Tiffany Morris's Blog
March 31, 2025
Women in Horror Month: Mae Murray
Kwe’ all! Welcome to my not-often-updated blog portion of my website! March was Women in Horror Month, and if you hadn’t been following Mae Murray’s excellent interview series this year, they can be found here!
I loved Mae’s questions and wanted to know what her answers would be, so she graciously agreed to let me interview her using her own format! Here is my interview with Mae. Happy Women in Horror (Every) Month!
1. Introduce yourself. What do you want people to know about you and your work?
My name is Mae Murray. I’m a writer and editor. I’ve recently taken a step back from the latter to focus on my own craft. I’m best known for being the editor of The Book of Queer Saints anthology series; the first volume was nominated for a British Fantasy Award, and one of the stories in it (Morta by James Bennett) won the BFA for short fiction.
My work focuses on working class queer people—usually in the South—disability, classism, police violence, and the loss of identity that comes with being part of the Indigenous diaspora.
2. Who or what were your earliest horror influences?
To answer very honestly, I think growing up in poverty, in the Southern Baptist Church, was my earliest and most crucial horror influence. Growing up with a lack of resources in an abusive home, where I learned to be hypervigilant, I got used to fear. I know it’s a cliche to say, but as a child, I think I became fascinated with the genre as a means of survival. I was constantly wondering, “What if X happened? What would I do?” Which is also the fundamental question of most horror plots.
I was that kid who read all the Goosebumps books in my second grade classroom, always had Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark checked out from the library, and booked it home to catch Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Buffy the Vampire Slayer when they were on TV (until my stepmother banned Buffy for being Satanic).
Horror and queerness walked hand in hand as I was coming of age in Arkansas in the early 2000s. In my early teens, I read Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice on my grandma’s recommendation, and I think that was a major turning point for me. The prose felt at times indulgent, like chocolate, and the character of Lestat was overtly queer. It was also around this time I started to realize I liked girls and sought out queer media, which was almost always independent, scrappy, and surreal, like Velvet Goldmine.
3. You’ve recently published your debut novel, I’m Sorry If I Scared You. Can you talk about what inspired it and what it was like to write it?
The book started as a short story for a holiday horror call back in 2021, which is why the book takes place over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday. This was right before Roe v Wade was overturned, so abortion was on the mind. In 2014, I was sexually assaulted, and I remember after it happened, my greatest fear was that I would need an abortion. I had a lot of unresolved feelings about that event when I sat down to write this book almost 10 years later, so the writing became a way to work through those feelings.
The book was funded by a crowdfunding campaign back in 2022, which raised around $16,000 in preorders. At the time, the book was little more than an outline. I raised the money to help meet my basic needs while writing it, and was hoping to inspire other working-class authors to take a non-traditional approach to publication. I had just left a job as a peer support specialist for children and teens coming out of psychiatric treatment facilities that was paying me very little (just $14/hr) and left me feeling burned out and hopeless every day. It was difficult to find another part time job that understood my needs as a disabled person battling lupus, and it felt like the right time to do what I’ve always wanted to do: write a novel. The support I received from the writing community was incredible, so much more than I could have ever hoped for. It was a positive experience until it wasn’t.
I put off writing it at times so I could work through the feelings that came up for me about my assault with my therapist. During this time I was also diagnosed with endometriosis and had surgery to remove the lesions. Then my grandmother, who was more like my mother, was diagnosed with colon cancer, and 10 months later she died.
Things reached a breaking point for me when the novel wasn’t finished within the year promised. Online bullies began to spread rumors that I didn’t work for a living (at the time I was working part-time as an after school teacher) and that the novel was never going to happen and had been a front for stealing money from the horror community. I don’t think these rumors were ever taken very seriously, but it hurt me badly. I started to think I couldn’t finish it, and I went to a very dark place in my mind. The writing of I’m Sorry If I Scared You was fraught, and I almost didn’t survive the ups and downs.
It released in November 2024, and I learned so much from the process, about my resilience, about my ability as a writer, and how there is so much more I would like to explore in my own writing if the time and resources were made available to me. I also learned about the kind of person, friend, partner, writer I want to be moving forward. I learned to be gentle with myself, even when others were being unkind. And I learned that writing a novel within a year might not be something that is ever possible for me, and that’s okay!
4. Take us through a day-in-the-life of Mae Murray. How much of your time is spent writing?
I am perpetually trying and failing to “get my shit together.” I usually wake up at 6 a.m. to one of our two 6-month-old kittens jumping back and forth from the bed to the window sill like she’s at a trampoline park. I get up and feed them, make myself a cup of coffee and breakfast, and sit in the living room half-asleep watching TV until my husband gets up to work from home at around 8:30 a.m. Then I go back to sleep because he’s on kitten duty.
When I wake up again, I take my meds, answer emails, clean a little around the house, and still generally don’t get as much done as I had planned to. Sometimes I go to a coffee shop to do the email part, squeeze in a little writing, swing by the library, pick up my prescriptions—of which there is a long list.
I like to watch a little TV to decompress before I go to work, too. I work second shift for a local organization that serves over 1000 children and families in my community. I leave work at around 9:20 p.m., eat dinner, watch a little more TV, and go to bed.
All that to say, I don’t get a lot of writing done during the week, and even though I might be able to make the time, the truth is I don’t have the energy or mental resources to do it.
This question was important to me to ask others because I wanted to talk about how much writers, particularly marginalized women, have to juggle in order to carve out space and energy for writing. And I don’t even have kids, unless you count kittens.
5. Imagine you’re standing in front of a crowd of every horror creative—authors, filmmakers, podcasters, journalists, etc. What would you want them to know about your experience as a queer woman of Indigenous descent in the genre?
Because the competition is so great and the resources so few, it doesn’t matter how little you have, there will always be those who believe they deserve it more. They will be angry at you because you exist, because you are taking up space, even if it’s just a small space you’ve painstakingly carved for yourself from nothing, and this is doubly true for those of us with intersecting marginalized identities. It’s happened to me. It’s torn me apart mentally, emotionally, and has even made me physically ill. I didn’t deserve this kind of treatment, and when it happens to you, you probably won’t deserve it either.
I’m lucky to have built a solid support network of writers and friends who have been able to pick me up when these things happen, but I dream of a world where we are all in collaboration with one another, not in competition. Life is hard. Period. It’s harder for some than it is for others, and we have a wealth of knowledge and experiences to share with one another. I want you to know there is a better way to be with one another, and there are hard conversations, forgiveness, and understanding to be had if we are willing to try.
November 21, 2023
2023 Eligibility List!
I’m so happy to share my 2023 works eligible for awards consideration! Links are as follows:
Fiction:
Green Fuse Burning (novella) Purchase link, contact for ARC
“Night in the Chrysalis”, Never Whistle At Night (short story) Free to Read
“Still Life with Vivisected Dream”, Dark Matter (short story) Free to Read
“Wapnintu’tijig: They Sang Until Dawn”, Podcastle (short story) Free to Read/Listen
Poetry:
“Ghost Sludge”, Under Her Eye Purchase link, contact for copy
“Awakening”, Nightmare Magazine Free to Read
“Hora Somni”, Uncanny Magazine Free to Read
“Shadow Work”, Eye to the Telescope Free to Read
“Dawning”, Uncanny Magazine Free to Read
“Shut Mouths Sing Melodious”, Apparition Lit, Free to Read
November 10, 2023
Green Fuse Burning is out NOW!
I’m so thrilled to share that my debut horror novella – swampcore, ecohorror, climate fiction – is now available from Stelliform Press!
Mi’kmaw artist Rita Francis, grieving her father and dealing with a failing relationship, goes to an isolated pond on an art retreat. The phenomenon she encounters there is numinous and strange – and increasingly threatening.
Read an excerpt here!
September 11, 2023
Read “Night in the Chrysalis” FREE!
My story from Never Whistle at Night is now FREE to read on Gizmodo!
A woman’s voice, soft with lullaby, sang its wind-chime strangeness into the dark.
Cece woke with a start.
“Kwe’?” she asked. Wide-awake in the dark, no light came through the bedroom window. “Hello?”
The woman’s voice was coming from another room. Cece fumbled for her phone and saw the time: 11:45 p.m. Still early. She wished that daylight was shuffling closer.
She turned to the flashlight on her phone and found her battery-powered lantern. She clicked it on, its yellow brightness a little stronger than her phone’s dim light, and stepped out into the dark hall.
“Is someone there? I already called the cops,” she lied. She wandered, shaking, to the room across the hall. The cold brass knob turned with no effort. A rustling sound scurried over the floor. She shone her lantern there.
April 5, 2023
New Writing in Apparition Lit, Dark Matter, Podcastle, and Uncanny!
I love when I can give an update on my writing and it’s all available to read for free online! I’m truly grateful to have had a solid start to 2023, with two poems and two stories being published at some of my favorite outlets! In alphabetical order (of the magazine name), here are some links:
A spirit appears and disappears
at my house, in faces in the
wood-knots,
hands outstretched
in doorways. The tap spits hair
and unspools thread.
Read the rest of “Shut Mouths Sing Melodius” here!
“I want to paint my nightmares, but I don’t really have the talent,” he continued. “I’ve tried to write about them. Usually I’m able to journal my thoughts, but I can’t write this. If I describe the dreams, can you paint them? Is—is that something you think you can do?”
“Yes,” she said. “Describe your nightmare to me.”
“Do you know what vivisection is?”
Read the rest of “Still Life With Vivisected Dream” here!
Their croaking had switched into a soft howl, as if the moonlight had transformed them into new creatures altogether. She swam up to them. They scattered into the reeds in a clamor of long, panicked legs. She waited in place and tried to remember their old language. Finally, it came to her: a soft chirping sound. She greeted them. A small green frog, its leopard spots glowing pink in the dark, blinked at her without recognition. It gave another soft howl and disappeared with its comrades into the gathered shadows.
Read or listen to the rest of “Wapnintutijig: They Sang Until Dawn here!
A custom sun
graffitied with the
low pink scrawl
of waking
burns orange with hope
rising and stretching like
the landlocked siren singing
over sighing plains
where ewupniaq,
calming storms of
plant calligraphy hold
pollinator epistemologies
in the brush of wing
and scale to leaf
Read the rest of “Dawning” here!
December 5, 2022
2022 Eligibility Post!
I’m so grateful to have had new work out this year in some truly amazing anthologies and worked with some fabulous editors and fellow writers. I’m thrilled to share with you my works eligible for awards in 2022! Wela’lioq 
My full-length debut horror poetry collection, Elegies of Rotting Stars, was released November 7, 2022 from Nictitating Books! Featuring poems that cover everything from vampires to possession to climate change, this collection contains poems that previously appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien Literary Journal, and Augur Magazine.
Poetry: Anthologies
My poems “Dririmancy” and “Regeneration/Collapse” appeared in Under Her Skin: A Women in Horror Poetry Anthology from Black Spot Books!
Poetry: Single PoemsMy poem, “Paradiso: A Found Cyborg Poem” is in the latest issue of Haven Speculative Magazine! It’s free to read here!
Short Fiction: Online
My flash fiction story “The Corpse of Hours” was published with Dread Stone Press’ Dose of Dread! It’s available to read free here!
Short Fiction: AnthologiesMy short story, “Light Bent Strangely There” appeared in the Let The Weirdness In: A Tribute to Kate Bush anthology from Heads Dance Press. Featuring a heartbroken woman, mysteries of Cloudbusting, and strange machines.
My cannibal horse horror story, “A New and Different Hunger” appeared in the Monstroddities anthology from Sliced Up Press!
Ever wonder what it would be like to be possessed by a color? My horror story “Hope In Her Devouring” appeared in Chromophobia:A Strangehouse Anthology by Women in Horror!
My sapphic revenant horror story “We Have Made A Home Beyond Death” appeared in Moonflowers and Nightshade: A Sapphic Horror Anthology!
November 14, 2022
My horror poetry collection, Elegies of Rotting Stars, is out NOW!
I’m so thrilled to share that my horror poetry collection Elegies of Rotting Stars is out NOW from Nictitating Books!
“Elegies of Rotting Stars by Tiffany Morris is a gorgeous and visceral collection that takes readers down into the depths of a dark, poetic cathedral. Within, stars bleed and ‘flowers drip like meat.’ The spiritual meets the unholy, and clouds dance like ghosts in an angry sky. Lush word choices surround every verse, and Morris does an expert job at evoking emotion, whether she’s navigating the striking cultural influences of the Mi’kmaq language or describing the earth’s sorrow. Readers will delight in the rich descriptions and haunting melodies so carefully crafted within this outstanding collection.”
—Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil’s Dreamland
“If you own one poetry collection by a contemporary Indigenous writer, it’d better be this one. Elegies of Rotting Stars strikes like a scream; it is a cry in the darkness of a world hurtling toward environmental disaster, a sound felt through the hearts of every citizen of the Indigenous diaspora. Horrific, beautiful, unforgettable, it is as much a love letter to the Mi’kmaq language as it is an exploration of terror when our ties to our languages and Nations are severed. This book occupies the space between devastation and hope, proving that even in the face of genocide and separation from our homelands, we can always find ways to come home.”
—Mae Murray, author and editor of The Book of Queer Saints
“The power of Tiffany Morris’s words wakes you up with righteous anger, heart-rending shockwaves of recognition, and restorative wisdom in the face of doom. She handles horrors both cosmic and specific deftly, like a magician. Elegies of Rotting Stars is a beautiful, masterful book.”
—Joe Koch, author of The Wingspan of Severed Hands and Convulsive
“What Tiff Morris does with language, with form, with imagery, is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Somewhere between poetry and prophecy, between ruin and rebirth, Morris is undoubtedly our most clear-eyed witness of the anthropocene and all that comes after.”
—Paula D. Ashe, author of We Are Here to Hurt Each Other
November 19, 2021
2021 Eligibility List!
I am deeply grateful to have worked with many wonderful editors and teams this year and to have shared TOCs with amazingly talented writers. As ever, writing is about endurance & luck & knowing that you’re lucky to get to work with such fine people. Wela’lioq. 
My Eligibility list 2021:
Read Online Free:
Utopian Mi’kmaq futurism flash story in Apex Magazine: https://apex-magazine.com/when-evening-arrives/
Scarecrow flash horror in Dreadstone: https://dreadstonepress.com/2021/09/24/into-the-sunset-eternal/
Purchase or Contact Me:
My endangered birds x endangered languages cli-fi flash story in A Quiet Afternoon vol. 2 (Purchase or Contact Me): http://www.graceandvictory.ca
Sci-fi horror – Jungian shadow selves and goth club psychedelia in Fusion Fragment #7 (Purchase or Contact Me): https://www.fusionfragment.com/issue-7/
Lo-fi sci-fi flash featuring a robot tarot reader and a gothic cli-fi flash piece about a reunion before a funeral in This magazine (Purchase/Contact Me, Online link TBD): https://this.org
Poetry
Read Online Free:
“Paqtasultieg” in Uncanny Magazine: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/paqtasultieg/
“Crossroads” in Nightmare Magazine: https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/poetry/crossroads/
“Witnessing” in Mermaids Monthly: https://mermaidsmonthly.com/2021/09/27/witnessing/
Purchase or Contact Me:
“Damn Girl” in These Days #9: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/960118081/these-days-9-due-to-factors-beyond-their?
“Best Days Calendar” in Odd Poems 2021: https://nullpointerpress.blogspot.com/
“What Is Left” in filling station #76: https://fillingstation.myshopify.com/products/filling-station-issue-76
“Will O’ The Wisp” in Shadow Atlas (After Release Date November 30): https://www.hexpublishers.com/publications_shadow-atlas.html
April 23, 2021
Aurora Awards Eligibility!
Hey Canadian Spec Lit Fans! I’m happy to confirm that I have five pieces eligible for this year’s Aurora Awards: four poems and one microfiction short story.
Poems:
“Surfacing” – Abyss & Apex, 2020
The siren, in silence, scales the blue-wave cathedral to the surface. She bathes in red light on waves. Flames blossom onto night-black water.
Read the rest here!
“Re-Wilding” – Augur Magazine 3.1
You: wake up in the dark,
tattered into breath.
You: capture the tide,
ride the typhoon, soak
in the monsoon rains of
disaster.
Find the issue here!
“Hecatomb” – Vastarien Lit Journal 3.2
This horizon of rusted machines
extracts what shines bright:
golden poisons, black snakes
and femurs, glistening.
Flowers drip like meat, wrap
our bleaching bones: a shrine
to what devours us.
Find the issue here!
Depth Sounding (Haiku)- Space and Time Magazine #137
He slips off his skin
and dives beneath the black waves:
trail the fathom glow.
Find the issue here!
FICTION
“To The World Beyond the Sky” – Stargazers: Microtales from the Cosmos
Sunlight had grown dimmer each day until it was a dark orange tinge in the sky. A gloom across the horizon: Earth’s yellow sun in its last throes. Thousands had already made their way to Helionous, the Earth-like exoplanet; the wealthiest already evacuated, a randomly-selected worker lottery followed.
Read the rest here!
Wela’lioq for your consideration!
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Updates: Chapbooks and Awards and New Work!
So uhh it’s been literally two years since I updated this website and I have a bunch of things to share. Please check out my writing page for some free reads of speculative and political poems that I’ve had published, uh, lately! And please feel free to add me on social media because I’m slightly more disciplined about it (or, y’know, addicted to it).
[image error]First things first: my first chapbook came out! Havoc In Silence is a small but mighty book of apocalyptic horror poetry – a “calendar for the barbed witch and her wasteland” – and it’s nominated for an Elgin Award this year via the Science Fiction Poetry Association!
Buy It on Storenvy! (Or don’t, I’m not a cop)
I also had a microchap come out that you can get for free from Ghost City Press – it was in their summer series last year. Each poem comes from found text in three different Sweet Valley High books. There’s horror in its pastel paradise!
[image error]Get it here: It Came From Seca Lake! Horror Poems from Sweet Valley High
Beyond that, I participated in readings for the Halifax Anarchist Bookfair, Saint Mary’s University’s Pink Triangle Day reading, and others. I’m still not quite over my stage fright but getting there!
I’ll be headed to grad school this fall to take a deep dive into EcoHorror, Indigenous worldviews, and the apocalypse – though honestly, with everything that’s been going on, I’m feeling the post-apocalypse much more, ya know?
Stay spooky!
