C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 20

#EldritchGirl S03E15: What A Piece of Work is a Man

Listen Nowread nowEaster Egg for Prequel Novelette!

The heading this time is a quote from Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Wes is indeed a piece of work, and this is apt, I feel, but the most exciting thing in this chapter (for me) is the little Easter Egg I got to drop in.

In this episode, Wes lies to Hugo but comes (partly) clean about his involvement with the cult to Ricky and Carrie; Ricky reads Grampa Nathan’s journals and has an idea. He even reads my favourite line.

If you’re interested in Grampa Nathan, there’s a whole novelette about him which you can get now! You’ll get the audio for this novelette, The Sussex Fretsaw Massacre, and short story ‘Gerald’, as bonuses at the end of this season.

When Nathan Montague Porter, occultist and civil servant, catches the attention of Sir Jack Sauvant, he is invited to Sir Jack’s Sussex country house to attempt some grisly magical experiments. Little does he know that it is Sir Jack’s maid, Deirdre Wend, who actually holds the key to forbidden knowledge – but she won’t give it up unless he takes her to the pictures first.

A Lovecraftian pastiche for fans of Clive Barker and Ray Bradbury, a standalone prequel to The Crows.

https://buy.bookfunnel.com/kcfqxb88e1

Interview with Helen Nde: Mythological Africans, Deviance, and the Dark Side of Family in African Folklore

Introduction

CMR: Hello, welcome back to Eldritch Girl, and we have Helen Nde here today. We’ve been talking a lot about folklore and the dark side of family in the bonus episodes, and Helen’s going to talk to us specifically about the dark side of family and deviance in African folklore. So, Helen, would you like to introduce yourself?

HN: Thank you, and I’m so glad to be here. My name is Helen Nde, and I curate Mythological Africans. It’s a platform online where I talk about stuff that excites me. which is mainly African mythology and folklore. One of my favourite things to talk about recently. And it’s a pleasure to be here, really. It’s just a pleasure to be here and to be on the Eldritch Girl Podcast.

CMR: It’s really lovely to have you. What sort of relationships are we going to talk about today in some of the folktales that you’ve looked at?

HN: Sure. So. One of the things that really come through when you start looking at mythology and folklore from the African continent (and anywhere really) is, how family relationships work, and what they say about how people feel about how things should be, and their sense of how things go wrong. And I remember we started talking about this, you and I, when… after the talk I gave about deviance in African fiction.

CMR: Yes, Yes, it was a very good talk!

HN: And it was an exploration of how different communities, either in fiction or in folklore, deal with individuals who show up, but don’t show up in the expected ways.

 And one of the things that came through pretty strongly is that sometimes there is a lot of disruption that happens because these people, you know, are not adhering to the norms of the community, and sometimes this disruption is for the better. Sometimes it’s for the worse.

    One talk I gave also that you participated in was about the enfant terrible character, and you remember the story of the just, crazy, destructive kids who went on a rampage. So there is this sense that in some communities — and this shows up in their stories — the dynamics within families can take a bit of a dark turn, and often the trigger is an individual or a group of individuals who just show up in ways that are not expected.

And the stories then become the means by which the community makes sense of these individuals experiences, and the lessons that they learn from them. And this is a powerful way in which people around the world, not just on the African continent, make sense of things that are sometimes incomprehensible, make sense of things that are different, make sense of things that are strange.

    And ultimately the goal is to return to some kind of norm which you know sometimes doesn’t bode well for the characters in question, so it shows up in so many ways in the different relationships that will come up between husband and wife, between you know, parents and children, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, mothers and step children, which is the one that, you know, is quite well-known all around the world between siblings between in-laws and families. So it comes up in so many ways, and that dark side will really show up sometimes.

CMR: Yeah, definitely, I’m thinking like there’s quite a lot of parallels and things with some of the other folklore that we’ve looked at, because I’ve had a previous interview with Lucy, who did a short film on the relationship between a mother and daughter, and the way that that haunts you throughout your adult life, and that kind of thing, you know, those sorts of… how do you make sense of your loss and bereavement when you’ve had a very complicated relationship with [them], and that brought in a lot of Northern English folklore into that and a little bit of the superstition and that kind of thing. So yeah, this is interesting. I just love it.

HN: If you’re looking at, you know Northern English folklore, you’re looking at African folklore, or you’re looking at Asian folklore, folklore from out of the South America. So just anywhere in the world you find the same themes repeating themselves almost the same stories, the same struggles.

    That’s something that I find comforting. I find it reassuring that there is no experience that you have as a human being that is unique only to you, you know you might experience it in your own unique way, but someone out there has experienced what you’ve experienced before, and has dealt with it one way or another.

    And it’s one of my favourite things about curating Mythological Africans, because, you know, I come from Cameroon, which is a West African country. But in the course of some of the discussions I’ve had, we’ve had people from the Philippines, from Japan, from you know Russia from Poland, from you know the UK like yourself and from all over the world. You know Canada, South America, Mexico, and there is always a sense of oh, wow! That sounds like the story that I heard when I was a kid, or that I studied at school, and it’s exploring a similar theme. So in the darkness and in the light there is a commonality to the human experience. And I find that very reassuring.

Folklore and Gender Roles

CMR: Yeah, definitely, and also like ideas of gender roles and values and structures, they get kind of discussed a lot in terms of what community norms are and explored. So I wondered if we could look at some examples of that, so, folktales that talk about gender roles, either being subverted or supported, or how they work within the framework of their cultural background, and that kind of thing.

HN: Absolutely. So. What you find is that a lot of these stories will either reinforce gender roles as they need to be, in whichever community that the story comes out of, and you explore those gender roles, you enforce the values that exist around family structures, what people are expected to do, and that plays into the folktale’s role, as you know, a teaching tool. In many cases you people told these stories to remind each other of things to preserve something that happened in the community, so future generations could learn from it. And sometimes it was just pure entertainment, but entertainment with a purpose.

    And if we look at all these different family dynamics and the different turns in which they would go, you still find a lot of these gender roles, these values being reinforced. So. There are a variety of pills that explore the tensions that will come up between husbands and wives, for example. And the tendency for these stories is that you know the woman behaves in a way that is not out of the expectations of what she is supposed to be as a wife, and there are consequences for that.

 There is this collection of folktales which is basically an exploration into the erotic side of African folklore. And quite often the stories are those of women who are unfaithful.

    And You know the husband will either kill the lover or kill the woman, like, so those tend to be the outcomes. So you will find a case where, you know, a man deals faithlessly with a woman, and find himself in, you know, difficult circumstances gets caught, gets killed. So there is that dynamic that gets explored as well. If we look at the relationship between fathers and sons, for example, that can get really dark in a lot… in many, many stories that come out of the African continent because one in some communities there is the idea that okay, once a man reaches a certain age, he’s supposed to step aside and let the young generation come through.

    And if that man is not willing to do that, then a power struggle ensues between, you know, the sons and the fathers. So there are many folktales that explored this dynamic of the power struggle.

    The Mwindo epic is one of the big, you know long-running stories that come that have come out of a traditional African folklore, and that is essentially what it is all about. You had a king refused to hand over power, decided that he only wanted daughters because he didn’t want the son who would succeed him, and then, of course, his favourite wife gives birth to his son.

    And so the story starts with this chief, trying to murder his own son. You know that dark side comes through, and he doesn’t succeed because Mwindo his son is a magical being; not very easily killed.

    And so he tries to kill him, Mwindo, multiple times. He tries to drown him, tries to have him, you know, murdered with arrows, and none of those work.

    So Mwindo quickly grows up into a young man and decides well if he’s trying to kill me, then I have to kill him.

    So the rest of the story is window in hot pursuit of his father, you know, goes into the underworld, goes into the heavens just instance, after instance of Mwindo trying to catch and kill his father, and in some versions of the story it ends up with him, you know, catching and killing his father in some other versions. He catches up with his father, and, you know, forgives him, and, you know vanishes him there. There are different ways in which the story ends.

    But in the midst of all of that there are wars that are fought and lives that are lost, and alliances that are betrayed, you know it. It just explodes into this drama, you know, which has quite a bit of a dark site. But then there is also, you know, the story that comes out of one of my favourite stores in African folklore. It’s the Palm Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola.

And in this case he and his wife gives birth to a child.

And this child is just something else. He is one of those crazy, you know, magical child type characters who is just, you know, out for blood and doesn’t care. And in his case the child, whose name is Zurrjir, just wants to eat, and he eats everything in sight eats all that is available to the people. And if you’re looking at the culture where the ability to have food available for everyone is what underpins this community survival.

    A person who eats all the food, you know, it’s a massively disruptive character. But then the thing is, you can’t stop this child Zurrjir, you can’t stop this child. He would eat, and then if he tried to stop him, he would beat you up, and I’m going to read a little excerpt here because I love this story.

    I think it’s well worth delving into, so I’ll start right at where Zurrjir gets born, and maybe I’ll stop just before he gets killed, because that’s another dark aspect of this story. At the end of the day. This child, you know, has to be offed because he’s he just… He can’t be stopped. He can’t be stopped.

So a little excerpt from the Palm Wine Drinkard.

So, within the hour that he came down from the thumb, he grew up to the height of about 3 feet and some inches, and his voice by that time was as plain as if somebody strikes an anvil with a steel hammer.

    The first thing he did is ask his mother,

    “Do you know my name?”

His mother said no.

Then he turned his face to me and asked me the same question, and I said no.

    So he said his name was Zurrjir, which means a son who would change himself into another thing very soon.

    And when he told us his name, I was greatly terrified because of his terrible name.

    And while he was talking to us he was drinking the palm wine which I had tapped already.

And before 5 minutes he had drank up to 3 kegs out of the 4 kegs.

    I was thinking in my mind how we could leave the child in the farm and run to town, because everybody had seen the left-hand thumb of my wife, which had only swelled out.

    But she did not conceive in the right part of her body as other women do.

    As I was thinking so this child took the last keg of palm wine, which he ran through the left side of his head.

    And then he was going into town.

    And he knew where to go, though no one showed him the road that led to town.

    And we stood in one place looking at him as he was going, and then we followed him. After some time.

But before we reached the town we did not see him on the road.

To our surprise the child entered the right house, the house we were living in. He saluted everybody as if he had known them before and asked for food, and they gave him the food, and he ate.

He entered the kitchen and ate all the food that he met there as well.

    But when a man saw him eating the rest of the food in the kitchen which he had been, which had been prepared for the night.

He told him to leave the kitchen, and he did not leave, but started to fight the man instead.

And this wonderful child flogged the man so that he could not steal well before he left the kitchen.

And it just goes on and on. He will eat everything in sight, and anybody who tries to stop him will get a flogging. It spreads to the village, and it just it keeps escalating and escalating, and there’s nothing they can do to stop this child until they finally, how they get rid of him is that they abandon him with what you might think of as the fairies. So there are these 3 creatures, Song, Dance, and Drums. So Singing sings and never stops, Drumming drums and never stops, and Dancing dances, and never stops. And they finally bring this child to these creatures, and he starts singing and dancing, and you know, going with the drums, and they just quietly back away… [laughter] Like, ok, we’re going to leave you here now! Which, in many fairy tales that you’ll see around the world, it’s kind of a death sentence, because you just … you keep dancing on until you drop. That’s something that has shown up in some folktales in other parts of the world.

So. But before they even get to this point, there were many attempts to kill this child, you know to take away this power that he had because he just he couldn’t be stopped.

So that’s a quick example of how these family dynamics will show up between father and son, but then there is the mother and daughter dynamic as well, which tends to be centred around – not so much power struggles but around competition.     

So the woman, the older woman, realizes that she is aging, and she’s using losing the advantage of youth and beauty. And the daughter, who is, you know, becoming a woman, has this thing, and somehow you know it becomes a power struggle. So there’s a story from Congo where this a woman basically drowns her daughter because her daughter was beautiful, and had all the suitors in the village.

    And then luckily the child is seized by the water spirits, and you know, shows up to help her brother, and you know it escalates until the end, and the mum gets killed.

There is also a story, and I believe this is from the Fulani people, and the Fulani are a group of people who occupy most of West Africa, spread across many of the countries, and it’s the story of a woman. She’s of the devouring mother, you know, Goddess Archetype, and she basically she was created, Her name is and Ndjeddo Dewal, and she was sent by the Fulani creator being called Guéno, to punish the Fulani people for their sins. So she she’s one of those you know darker type figures.

    And she’s powerful, and, you know, able to do just about anything she wants, and she is very, very ugly. She marries an equally magnificent being. But then she gives birth to 7 of the most beautiful girls in the world, and that becomes her way of getting access to power, because she sets her daughters up so that when their suitors will come seeking to marry them, they would, you know, go into the bridal sheet.

    And when they start having intercourse with the girls, through some system of tubes, the mother will start sucking blood out of these suitors. And she will always go too far, and then the young men will die.

But then the girls will, you know, regenerate their powers. They’ll get their hymens back, and more men will come. So basically through her daughters, this woman was… you know.

    And that speaks to that dynamic that can exist sometimes between mothers and daughters, right? The idea that a woman is living vicariously through her children, that overbearing, devouring, you know “you can’t escape me” type of energy that will come through sometimes.

    So you’ll see this a lot in in folktales which you know it’s obviously a cautionary tale to say, hey, this is not the way to be, and the tendencies that these figures, these maternal figures, will get, you know, defeated eventually in the case of Ndjeddo Dewal, she’s defeated by like, I can’t pronounce his name well, because I get the emphasis wrong sometimes.  She is defeated by Bâgoumawel.

    I think I’m saying that right?

    And this is an enfant terrible type character. So a smart child who is able to outwit the old woman and bring about her destruction.

If we want to look at mothers and step-children, that’s the standard. You know story that you’ll see across all cultures. There is a story, and I believe this is from – I think it’s Kikuyu people in Kenya, where a woman has her own child, and she has a child from her husband’s previous marriage, and because she doesn’t want to give this child food, she basically sets his child up to get killed, and she hides the child’s body in the storage like the granary.

But then the child’s half sibling. You know figures out what has happened, and the story is just this other child’s efforts to communicate to their father that oh, this is what has happened, you know, and eventually the woman gets caught, and there is punishment. So that dynamic being explored, the step-mother/step-child dynamic that you’ll see in many folktales, there is sibling rivalries. One of my favourite stories, which I heard growing up is about these: brother and sister, who go out to collect flowers and to impress their feather, and the girl finds flowers that are more beautiful than her brothers and her brother, in a city of rage murdered her right. But she that’s where she murders her, abandons a body in the forest. It decays down to bones and a hunter goes by where she died and steps on her bones, and she started singing her story. And you know the story evolves, and eventually the brother is found out, and in some versions of the story he gets killed. In some versions of the story he is patterned because the chief goes, he you already lost one child. There’s no reason for us to you know, Kill another child.

    So there is stories about families and the in-laws. And this, you know, demonstrates that that that dynamic that can occur sometimes. If your in-laws are too much in your marriage, then you can mess things up. But then, if your in-laws, if your family is not involved, if, you know, you are an entity onto yourself, then you lose out on the benefits of being part of a community. So it explores the currents of that, too, and of course, a cautionary tales, you know, between parents and children. Parents, this is how you should treat your children.

The story we looked at in the enfant terrible talk is an example of that where the problem was that the parents told the children to be loyal to each other, no matter what.

    So they had this one child who was just on a destructive rampage, and his sister, you know, felt like she had to be loyal to him regardless.

   But then there is also cautionary tales towards children, you know, saying you have to listen to your parents, and this shows up in so many tales.

    A classic one being the one where a girl decides to marry a man, and her parents are like, we don’t think this is a good idea, and she ignores that advice, and then she gets carried away, and then she’s almost killed. So there are all these stories, all of them, you know, steeped in the dark dynamics that will come up sometimes in families, conveying different messages, all ultimately saying, hey, this is how we expect you to behave. This is the these are the values we uphold. These are the general rules we endorse, and if you deviate from these, these are the consequences that can come out of it.

CMR: I love that. I was just thinking while you were talking like I’ve heard … I don’t think I’ve heard the singing bones story. But I have heard a similar one where I was just thinking of the Scottish version of that. She’s murdered by her sister, and she’s drowned because her sister is jealous of her because of a lover that her sister wants, that she has. So she drowns her, and then she’s found, her body is found and pulled out of the water, and   her bones are turned into a musical instrument. And the musical instrument is taken to the court, because obviously we’re in a sort of the Princess kind of, you know, that sort of context, and that it’s played for her father, the King, and it plays and sings the story of her murder, and accuses the sister of killing her. And so the whole story comes out, while the musical instrument it is played, and sometimes it’s a harp, and sometimes it’s a violin, and the strings are her hair, and you know her finger bones are the tuning pegs, and that kind of thing, you know, like it’s this really weird instrument, and that just made me think of that. I think that’s you know the idea of the murdered person needing to tell the story that the bones will actually tell the story like supernaturally, I think that’s so [cool]. That just made me think of that story, and it’s a ballad as well. Yeah, I love that.

HN: But that whole idea of bones, you know, having an element of the truth in them. I’ve always found that really fascinating, especially when you look at some of the traditions that on the lie these stories in many communities in African countries, as well as in other countries, the diviners will use bones, you know, as one of the implements that they through. For example, you know, to figure out what the truth is, so that that has always been so fascinating to me. The idea that, you know, you have so many stories that speak of bones and skulls. There are stories where you know the skull of a surviving hero continues to speak the truth continues to prophesy.

    And you have many communities on the African continent where the skulls of ancestors are preserved and venerated, and they are the ones who speak to the community and provide truth and guidance to the community.

So it’s those parallels between stories and cultures and ideas. I always find them interesting, because that’s how you know the culture and the stories that come out of the culture really know together, you know, they feed into each other.

CMR: Yeah, we have a head story from Wales! [The story of Bran the Blessed’s talking head]. Yeah, I love the crossovers, and like the kind of the universal things of the human body, and the human body after death; and how family members relate to one another, and the community relates to the dead and the memories of the dead, and that kind of… yeah.

HN: That’s so interesting. I like that, it’s the best part of building into myths and folklore, though because you have these great stories, these heavy themes that are just meaty, and make you pause and really think about the human condition.

And then you find out that it’s all connected, you know. We really are all connected with the stories with our life experiences, with how we respond to these life experiences. It remains one of my favourite things about doing the work I do.

Folklore and Deviance from Community Norms

CMR: absolutely and what about deviance and that sort of thing. We haven’t touched on that yet. and so deviance is often the cause of tensions within families, as you’ve said in your amazing talk that is also on YouTube and I’m going to put the link up in the transcript, so that all your previous talks are linked as well that you’ve done with Romancing the Gothic, so people can listen to those.

    Yeah, can you talk to us about a little bit about that? Deviance in terms of mental illness, queerness, disability, supernatural deviance, that sort of thing, and how that impacts positively and negatively on the relationships within the families?

HN: Right, right. So how deviance comes in, and just to set the stage, like you said, deviance of course the standard interpretation is as deviating from the norm.

    But in this context we’re looking at individuals who do not fit into the norms of specific societies, whether because they come out differently abled or disabled in one way. And when we talk about differently abled, I’m thinking mainly in terms of neurodiversity, different ways in which they perceive the world. Or they’re queer.  And in many African countries these characteristics get coded as supernatural. So you’re not really from here, and that can be a good or bad thing, and it being a good or bad thing, can be a cause of tension in the community.

    In the case of neurodiversity, for example, a lot of the enfant terrible stories are just stories of, you know, gifted children, genius, children who are able to see passed the norms, the standards that are expected of them, and to see the cracks in these standards.

    And by the way, they live, by the way they respond to situations, you know, show the adults, show where, you know, things are not quite coming together. And, as you know if we, if you live in a community where you know the community, harmony depends on you as a child playing a specific role, the moment you stop playing that role, you introduce tension into the equation, and then there is effort made now to correct you, to push in the right direction.

But then, if that direction is one that is no longer tenable for the community, it can erupt into all kinds of stress and tension, and I explore that quite a bit in the enfant terrible talk which I really encourage people to check out, because the enfant terribles are one of my favourite characters in mythology and folklore, and they are wonderful. They actually are wonderful.

    So you have that. But then there is also mental illness, right, which is on that spectrum. Are you just seeing the world differently? And is this, you know? Are you able to live and function and take care of yourself? Or is this difference in perception getting in the way of you being able to live and function and take care of yourself?   

    And sometimes it doesn’t.

    But then, if you get coded as Other, as supernatural in some way, that can introduce a lot of stress and tension in your family, too.

    Whether you’re a parent or a child, or you know, whatever, their sibling, it can cause, you know, people to react to you differently, to have expectations of you that maybe sometimes you just can’t meet.

    So this causes a lot of stress in community structures and things like that, and will erupt sometimes into violence and the darkness that we’ve been talking about.

    Queerness too is an interesting area in a traditional African mythology and folklore, because if you look at many traditional African cultures, some of them were quite homophobic, so you know, not presenting as heterosexual was cause for stresses and difficulty in your community. But many communities will look at queer people, as just people who walk paths that are different from people, and they would give this a spiritual dimension.

    And this, of course, and many of the stories that we we see coming through in folklore will not really speak as much to this spiritual dimension of queerness, because I imagine the people telling – wait, to back up a little bit. Many folklore collections, many stories were written down by European explorers, by missionaries, and I imagine the indigenous people were not too keen, you know, to tell some of these stories, especially if they saw the reactions of these historian or Europeans to some practices.

    So you, you don’t see so many of these queer stories that won’t necessarily explore the spiritual side of things, or if they exist, they are in highly metaphorically coded languages; that if you know, if you’re not from within the culture, and you understand certain nuances and metaphor, you will completely miss them for what they are. One collection, though, by Leo Frobenius, which I mentioned before, and he is one of the explorers who basically said it doesn’t make sense that there are no stories at all about eroticism and sexuality, because it’s all around me. So what are these stories? And he set out to collect stories that are specifically on the erotic end of the spectrum.

    So then, in these stories you see a lot of the queer dynamics will come out and one of them which stands out in particular is a story from the Kabyle people, and I think they are mostly found in Algeria. So it’s the northern part of the African continent. It’s the story of Simoa Ben Abid, and he this character who is this flamboyantly queer, right, he is bisexual, and he’s a cross-dresser.     

    The difficult thing about Simoa’s story is that it ends up playing into a lot of the negative stereotypes that exist about queer people, and that’s perhaps all of the culture out of which it comes, because you know, most of the Northern African continent became dominated by Islam, and you know there are aspects of Islam that are not particularly friendly to queer people.

    So. But the start of his story, you know, set him as just another person in the community. And then he goes off on this rampage. And that’s another story I want to read because I think Simoa’s story is fascinating.

All right. So the story of Simoa Ben Abid.   

And it is said that Simoa, the son of Abid, at 18 years of age, was more handsome than any other man.

    Up to that age he remained at home.

    He was quite inexperienced, and had no inkling of the inexhaustible potency of his sexual parts.

    But when Simoa was 18 years old, he said, now I’m going to set out on my travels. And so Simoa Ben Abid took his leave and departed from his village.

    Simoa set out on his travels on the first evening  when he was prepping to lie down to sleep at the wayside he heard the sound of music.

    The music was coming from a town very close by. When Simoa realized this, He did not lie down, but went into the town. Simoa arrived in the town, which was celebrating a festival. People were dancing and Simoa went to join the dancers.

    And all of the others stopped dancing and stepped aside.

No one in the town had ever before seen so comely a man dance so exquisitely.

    The girls giggled and nudged one another with their elbows, and the young men whispered to each other, if only we could sleep with him.

    The old women said to themselves, if only we were not so old.

    And Samoa went on dancing, and everybody shouted, “Do not stop, Keep on dancing.”

    “Then bring me an anklet for my foot,” Simoa said, “Bring me bracelets for my arms. Bring me a head ornament for my forehead. Bring me a chest ornament for my chest. Bring me women’s garments made of silk. If you clothe me in all these things, I will dance for you, such as you’ve never seen.”

    The people brought him women’s garments made of silk.

    They brought him ornaments for his chest, his forehead, his arms, his ankles.

    Simoa Ben Abid put on these clothes. He chose the most beautiful ornaments.

    The young woman gazed at him.

    The old women came close up to him, and nudged him with their elbows. Simoa Ben Abid was more comely than any of the women who had lived in that town.

    He called out: “I am ready now. You must play by my own tune. You must sing my own song. Sing:  Simoa Ben Abid is running away. May God bless Simoa Ben Abid for that.”

The fiddlers fiddled, the drummers struck the tambourines, and the people stood around in a ring, singing.

    “Simoa Ben Abid is running away. May God bless Simoa Ben Abid for that. Simoa Ben Abid is running away. May God bless Simoa Ben Abid for that.” 

And Simoa danced. He danced to the right. He danced to the left.

    The women called out to him in a shrill voice: the young girls tapped their feet on the ground and pressed their hands together.

    The young wives pressed their legs together and their hands against their breasts.

    The old women waggled their buttocks, and everybody watched Simoa Ben Abid dance.

    Simoa danced. He leapt into the air. He went leaping through the streets and out into the bush. And he gathered up his dress and said to himself, “My running away has everyone’s blessing?  God grant that I run fast enough to enable me to keep all of this fine jewellery.”

    The people ran after Simoa and they lost sight of him in the bush. And the people said to one another, “If we cannot catch up with him while we are on the open road, while we are still quite fresh, we cannot possibly do so in the bush.”

The people gave up their pursuit and went back into the town.

CMR: That’s amazing.

HN: I think it just goes on and on. And he in this in this, in this form that he takes.

    You know, he basically goes into a family and just pokes a finger into the dark family dynamics. You know, in how he deals with the husband, with the wife, with their daughters, and it just escalates into this messiness like you would never believe. And that’s where I try to be careful, because then you know it, it… In my opinion, the story, you know, takes that turn where it’s, saying, oh, this is this is how you should be, this is how you shouldn’t be, you know, and using a queer person as a scapegoat in that case, and I have, you know, reservations about poking into all of that. But the start, you know with him being this figure that people admire, that people desired, that’s something that you know you don’t often see in folklore, that you know, is running around, and that perhaps has to do more with just the way people approached queerness in traditional African societies.

So it’s evidence that it wasn’t a strange thing. But there was some delicacy, and, you know, discretion in how people approached it in many communities. So yeah.

CMR: yeah, that’s really yeah, that’s really interesting. Like it. I like just the idea that the guys are just going. Oh, I wish I could sleep with him, he dances so well, and that’s just like …

HN: I mean you have the whole town really be going, oh, this is such a novelty, this is so different.

CMR: Yeah, I like that beginning. And then it just goes into the…

[Laughter]

CMR: Left field. Just off a cliff.

HN: It was a time when I was working through this book. Leo Frobenius’s collection of erotic African folktales, and quite often I would, you know, I started screening the stories, so reading them before the sessions, because some of them were just. Oh, my gosh! No no no nononono. [Laughter]

But then it’s still it’s still information. It gives you a sense of, you know, who was telling the story, and why they were telling the stories and what values they have, and you know, gives information about why certain attitudes are the way they are today. Of course we don’t have to repeat these stories given how we can endanger people’s lives and reinforce things that we don’t need to reinforce. But what really comes true for me, thinking about all these stories.

    It’s just the idea that you know, however you want to look at it, you have families, and you have these dynamics that don’t always show the best side of things. But then you have these stories that show how people navigated them, you know, to the best of their ability, and they know how, and it gives information ultimately about how things have been, but also about how things could be, which I think is the ultimate function of storytelling. You know, this opportunity to reflect and figure out what the best way for it might be.

CMR: Yes, that’s sort of – this is where we’ve come from, and this is where we can go, and that like, how do you break a cycle? How do you move forwards from something where you know, where can you go next? And yeah, yeah, and it’s really important to remember stories from the past, and to remember that you know how far you’ve come as a community, and as even as an individual, and what they mean to you as a person, but also like what that means to you as a community, as a culture, as a society, and then to look at how you want to be, and like how that all fits into that tapestry. Yeah, yeah, that’s… yeah. It is really like folktales are really important for that, I think.

The Runaway Princess: Out Now!

CMR: And I think that’s almost all we’ve got time for. Thank you so much. It’s a perfect place to end, though. On a little hope. But thank you so much, that’s so interesting, and I would just like to give you some space to wrap it up just to plug anything that you would like, so let us know anything you’ve got going on for 2023, or anything that is ongoing that you’d like to let us know about.

HN: Sure. Sure. So the big thing I have going on right now is a collection of folktales that I am working on, and these are retellings of folktales from different parts of the African continent about girls and women, and I am retelling all of them, either in prose or in verse, and the focus is on just what’s going on in these women’s heads as they are going through what they are going through. If you know anything about folktales they tend to just tell the story, and they don’t really go into that reflective, you know, side of okay, why am I making these decisions? So that’s what I try to do with this collection. It’s called The Runaway Princess and Other Stories.

Buy Direct from Mythological Africans

Buy on Amazon

I’m wrapping up, you know, writing actually, I have quite a bit of writing to do today. But I’m planning to release the book in January of 2023, so you can find out more about the project on the Mythological Africans website, mythologicalafricans.com. So that’s the big project I have going on, but otherwise, go on mythologicalafricans.com, that’s the one-stop shop for everything else I have going on.

I do talks about African literature and folklore, and just exploring, you know, the interesting themes that will show up, and their relevance for what we have going on now as humans, and what future possibilities might be.

There is a YouTube Channel as well where I do deep dive. So I do Twitter polls, and the Mythological African followers on Twitter will tell me what they want to hear about, and I will, do, you know, a 30 min or 45 min episode on the topic. So we are quite a few episodes deep. So it would definitely be helpful to catch up there if you want to check it out.

    And yes, so mythologicalafricans.com, you can subscribe to the Newsletter, if you want to keep abreast of everything we have going on.

I put out a newsletter every month giving an outline of what’s coming up, and what has passed, and the talks like you talked about on the Mythological Africans page as well. You get — You can watch past talks that I have given on different topics. So… but yeah, the main thing is the book, The Runaway Princess and Other Stories which I’m pretty excited about, and there is merchandise in case you want that.

CMR: Oh, I’m going to put all the links up in the transcript, so I think the book may well have come out by the time this episode is aired. So I will pop some promo images in the Transcript and buy links as well. So people can just go direct and grab it. so hopefully. hopefully, it will be out so that’ll be really exciting. Thank you so much for coming.

HN: It’s always great to look at these stories from different perspectives, and I discover something new every time. So it really is my pleasure to be here.

#EldritchGirl S03E14: Love in Banishment

Listen NowBuy NowLove in Banishment

This is the final chapter in Part 2: Fall of the Titans, and next week is the first chapter of Part 3: Rise of the Gods. All the chapters in all three parts are divisible by three!

Part 1: Fall of the Oracle = Chapters 1-6, Part 2: Fall of the Titans ran from Chapters 7-12, and the final part runs through Chapters 13-21 plus the Epilogue.

This is a quieter chapter with a more domestic feel but it’s a turning point for Katy, building on her encounter with Myrddin and things she’s been thinking about since then.

My stepmother-in-law requested that someone have a pet in my books, so Layla has two. One is a greyhound and one is a cat – both are rescues. I thought that would also give Katy a bit of normalcy and domesticity that she’s been lacking, and the fact that Layla is good with rescue animals translates across to her being good with/for Katy, in that she is a ‘safe’ person for her to be around, calming and comfortable.

In the original draft I worked on Ricky/Layla as a dynamic and a few things didn’t work so well, but there is a deleted scene up on Ko-Fi for members. I played with a lot of different narrative plot threads, and these scenes use one that was scrapped after the beta version.

Deleted Scene 01 is here, Deleted Scene 02 is here.

#EldritchGirl S03E13: The World You Desire Can Be Won

Listen Nowbuy nowThe World You Desire Can Be Won (Or Can It?)

In this episode (Chapter 11) Wes makes a serious sacrifice in exchange for three wishes, and almost immediately regrets it… and yes, that’s a quote from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Of course it is.

We don’t get into Wes’s actual philosophy but that’s because he doesn’t have a coherent one. He’s not the kind to subscribe to any ideology, he just aligns most closely to whatever suits his purposes and thoughts at any one time. He doesn’t stand for anything. He loves Maggie Thatcher (he reads her biography every year, a big commitment for someone who doesn’t really read), and I think Ayn Rand is the only other author he’s ever properly picked up. Maybe a bit of Hemingway to look educated, since he’s got a chip on his shoulder about not being ‘cultured’ enough for the upper class circles he wants to get into. I think he’s probably also read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but would never admit it bored him. If pressed, he would say it was one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. It’s also one of only five novels he’s ever read, so that’s also why he’d say that.

In this case, I thought we’d go with an Atlas Shrugged quote for this chapter because his sacrifice is not entirely altruistic, shall we say, and that was the ‘best’ book to go with. (Look at how he phrases his wishes…)

I was really excited to get to show what actually lives in the wishing well, and how the well’s magic works. If you’re on the ball you’ll notice that Wes sees a five pound note down there, which is from The Crows (Chapter 6, Be Careful What You Wish For), when Carrie drops it and it disappears into the ooze as if something has pinched it in the middle and dragged it under.

The Engineer, Hellraiser (1987)

The creature in the well is inspired by the spider guardian of the Widow of the Web in Krull, but the creature design is more leaning into Guillermo Del Toro and Clive Barker monster influences, an arachnid-like maggot thing with spindly limbs and a mouth “like a cat’s arsehole” (thanks Wes). Naturally, Wes cums in his jeans.

If I ever commission NSFW art, it will be of this scene.

I have commissioned a portrait of Wes though, from Georgina Donnelly who did the gorgeous portrait of Katy, so I can get the set of them in the same style. I’ve seen a sketch of Wes and it’s GREAT. Complete with a replica of one of Maggie Thatcher’s brooches, like I asked for. You know he has his own collection.

Here’s the Katy portrait – I’ve asked for Wes to look like he’s sleazy and good looking but only one bender away from being an extra in Trainspotting, so we’ll see what happens…

Go follow her on Insta and support her work!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Georgina (@georginadraws)

#EldritchGirl S03E13 ~ The World You Desire Can Be Won

Listen Nowbuy nowThe World You Desire Can Be Won (Or Can It?)

In this episode (Chapter 11) Wes makes a serious sacrifice in exchange for three wishes, and almost immediately regrets it… and yes, that’s a quote from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Of course it is.

We don’t get into Wes’s actual philosophy but that’s because he doesn’t have a coherent one. He’s not the kind to subscribe to any ideology, he just aligns most closely to whatever suits his purposes and thoughts at any one time. He doesn’t stand for anything. He loves Maggie Thatcher (he reads her biography every year, a big commitment for someone who doesn’t really read), and I think Ayn Rand is the only other author he’s ever properly picked up. Maybe a bit of Hemingway to look educated, since he’s got a chip on his shoulder about not being ‘cultured’ enough for the upper class circles he wants to get into. I think he’s probably also read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but would never admit it bored him. If pressed, he would say it was one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. It’s also one of only five novels he’s ever read, so that’s also why he’d say that.

In this case, I thought we’d go with an Atlas Shrugged quote for this chapter because his sacrifice is not entirely altruistic, shall we say, and that was the ‘best’ book to go with. (Look at how he phrases his wishes…)

I was really excited to get to show what actually lives in the wishing well, and how the well’s magic works. If you’re on the ball you’ll notice that Wes sees a five pound note down there, which is from The Crows (Chapter 6, Be Careful What You Wish For), when Carrie drops it and it disappears into the ooze as if something has pinched it in the middle and dragged it under.

The Engineer, Hellraiser (1987)

The creature in the well is inspired by the spider guardian of the Widow of the Web in Krull, but the creature design is more leaning into Guillermo Del Toro and Clive Barker monster influences, an arachnid-like maggot thing with spindly limbs and a mouth “like a cat’s arsehole” (thanks Wes). Naturally, Wes cums in his jeans.

If I ever commission NSFW art, it will be of this scene.

I have commissioned a portrait of Wes though, from Georgina Donnelly who did the gorgeous portrait of Katy, so I can get the set of them in the same style. I’ve seen a sketch of Wes and it’s GREAT. Complete with a replica of one of Maggie Thatcher’s brooches, like I asked for. You know he has his own collection.

Here’s the Katy portrait – I’ve asked for Wes to look like he’s sleazy and good looking but only one bender away from being an extra in Trainspotting, so we’ll see what happens…

Go follow her on Insta and support her work!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Georgina (@georginadraws)

#EldritchGirl S03E12: Ynys Afallon

Listen NowBuy NowYnys Afallon | Island of Apples

How to pronounce ‘Ynys Afallon’ in Welsh: https://www.howtopronounce.com/welsh/ynys-afallon > (Un-is Av-ah-lhon)

Ynys Afallon is a mythological island in the west (of Britain), which is a place of perpetual youth and fertility, similar to the Irish Tír na nÓg. I conflated it with Myrddin here because it appears in Arthurian legends as the place Arthur was taken after the battle of Camlann, where he was defeated and close to death. There are also several prophetic poems attributed to Myrddin addressed to his apple tree (and his pet pig), so that’s why Myrddin has a thing for apples in The Day We Ate Grandad, too.

I also liked the idea of playing with portals and perceptions, so the ruins that Ricky and Wes find themselves in do not properly belong on the island at all, so there’s constant slippage of one realm to another that I hope further destabilises the notion of our own world and what is possible there.

Ynys Afallon was also a name for Glastonbury, so that’s why they ascend a small tor to get to the ruins, which are a cross between St Michael’s Tower and Carmarthen castle, two real life places that converge confusingly in the dreamspace on the island. The time and space rules within that ruin also work on dream logic, so you have the scene where Ricky and Wes become separated on the spiral staircase and Ricky has a vastly different perception of it than Wes does. His mantra, I’m a god, I’m the Soothsayer, I’m the One and Only, isn’t helpful here. It only serves to make his failure starker.

I did have a whole scene where Ricky is forced to verbally express to Myrddin in poetry what Carrie means to him, but this was cut when I rewrote the middle section to include the wishing well. I will put this version of the scene up on Ko-Fi for supporters to read!

I liked exploring a new dimension, one that was very different to the Outside. There will be more about these realms in future!

#EldritchGirl S03E11: A Grief Heavy To Me

Listen NowBuy NowChapter 10 (Part 1): A Grief Heavy To Me

Ricky reacts badly to some devastating news, and Myrddin returns with an offer of help.

Support my podcast by pledging a monthly substack donation, or by tipping me on Ko-Fi/joining my Ko-Fi membership!

CWs: loss, self-harm in response to grief, inter-familial violence

Intro/Outro Theme Music: Gemma Dyer

#EldritchGirl S03E10: The Breaking of So Great a Thing

Listen nowBuy nowNew Episode!

Jem Foreman takes his (not)-boyfriend Theo to open the portal… with dramatic and deadly consequences.

Support my podcast by pledging a monthly substack donation, or by tipping me on Ko-Fi/joining my Ko-Fi membership!

CWs: blood, gore, cultist POV, body horror

Intro/Outro Theme Music: Gemma Dyer

#EldritchGirl S03E09: All hail the Beast

Listen nowBuy the bookAll Hail the Beast

This chapter was a mix of several drafts, as I wrote this in about 4 different ways from different POVs. I ultimately decided that Katy’s transition from ‘killing machine’ to the other aspect of Mars, a guardian-type aspect, would be showcased best here with an act of mercy the Beast has only shown to Wes and Ricky so far.

Katy’s mental health issues won’t be resolved in this book (and maybe never) but this is a first step for her in reconciling some parts of herself, and the setting of a deconsecrated parish church worked in a few ways for this moment.

I quite liked making this church the central focus for this chapter, so you get the sense of family history colliding with local history and being the place where their current gods appear and come into their roles. Also that this is the scene of a thwarted sacrifice, which was set up as the opposite of the sacrifice of Christ, so there’s an inversion of action vs intent, and an act of mercy at the altar rail area, so I quite liked all those allusions too.

I also enjoyed writing the way Layla sees Katy in that moment, and playing with the Lovecraftian mythos-esque descriptions.

Her eyes reflected the impossible vastness of her god, warping the dimensions of the space around them. The Beast reared, expanding. There was nothing for its worshipper now but the grey seal-hide sky, which was its skin, nothing but the glow of the desolate twin suns flecked with constellations of voids, which were its eyes.

The worshipper swooned in ecstatic, perfect terror.

The Beast contemplated it for a moment, and finally, graciously, surprising even itself, had mercy. More than mercy. The Beast scooped up the unconscious titbit in the trumpet-folds of jaws, but did not swallow. It wanted to protect.

The Day We Ate Grandad – C. M. Rosens

Bonus Easter Egg

I threw in a little Easter Egg for The Folklore of Pagham-on-Sea Volume 1, where many of the folklore stories have been recorded by Rev. J. D. Allardyce, who appears on the plaque on the church wall as one of its incumbents:

This was where the Pendles had filled the pews since time immemorial, and where the vicar had gone insane in 1893 after a visit from the three Pendle sisters. The story went that Reverend Winborn recorded their sham marriages into the parish register, then flung himself from the bell tower and dashed himself to pieces on the gravestones.

Wes spotted the plaque of incumbents and vicars on the wall, where Winborn took his place between Revs. Starley and Allardyce. He wondered what they would make of this farce.

The Day We Ate Grandad – C. M. Rosens

Blink and you miss it, but there he is.

Dirk Gently – Everything is Connected gif Buy Folklore Vol 1

Interview with Paula D. Ashe: Body Horror, Weird Fiction, and Fkd Up Family

Listen NowBio

Paula D. Ashe is an educator and an award-winning writer of dark fiction. She lives in the Midwest with her family. Her collection, We Are Here to Hurt Each Other, was nominated for the Bram Stoker award for ‘superior achievement in a fiction collection’.

Subscribe to NewsletterFollow on Twitter Buy NowIntroduction

CMR: Hello! Welcome back to Eldritch Girl, and today we’ve got Paula D. Ashe with us. I am so excited. So Paula! Can you introduce yourself for us, please.

PDA: Sure. Yeah, Thank you so much again for having me. My name is Paula D. Ashe. I’m the author of the short story collection We are Here to Hurt Each Other, which came out in February of 2022 from Nictitating Books, and it was recently nominated for a Bram Stoker award for a superior achievement in a fiction collection. That phrase is so surreal to me. But I mean I got to say it. So. Yeah. But thank you. Thank you so much for having me, CM. This is exciting.

CMR: Yeah, this is. It was well deserved, I think! I’m really excited for you yes. I love that collection. And yes, it did fuck me up quite a lot.

PDA: That’s what it does. That’s my lane, apparently. That’s… yeah, and it’s funny, because, you know, I think, you know, anyone, like, which is true for a lot of writers… Most of us live pretty normal… Quote unquote “normal”, you know, lives, and so when I tell people I’m a writer, and I say, I want, you know, a horror writer, and I like oh, cool like Stephen King, and I’m just like… No. Mm-mm. No, no, and they’re like, oh like what? And I’m like, I don’t know if you should read it because you won’t talk to me anymore. But it – you know, it works out okay, but it’s pretty extreme stuff for sure.

CMR: No, I did really enjoy it, though, and I’m excited because you’re going to read an extract from one of the stories in the collection. Would you like to introduce that and kind of give it a little bit of context for it?

PDA: Yeah, absolutely. So this story the excerpts is from a story called Jacqueline Laughs Last in the Gaslight, and it is the only historical piece in the collection. And I actually wrote this story because, I mean I’m sure as you can tell I’m in the United States, I’m American for better or for worse, and so I wrote this story after visiting London, and specifically the Whitechapel district. And that’s kind of what this, what this story is about, and this is the opening paragraph.

And so yeah, so I’m gonna read it. And just be aware, as with you know, a lot of my stuff, it’s pretty… not all of my stuff, but this excerpt in particular, is a little racy, let’s say, and it has some language. So yeah, so that’s it.

Alright, so I’m gonna go ahead and read.

Extract from ‘Jacqueline Laughs Last in the Gaslight’

Early July 1888.

The young bride and her handsome Deacon, her hand like painted porcelain nestled delicate and safe in the sanctuary of his forearm. In Whitechapel’s rookery of wastrels the fine pair is as prominent as a hanged man’s prick. Spectacles of health in a garden of steaming grime.

They walk the Flower and Dean, mouths stiff but smiling as cutthroats and pickpockets threaten the woman with rape. Slatterns with pickled brains emphatically offer the Anglican a variety of slick and tight delights, flipping their ragged skirts at the pass of his shadow to give him a glimpse of their puckered and pestilent holes.

This is their honeymoon.

Jacqueline Laughs Last in the Gaslight – Paula D. Ashe

Interview Transcript

CMR: Wow, yeah.

PDA: It’s racy.

CMR: Yeah, it’s yes, it’s just … grimy.

PDA: Yes, no it really is! I always forget sometimes when I read that part. I’m just like, That’s so… yucky. On various levels, you know what I mean? I’m like, yeah, ew!

CMR: Yeah, it reminds me, because you use like a lot of that kind of body horror, and that you do a lot of body horror in your work. And it kind of reminds me of the Rotting Man, I think it is.

PDA: The Rotting Man is in the story All the Hellish Cruelty of Heaven. Yeah, that that character is from that story. Yeah.

CMR: Yes, and you’ve got this real talent for creating very visceral but also a weirdly beautiful imagery at the same time. And there’s something about that, like the beauty and the grotesque. And then it’s great, because it kind of crosses that line into ‘no that is just revolting’, and then back again into oh, oh, that’s… *approving sound* Yeah, I love that about your prose. That’s one of the reasons I was excited to chat about it with you.

Paula D. Ashe on Body Horror

So how central is body horror to your work? And what drew you as a writer, to focus on the body as a site of horror in some of your stories?

PDA: it’s funny because somebody… there were a lot of people in the book first came out, a lot of folks were were saying… They were comparing it to David Cronenberg, which was super flattering to me because I love both Cronenbergs’ work at this point, but I grew up on, you know, Cronenberg the the elder, and so that was really flattering to me. I didn’t realize that what I was doing was body horror. It just kind of came natural to the way that I tell a story, and I didn’t… it never… I mean, again, like it didn’t strike me until the collection came out, and people started to respond to it, that’s what they were seeing, and that’s kind of what I was doing. I mean. I guess it’s central, because I think for me the reason why I feel so drawn to body horror… I feel drawn to body horror for several reasons.

One of them is I’m just not scared of supernatural stuff in literature. Just doesn’t often scare me. That’s not to say that I don’t like it, or that I think it’s not valid or anything like that. I just, as a writer, I don’t feel like – I don’t know, like that just doesn’t spark my imagination, for whatever the reason is, it just doesn’t, cause I think I think I know me as a writer, and I would use the supernatural as like a ghost in the machine kind of thing, like I would be like, Oh, I don’t know how to end this story, so I’ll just have some ghost show up. You know what I mean, because they can do, and so for me, to make it a challenge that I can tangle with creatively and intellectually, it has to be grounded in reality, and it has to be grounded in the body. So that’s part of it. It’s just so stupid. And again, it’s like, you say that I don’t write about supernatural stuff – I have, and I’m sure that I will in the future. But for this collection in particular, me and the editor, Shawn Thompson, talked a lot about the body horror aspect of it, and how it’s like you said after the the excerpt. It’s grimy. It’s meant to be. It’s a grimy kind of embodied focus.

I think also as far as my work goes, I choose a lot of body horror because I feel like as a marginalized subjects on a lot of different levels, that women are kind of conscripted to the body. Like that’s that whole binary, that duality thing, like you know, men have the intellect, and women have the body, and so I think just that kind of – not saying that that’s true. But just… A lot of my background is in a lot of feminist theory study, and I just think that’s really interesting. I’m familiar with the work of Julia Kristeva and Monique Wittig and all of these feminine theorists who talk a lot about the body and embodiment, and so that’s also a big part of it, too. I really am fascinated by Julia Kristeva’s work on objection, and how like you know, the body as the site of both life, but also death and decay. And you know the undeniable kind of corporeal reality of our bodies, that’s just really interesting to me. I like to play around with that. because I also just find bodies gross like, let’s just… I mean like, being an embodied subject, sometimes it’s gross, and that’s a side [of it that] I think – we have a lot of anxiety for people for a lot of reasons, and I think that my work kind of plays around with that as well.

CMR: Yeah, definitely, I think like that’s… the corporeality of the horror makes it so much harder to deny, as well. And you have to then face up to things like, not just mortality, but also changes that you can’t control within yourself and the outward expression of those changes. And that can be incredibly frightening on multiple levels, whether or not there’s a supernatural element to it, because the cause at that point is kind of by the by, it’s what’s actually physically happening to you that you have to reckon with, particularly if it’s irreversible, or it appears to be irreversible in the moment.

PDA: Sure.

CMR: I’m thinking about the one story that actually maybe stop reading for the longest time. I had to pause the whole collection because I couldn’t carry on [laughs] – was the Carcosa one. which is – for anyone who hasn’t read it – it’s told via email. So it’s kind of epistolary which I love.

PDA: It’s my favourite.

CMR: I love that form that’s really cool. You’ve got that that distance and the ability to tell that story through sections, but also just the concept of this drug that makes you mutilate yourself in a trance-like way. But, oh, my God, I was like No.

[laughter]

PDA: I’m sorry that you had that experience. But thank you so much for telling me that because that’s so flattering to me as a writer! I’m like Yes, yes, she was repulsed! Hooray!

CMR: Loved it. I think that one is probably the one that still haunts me from there [there = the collection].

PDA: Sure, sure. That one, that particular story messes with a lot of people, and I’m really proud of it, because that, like you were saying, that epistolary format is really hard to nail down. I know we’re talking about body horror, and we’re going to go too far off on a tangent, but it’s so hard, I think, to tell a story in that format well, and I’m just so blessed that worked. I’ll just I’ll leave it at that. But this so, Thank you. But glad that worked out.

CMR: Yeah, definitely. And I think, like that brings us on to the whole, to the other question that I had, which is about the weird fiction elements in your work, because it’s not just about the body horror. And I think there’s a lot more we can dig into with the body horror as well-

PDR: For sure.

CMR: But something that I found was also the uncanny nature of it, and that idea of your body changing, and something familiar becoming very unfamiliar. And that direct reference to The King in Yellow as well, which is the Robert Chambers King in Yellow, play kind of story, reference, playing about with Lovecraftian mythos. And I found there were quite a few other sort of classic Weird fic elements and tales in your work. And so there’s definitely a weird vibe with the uncanny nature of some of them.

Paula D. Ashe on Weird Fiction

So how and when did you get into weird fiction and did that naturally present itself as a vehicle for storytelling for you?

PDA: Yeah, that’s a great question. I don’t know how direct an answer I have for that one. I’ve always been into what in the nineties and early 2000s was called ‘horror/dark fantasy’ like that was its own kind of section. They were combined together, and then they kind of split apart for a bit. I think they’re coming back together for some folks, but for HDF, horror/dark fantasy, was just like my jam, that’s so much of what I read, and I particularly read a lot of Tanith Lee, and so from reading Tanith Lee that led me to… Um? I read a lot of Clive Barker and Tanith Lee and Caitlin R Kiernan, and Poppy Z. Brite, who, you know, currently known as Billy Martin, but used to write as Poppy Z. Brite, and I don’t know when I discovered Thomas Ligotti. It wasn’t… maybe 10 years ago?

But then I started reading it, and that was when, like, I started to recognize the Weird as the Weird, there was a kind of Weird resurgence, particularly in the United States, and we had, you know, writers like Olivia Llewellyn with Furnace, and you know we had, like Matt Cardin and Laird Barron and Matt Bartlett, and Victor LaValle came out with the Ballad of Black Tom, and I was just reading all these things, and just really like digging that that vibe, that uncanny strangeness, but also the philosophical implications.

One of my favorite books of all time is Thomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, and, like I read that book, and it just made me feel like, oh, like somebody gets it. You know what I mean like. Oh, somebody understands. It’s fine, I mean, obviously it’s kind of a cornerstone of cosmic pessimism, so it’s not the most chipper kind of perspective to have, and it’s certainly a – my perspective just has changed over time. It’s really becoming a parent has changed that for me in a lot of ways.

But you know, reading Ligotti, reading the work of Jon Padgett and reading… the magazine or the Journal of Vastarien… What else? There’s just so much of that stuff that that came out in that group.

You know. Early- to mid-noughts, I guess, was just really like — I just devoured all of that stuff because it seemed to Vibe with me in such a way that it was engaging intellectually to me, but it was also it went beyond just ghosts or vampires, or werewolves. It was the nature of reality and not itself, is malevolent or off. And I just found that to be really, really intriguing. And so I really like to play around with that in my own work, and I particularly like to play around with that in my own work, because I think it resonates in the sense of what they call now kind of like social horror. But I don’t know how much I like that phrase.

But I think if you are again part of any kind of marginalized, historically underrepresented, however you want to put it, you know, oppressed group, you know reality is not always safe for you, so fiction that represents that, that plays around with that, is really engaging for me. I think it also not laundry list of names, and you know, books and stuff.

I also forgot to mention, like, probably, one of the big cornerstones of my own kind of development as a writer was the work of Toni Morrison, who is not known as a horror writer, but her work is absolutely horrific, and it’s structure, and it’s intent, and it’s, you know, deployment. So that was also a big influence, particularly the book, her first novel, The Bluest Eye, which is a story about a young, very dark skinned Black girl in the fifties, who, because all of her life she’s been told that the white eurocentric standard of beauty is the— well, that is it, and because she doesn’t fit it, she is ugly, and she’s been treated horrifically her entire young life, because of that, and it’s one of those books that made me realize, like the perspective that a person has on the world, and where they fit into it, it’s not only influenced by their experiences. It’s also influenced by how the world perceives them as well. So if the world perceives you as a threat, then you’re going to see threats in the world, right? Because that’s like how people respond to you.

And so I just — I don’t know I kind of write. I try to write often from from that perspective I think it makes things more interesting. That was a really long answer. So. [laughs]

Paula D. Ashe on Fucked-Up Family Dynamics & Themes of Intersectional Socialization

CMR: no, yeah, that’s that makes a lot of sense as well like, and it reminded me of one of the stories I think you sent a link to in your newsletter (which everyone should sign up to, by the way, links will be in the transcript), which was a very disturbing kind of weird tale, which is the family dinner and some weird shape that appears between them, and then it kind of takes— and then it it just gets massively, wildly out of control. It didn’t go anywhere I thought it was going to go, but it kind of — yeah that kind of microcosm of threats, and the strange dynamics within a microcosm of a family which I love.

PDA: Yeah, yeah.

CMR: Yeah, so that just reminded me of that. And I was like, No, I can see it. I can see the influences in that story.

PDA: That’s cool that you say that because I never even thought about that. But I think you’re right with that particular story, because I do a lot of stuff on family dynamics and family, families that are fucked up like I — that’s just my — let’s be real. And but yeah, certainly for that one, I also like the idea of a threat that only certain people can see, because that just that creeps me out. You know what I mean like that’s just really upsetting to me. So yeah, I think that’s that’s a big part of it as well, the the threat being a thing that only certain people can see, for whatever reason, I can see how that has some parallels with social horror as well, and being part of a marginalized group, because in those cases, certain context, the threat is only something you can see. I mean that’s what a microaggression is, right. Like. It’s something that only certain people interpret rightfully as aggressive, discriminatory behavior.

CMR: Right.

PDA: But not everybody else sees it that way because it’s not attacking that part of their identity or whatever. So, yeah.

CMR: The more I think about that Thanksgiving story the more I want to go back and re-read it, and see, like, yeah. But also, fucked up families it as it as their own thing is, is a a really interesting theme to play around with, and you can get the microcosm of threat in those dynamics, in the way that different members of that family, and then how relative power dynamics play out. And you can show such a lot about society and such a lot of that anxiety and fear and change, and all of that stuff through that kind of — yeah, is that why you like to write about families or —?

PDA: I mean my therapist probably has a different answer the one I’m going to give, but I’m going to say, [laughs] no, I think it’s because — I mean, I think you’re right, it’s a microcosm, my background is also in sociology, I’m a sociologist, and so you know, I’m very big on socialization, and the processes of socialization, and how we learn how to be human in society, and how we teach people how to be human in society, and the biggest, you know, most powerful influence when it comes to socialization is the family. We learn everything about everything from the family. You cannot escape that, you know, for better or for worse, so those dynamics echo throughout your life. If they’re positive — and again, I’m not trying to say that people are like doomed or anything, but if they’re positive dynamics, then that’s good. You can build on that very strong foundation. But if they’re not, that’s where we — that’s where you know, a lot of trauma comes from, a lot of mental illness, and things like that can come from those sorts of things, and I just. I’m always intrigued by how much power families have and how family dynamics are so — I don’t know, prophetic in a way.

I mean again, I’m not trying to say — I know that people don’t like to hear, particularly for people who come from, you know, like abusive backgrounds, that you know, that’s all that they’ll ever be. That’s not what I’m saying, but what I’m saying is, it is difficult to view the world as a safe place when your first experience of the world was was one where you weren’t safe, right?

So that’s kind of the thing that I find really. really fascinating, and I come back to over and over again. And to be fair, I grew up in a relatively, in a comparatively safe household, I think, certainly less safe than some others, but I think it’s all kind of — you know, it all kind of just depends. But, for me, I think I was very acutely aware of that when I was young. I don’t know why, I just always have been kind of aware of that.

And I think one thing that I’ve also noticed, as I’ve, you know, like I’m a parent, is realizing how difficult it is to keep, you know, to protect your family, to protect yourself, to protect your children from like the forces outside of your home, whether it’s like, you know, economic chaos or social strife, or, you know, like even interpersonal stuff. But you have to compartmentalize that for your family, and that’s really hard, and it just makes me kind of think about how difficult it is to maintain those kinds of structures and keep all that stuff in place, you know, while at the same time, like being a productive number of society and all of that other stuff. So it’s a lot to deal with, I think.

CMR: Yeah, and I think — you kind of said, the generational cycles as well,

PDA: Yes, mm-hm.

CMR: I think that’s what you were alluding to there,

PDA: Yeah, yeah.

CMR: -They’re really, really hard to break out of, and it’s really hard to be a cycle-breaker,

PDA: Yes, for sure.

CMR: especially when you’re the first person to do that, and you have no kind of reference. You have no—

PDR: —You have no model. You’re just doing it all on your own, and it’s so easy to make those same mistakes. I think you start to realize that a lot of times people, you know, it’s because there’s no model. There’s no frame of reference, like you said, it’s so easy to go back on that, you know, those past generational traumas, because, it’s all, even if it’s terrible. It’s almost like it’s easier to do that, because it’s familiar, than it is to strike out into the unknown. So yeah, I think that’s a big part of it too, as well, I think, yeah.

CMR: yeah, and that kind of brings us interestingly back to body horror Doesn’t it?

PDA: It does!

Paula D. Ashe on the Interplay between Internal Suffering and Physical Deconstruction with Reference to Religious Horror

CMR: Cause like, yeah, families inscribe themselves on you in that kind of way. You can’t help but look like the people you’re related to you, you literally carry their DNA around, you literally embody them, and you embody that cycle, and there’s all sorts of yeah, studies on how trauma literally changes your DNA and changes your brain and all of that. And I was really interested, looking at your brand of body horror — I don’t know if you have a brand, but the kind of body horror that you like to write — and there seems to be a really strong connection, especially in the collection, between internal pain and physical deconstruction. And again, I’m thinking about the Carcosa story in particular. But yeah, just because that’s just in my brain like a brainworm.

PDA: [laughs]

CMR: But how do you see that relationship manifesting in your work and the connections between those two themes?

PDA: Between like, internal pain, and then —

CMR: Yeah, between internal pain and physical deconstruction, and how does that go together?

PDA: So okay. So I’m gonna try to think of how to explain this in a way that doesn’t make me sound like a complete lunatic. I probably disappointed you already. I mean, I think there’s certainly a connection there. I think so. I keep talking about ‘my background is in… blah blah blah’, and it sounds like I have like 17 different majors, but I studied a lot of stuff. I’ve been in school for quite some time. So another thing I studied was abnormal psychology, and I was really fascinated by that. And so I am really interested and intrigued by – there’s no way to talk about this without sounding weird, but this is the Eldritch Girl podcast, I’m guessing ‘weird’ is what people are here for, so!

CMR: Yeah…

PDA: I’m really fascinated by self mutilation. Whether it’s for religious reasons, whether it’s for what we might call pathological reasons, whether it’s, for, you know, I like to call it self-expression, whether it’s piercing or branding, or like the hooks that –? Like meathooks, basically?

CMR: Yeah yeah yeah, the hooks people like to hang themselves from, meathooks, yeah.

PDA: And I’m so fascinated by that and why people do that. (Also I have to have an aside and talk about, yes I am obsessed with Hellraiser, how did you know?) I’m really intrigued by that. I think that as somebody who was also raised in a very evangelical household, there’s so much — There’s a lot of physical suffering in Christian theology, right, like there’s just…. that’s just name of the game, and I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of transubstantiation and transformation, and then, like transfiguration, and how you can change yourself, like so kind of, I think kind of similarly to what what you were saying, CM, about the way that you carry your family in your body, like you wear the face of people who came before you that you’re related to. What if you don’t like that? What if you want to change it?

And so one of the ways you can do that is by — You know, what we would call mutilation of the face, or, you know, piercings or tattoos, or you know, branding or scoring, or what have you. And I’m always, I’m interested in that, because one, I think it’s a really fascinating way to look at expression and trying to break some generational curses or generational trauma. But then I also think it’s really interesting in a more spiritual sense, like you defining who you are, and also you having agency over your flesh in a way that you like, I can’t change my DNA, but if I look like somebody in my family, or you know, whatever the situation is, I can alter myself, you know I can alter myself physically. I can alter myself externally, and maybe I can’t change myself internally, but I can change.

I can alter myself externally, and if I get to see that in the mirror, and be reminded of myself, and my own choices, and my own power, rather than looking in the mirror and be reminded of the people who came before me, that can do something to help shift my perspective toward some kind of actualization of some sort, or some kind of like, you know, a sense of agency, some kind of sense of an internal locus of control.That’s the one thing I can control, right, I can control – to an extent – how I look. And I think for a lot of people, and I’ve studied a great deal — I have plans for a novel that plays around this idea, in a much kind of bigger way – uh-oh [laughs at CMR’s excitement while on mute] You’re like ye–eeessss. [laughs] Thank you, thank you so much.

CMR: Literally sitting here like yeee-ess. [laughter] Yesss, excellent.

PDA: Bless you, thank you so much. But, um, that plays around with these ideas of mutilation and apotheosis. Like I don’t know, I know it’s weird –

CMR: Yeah.

PDA: I can’t really explain it, I think in a linear way, because it’s not linear, it’s, you know, I mean at least particularly within, like the Christian faith, like that’s – you know, the way that salvation works, not the only way but one of the clear ways that we tend to celebrate is through suffering. And so I mean, I don’t know, that’s kind of what we’re given to work with in a lot of ways, and I think that’s really interesting.

CMR: Yes, yeah, definitely. I’m a medievalist. That’s my background. I was also raised in a a a Welsh Baptist context, via Greek Orthodoxy with a little bit of — [laughs] So I grew up partially on some of the Greek islands. So I, yeah. So I had quite a lot of the iconography of suffering. But also I find Greek Orthodoxy as much more also about the expression of joy. But it’s more the aesthetic of the small churches, the very gloomy, no natural light except candle light… And Papa Petros, who used to pick me up so I could like candles because I was too small, you know, like that. He was just this like pillar of black. I would look up, and there’d just be this black cloth and then a beard up there somewhere, so you know. And so I kind of remember those sorts of things. And then coming back into a coming back to the UK and growing up in the UK, in a very Welsh Baptist context, and hearing about that that emphasis on suffering and also personal suffering, and that the idea that Christ came to suffer and to be lonely and to be mortal and experience that, and I had that real kind of… that resonated a lot with me, I think.

But then, when I so studied medieval expressions of Christianity and medieval traditions, I think one of the things that I was thinking of as you were talking, there was a priest who was concerned that he didn’t really believe in transubstantiation. So he prayed to God to give him the kind of definitive answer. Is this the body of Christ? Am I to believe that these wafers [correction, should be bread not wafers at this stage] are literally You? And he had a dream. As you should do in all good —

PDA: Oh, sure

CMR: you know. So he had this dream about someone performing the Eucharist, and as he lifted the bread to bless it, it was a baby. And then he tore the baby apart.

PDA: [laughs like what the fuck]

CMR: Literally a literal, actual baby, in the dream, and that obviously was Christ, not as a man, but as an infant as the Incarnated. But and that’s so… that’s an incredible visceral… horrible image. I think that’s worse than actually, you know, cannibalizing an actual adult. It’s just lifting up a baby and tearing it.

PDA: Tearing it apart, yeah.

CMR: And then he was like, oh, you’re right, you know what transubstantiation? That’s fine.

PDA: I’m good! I got it! Thanks! I believe you! Hoo boy.

[Laugher]

CMR: Yeah, so the medieval relationship to suffering, a relationship to to bodily suffering and embodied suffering was kind of off the charts. But yeah, so that that made me think of that kind of embodied visceral image and religious imagery. Yeah. So I get that. So it’s —

PDA: Yeah, yeah.

CMR: So coming at it from a slightly different angle to to the spiritual angle of expressing yourself through —

PDA: No, but I think that that’s part [of it]. I mean it — I mean it’s certainly in the sense of like. you know, as far as the Western thought, that’s kind of a big, like the whole idea of bodily suffering that transforms, you know, the spiritual access to grace and salvation through bodily suffering with that, kind of undergirds everything. I mean, particularly like in the United States, you know, the influence of Puritanism, but that’s everywhere like that’s it. It’s everywhere. It’s in everything. That’s just it, you know? it’s everywhere, it’s in everything, and I’m trying to – I’m trying to – because you said you were a Medievalist, because I’m really interested in fascinated by the Convulsionnaires and the sex, in I think it’s fifteenth or sixteenth century France. They were basically like cenobites of that time period. But they were people, and they, and it was again for religious purposes, and they just did so much of the mortification of the flesh. Just reading about it… At first it sounded like just the normal, you know, “normal” flogging, and all that sort of stuff, then they just go into some really wild places that brings us to today, and kind of a lot of the extreme, more extreme body modification practices of today. it just seems like a thing that humans are really — pardon the pun, but it seems like a thing that humans are really hung up on, is that, that — you know, I’m this thinking meat, and it causes me some issues, so I’m going to hurt myself to try and like, transcend it or transform that or something. And I just think that’s — I don’t know it fascinates me that that’s such a common practice across cultures, a common practice across, you know, time periods. No matter how intellectual we get, we still… there’s some pockets of society that still come back to that over and over and over again. And yeah, I mean, I don’t think that necessarily consciously that’s in my work. But I think certainly that’s a big, that’s kind of what’s going on in the back of my head at a lot of times and in those kinds of stories that feature, those those kinds of acts, I think.

CMR: Yeah, that’s really interesting. I can’t wait to see what else you do with those sorts of themes. Like, novels, as well. That’s going to be delicious.

[laughter]

PDA: It’s going to be really awful. Like, I’m saying now, it’s gonna be… [disgusted noise] but you know it’s… but I appreciate that, and I think that’s one thing I kind of have to say, that this was not a question that you asked at all, but the reaction to the collection, for the most part, has been really like affirming, because I think a lot of people have these kinds of questions, or have these kinds of thoughts, or, you know, are intrigued by these sorts of things, and I think that knowing that is really like, oh, okay, that kind of — I don’t know, lets some of the pressure off, I think.

Before the book came out I was really nervous about it’s content, I mean, you know there’s a very long content warning at the beginning of the book, and I was like man. I don’t know, this might be too much for a lot of people, and if it is that’s fine. You know what, that’s okay.

I wasn’t so worried about that. I didn’t you know, not release the book. I didn’t change anything or calm down anything like that. But I think it’s affirming for me that that the book connected with so many people, even though it’s it’s pretty extreme, and it’s themes, and just in the the writing itself. So I have found that to be really lovely.

CMR: Yeah, I think that goes back to what you were saying, it’s like a universal thing that people kind of — you know, not everybody?

PDA: Sure, certainly.

CMR: But like, there’s perhaps a group of us.

PDA: Yes. A small group of us you are, you know, just into that sort of thing. Yeah.

CMR: Yeah! Even if we don’t do it to ourselves,

PDA: Correct.

CMR: it’s a cathartic way, I think, and a safe way of using fiction and expressing things through fiction, and like dealing with personal trauma and stuff,

PDA: Sure.

CMR: -through this kind of physical, this fictional depiction of physical suffering or physical changing or physical something. And I think that’s that is the allure of body horror, isn’t it, for a lot of people.

PDA: Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right. I mean it’s just like you said, it’s a safe way to, you know, to explore some of these anxiety that we have, and some of these, you know, experiences that we have as as human beings that we just can’t really articulate well. But you know we can present it in some kind of visualized way that that resonates, you know.

I was watching Possession a couple of weeks ago, and I’d never seen it before. I had never seen Possession with, you know, Sam Neill and Isabella Adjani. You know everybody talks about that scene where she’s in the the subway, and she’s, yeah. If you haven’t seen Possession, you have to. I think it’s on Shudder now. I don’t know if it’s on like, UK Shudder, but I know it was on Shudder in the US, and I was watching it, and it was just like, you know. Trying to explain to somebody what that movie is about is really, really difficult. But there are parts of that movie where I’m like. I get it exactly. I totally understand what that is meant to to represent. I’ve never done those things in real life, but I emotionally, I completely understand what these characters are going through. And that’s just really fascinating, the fascination with any kind of arts or creativity is that it can make sense on some level that you may not be able to, like, verbally or even textually articulate, but like you get it, it makes sense in some way. So.

What Next?

CMR: Yeah. I think that’s a good place to end it, because that’s all we’ve got time for at the minute. [Laughter] I wish [we could go longer]. But. Before we go, is there anything you would like to plug, anything you’ve got coming out this year [2023], anything you already have that you want to reiterate?

PDA: So I do have a story coming up in this collection called This World Belongs To Us, an anthology of horror stories about bugs. My story is about earwigs, because I think they’re so gross. Yeah, they just gross me out. That collection will drop, I believe, mid to late March, from From Beyond Press. It has a fantastic line up of writers. So please be on the lookout for that.

And then, yeah, I mean the best way to to stay in contact with me or just keep up with me is probably via Twitter. Sadly enough. I’m always on Twitter. But yeah, my twitter handle is just @PaulaDAshe. But yeah, so. But thank you so so very much CM, for having me. This has been a lovely conversation.

CMR: Yes, definitely! It would be lovely to have you back and we can talk more insects and body horror and gooey things!

PDA: Yeah!

[Laughter]

CMR: But thank you so much for coming on the show, it’s been fantastic to have you, and best of luck with everything that you’ve got going on.

PDA: Thanks so much, and to you as well.

[Outro: Waltz Primordial – Kevin McLeod]