writing, know exactly what it is that you want. Do you want to publish short stories? Or novels? Or a combination? Do you want to be an indie author or a Big 4/5 author? Have some sort of idea what it is that you want and make sure you are positioning yourself towards that goal. For example, if you want to write novels, then maybe you should focus your time on writing your novel and not writing twenty short stories a year.
As part of that, have an idea of what your financial goal is with writing. Do you want writing to be a career? To provide a supplemental income? Be honest with yourself of 1) how you want your career to look in terms of the work you are writing, 2) how much you are hoping to generate from your writing and my big piece of advice is don’t quit your day job unless you are absolutely set with your mortgage, rent, healthcare, and so on, and finally 3) social media is not real life. Yes, it’s a useful tool to connect to the larger writing community, but humans as far back as history shows love to get swept up into a frenzy over things that are not real or made up (see the Witch Trials). So, as writers who want to be writing professionals – stay away from all social media drama because you never know who is watching…and the people who ARE watching are librarians, readers, editors, publishers, and more.
And to the women who write horror out there who are just getting started, what advice would you give them?
Stay focused. Write whatever it is you want to write and know that you are amazing.
