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Interview with Author C.M. Saunders: Silent Mine

Silent Mine may be a quick, fun read, but it also offers plenty for deeper thought and perhaps more profound shivers, and author C.M. Saunders is here to reveal some of his thoughts about the novella’s well-researched background and larger thematic framework.

Silent Mine

In 1879, Dylan Decker rides his trusty steed Skydance across California in pursuit of a lost man, Thomas Winstanley, whose wife needs to know if she has been jilted or widowed. He was last known to be headed toward a place called Silent Mine and in searching for him, Decker encounters a town full of locals who clam up every time the mine is mentioned, two cutthroat bandits with their own horror stories, and a group of natives who understand what truly lurks in the dark recesses of the mine.

But none of them can deter Decker from keeping his promise to Mrs. Winstanley. He will solve the mystery, regardless of the cost.

Will he survive the horrors in front of him, or will he share the fate of the man he seeks in C.M. Saunders’s action-packed western horror novella, Silent Mine?

Click the pic for more on Amazon!Interview

1. Melding Archetypes. Genres don’t exist without conventions that tell readers you’re in a western or you’re in a horror story, and Silent Mine front-loads the western conventions, starting in in the dusty town where a saloon scene kicks off the action and progressing to bandits and natives. How do you make these conventions your own as well as recognizable yet fresh-feeling experiences for readers? Along the way, you gradually blend in horror conventions, increasing talk of curses and creatures. How natural did the blend feel while writing it, and how jarring should it feel for readers? Dylan Decker doesn’t reach Silent Mine until more than halfway into the story… but at what point should readers feel they’ve passed from standard western territory into a more horrific universe?

CMS: Conventions are important. Not least because they help set the scene, offer a measure of familiarity, and help the reader find a gateway inside the story. That said, western horror is a new genre for me, and I had never even read any until recently. I have dabbled in a lot of things, but until now most of my fiction has veered more toward traditional horror or sci-fi, so there was a lot of experimentation involved to try to find out what worked and what didn’t. My objective was to write a fast-paced, action-packed story readers could get immersed in and finish in one sitting. They should be able to recognize it isn’t your average western pretty early on.

My newfound fascination with western horror is a legacy from the Covid lockdowns and too many hours spent playing the videogame Red Dead Redemption 2. In Silent Mine I wanted to convey that sense of unease and reinforce the idea that anything could happen at any moment, which was probably more prevalent a century ago when so much of the country was still unmapped and day-to-day survival was a lot more difficult. I wasn’t there, obviously, but I imagine people lived in a near-constant state of peril. I deliberately introduce the supernatural elements slowly to give the reader time to adjust, so when the final horror is revealed, they are primed, and hopefully it doesn’t come across as too jarring. At the same time, I wanted to retain an element of realism and not stray too far into the fantastical. That’s where I hope my research and attention to detail will pay dividends.

2. Melding Lores. On his journey, Decker encounters the Chumash, appropriate given his general location, and they give him a folkloric account much richer than the frightening rumors he has heard about Silent Mine. Why did you decide to include this lore in your story? How much research did you do about the Chumash, and does the account in your book have any similarity to their actual lore? In any case, it feels plausible, and later in the story, it resonates with other lore, including Welsh. What inspired this connection?

CMS: Great observations! Yes, I did research the Chumash and their belief system, though I may have used a little artistic license when referencing it in the book. I find it fascinating how many of these ancient civilizations have such similar core beliefs. There is so much crossover it’s almost as if there are invisible threads binding them together. For example, almost every culture has a tradition of little people, or fairy folk, and they are usually said to live underground. Inevitably, cultures with mining traditions have long talked about interactions with these entities. In Devon and Cornwall, they were said to be intrinsically mischievous and often held responsible for missing tools or food, while in Wales they were known as the coblynau, and had a far more sinister reputation. In both cases they were identifiable by the knocking sounds they made underground, and when the first British settlers moved to America those beliefs were transplanted and morphed into The Tommyknockers, which you might recognize from the Stephen King book. By grounding the story in existing folklore, I hoped to make it more convincing. Something similar to the events described in the book actually happening somewhere at some point isn’t completely beyond the realms of possibility. That, I think, adds another layer of authenticity.

Depicting the Chumash as being more open to the supernatural was also deliberate. I’m sure the white settlers had their own superstitions, but they would have been unfamiliar with the land and the legends associated with it. In that environment I think they would have been more pragmatic and focused on material things they could understand. Like gold. They were probably very dismissive of any local folklore they may have come to learn about, partly through an inherent fear of the unknown.

3. Melding Influences. Decker carries a prized copy of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and reflects on having always read science fiction and been “seduced” by “fantastical worlds.” What does his quest to pursue a lost man in a place where more and more people warn him not to go say about the influence of fiction? Did Verne and other writers from the late nineteenth century influence the adventurous spirit of Silent Mine? I suspect other influences… Robert E. Howard? Arthur Machen? Algernon Blackwood? I’m thinking of one story in particular, but perhaps obviously—H.P. Lovecraft? Skipping forward, the film The Descent (2005)? If I scored any hits, how so? Whether or not I did, who/what were your biggest influences, and how?

CMS: I referenced Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea not only because it fit the time frame but also because it was an important book in my own life. Plus, I wanted to use it as a mechanism to hopefully instill something of Dylan’s character in the reader’s mind. In a novella, you don’t have much time to play around. Things must happen quickly, and everything has to be relevant to the story. It’s fun to use little tricks like that. I think the reader might have a completely different impression of Dylan had he been carrying around a copy of Wuthering Heights or Great Expectations. True, Arthur Machen also plays his part in forming Dylan’s character, not least because they both have Welsh blood. Another of those little strings, along with the coblynau of Welsh legend, binding the story together.

Good shout on The Descent! It was definitely a big influence, though I didn’t set out to write an homage. The similarities only became evident later. I loved the claustrophobic feel of the movie and tried to replicate it in the latter stages of Silent Mine. Incidentally, though set in North America, The Descent was filmed in Scotland by Neil Marshall, who also directed Dog Soldiers. I have a penchant for British horror (Howl, Outpost, 28 Days Later, Censor, etc.), I think largely because I relate to the dark humor that often runs through it like an undercurrent. For me, horror and humor often go hand-in-hand. I love the contrast between light and dark, and there are definite moments of absurdity in the Dylan Decker universe.

Taking up your main point, most of my personal influences are literary. MR James, HG Wells, and Jules Verne of course, and I grew up on a steady diet of King, Koontz, and Graham Masterton. I later discovered slightly more ‘out there’ writers like Richard Laymon, Chick Palahniuk, Koji Suzuki, and Jack Ketchum. But perhaps my biggest single influence, especially stylistically, has been yet another Welshman, Roald Dahl. He is usually seen as a children’s writer, but most of his stuff was pretty dark. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being a prime example.

4. Survivalism, Self-Reliance, and Masculinity. I know the film tradition much better than the written one, but when I think of the traditional western (say, up to 1968), I expect the story to address two topics, and Silent Mine hits both. Decker travels alone with his “trusty steed.” To what extent is Decker’s ability to rely on himself a part of his sense of being a man, and to what extent does it reflect his time and culture’s definition of a certain type of manliness? Do you want him to match up with a certain ideal of a rugged frontiersman, or do you think he challenges that ideal? Why might loneliness be a part of manliness? In addition to his horse, some of Decker’s trustiest companions are his Colt and his Winchester. In the western, to what extent do the guns make the man? Decker reflects on not keeping count of the men he’s killed or the women he’s slept with. Is that kind of detachment manly in this context? Why or why not?

CMS: Great question(s). Well, clearly Dylan Decker is very much a man’s man. A stereotypical emotionally detached loner with a huge chip on his shoulder. He tries to do the right thing. Mostly. But other people keep pushing him off course, and he isn’t one to let those things slide. But it’s all done with tongue firmly in cheek. As Silent Mine is the first in a series, I feel I have plenty of time to explore the character and maybe take him out of his comfort zone. The publisher, Undertaker Books, is very progressive, and I’m sure would be open to most things, but this early on, it’s more about setting the scene. It was a very different time in the Wild West, and I think the book had to reflect many of those ideals. But once certain tropes are embedded in the reader’s mind, it might be fun to play with them a little and see how far I can push the envelope.

The weaponry plays a huge role in the book. In that time guns and knives were essential survival tools but were often also kind of status symbols. Your choice of weapon also says something about the kind of person you are, I think. For example, using a Winchester rifle might suggest the character is rational and reasonable, though at the same time is no stranger to violence and wants to be prepared for any eventuality. On the other hand, to go into every situation brandishing a double-barreled shotgun would probably mark you down as irresponsible and uninhibited. Another reason I wanted to highlight the Winchester is as a nod to the Winchester Mystery House in California, built on the proceeds of gun sales and, according to Sarah Winchester, widow of William Wirt Winchester, haunted by the spirits of those it had killed.

A few years ago, I wrote a book called Human Waste, about a survivalist faced with a zombie apocalypse, which sort of pokes fun at the whole concept of preparedness. The twist was that there was no zombie apocalypse, which seemed to go over a lot of people’s heads. Something in this guy’s mind had snapped, and he started seeing zombies instead of humans and giant alien insects instead of SO19 (British equivalent of SWAT) teams. The crux of the story was that he had been prepping all his life, he just didn’t know what he was prepping for, and when no reason presented itself, his deranged mind invented one because otherwise all that time and energy would have been wasted. You have to trust your readers to draw their own conclusions, and sometimes, for whatever reason, they draw the wrong ones.

5. Survivalism, Self-Reliance, and American Identity. Whether American, Italian, or otherwise, the traditional western also addresses American identity as it formed during white America’s western expansionist period, which Silent Mine also does not neglect. As a character, how does Dylan Decker relate to the traditional western hero? His survivalist skills and instincts, along with the aforementioned self-reliance, fit at least a certain profile of what are touted as American virtues. Does your story celebrate these virtues? Why or why not? The story does represent a Chumash perspective on Decker’s quest to reach Silent Mine, which to them seems like the quest of yet another white man plunging foolishly into things he doesn’t understand. As a post-1968 western horror story, do you think your western is more willing to admit critical perspectives on American identity? Why or why not?

CMS: You picked up on so much! Regarding the attitudes of the Chumash, I really tried to put myself in their shoes. How would I feel if an outsider suddenly turned up on my doorstep, ignored well-intended advice, and ran headlong into a situation he couldn’t even comprehend? And for what? Money? In Dylan’s case, it isn’t even that. He is driven by this overbearing sense of doing the right thing. Or what he considers is the right thing. Which, of course, is subjective. Basically, it’s about his ego. And that self-reliance. Going steaming in is such a silly, gung-ho, but typically male thing to do, and I imagine the Indigenous people were quite jaded by it all and probably spent a lot of time walking around shaking their heads in disbelief. I tried to flip the script a little with the role Nina, the young Chumash girl, plays. Without giving too much away, Dylan ends up deeply indebted to her. I couldn’t make it too obvious, but it was my hope that readers would be astute enough to realize how much that must affect someone like Dylan. Not only is she native American, and female, but she is also younger and physically smaller than he is, but in the final showdown, none of these perceived weaknesses matter.

Regarding American identity, as an eighties kid my interpretation of it is very much influenced by movies like Rocky and TV shows like Magnum PI and Miami Vice. If you look back at my list of literary influences, they are mostly American, and most of my favourite musical artists (Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Green Day) come from the same place. As an outsider watching on from across the pond, in my mind being American meant you stood for noble causes and were blessed with certain inherent traits, such as resilience, resourcefulness, a sense of justice, all the things I bestowed upon Dylan Decker. But these positive elements only represent one side of the human character, regardless of where you come from, and this is something Dylan has to reconcile.

6. The Senses. Especially once Decker reaches the mine, your book pays a significant amount of attention to senses other than sight, especially smells (rot is pervasive and disgusting) and sounds (dripping water, what might be voices or screams). Why is employing a fuller sensorium so important for your story? Even if they have never experienced anything like what Decker smells, do you think readers will be able to smell along with Decker? Why or why not? As for sound, it becomes an integral part of the horror, as in The Descent or the more recent A Quiet Place (2018) and its sequels. Those examples are films, though. How do you create suspense and horror with sound in writing?

CMS: Again, well spotted! I think writers simply describing what their characters see is an overused technique. It is effective, yes, but it’s also lazy. That was one reason I wanted most of the action to take place either at night or deep in the darkness of mine, where visibility would be limited. It forced me to be more creative in my sensory descriptions, and it forced the reader to pick up on non-visual clues. From a technical perspective, I think the moment you say it is dark, you are more-or-less clueing the reader in and asking them to be prepared for less conventional elucidation. You are throwing down a gauntlet, and at the same time picking it up and running with it.

7. “The retribution of the universe.” At one point, Decker worries about what I have quoted—the idea that he might face cosmic comeuppance, and perhaps the trip to Silent Mine is it. This idea resonates with the idea of a curse that characterizes Silent Mine from the beginning. In the universe of your story, how serious is the possibility of a curse, be it a big one like the one that could afflict Silent Mine or a more personal one like the one that might be on Decker’s head? If, in your universe, monsters might be real, might curses be real? Other cosmic forces? Forces as big as Fate?

CMS: The notion of a curse stems from Dylan’s sense of guilt. Though he tries to be a good man, as I touched on previously, the concepts of “good” and “bad” are subjective. and he lives in constant fear of being punished for the bad things he has done or been forced to do. I don’t know how well it comes across, but Dylan has essentially rejected conventional religion but acknowledges that there are forces at work in the universe. Fate, destiny, karma, luck, whatever you want to call it. This mirrors my own philosophy and is something I intend to explore more thoroughly in later books.

8. The Horrific Sunset. In our correspondence, you mentioned that Silent Mine is the first in a planned series of western horror stories. What can you tell us about where you’re going next? I won’t spoil whether Decker survives Silent Mine, but you could always write prequels—will Decker appear again? Though you give it a nice twist, the cursed mine seems like a classic kickoff for a western-centered series—what other horrors do you have in mind?

CMS: The Dylan Decker books will each be set in the same universe and feature the same central character, though each will be written as a standalone. The reason for this is that I want to make them more accessible. The reader will be able to pick up any Dylan Decker book and find a complete story with a beginning, a middle, and a satisfying conclusion. There may be an odd Easter egg or reference to other stories, but there won’t be any requirement to read the other parts. With a lot of series out there, you are expected to read X, Y and Z in order, and it’s a big commitment. I wanted to strip it right back and write a series of fast-paced, tension-filled stories in the tradition of the old pulp fiction books.

Another sort-of installment, a short story called “A Christmas Cannibal,” is already out on Undertaker Books. This, you might deduce, is a Christmas-themed story. In fact, you can deduce a lot from that title, but it shouldn’t affect the reader’s enjoyment. When his horse Skydance is stolen, and Dylan is left for dead in the wintery badlands, he follows the thief’s tracks to a nearby town which is in full festive swing. Let’s just say this time, Dylan may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Click for the free download at Undertaker Books!

Later in the year, another Dylan Decker release is scheduled, again on Undertaker Books. Titled Meeting at Blood Lake, it’s about a town under siege from a flying cryptid in the Thunderbird/Mothman vein.

The potential for future books is endless. I like melding truth and fiction and riffing off already-established concepts, either rooted in folklore or documented history. I would love to pit Dylan against a werewolf or vampire, or maybe send him to somewhere like Skinwalker Ranch.

9. Going West. Also in our correspondence, you signaled that this book is a bit of a departure for you, and I can see from your many horror successes that the western part is the departure. What made you decide to go west? Although we’ve implicitly addressed some of the differences, what’s similar between writing the western elements and other writing you’ve done, and which of your earlier publications show those similarities most clearly? In other words, if readers love Silent Mine, where should they go next?

CMS: The aforementioned Human Waste springs to mind, which has many of the same elements. Except with less horses and better weapons. Another recent book of mine, The Wretched Bones, also has similarities in the sense that it features a lone protagonist with a traumatic backstory on a quest for answers. In this case he is a paranormal investigator who lives in a mobile home with a stray cat who gets called in to investigate an exclusive retreat where people tend to have a lot of accidents.

But perhaps the most similar in terms of a fast-paced, bloody read is Dead of Night, which is about a young couple who go on a camping weekend and end up fighting off an army of undead confederate bushwhackers. In fact, it’s so similar I have been thinking of writing an origin story using Dylan Decker’s character.

10. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

https://cmsaunders.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/CMSaunders01

https://www.facebook.com/CMSaunders01

https://undertakerbooks.com/blogs/signed-authors/c-m-saunders

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0034QAX0E

About the Author

Chris Saunders, who writes fiction as C.M. Saunders, is a writer and editor from New Tredegar, Wales. After teaching English in China for several years, he worked extensively in the publishing industry, holding desk jobs ranging from staff writer to associate editor, and is currently employed at a trade publication. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, ezines and anthologies around the world including The Literary Hatchet, Crimson Streets, 34 Orchard, Phantasmagoria, Burnt Fur, and DOA volumes I and III, while his books have been both traditionally and independently published. His latest release is the horror western Silent Mine on Undertaker Books.

The post Interview with Author C.M. Saunders: Silent Mine appeared first on L. Andrew Cooper's Horrific Scribblings.

Interview with Author Chuck Nasty: Lot Lizard Stew

Touching on the art of the kill scene, the importance of bodily fluids, and the urgency of marijuana legalization, Chuck Nasty shares some of his recipe for Lot Lizard Stew.

Lot Lizard Stew

Albert Ridgeway is an asshole. He’s also a trucker with a sketchy past and an unhealthy addiction to raping and killing prostitutes at truck stops. These ladies of the night are known as lot lizards. After having his fun, he feeds the fresh meat to two double-headed, mutant alligators.

After a tragic run-in with Albert that left two of her loved ones dead, Julie is able to get away. Hoping to find help, she quickly realizes she has to take matters into her own hands.

Click the pic for more on Amazon!The Interview

1. Profiling Albert (Al) Ridgeway.

LAC: Introduce us to Al, where’s he’s coming from, and the kind of guy he is.

CN: We all knew that one guy in school who always had a bad attitude. Never could play nice or work well with others, unless he was running the show and did things his way or nothing…that’s Al Ridgeway. He’s a filthy bastard who likes to have a good time doing very bad things, and when those things are stalled, he sees red and slightly goes off the deep end. Sadly, he’s a metaphor for what can happen when parents don’t parent and expose their children to an X-rated world.

LAC: What would he be like to hang out with on a Friday night?

CN: Hanging out with Al on a Friday night would be dangerous. I’d say it would start out with smoking large amounts of cannabis and gulping down shots of whiskey, chugging beers the whole time. The night would probably progress into chaos that would most likely involve unspeakable acts of some sort.

2. Comic Sadism?

LAC: The idea of people like Al and his accomplices doing what they do is intrinsically scary, but am I a bad person if my primary emotional reaction to their bloody antics is bemusement (complete with chuckles)? Why or why not?

CN: Does it make someone a bad person for laughing at something they found humorous? Not at all. It’s in the context of why something is funny to someone that makes them a bad person. If someone can laugh at something dark and think, “I really shouldn’t laugh at that,” then they probably aren’t that shitty of a human and have somewhat of a conscience. However, if someone can laugh at something horrendous and not have the inner dialogue of “Maybe I shouldn’t laugh at that,” then most likely they are cold and heartless, and people should flee from them as soon as they can. Ha!

3. Misogyny and Queerphobia.

LAC: Al has some less funny… problems… with other people. His biggest issue is with women, who usually appear in the book as objects for fucking or killing, often both. Why is his hatred of “lot lizards” so pervasive? The book points toward his mother as a possible answer—would you be Freudian enough to say that he keeps fucking and punishing his mother over and over again?

CN: It’s not so much that he hates “lot lizards” or women in general, really. Like most big bullies, he usually chooses to make who he sees as “weak” his targets. With any villain that has a backstory such as his, rooted in parental abuse and witnessing all the wrong ways to treat someone, he knows no real other way to be. Raping and killing, then throwing someone away like trash, it’s kind of all he knows. The evil is ingrained in him from day one. To say there is something Freudian about Al’s dirty activities, maybe there is, but mainly, he just thrives on having control and being an inebriated asshole.

LAC: In addition to the misogyny, there’s some odd queerphobia, including deeply unsettled feelings surrounding a sexual experience Al has involving a gender misread and Al’s sidekick Joey repeatedly worrying about having to suck cock. Why are these phobias important to the characters?

CN: I have to make it known that I don’t usually know what is going to happen before I sit down and start typing. I have ideas, but those always change when I actually am doing the deed. So, when it came to the scene you are referring to with the misgendering, knowing the type of nasty fella Al is and how he gets when his plans get foiled, how would he act if the “lizard” he picked up wasn’t the gender he was expecting? I would say it would go as violently and senselessly as it does in that scene. As for Joey and his phobia of having to suck a dick, he’s the weakling of the crew. He is the one who is easily messed with. Seeing the vile life he and his “friends” lead, the bullying is more aggressive and hurtful. Not to mention, since they are all pieces of shit, the fear of having to do that for punishment seems like a legit fear to have. Thus, why we must choose our company we keep very carefully.

4. Pornoviolence, Porn, and Violence.

LAC: Most extreme horror is at least somewhat episodic, as the kill scenes are strong components that often take on lives of their own. Especially in the first half, Lot Lizard Stew builds the larger story around alternating episodes of explicit sex and explicit violence, with some sex and violence occurring simultaneously. To what extent are you deliberately juggling types of scenes to keep your audience gratified?

CN: When it comes to the sex, the book is called Lot Lizard Stew. Since a “lot lizard” is a sex worker who mainly creeps around rest areas and truck stops looking for a client or a John, as they are mainly called, sex is an obvious. When it comes to the sexual violence, a sad truth is, that kind of thing happens in reality all the time when prostitution is a factor. I like for the reader to understand how bad a character may be, and I’ll use whatever imagery I see fit to show that. And again, these scenes aren’t usually things that come to me before I sit down to work, they just pop in when a story is getting heated in some way.

LAC: Do you feel like parts of the book qualify as erotica?

CN: I don’t. No. In order for something to be erotica, there needs to be a point where the sex is passionate and at times loving with maybe some kinks here and there. A book like this one has none of that. The sex in this book is repulsive and meant to anger the reader. And when I say meant to anger, I mean, I want you to remember that regardless of the humor, Al and his buddies are pieces of shit.

5. The Art of Variation.

LAC: Speaking of the kill scenes, one of extreme horror’s artistic challenges is keeping them fresh, establishing variation to keep readers satisfied while staying within the logic of the story. Lot Lizard Stew has a LOT of kills. What do you do to avoid repeating yourself?

CN: I’m a firm believer that anything can be something horrible. In the case of ways to take a life, the ideas are endless. A lot of times I just think of where the scene is taking place and think of what may be around that can be used. If the scene is taking place in a familiar spot, just think of what else could be in that killer’s reach and think of the most violent and depraved ways they can use those instruments.

LAC: I’ve assumed something so far, but I want your take: is the kill scene a form of art?

CN: In ways, yes. Pretty fucked up art form. Ha! But, yeah, the ways to kill are endless, and the more creative someone can be is something the reader looks for. It’s the same reason we watch Friday the 13th films, to see how Jason will kill next. Art is something that is desired, and we, the horror fans, want the red in any sadistic form it can be given to us.

6. Piss and Other Effluvia.

LAC: Why is there so much piss in Lot Lizard Stew? Not just people pissing on each other, but people just randomly going off to relieve themselves, explicitly. In addition to piss, we get a fair amount of semen, non-negligible squirts of spit, farts with bonuses, and the perhaps more expected sprays of vomit and buckets of blood. Why does human liquid belong in horror?

CN: Great question. I guess, when it comes to hardcore horror (extreme and splatterpunk), disgust is a necessity. It’s a big reason why people read it. Not just for the fecal matter or urine draining, but for the gross-out in general. Any time there is a moment where something disgusting or rude can occur, it most likely will.

LAC: Why don’t more stories feature so much human liquid?

CN: Oh, there are many that do. Especially in the hardcore horror world. Hell, there are stories and books written where human liquid is the main basis for the story.

LAC: Does all this human liquid have something to do with body horror?

CN: That’s a fair assumption, honestly. The human body is at the center of these horribly grotesque and fun stories we read and write. Without the gore that rests in each of us and the many liquids waiting to be shot from whatever orifice, the genre would be much different. It would be trees getting stabbed or some shit. Ha! So, yes, body horror in ways, and the liquids are needed Ha!

LAC: Speaking of liquids, without spoilers, what can you tell us about the mystery liquid, that purplish ooze, that’s such a feature in your novel’s stew?

CN: The mystery liquid is a few things. Being a substance with many different psychoactive effects, in ways, it’s a metaphor for hard drugs. Some drugs don’t have all of the same effects on one person that they have on another. Also, the mystery liquid is something that will be making many appearances in future releases.

7. Reefer Madness.

LAC: Al mostly avoids other drugs due to childhood trauma, but he and his accomplices smoke huge amounts of weed. What does all the pot-smoking say about the characters?

CN: The cannabis use throughout the book doesn’t say much, really. We have a cast of characters who come from the South who like to get “Off the frame”. Two of the main things people like in the South, things that aren’t the harder stuff, are booze and bud. How do I know this? Many years of research. Ha!

LAC: What do frequent pauses for the enjoyment of blunts and joints add to the overall feeling of Lot Lizard Stew?

CN: Mainly they show that regardless of the despicable acts characters are performing on people, they still make sure to catch a buzz in between. Shows how humans can act when doing inhumane things, honestly. Think about it. Hardcore smokers will blaze up before and during anything, doesn’t really matter what. The question is, what do murderers do while waiting for it to be time to do what they do again? In this case, drink beer and smoke weed. There’s a part where the gators are chasing around two women in the pit–what are the villains doing? Watching while ingesting shots of whiskey, lots of beer and tons of weed and commenting like sportscasters.

LAC: Should marijuana be legalized—or completely banned again—across the U.S.?

CN: As the one given the nickname, The Stoner Gore King, I say cannabis should be legalized all across the board. I am so tired of people who fail to do research or focus on what facts are when it comes to the power of the herbs. It’s been proven to help with many illnesses (I have Crohn’s disease, and it’s the only thing that has ever, EVER calmed my pains). Living in Kentucky, we are about to go medical, however, because people want to bitch and moan about anything they don’t understand, we aren’t allowed to legally have flower yet, only edibles and things not able to be smoked. America needs to get the corn cob from its ass. So many states have gone recreational, and there are reasons for that. Many good reasons: it creates jobs, helps with sickness, lowers crime rates, and all of that and more has already been proven many times over by the states that have been recreational for a while. Sorry for the rant. I am quite passionate about this topic.

8. Freaks of Nature, Freaks of Nurture.

LAC: As the description at the beginning of this interview highlights, double-headed mutant alligators are at the heart of the story, but ideas about freaks don’t seem to stop there. Characters use the word “freak” to describe themselves and each other several times, and after the novel shows more of the people and area around Al’s home base, nearly every local male seems to be a freakish sexual predator. Why the focus on freaks?

CN: Part of the fun of writing hardcore horror is coming up with interesting characters, and some of those characters are despicable. The despicable ones are usually in some kind of “freak” category, be it in a sexual sense or in a behavioral manner. Them recognizing that what they do is fucked-up just adds to the sinister aspect of their personalities. When it comes to the two-headed gators, one could see them as the type of “freak” that knows no better, just does what they do based on instinct and environment.

9. Profiling Julie.

LAC: As the description above indicates, Julie is “the one who got away.” Introduce us to Julie. Did you model her on the classic Final Girl?

CN: In ways, I did. I have a few stories and books out that have very strong female final girls. When I write a character like Julie, I always have a couple of female film characters in mind. Barbara from the Tom Savini remake of Night of the Living Dead, Lt. Ripley from the Alien franchise and Sarah Connor from the Terminator films. There are many more strong female roles in horror and sci-fi, but those are the three that come to mind when creating a badass female character. Funny thing is, Julie wasn’t supposed to be a final girl. There was actually a male character that I scrapped early on. This was due to seeing where the story was going. A bunch of pigheaded, horrible excuses for men causing misery on women… yeah, there needs to be a woman to kick some ass. That change happened as I wrote Julie. I was about to have her lose her head, and then I saw her attitude and thought, “Nah, she isn’t the type to give up, and she’s going to be the one to bring justice and be an all-around pain to the bad guys.” Ha!

Barbara from Night of the Living Dead (1990) Ripley from Aliens (1986) Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 (1991)

10. Access!

LAC: How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

CN: My Facebook page CHUCK NASTY is the best place to see what I am up to or to reach me.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/chuck-nasty/author/B0C959H5LV

And Unveiling Nightmares Press, which is going through some changes and the site is down at the moment.

About the Author

Chuck Nasty is a resident of Whirlin’ Sterlin’, Kentucky. He has one of his stories in the first issue of the comic book Tales of Shock and Terror as well as a few stories in Any Last Words Magazine. When he isn’t writing pure horror and disgust, he plays drums and does vocals for the band Bastard Sons of a Judas Goat. Being one who likes to talk, he also has three podcasts: Nasty Nation, Graveyard Talk and Video Store Clerks Podcast.

The post Interview with Author Chuck Nasty: Lot Lizard Stew appeared first on L. Andrew Cooper's Horrific Scribblings.

Interview with Author Patrick C. Harrison III: Queen Boss Slay

Patrick C. Harrison III’s plan for his latest Pocket Nasty Queen Boss Slay not to be taken too seriously doesn’t keep it from being provocative. In this interview, he discusses how he put together his unusual main character’s perspective and, with it, a peculiar and entertaining read.

Queen Boss Slay

Sara is a working gal.
She deals in pain and pleasure.
The tools of her trade are… varied.
Men are her clients.
And Sara doesn’t like men.
She has her reasons.
She has a process.
And she’s ready to show you how it’s done.

Click the pic for more on Amazon!The Interview

1. The Female Gaze. Especially when referring to horror film, people often talk about “the male gaze,” the point of view that determines what and how people see in a way that fundamentally empowers men and objectifies women. Horror’s male gaze typically belongs to a sadistic voyeur, someone who enjoys watching women get brutalized. One of Queen Boss Slay’s central projects seems to be to create the written equivalent of a female gaze, as Sara’s point of view dominates, and she objectifies and brutalizes men. Do you agree? Why or why not? What are the main components of Sara’s point of view, and how did you feel writing it? How might readers feel seeing men from Sara’s perspective? How might readers feel seeing through Sara’s eyes in general?

PC3: I guess I’ve never really heard of the male gaze trope. Certainly, no consideration of creating a female gaze went into my thinking, though it’s obviously written from the perspective of a female character doing terrible things. I think readers will see Sara’s perspective as demented and dripping with rage, though also somewhat logical at points, with nuggets of hard truths. I hope readers mostly see her thoughts of the world as absurd, if not comical. The book—and Sara by extension—was not meant to be taken seriously in any way.

2. Looking through the Female Gaze. Putting a woman’s perspective in the center and experimenting with giving her the power of the gaze typically reserved for men in horror is arguable praiseworthy, but as a man (I’m drawing conclusions from your pronouns), do you have the right to do it? How do you have the authority to represent female authority? What gives you insight into empowered femininity? For example, in a passage about women as sexual creatures, you write that women are “just as libidinous as men, if not more so.” While I know women who’d agree—and this belief was widely held until a couple of centuries ago—it’s still a controversial statement. Do you feel comfortable saying it on behalf of women in general? Why or why not?

PC3: Let me state the obvious first: Queen Boss Slay is a work of fiction. I didn’t write an essay on how women think or should think, and I don’t claim authority over anything aside from, hopefully, being able to make readers occasionally laugh, cringe, and retch. That being said, you ask if I have the right to write from a woman’s perspective, but it’s actually more than that. As an author, I have an obligation to write from perspectives I might not fully understand, whether writing about different genders or races or sexual orientations or whatever. It’s my job to crawl around in those areas and make sense of them and mold interesting characters out of what I discover on my quest. Whether the traits I’ve given the characters fit nicely into a reader’s perception of what that individual should represent in the real world is irrelevant. Does the character fit nicely into the story? Is the character interesting? Do they make you laugh or gasp or smile? An author shouldn’t be compelled to write only characters like themselves, but characters who are complex and interesting, and characters who may be wholly different than their creator. I agree with what Joe Lansdale said regarding a question of why he writes black and gay characters: “Because I don’t believe in segregated fiction where one group only writes about their group and no one can make an appearance that isn’t of your group.” (Check his Facebook post from February 11, 2023 for more on this and other questions—great read!)

3. Misandry. As the description above says, Sara doesn’t like men. She generally seems to view us as idiotic “ballbags.” While I don’t know that I’d be up for another smorgasbord of misogyny like American Psycho (though I think that book is brilliant), I must admit I found the focused misandry in Queen Boss Slay rather refreshing. To what extent did you set out to write an antidote to the piles and piles of representations of misogynistic killers in horror fiction? How serious is Sara’s denigration of all men? Do your representations of men critique masculinity? Why or why not?

PC3: This question requires the origin story of why QBS was written. Sara appears at the end of my book 100% Match. In the last chapter of that book, we see what she is, how diabolical she is. We don’t know why, and we don’t know anything of her back story because that story was not the narrator’s to tell. When 100% Match was written, I thought the story was over for Bart (the narrator) and Sara. But the story quickly became my bestselling book, and one review after another was asking for a sequel. So, I thought on that. Sara needed her own story, I decided, one completely separate from the book that birthed her. So, to answer the first question, in no way at all did I set out to write some kind of female response to misogynistic killers; I just had to continue the story, and this was the logical way to do it in my mind. When you ask how serious Sara’s denigration of men is, I’m not attempting to make some overarching criticism of men or masculinity. Her disgust for men in general, whatever her reason, is merely the tool carrying the story forward. Though I give many reasons, false or otherwise, why she does what she does, there’s no critique of my own that should be taken seriously. It’s a means to an end, I suppose.

4. Vengeful Spirit. How much should the sense that Sara is turning the tables on men, putting them in the victim positions usually reserved for women in horror, make the horror more fun? Does Sara’s edge of vengeance make her actions more morally acceptable? Why or why not? Since Sara often refers to early-life trauma, particularly rape, related to her present-day activities, your story seems connected to the rape-revenge tradition in horror film and fiction. How would you relate Queen Boss Slay to a film such as I Spit on Your Grave (1978) or a book such as Monica O’Rourke’s Suffer the Flesh?

PC3: I love a good revenge story. Kill Bill, Death Wish, Payback—man, those are fun! I Spit on Your Grave is exactly the type of connection I want readers to make with QBS, up until that kinda gets turned on its head. I want readers to be appalled by the things Sara does, but also have a sense of understanding, like men as a whole deserve her wrath after what she’s been through. She’s an antihero, by god, fighting for all women because of her history of trauma! Or is she the villain? I’ll let the reader decide for themselves. As far as Suffer the Flesh, nothing else I’ve ever read or written relates in a substantive way to that masterpiece of depravity.

5. Misogyny? While Sara openly advertises her hatred of men, she shows more than a little disapproval of women. Why are the hypocritical church ladies important to Sara and important to the story? In addition to showing examples of women who seem like they might be as loathsome as men, you devote some pages to the quickly-becoming-classic “the man or the bear?” debate that asks whether, if encountering one while alone in the wild, a woman should choose to confront a man or a bear (incidentally, I also discussed this topic with Kenzie Jennings in a recent interview). The feminist-leaning answer is the bear. Sara finds this answer absurd—does she also find the women who answer that way absurd? Why or why not? Do you agree with her? Why or why not?

PC3: I think while Sara sees men as the preeminent problem in society, she sees herself as the only real antidote capable of combating the system. She views other women as weak enablers, allowing men to ascend to their status at the helm by sheer submissiveness and lack of action. Interestingly, in that scene where the bear question is posed, Sara is talking with a woman who shares the same basic beliefs as herself regarding men. Sara simply believes she knows what to do about it, while the other girl is ignorant and weak. As an aside, judging by my reviews as a whole, probably 75% of my readership are women. When I completed QBS—with all the crazy, repulsive, depraved things within the story—it was this scene that most worried me regarding pushback from those readers. I thought there was a real possibility folks might call for my head over a few paragraphs of fiction. But I kept it in there because it was exactly how Sara’s character would respond to the bear question. And, besides a few reviews, no one seems to have cared much.

6. Showing Us How. When you write about Sara addressing her online audience, she addresses that audience, but you also break the fourth wall and have her address readers. Why? As the description above indicates, Sara at least behaves as if what she does has an instructional dimension. Why does she feel driven to teach, and what exactly does she hope her students will learn? At one point she concedes that much of her audience is male… is she addressing the men, too? Why or why not? If what she does is instructional within the story, is your story instructional? If so, what are you teaching and why?

PC3:100% Match is much the same way in how the reader is along for the ride, experiencing everything in present tense as the character goes through their routine. From the beginning, I wanted to make QBS a How to of sorts, in part to distinguish it from 100% Match. I actually ended up removing a lot of the instructional content because I thought it was getting in the way of the story. I’m not sure why Sara is compelled to teach. In my mind, I kinda saw it as someone (the reader, presumably) asked her about her lifestyle, so she’s bringing this person along to show them the ropes. I don’t know that she believes “much” of her audience is men, but she certainly knows some are. I think she addresses the men in the audience—you included, Andrew—with a roll of the eyes and a middle finger. I thought of having her mention at some point how disgusted she was about a man (me) writing her story, but it just didn’t work out on the page the way I saw it in my head.

7. Livestreaming. Perhaps because I’ve written extreme tales involving cameras, too, I’ve asked a couple of authors, and now I’m asking you—why do you think videos and streaming images are so prominent in extreme horror? Sara streams the highlights of her depraved activities online for eager viewers. What does her practice say about exhibitionism, and what does her audience’s eagerness say about voyeurism? Are horror authors similarly exhibitionistic with our depraved imaginings, and are horror consumers similarly voyeuristic with their eagerness for extremes? Why or why not?

PC3: These are really interesting questions. There certainly is no shortage of livestreaming/video torture stories. In fact, Home Video by Matt Shaw was one of the first extreme horror books I read. I think this subgenre of a subgenre is so prevalent, in part, because we now live in a world where what was once taboo is now easily accessible with a few clicks. When I was a kid, porn wasn’t something you could see on a daily basis. The first porn I saw was a crumpled Hustler magazine I found in a lunchbox in the middle of a field. Now it’s everywhere. You can look at porn on X, for Christ’s sake. And then there’s OnlyFans, which was kinda the inspiration for what Sara does. What’s interesting, and horrifying, is that there undoubtedly really are people who watch or want to watch the types of things Sara does. Why? I’ll leave it to the psychologists and sociologists to figure out, but there is a certain segment of the population that desires to see what shouldn’t be seen. Has your Instagram algorithm ever gotten to where it’s only showing you people getting hit by cars or mauled by animals? Like, I don’t want to see that shit! But… I also kinda do. Extreme horror and splatterpunk play much the same way. So many readers of such works say they’ve had to put the book down for a while, that a certain scene made them nauseated or upset. But why did they pick the book back up if it made them feel that way? Pure curiosity? To see how far the writer would go? To prove to themselves they can get through it? On that topic, I end my novella Grandpappy with a subtle shoutout to the reader, through the narrator’s voice, expressing self-admiration for making it “through Grandpappy.” It is an accomplishment, I suppose.

8. BDSM. Your cover suggests BDSM, and at one point Sara calls herself “The baddest BDSM bitch in the land!” Why is BDSM part of Sara’s self-image? How do her activities relate to BDSM outside of fiction? How thin is the line between getting off on domination and pain and getting off on injury and death?

PC3: This aspect of Sara was introduced at the end of 100% Match. As I said previously, initially, there was no sequel planned. But when I decided to go for it, I had to roll with what Sara was, a demented dominatrix. I think Sara is indifferent to BDSM and kink, but it offers her an easy way to dominate men. Many of them willfully come to her to be dominated. She is more than happy to oblige. Though there are certainly people who are attracted to the D/s lifestyle and power dynamic, I don’t think any of Sara’s activities relate at all to real-world BDSM. As someone who has spent time in the kink community, I can say that trust is everything and equal power between the ‘D’ and the ‘s’ is very important. And the line between getting off on domination and pain versus injury/death is so expansive it cannot be measured. There is no relation.

9. Pocket Nasties. Queen Boss Slay is second in your series of Pocket Nasties, following the successful 100% Match, which I haven’t yet had a chance to read, but you told me it is loosely related. I had no trouble following Queen Boss Slay as a standalone, but I’m curious—without spoilers, can you tell me and readers starting out like me about the connections? Also, what are your plans for upcoming volumes in the series? What characters, themes, or ideas are likely to reappear? Is there anything nasty you wouldn’t do?

PC3: As I said previously, 100% Match is told in a similar style—first person, present tense, spoken to the reader in a comedic fashion. But it’s wholly different. Far less graphic. It doesn’t even contain profanity, and I see it more as a black comedy than a horror story. The plot follows a man named Bart, a thirty-something burger flipper in search of his perfect match. He’s obsessed with compiling statistics that will help him attain his goal of finding his true love. He’s also very awkward, in the worst of ways. And he just might be a serial killer. Sara from QBS comes into Bart’s life as one of his love interests, and things don’t exactly go as planned. For the upcoming Pocket Nasties, there will not be a connection from one story to the next, at least not with the next few. They’re going to be extreme horror/splatterpunk stories meant to do what those genres are meant to do—shock and appall, and occasionally make one think. The next one is called Firecracker Kings, a previously published story that I have expanded. Following closely after that, a tale named Panty Mail. If I don’t get canceled for that one, I have a couple more loaded and ready to write.

10. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

PC3: I’m most active on Facebook. I also have a substack titled PC3 Horror, where I do movie reviews and keep subscribers updated on new releases. All of my books can be found on Amazon, and I also sell my books on Etsy, along with vintage books of all types. I’d also like to let any of your readers who are not extreme horror fans know that I write non-extreme stuff as well. In fact, my latest release is an anthology of middle grade/quiet horror I curated, titled Ghosts Are Real and There’s a Monster In Your Closet.

About the Author

Patrick C. Harrison III (PC3, if you prefer) is an author of horror, splatterpunk, and all forms of speculative fiction. He has written over a dozen books, including 100% Match, Grandpappy, Vampire Nuns Behind Bars, and Queen Boss Slay, and his short stories can be found in numerous anthologies. PC3 lives in Wolfe City, Texas with his family and their loving doggo—Nora.

The post Interview with Author Patrick C. Harrison III: Queen Boss Slay appeared first on L. Andrew Cooper's Horrific Scribblings.

Interview with Author RJ Roles: Necronado and 2-fur-1 Fluffybutt Tales

Horror community standout RJ Roles talks about the many special ingredients he twists together in his zombie horror novel Necronado and then examines the dark charms in two of his tales/tails of the inimitable feline Mr. Fluffybutt.

Necronado

The sleepy town of Lordsland is rocked by a baffling storm, leaving the residents mystified by its origins.

As the day progresses, an insidious evil leaves the entire town scrambling in a battle against the newly awakened dead.

Part Necro, Part Nado: All Death and Destruction.

Who will live, and who will join the shambling horde of undead?

Click the pic for more on Amazon!

2-fur-1 Fluffybutt Tales

A brand new back-to-back book for your reading enjoyment.

In “Devil On My Shoulder,” Lucifer’s wife nags him to go start the apocalypse, toward which he is accompanied by his faithful companion, Mr. Fluffybutt. Will they succeed in their mission? Why must they go to Ohio? And ask yourself, Who is the devil on the devil’s shoulder?

“Mr. Fluffybutt Saves the World” is a “tail” about when a hankering for tacos goes wrong. Tasked with catching up on work around Hell, Lucifer has to let Mr. Fluffybutt find other avenues when he wants to throw down for some tacos. After he enlists Randy, the unlikely duo are roped into a world-ending plot. Can they stop the mastermind aiming to destroy humanity? Why can Randy see and talk to Mr. Fluffybutt when everyone else can’t? Do they get the tacos?!

Limited availability! Click the pic!

The Interview

Necronado

1. Part Nado. Other Nados? We’ll get more into movies in a moment, but your title and premise—though I would argue, generally not your attitude—echo, um, the overnight camp film classic Sharknado (2013). Is this echo intentional? If so, in what ways is Necronado like Sharknado? If not, what do you think of the echo? The echo makes me question your book’s tone, whether and when you’re being tongue-in-cheek. How serious is Necronado? Should readers be on the lookout for irony? Why or why not? Jake, one of the main characters if not the main character, is a writer, and writers in stories often signal a kind of narrative self-consciousness. If that’s the case here, what kind of self-consciousness does Jake represent?

RJR: With Sharknado, I wouldn’t say any echoing was intentional since I’ve never seen it or any of its many, many sequels. My title and the story’s premise came from a conversation I had with a friend about a tornado pulling up bones from buried pets around his yard. As for the shifting in tones, I feel that’s just life, right? Any given situation will elicit a mix of emotions from people, and as a writer I tried to live in the characters’ heads and give their honest reactions to what was going on around them. But how serious is Necronado? I would say equal parts silly and serious right up until the end (IYKYK). Touching on irony, I think that’s definitely built into my personality and comes through in my writing. Hopefully the reader picks up on it and understands what’s happening when they go to read it. Jake the writer is definitely struggling when the book starts. He needs to provide for his family, and the only way he’s going to do that is to write his next masterpiece to sell. I feel that’s something any writer struggles with, despite where they are in their career. Is it worth it? Am I any good? Am I just wasting my time with all of this? What if everyone hates this? These are some of the things that enter a writer’s mind a lot of the times when they’re struggling, and they turn inward to try and work it out. Jake is just an on-page manifestation of myself, and many others, in that way.

2. Small Town Zombie Horror. The sleepy town of Lordsland is one of those where everybody seems to know everybody, and, when the time comes, some people seem to know almost every body. More typical zombie scenarios involve strangers thrust together by the undead crisis, people brought together in a farmhouse, mall, etc. What drew you to the small-town approach? How do you think putting names on so many corpses changes the horror? Some of the hordes are faceless, literally and figuratively, especially as their numbers grow, but overall, do you think Necronado’s small-town, ensemble approach makes zombie encounters more personal? Why or why not?

RJR: The small-town approach came directly from my upbringing and current life. I have never lived in a big city, so with Necronado, I was writing what I know. I also feel having the smaller setting where almost everyone knows their neighbors packs a lot more punch into a horror story when something bad happens to one of them, which is also amplified but using the names of people the characters know. It’s hard to pull the trigger when you have a shambling, undead old lady you’ve literally known your entire life, but you do what you have to do to survive. Once the odds become overwhelming and you lose that intimacy with individuals to a large, swarming horde, the fear level stays just as high but in a different way. Having a group come together over time, all fighting for the same thing, lends a lot of relatability to the reader, and it’s pretty standard now in zombie fiction, I suppose, because there is strength in numbers. It gives the author and reader both a chance to develop relationships with the characters and, for better or worse, foster an attachment with them.

3. Zombie Zealot Horror. One of the first plotlines to develop involves a schoolteacher who likely suffers a psychotic break after seeing the encroaching dead. She takes her religious fervor to the extreme of wanting to purify children by sacrificing them to undead appetites. What inspired this plotline? The term “zombie apocalypse” is common for a reason—at least since Romero’s early films, the appearance of zombies in a story has usually signaled a potential for the end of the world, with implied (or perceived, by characters) Biblical significance. How does your inclusion of psychotic zealotry reflect on this tradition in zombie storytelling? How does it reflect on religious zealotry more generally? Which is scarier—a zombie or a religious zealot ready to kill children for their beliefs?

RJR: There’s always one in every group, right? Someone who, when the shit hits the fan, will start to be a doomsayer and try to make others see that the only path forward is through zealotry. As far as Mrs. Nelson goes, she’s definitely modeled after Ms. Carmody in Stephen King’s The Mist. She’s a powerful character in that book, and she’s stuck with me ever since I read it. I think having a character like Nelson included in this book works on a few levels. On one hand, it’s a bit ironic to the reader when Nelson is yelling about judgement coming down on them all when the reader knows exactly how this all came to be after the prologue. On the other, it shows how crazy people can get when they think all hope is lost. There is a time and a place for everything, religion included, especially during an end of the world scenario, but it’s when people cross that line, go the extra step and take it into zealotry territory that it becomes a whole other scary situation for those around them to deal with. You asked, ‘Which is scarier—a zombie or a religious zealot ready to kill children for their beliefs?’ Ah, which is scarier, indeed? For me, people. Always.

4. Family and Relationship Horror. You use many characters’ perspectives to tell your story, but five major characters stand out to me: on one hand, you present the family consisting of Jake, his wife Marie, and their son Alex, and on the other, you present hardboiled leader Lilly and her doomsday prepper ex-lover L.T., who obviously have unresolved issues. In a way, then, family and relationships are at the center of your story. Did you plan it that way? Why or why not? How did writing from the perspectives of the people in these relationships affect you emotionally, and how do you think experiencing these perspectives will affect readers? Whose perspective is easiest to identify with? Whose is most difficult? Why?

RJR: Family was definitely in mind when the idea for the story was first thought about. When speaking with the same friend about tornados and pet bones, he told me about him and his family sheltering in their bathtub one night when a tornado came through their area (and that exact scene made it into the book). Had it just been Jake on his own, what were the stakes? What would he have to live for? The family aspect is integral to the story. Switching between characters who have their own POVs of a situation can be a challenge at times when writing, but I think that adds to and enriches the creative process, allowing you to dive into different sides of the same situation and work through different feelings about what’s going on. It makes you a better writer. Switching into the POVs of kids may have been the hardest for me because I had to get my mindset right and make it feel authentic. Tap into what it would be like being so young and having their world crash down around them. Hopefully that came through on the page. And the flipside, I don’t know if she was the easiest character to write, but Christina was absolutely the most fun character to play with because all rules were off the table with her. She could do or say anything, and it would make sense for her character. Writers should not have that power, lol. Perhaps there is a solo Christina story out there waiting to be told. Perhaps.

5. Media Zombies I: The Anxieties of Influences. When I was reading your “Prologue,” I thought maybe I was watching an early Michele Soavi movie, or maybe a little earlier in the Italian undead cycle, visiting Lucio Fulci at his peak, but then the curse-causing-ritual made me think of Roger Corman’s Lovecraft adaptations from the 1960s and 70s, which made me think of Corman’s factory movies on the SyFy Channel, where an adaptation of your book would fit… and of course while reading I was always thinking about George A. Romero and Max Brooks and Brian Keene and… how freaking scary is it to write in territory that has involved so many great names so recently? Your book refers to zombie movies frequently. How much of this referencing is about homage, and how much is about acknowledging that you’re in well-walked territory, and you know your stuff? What specific zombie works influenced you the most? What do you consider to be essential zombie reading and viewing?

RJR: Walking in the footsteps of greats certainly can be daunting, but you have to put your head down and commit. Think outside the box, bring something new to the sub-genre, and hope it doesn’t suck when you finish the book. If you’re picking up on anything in Necronado that makes you think of a zombie movie, I was definitely giving nods to the books and movies that I’ve enjoyed, skirting that fine line of not overdoing it with too many, which can take the reader out of the story if they pick up on it. Zombie fiction that has formed me into the creature you see today would be The Rising by Brian Keene, The Walking Dead (TV show), Dawn of the Dead (both original and remake), Resident Evil (games), Left4Dead (games), and Evil Dead (Is it zombies? I think so.) which I use for a direct comparison when talking about Necronado if you think about the prologue of the book. All of these should be on everyone’s reading, viewing, and playing radars if they want to be entertained.

6. Media Zombies II: The Benefits of Influence. Luckily, you and your readers aren’t the only people who are familiar with zombie fiction across media. Your characters are, too. Although they’re properly shocked and horrified that a zombie outbreak has occurred, your characters know what’s happening because zombies in books, movies, and video games exist in their universe. Some characters either already know or quickly figure out, for example, to aim for headshots because they’ve seen enough movies. What is/are the relationship(s) between zombie fiction and zombie reality in the Necronado universe? If a storm of the undead hits, do you think those us who have played the Resident Evil franchise will be better able to defend ourselves? Why or why not? In general, are people who expose themselves to horror in fiction better prepared when horror appears in real life?

RJR: The characters in Necronado would be the same if you or I would be thrown into a similar situation. We know what zombies are through all the media mentioned, so I wanted to have that aspect as grounded in reality as zombie fiction could be. I absolutely think people well-versed in Resident Evil will have a leg up on your average Joe off the street. You’ll know what you’re seeing (hopefully before it’s too late) and be able to deal with the undead through resourcefulness and knowledge. I’m just not sure how useful ink ribbons will be in real life. As to people who read, write, watch, and play horror media, I can see both sides of whether or not they’ll be better prepared in horrific situations. You can train and train and train for any number of scenarios, but it’s still not real until it actually happens. Speaking for myself, I can write blood and gore all day, but if I saw it in my everyday life all of the sudden, I know for a fact I would not be able to handle it with as much grace as I would hope to. But things change when life and death are on the line, so you really can’t say until shit goes down.

7. Zombie Typology. Somewhat famously among horror nerds, Romero’s film that birthed the modern zombie, Night of the Living Dead (1968), doesn’t use the word “zombie” but does use the word “ghoul.” Necronado has a diverse lexicon for its undead, with so many names for “zombie” that watching the variety becomes an entertainment (I like the bureaucratic edges of “expired person” and “once-alive residents”). Did you brainstorm a list in advance that you could draw from while writing? If not, how did you keep up the variety? Of course, zombies are more than their names. Horror nerds often debate the virtues of slow versus fast zombies, for example; characters comment on yours not being fast, but yours do lurch and climb over each other in ways that typical slow zombies might not. Typical zombies don’t show emotion, but yours show malice, perhaps more like demonic zombies (cf Lamberto Bava’s Demons films or Brian Keene’s Rising novels). What is your zombie’s profile? What is the ideal type of zombie for the 2020s?

RJR: 90% of my writing is off the cuff, with the other 10% being thinking about where my current scene is going when I’m not able to be working on it, so a lot of the terms I used came to me in that moment. I try to mix it up and not overuse certain words if I can help it, which keeps them impactful. Sometimes it is hard, though, and I will sit and stare at the screen while I cook something up. It slows progress but is hopefully better in the grand scheme of things as I go along. Ah, yes, the age-old debate of fast versus slow zombies. I’ll take both, thank you! I guess in Necronado they’re a bit of a hybrid but definitely lean more toward the slow side. Slow but capable. I tell people my zombies are not the typical ones and more of a supernatural undead since they don’t really spread through virus and biting but more through death. There’s definitely some Keene aspect to that, but they’re not demons, and they’re on a timer. For modern zombie fiction to be successful, I think the creator has to come up with an interesting hook to draw the audience in. Really give them something they haven’t seen before since there is such a long lineage of the sub-genre coming beforehand. That said, though there are a lot of zombie tales that have already been told, they haven’t been told through your voice, remember that.

2-fur-1 Fluffybutt Tales

8. Feline Personality. I might sum up Mr. Fluffybutt as the talking cat who associates (cats are not “owned”) with Lucifer, ruler of Hell, but who, and what, is Mr. Fluffybutt really? How would you describe his personality? His sense of humor? His mettle as a protagonist in your connected, perilous tales of slaughter and delicious food? One last thing… how strategically does he use the fact that not everyone can see him?

RJR: Well, I’m a cat guy, and I don’t think that’s any surprise to anyone who follows me on Facebook. Originally, Mr. Fluffybutt was conceptualized as the devil who would be on the Devil’s shoulder, and naturally I came to the conclusion it would be his cat. Fluffybutt is about the most laid back, nonchalant cat you could (not) meet, and I feel a lot of myself bleeds through with his character. There are a few things added in there, but he’s definitely me on the page, humor and all, someone who likes to chill out, have a good time, and find some good eats. As to his lack of reaction to a lot of things that go on around him, that might be me as well, a fault of mine, but it also adds a dichotomy to the scenes in which it’s happening, so I like the way it reads on the page. As to him using the fact that no one, aside from a select few, can see and interact with him, it gives Mr. Fluffybutt the freedom to do or say whatever he wants, which is probably very relatable to readers who wish we had the same ability.

9. A Laidback, Casual Kind of Hellfire. Lucifer lives in an almost ordinary-seeming domestic situation with his wife and Mr. Fluffybutt, and the apparent ordinariness extends to Lucifer’s duties related to torture, communication with other higher powers, and potential apocalypses. Mr. Fluffybutt seems particularly inclined to take world-ending hellfire in stride. Why? What’s the significance of finding hellfire, horrific slaughter, and the possible end of everything kind of… meh? Just another day in Ohio? Just another ambitious mastermind? Do you share Mr. Fluffybutt’s blasé feelings about the end of the world? Why or why not?

RJR: I love the super playfulness and audacity of putting Lucifer in a domestic situation where he’s essentially working a 9-5 as the ruler of Hell and only wants to hang out with his cat and play some games or something. That is the foundation I have set for myself with writing these stories—have as much fun as I can. Fluffybutt stories act as a respite for me from my typical writing of horror, and all bets are off with them. They have no rules and can be as crazy as I want them to be. It’s freeing as a writer, and I recommend it to others when they find themselves struggling. I think within every cat lives a Fluffybutt—to sow chaos. It’s not malicious, just in his, and their, nature. It opens things up for things to get hairy quick. On the flipside to that, you have Mr. Fluffybutt who, at his core, is pretty ambivalent to what’s going on around him. Except when it comes to Ohio. Ohio sucks. Is Mr. Fluffybutt truly an evil mastermind? I cannot say at this time, but the idea for his next “tail” is brewing in my head for when I’m ready to write it. But as I said, F.B. reflects a lot of myself, and I’m a very come what may type of guy, so yeah, his feelings toward the end of the world would probably bum him out a bit since it would probably hamper his plans for his next tasty treat.

10. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

RJR: First, I want to thank you, Andrew, for all the work and support you do for your fellow Indie Horror Authors. That’s real hero stuff giving others a platform to be seen and heard. If anyone would like to find more of my work, they should visit www.rjroles.com, where I have all my books listed (solo and published anthologies featuring the works of many other great authors). They can also find me on social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook by searching my name, RJ Roles. I will follow you back if you do. Necronado is currently available everywhere named Amazon in paperback, hardcover, ebook, and Kindle Unlimited. 2-fur-1 is currently only available at live, in-person events that I’m at, or from my online store rjroles.bigcartel.com when they’re in stock. My next release should be available by March of 2025, a brand new short story collection I’ve been compiling and working on while putting together anthologies and a few other projects that are in the works.

About the Author

From 100 word drabbles, to full-length novels, RJ Roles is an author who takes pride in his various works of horror fiction. He is the founder and admin of the Books of Horror Facebook group and founder of From the Ashes. His stories span the entire horror genre, as well as its sub-genres, and his pen often dips into many inkwells, creating unique, boundary-crossing tales. He lives a quiet life with his wife and many cats in southern West Virginia. Find him on his website www.rjroles.com. 

The post Interview with Author RJ Roles: Necronado and 2-fur-1 Fluffybutt Tales appeared first on L. Andrew Cooper's Horrific Scribblings.

Cover Reveal for Noir Falling!

I’m so happy I have cover art for my forthcoming novel Noir Falling to share with you!

The image is “The Draw Bridge” by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (ca. 1761), used with permission from the Princeton University Art Museum, part of a series that the features prominently as a… setting… in my story, so I am quite pleased that Jacob Floyd, publisher at Nightmare Press, and designer Christy Aldridge were able to transform it into such an attractive cover.

The novel, about which I’ll say more as the press releases more information, is primarily surrealist, but also a film-noir-inspired, conspiracy- and paranoia-fueled mystery, with a lot of philosophical reflection that is generally relevant to the plot, without a lot of attention to conventional narrative… some of my best work.

And, it’s not really horror, so if you can’t stomach my other work, you might enjoy this one!

STAY TUNED!

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Interview with Author Dan Shrader: Full Nasty III and Satanic Candy: A Full Nasty Christmas Tale

Skilled mixologist of extreme horror and twisted humor Dan Shrader discusses loves, hates, 80s bands, and other inspirations that make the latest Full Nasty stories, Full Nasty III and Satanic Candy: A Full Nasty Christmas Tale, so very full of delightful nastiness.

Full Nasty III

You know the name! You know the drill!

The Hell-wagon has a full tank of gas for this trip.

Satanic Bill is back and more unhinged than ever before!

Buckle up, little termites, for a ride down memory lane in one of the most bizarre installments of the series yet!

Click the pic for more on Amazon! Satanic Candy: A Full Nasty Christmas Tale

Satanic Bill and Candy’s relationship is stronger than before. Their love is as sweet and ripe as a decaying corpse in the summertime, but the holidays are almost here! Before advancing to Full Nasty Films, Bill thinks it’s necessary to resolve certain issues from Candy’s past. Those who wronged her are facing consequences one by one, leading to the final chapter.

Our modern-day Bonnie and Clyde are taking a road trip for your enjoyment. To celebrate this winter season, let’s decorate with tinsel made of eyeballs and innards. Cook some bodies over the open flame. Cuddle up with someone special and read this late-night fairy tale of love!

Stuff your stockings with Satanic Candy this holiday season, and Bill will make sure your holes are filled!

Click the pic for more on Amazon!The Interview

Full Nasty III

NOTE: Some questions apply to the whole Full Nasty series. When they do, feel free to refer to parts one and two, but please focus on how part three develops the issues the questions raise.

1. The Art of Being Offensive. As your highly entertaining trigger warning promises, the book features ableism, homophobia, and other attitudes (and related language) most people would consider objectively offensive, along with the graphic rape, torture, and murder, of course, and in most contexts, such things might offend me. However, I find your “offensive” content not only personally inoffensive (n.b. I have a disability and am gay) but… quite humorous. I know I’m not alone. Am I, and are people like me, fucked in the head? Why or why not? I’m giving you credit for this little trick—how do you pull it off? How do you find so much humor in horror, and what inspires your special combination?

DS: I’ll be honest, I’m the last person to cast stones in this glasshouse. The Full Nasty books reflect my dark and twisted sense of humor. I’m not a fan of trigger warnings, and when writing this one I thought it would add to the humor to prepare the reader just by meeting Bill right off from the beginning. Figured I’d take a new approach to the trigger warnings out there. Full Nasty humor is either loved by those who get it or hated by those who don’t. I’m not sure how I even pull it off. To me, it’s just me being me, writing what I think is funny and horrific, or normalizing some of the shit we see every day. Perhaps my profession has a lot to do with it. Being a Corrections Officer, I have gallows humor about most things. Prior to working at a prison, I worked 8 years in a psychiatric treatment facility for youth, so… maybe that explains some of it?

2. Reading the Movies. The title for your series refers the “Full Nasty” videos—porn combining sex and violence, often or always snuff, I’m not sure—produced by your main character, Satanic Bill. Why build books around videos (one medium around another)? Some chapters are the content of a Full Nasty, as if the chapter were itself a video, and at the beginning of Part Three, there’s “a break in the reel” that interrupts the story. Does Full Nasty III as a whole simulate a movie—are “readers” really moviegoers? Extreme horror more generally has a fascination with film, especially snuff, from Srdjan Spasojevic’s influential movie A Serbian Film (2010) to the more recent book Broken Pieces of June by Stuart Bray, who wrote the intro to the first Full Nasty. What motivates this fascination? In your work and in your bio (below), you seem a bit nostalgic for video… why the nostalgia?

DS: Nostalgia checks all the boxes on this. Organizing the book around videos enhances its realism and intimacy, in my opinion. We all remember watching those gritty video nasties back in the day. I think photographs and films just makes it more tangible and terrifying when you think about it. Not only are these people doing fucked up shit, but they’re filming it! Now you’re in it!

My love for horror began when I stumbled upon boxes of VHS tapes that belonged to my grandparents. It turns out my grandmother had a fascination with recording everything when it first became popular. Those late-night movie binges were a rush, even though I knew I shouldn’t be watching them.

I had a strong bond with my grandparents. I looked up to them and hung out with them a lot growing up. I dedicated my first book I published to them as well. They got me my first typewriter and encouraged me to write horror stories. Their support and care meant the world to me, and I miss them every day. Even now, when I watch films like C.H.U.D., Halloween, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the same ones I first experienced from that box, it somehow brings me closer to them again.

3. Nonlinear Storytelling. Full Nasty III follows different timelines, often jumping forward or backward on one and/or from one to another as it moves from chapter to chapter. Why did you choose this structure instead of a more typical, chronological order of events? The “ride down memory lane” promised in the book’s description is closer to a rollercoaster. Do you think most readers can hang on as you zoom from one point in the story to another? Going back to earlier ideas, do you think these quick jumps to different scenes at different moments make the book more film-like, with the quick jumps being like quick cuts? If so, did that just sort of happen, or was it a matter of design?

DS: I believe that if I had written the story in chronological order, it wouldn’t have had the same impact. Going from the first book to the third in the order of events might not have captured the audience as effectively or been a good way to tell the story. The back-and-forth style of the Full Nasty books, similar to film reels and editing, seems to be popular with readers. To be honest, this is just how it naturally came together as I wrote, bouncing back and forth between different scenes. I spent years writing screenplays and have always had a raging hard on for Quentin Tarantino’s nonlinear style.

4. The Religious Stuff, etc. Satanic Bill sometimes gets snippy when people leave out the “Satanic” part of his name, and he at least gives lip-service to being the son of Satan or one of Satan’s legions. With Satanic Bill, however—kind of like the book as a whole—I’m not sure what to take seriously. Sure, Satanic Bill is into some evil shit, but the supernatural appears to be absent. Do you see actual religious stakes in this book, real God/Satan stuff behind the scenes? To get further into potential lore, what can you tell us about the mysterious “Employer?” Who makes the “underworld laws?”

DS: For this question, Satanic Bill is full of shit and enjoys fucking with people. It’s hard to take him seriously, and with this story, shit the whole series, there is no supernatural element involved. As you go through the books you will see his descent into madness more and more.  As for the “Employer” and the “underworld laws” aspect of Full Nasty—that will have to remain a secret for now. There’s still more to come.

5. Depeche Mode. How does Full Nasty III’s “playlist” help characterize the novel? Having the list up front makes songs’ appearances in the story more fun, but I never felt sure what to think of the music from the perspective of Bill’s universe. Is this bad (possibly cuck) music or good music? “Safety Dance” by Men without Hats just seems funny, but “Personal Jesus” by Depeche Mode seems a little more loaded. Does the choice of “Personal Jesus” have anything to do with Bill calling himself “The Messiah?” Depeche Mode doom and gloom doesn’t fit with the lighthearted nastiness of your work… does it? Why or why not?

DS: To be honest, with the music side of Full Nasty, I picked those songs because the 80s Euro-invasion music was big during that era, and I like those songs, so in my mind it seemed fitting for the off the wall nature of Bill. How often do you read about a guy like this with a taste for music like Men Without Hats and The Bangles? I really felt Bill listening to heavy metal, black metal, or death metal would just be what is expected and seems to be the normal go-to for these types of character. I didn’t want to follow the little bullet points of a normal psychopathic killer that you read about regurgitated over and over.  His odd taste in music gives him some depth, makes him different than the rest. To me I didn’t really have any correlation with “Personal Jesus” and Bill calling himself the Messiah. Bill just says off the wall shit. When I started the idea and writing it, there wasn’t really much thought about it—Bill did his thing in my brain, and I wrote it. I wanted to get gritty but also show off my twisted humor. Apparently, people like it.

6. Cannibalism = Orgasm. Your book makes clear that Satanic Bill’s appetites are not singular; his videos have an audience because, as a character comments, “people love violence and sex… the ultimate taboo.” Bill might not be the only one prone to ejaculate when he sees his lover eat human flesh. How common do you think such appetites really are? How like Bill’s audience is your audience? How much are you like Bill? How much fun was teaching readers the word “erotophonophilia?”

DS: I believe it’s more common than many people think it is. There’s a community that exists between men and women who have a strange fetish for being eaten or swallowed alive. Not all of them wish to die, either, while it’s happening, but there are some. It’s quite intriguing to read about. I think we’ve all heard of the man in Germany who was willingly eaten and killed by someone he met online. They both ate his penis together, too, or something like that.

Bill’s audience finds pleasure in his actions and is either worse or just as bad as him from my perspective. My audience, on the other hand… I hope they just enjoy reading about a fictional character’s misdeeds on mankind. I can relate to Bill’s strange sense of humor if anything. Necrophilia has never crossed my mind personally, but who knows, I might be missing out on something. But I enjoy making quirky comments and laughing at silly things. And it was fun playing with the word “erotophonophilia” in this one!

7. Killer Icons. Along the way, Satanic Bill meets a die-hard serial killer fan who puts him on a pedestal. Serial killer fandom is, of course, real, but not every serial killer becomes a celebrity. What do you think turns a real killer into an icon? Do the same qualities turn a fictional killer into an icon? Why or why not? As Satanic Bill’s story, world, and reputation grow, what qualities do you hope will make him stand out from the crowd?

DS: I believe that being frightened and entertained somehow goes hand in hand with this. The line between reality and fiction gets blurred, and this makes serial killers iconic and captivating figures in pop culture. Their actions are mysterious to us, and we want to know why they are the way they are. With fictional killers, we get popcorn versions of the real-life monsters, and, in a way, it desensitizes the reality behind the heinous crimes they commit.

Satanic Bill embodies pure evil and takes pleasure in it. He disregards others, viewing them as worthless, plain and simple. What sets him apart is his uniqueness—there is no other character like him. He’s only ever loved Candy—who has been dead for years, and no matter what he does, something always reminds him of her. It’s a fucked-up love story.

Satanic Candy: A Full Nasty Christmas Tale

8. Domestic Bliss. As the title promises, Satanic Candy: A Full Nasty Christmas Tale delivers nasty, demented Christmas and Christmas season settings and scenes. The result is a special focus on the love between Satanic Bill and Candy, an emotion that animates the carnage quite festively. It also puts a spotlight on domesticity: at one point, Satanic Bill and Candy are getting ready to move into a new house, start a new business, and in some ways set up like a proper couple. How does their version of domestic bliss relate to and reflect on typical (cuck?) domesticity? The book’s description (above) mentions their road trip and Bonnie and Clyde; the trip and the duo also reminded me of Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers (1994). What inspires you to write this couple, especially their relationship and family-oriented tendencies?

DS: Well, I suppose if you look at it from that perspective, it might seem like a regular situation: the business, house, and everything. However, the truth is that they’re actually moving into a house that is currently undergoing renovation to become like their H. H. Holmes Kill Castle to have their smut films made in. For normal people, it’s kind of similar, settling down and getting a house and having a life together, but for Satanic Bill and Candy, this is their normal.

Mickey and Mallory are a great example as well. I found a lot of inspiration by reading about several real-life killer couples, such as Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, and Gerald and Charlene Gallego.

9. Hating Christmas. A quotation sums up the situation nicely: “The laughter and excitement surrounding the whole Christmas holiday made Bill sick.” I’ve known a lot of people who find the holiday season miserable; as I discussed not long ago with screenwriter Mike Ede, there’s a reason it’s been a peak time for the horror genre for hundreds of years. Is Satanic Bill a spokesperson for the Christmas-negative, an oppressed minority, perhaps a silent majority? Why or why not? Do you think his feelings about the holidays are more personal, perhaps related to the childhood trauma touched on in Full Nasty III, or principled, an objection to the glitzy, cheery hypocrisy that he observes?

DS: Maybe he is. In a nutshell, Bill harbors a deep-seated hatred towards Christmas because his father hated it, and they never practiced it growing up. He was taught instead to find happiness in having sex with dead women, torturing people, and a bunch of other fucked up shit. To Bill, hating Christmas still makes his dead father proud, and he is always trying to impress him, wherever he is in hell. Bill isn’t interested in anything that’s the opposite of darkness. In his mind, nothing that happened to him as a kid was traumatic. Instead, it pushed him further towards becoming the devilish human being he always wanted to be.

10. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

DS: You can find me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Goodreads, and Amazon. I also have a website with links to all my social media accounts and other content for you to follow or read more of my work: www.danshraderhorror.com

About the Author

Dan Shrader, hailing from Southern Indiana, is a mastermind of spine-chilling and depraved horror stories that will stay with you. One day, his life changed when he found a big box of VHS tapes. The box was filled with horror movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, C.H.U.D, Black Christmas, and Night of the Demons. This discovery awakened a deep passion for horror within him. He has received nominations for two Horror Awards for his works Those Who Live in Darkness and The Devil’s Rite. Literary influences range from renowned authors, such as Clive Barker and Edward Lee, to Kristopher Triana and Brian Keene.

The post Interview with Author Dan Shrader: Full Nasty III and Satanic Candy: A Full Nasty Christmas Tale appeared first on L. Andrew Cooper's Horrific Scribblings.

Interview with Author Ruth Anna Evans: Against Medical Advice

The way Ruth Anna Evans’s new novella Against Medical Advice turns very relatable fears about sickness and medicine into a believable–and horrific–scenario results in a serious page turner. Here she reflects on some of the reasons why her story works.

Against Medical Advice

Frank’s six-year-old daughter Maddie is sick. Very sick. Her mother is out of town, and he’s on his own to handle the emergency. But the doctors can’t find anything wrong, and money is quickly running out. Frank is desperate, and he begins to consider the unthinkable.

Shelly is a social worker with a pill problem. When a case spins out of control, she finds herself out of pills and at the end of her rope. Then she gets a call to check into a tip from an EMT: A father who may be making his own daughter ill. Will Shelly intervene in time, or will she fail to save a child… again?

From the author of OH FUCK OH FUCK IT HURTS comes this gripping, fast-paced novella of medical horror that will make you question: How far would you go when the only thing you can do is Against Medical Advice?

Click the pic for more on Amazon!The Interview

1. Medical Horror. I can’t claim to be an expert on medical horror, but Against Medical Advice strikes me as very different from classics like Frankenstein (1818) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), or more recent standards in the vein of Robin Cook, or even films like Anatomy (2000) or The Human Centipede (2009). What motivated you to turn from this doctor-centered tradition to a story centered on parent and patient? What’s the attraction of medical horror for audiences, and what do you like most about writing it? What’s its relation to body horror? On the surface, Against Medical Advice and The Human Centipede seem to have nothing in common, but is that the case?

RAE: My style is horror realism with a touch of extreme body horror. To do that, I have to tap into my own fears and experiences, which revolve around my experiences with being sick and dealing with health insurance and all of the frustrations that come with having a body that is stubbornly not well. I fear pain, I fear suffering, I fear losing all of my money and having nothing to show for it. But even more that that, I fear these things happening with my child. Parenting is the most frightening role I’ve played in my life, so that’s why I write that type of horror. I don’t read like traditional medical horror in part because I don’t read a lot of traditional medical horror. It’s too scary!

2. Medical Industrial Horror. A great deal of tension in the story comes from Frank’s struggle with insurance that offers insufficient help in his emergency, requiring copays and out-of-pocket expenses that obstruct care. Am I fair in saying that the medical industry, particularly insurance companies and managed care, are a source of horror in this story? Why or why not? How much of Frank’s reaction to his experiences—and perhaps the reader’s reaction to the story—depend on perceptions of the medical industry as a giant corporate evil?

RAE: For sure. My collection OH FUCK OH FUCK IT HURTS goes even further down this route. There is just so much fear and frustration when you are sick and no one is helping you get better, but they are charging you out the teeth. Or when there is a treatment that would help, but you have to jump through impossible hoops to get it. I have a lot of financial fear in my life as well; I live in fear of not having enough to get through an emergency. And I see a lot of people running unsuccessful gofundme’s for life and death situations. This horror is real and immediate, which is why I think it’s so effective.

3. Medical Information Horror. When Frank tries to resist Googling medical conditions and then gives into temptation, I’m sure I’m not the only reader who relates. Feelings of impersonal treatment related to the industrialization of medicine we’ve been discussing have reduced doctor-patient trust, leading some patients to accept alternative authorities they encounter online and elsewhere. Frank considers such authorities. Is Against Medical Advice critical of the growing trend toward internet-motivated medical decisions? Why or why not? I don’t think I’m spoiling too much by saying Frank becomes a bit paranoid. Is paranoia an inevitable condition of living in a free information culture? Does the freedom of (allegedly) medical information online erode professional medical authority and therefore pose a threat to public safety? Why or why not?

RAE: I think we’ve all googled our symptoms and come across something saying we are dying. This isn’t so much a critique of that as an exploration of what happens when you listen to all of that noise. When you aren’t getting answers the traditional way, you’ll grasp onto anything. I remember I was certain CBD would cure my colon inflammation. It didn’t, but I was so sure. You get to where you believe this stuff, and you just don’t know when you’re wrong.

4. Healthcare and Economic Class. Your converging tales of Frank and Shelly aptly demonstrate the gaps class creates for healthcare access. While Frank scrambles to pay for the tests his doctors demand for his daughter, Shelly has plenty of cash she can use to exploit an impoverished case subject to supplement her legitimate pill supply. In the world of Against Medical Advice, is reliable healthcare a privilege of the upper classes? For me, at least, one of the most horrific and heartbreaking aspects of the story is the obstacle that money becomes for Frank and his wife Tish as they try to help their daughter. Does your book critique health care in the hands of capitalism? Does it take a position within current debates about health care being a matter of economic access or a matter of human rights? Why or why not?

RAE: I definitely critique the health insurance/health care system. It’s not fair that if you don’t have money, you can’t access all of the treatment people with money can. You have to wait for your insurance company to say yes, and sometimes they say no, and you’re shit out of luck. I think most Americans can attest to the fact that it’s scary having your health—even your life—at the mercy of somebody sitting in an office shuffling paperwork.

5. Good Parents and Bad Parents. With Frank’s and Shelly’s sides of the story, you provide different perspectives on parenting and child protection. As a social worker, Shelly, though unorthodox, stands in for a community or governmental view of sufficient parenting. How valid are these categorical ideas of “good” and “bad” applied to the specific circumstances of individual families? Does Shelly’s “pill problem” suggest a critique of these types of judgments? Frank and Tish want to be “good” parents for Maddie, but they can’t always tell in advance which decisions will be “good,” and the blame they place on themselves might be as painful as the blame they receive from others. Do you count social pressure to be “good” parents who somehow know everything among your book’s horrors? Why or why not?

RAE: I think what I’m trying to say is that most parents are doing the best they can, but sometimes their best is not only not good enough, but actively harmful to their children. It’s scary and sad and perfect for horror.

6. Fathers and Heroism. On the subject of good and bad parents, fatherhood seems problematic in this story. Early on, Shelly observes, “the people whose children she took usually started out loving and caring for their children. At least the mothers. The fathers gave less of a fuck, usually.” Are fathers deficient parents? No matter how hard Frank tries, Maddie keeps calling for her Mommy, and Frank keeps wishing Tish were home because she would know how to handle things. Are fathers disadvantaged parents? As Maddie’s illness stretches on, Frank repeats to himself, “I have to do something,” adopting what I think of as the “Mr. Fix It” attitude, an assumption common among men (I say) that they both can and should become the problem-solving heroes in any given situation. All your characters are flawed—how much of Frank’s imperfection comes from patriarchal presumptiveness?

RAE: This is a really insightful question! I feel like fathers have such different roles from mothers, and I was definitely exploring that, albeit a bit subconsciously. I just write what feels real, and when it resonates, I feel like I’ve hit on something. Frank’s love for his daughter is unquestionable, and the pressure to make her better even without the resources to do so drives him crazy. I think a mother would feel the same way, but she might be a little more practical in her approach. I do think there are more crappy fathers than there are crappy mothers, when you come to talking about parents who don’t care for their children. But there are plenty of crappy mothers, too. Plenty of awfulness to go around.

7. Social Workers and Heroism. You dedicate Against Medical Advice partly to social workers you call “heroes.” However, parents in your story, like many parents in real life, fear intervention from Child Services and people like Shelly in their family affairs, seeing them more as villains than heroes. Even Shelly recognizes that taking kids away from their families and putting them in “the system” can make things worse, and she sometimes feels like an “invader.” What makes a social worker or other official who intervenes in private family life villainous or heroic? With all her flaws, is Shelly a hero? Why or why not? How did you research her character? Do you think her experiences are like experiences many social workers actually have? Why or why not?

RAE: Social workers put themselves in the middle of impossible, tragic situations, with the goal of helping children have better lives. That is very brave. As a teacher, I’ve seen some of these unsolvable situations—horribly abused children who need to be removed. I can’t personally fathom having it be my job to try and put a broken child’s life back together. It takes heroism. Certainly there are bad social workers—and even the good ones may make some bad decisions in situations where there aren’t any good options. But I think in general the negative things they do are a result of the system, and the positive they do are the results of great personal strength. I’m talking about the good ones in my dedication. They definitely exist.

8. Addiction and Other Post-Traumatic Behaviors. Both Shelly and Frank struggle with traumatic memories that give them trouble with medical and child protective authorities. As children, Shelly dealt with an abusive, alcoholic mother, and Frank saw his mother through a terminal illness. To what extent have these traumas determined where the characters stand in the story’s present? Shelly has inherited anxiety (and probably a predisposition for addiction) from her mother, which seems connected to her habit of taking more than her prescribed doses of benzodiazepines but also her mission as a social worker. Has trauma compromised her? Inspired her? Both? Frank has an aversion to hospitals from all the time spent in them with his mother. What role does his traumatic past play in his relationship with the medical establishment and his potentially problematic need to be a hero? Is trauma destined to pass from caretakers to children? In short, what’s your book’s vision of trauma’s long-term impacts?

RAE: Trauma is my bread and butter as a writer. We all have it, unless we have been very very lucky, and it always rears its ugly head later in life. Until you deal with your trauma, it’s going to negatively impact you and the people around you. Shelly and Frank make messes of a lot of things because of unresolved trauma. Frank feels like he personally has to save his daughter. Shelly fails to cope with situations that remind her of her past. It makes for a rounder story, but it also helps the story ring true.

9. Child in Peril. Against Medical Advice is an intense read—had I not been interrupted, I would have finished it in a single sitting. Even though I don’t have kids, I felt Frank and Tish’s panic over Maddie’s illness, and I related to their turns of thought. How do you make their predicament so relatable while delivering their story at such a breakneck pace? How do you convey the nightmarishness of Frank’s experiences without ever abandoning realism? Children in peril can provide great narrative motivation, but from the writing perspective, they can be emotionally exhausting. What was the most difficult aspect of this book for you to write?

RAE: I always try to write one-sitting reads. I write in short bursts in an excited state. And my characters draw me through the story, as I hope they draw my reader through the story. I also focus a lot on plot. As a reader, I am obsessed with good plot. If you don’t have something happening on every page, what are you even doing? I don’t waste my time as a writer. The number one criticism of my books is that they are too short, but I’d rather my book be too short than let you put it down.

Children in peril is definitely a recurring theme in my work. I did a whole collection of stories called NO ONE CAN HELP YOU: Tales of Lost Children and Other Nightmares. It’s not emotionally exhausting so much as it feels very real. It’s cathartic. I hope it’s cathartic for my readers and their fears.

10. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

RAE: Website: ruthannaevans.com

Email: ruthannaevanshorror@gmail.com

BlueSky: Ruth Anna Evans

Facebook: Ruth Anna Evans

Instagram: ruthannaevanshorrors

About the Author

Ruth Anna Evans is a writer of short horror fiction who lives in the heart of all that is sinister: the American Midwest. She has been composing prose of all types since childhood but finds something truly delightful in putting her nightmares on the page. Her stories are full of twists and turns with relatable protagonists and startling endings. She has published several novellas, a collection of short stories, and her work can be found in horror anthologies from Hungry Shadow Press, D&T Publishing, and Gloom House Publishing. Follow Ruth Anna on Twitter (X) @ruthannaevans for updates on her work.

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Horrific Scribblings

In addition to being a good description of what I write (as this site’s name suggests), Horrific Scribblings is now my very own indie imprint/press for fiction that is provocative, scary, and strange!

horrificscribblings.com

The site where you are now will keep bringing you interviews and updates about my work. Horrific Scribblings will focus on publication news–which will eventually expand to include writers other than myself–and connect you with good reading material. The store, which offers signed books and exclusive short story downloads, is a prime feature. Come! Visit new horrific territory!

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Interview with Author Kenzie Jennings: A Woman Like Jo & Other Dark Pieces

Accomplished dark fiction author Kenzie Jennings discusses her latest collection of short fiction, A Woman Like Jo & Other Dark Pieces, a work with eclectic styles and themes sure to inspire thrills and thought.

A Woman Like Jo & Other Dark Pieces

There are those who are familiar with a woman like Jo, who steals a man’s heart during his own midlife crisis on the other side of the world…

…or a woman like Deandra, who robs the wealthy during the stormiest night of the season when the dark reveals its secrets…

…or a woman like Cassie, who collects airline travel perks no matter the cost to her, or others’, well-being…

…or a woman like Heather, who succumbs to a lifestyle brand, the kind one doesn’t ever recover from…

…or a woman like Jillian, who promises herself, after her divorce, to never be seduced by a stranger…

…or one out of a number of other women whose stories are told here, as cautionary tales, perhaps, of the absurd, the grotesque, the demented, the forlorn, the brazen, or the downright strange.

Perhaps even you may find some of them awfully close to home.

Click the pic for more on Amazon!The Interview

1. A Woman Like…. Your book’s introduction mentions that you “like writing about interesting, smart women,” and the book’s closing, nonfiction piece refers to you once taking a “Feminist” stance out of “empty obligation,” but you don’t quite claim the feminist label for the book. So, to clarify: do you think of the book as feminist? If so, how would you describe the book’s feminism? If not, how would you describe the book’s focus on women?

KJ: I’m somewhat…SOMEWHAT… conflicted about describing this collection, and pretty much anything I write, as “feminist.” The ideology seems so often misunderstood and disrespected. On the one hand, yeah, it makes sense to think of it that way as it’s a work of horror centered predominantly around women characters and their experiences in a genre that typically doesn’t give them any sort of equal footing to their male counterparts. On the other, I can see where it might not be as there are some troubling moments involving victimization tropes that seem antithetical to what’s popularly considered “feminist.”

Then again, feminism exists to remind us that women are human beings, and human beings suffer.

So… perhaps it IS feminist.

As for the story “Always the Bear,” the bear debate fascinates me. The point of it is centered on the unpredictable behaviors of men, but we’re forgetting something here: Feminism centers on the treatment of women as equals to men… basically, to be treated as human beings, rather than “less than.” So, wouldn’t women likely be a threat to men as well? I just wanted to toy with that idea because every time I’d heard the debate brought up, I couldn’t help but consider that humans, overall, are utterly unpredictable.

2. Treacherous Triangulations. In the stories “A Woman Like Jo” and “Tell Greg,” the female protagonists have problems with treacherous men, but their ultimate confrontations are with women. I see triangulations—do you see them, too, and if so, were they intentional? Roll with me: in these triangulated relationships, the second woman could be helping to mediate the emotional and physical ties between the protagonist and the treacherous man, or the treacherous man could be mediating between the two women. What sort(s) of mediation might happen and why? Intentional or not, triangulated relationships are among the advanced tools in your character-building toolbox: what other tools should readers watch for? 

KJ: That’s an interesting term – “triangulation.” I don’t think it’s intentional… well, at least not until I understand how the climax or ending, and some of the characters’ motivations, are going to be revealed. (I realize that’s not an answer to your question centering on what sorts of mediations might happen, but it’s all I have for now.) One of my character-building tools is the element of surprise in that sometimes, we’re not going to know much about a character’s motivations until just the right moment. Quite often though, I don’t even know when or what that is. They’re leading me to what’s happening. As for other tools I tend to use, readers ought to be aware that protagonist likeability, and with that empathy, isn’t always going be a factor. It’s great to have a heroine to root for, sure, but do we have to be friends with her… or do even want to be friends with her? Is that absolutely a story-killer to have a protagonist who’s unlikeable?

3. Problems and Solutions I. The story “Perks” focuses a great deal on body image and the shaming of people, especially women, who don’t fit within societal norms, which the story embodies within an abusive male character on an airplane with the self-conscious female protagonist, Cassie. This man emphasizes to me, at least, that patriarchal scopophilia is responsible for much public shaming; by “patriarchal scopophilia,” I mean basically that we live in a world ruled by men that is designed for men’s visual pleasure. How much do you think the pain Cassie experiences from her body consciousness comes from the world of men? The airplane’s “perks” program gives Cassie a way to fight back. The perks are a great fantasy, but can you think of anything like the perks in real life that would allow resistance to the violence of societal norms? Is violence in response to those norms necessary for change? Why or why not?

KJ: The pain Cassie endures definitely comes from that sort of “patriarchal scopophilia” you describe, and the ending only serves to enhance that with a dollop of internalized misogyny (I can’t spoil anything here). In reality, I don’t think violence sends any sort of “correct” message in order to enact change. Violence tends to breed further violence. However, it’s an interesting image, one that horror plays around with quite a bit, and if it’s a consistent patriarchal-bred vantage, that women exist for men’s visual pleasure, why not confront that with what that sort of… man… comprehends, which is, ultimately, violent retribution… but in the form of body horror (since it’s about body image to begin with)?

4. Queer the One You’re With. The main characters in the story “The One You’re With” are a same-sex couple, Gia and Marielle, and the story involves marital distrust that, right or wrong, blossoms into raging paranoia. Why make the central couple two women? Is the couple’s queerness relevant to the plot? Why or why not? More queer characters seem to be showing up in horror lately. Why do you think that is? Do queer perspectives up the horror ante in this story? In general? Why or why not?

KJ: Their queerness isn’t relevant to the plot. The story could be about any couple, really. I like writing about relationships, particularly the horror that can emerge from them. In this story, I wanted to have an ordinary couple tormented by an intrusive thought written on a wall, and Gia and Marielle were quite ordinary. I know that’s not a particularly thought-provoking answer, but it’s what I have.

As for queer characters and perspectives in horror, we’re seeing a horror Renaissance, and it’s fantastic and long overdue. Queer perspectives do up the horror ante, as much of the horror they face centers around bigotry and the physical and psychological violence that stems from it. There is so much reactionary material there, so much horror to write in response.

5. A Story Like…. Part of your collection’s fun comes from your play with form, notably the email epistolary style of most of “The Academic Hearing Committee’s Final Decision” but also switching tenses of narration and mixing in bits of other media in other stories. “The Third Woman” is formally adventurous in a way I won’t give away (feel free to comment). How do you know what form(s) a story will take? Which story in this collection do you think is most formally successful? Which was the most fun to write, and why? Do you see yourself as experimenting in your stories, or does the variety come from another motive?

KJ: I usually know what form the story will take, but it’s never set in stone. In other words, it depends on what I later decide what to do with it. “The Academic Hearing Committee’s Final Decision” was a long-planned story, though, one that was inspired by the barrage of faculty-and-administration email chains I’m confronted with every week. I’ve loved the epistolary form ever since I first read Dracula. My debut novel, Reception, was close to becoming a tale told partially in texts, but I needed the pace to go off the rails at the halfway mark, and I felt that texts would detract from that pacing. I’d love to write a novella that way, though, someday. To be honest, unless you’re well-organized, it’s difficult to do well since you have to pay close attention to the finite details in the format (dates and names in email exchanges, for example), and I’m quite scattered.

I don’t know which of the stories in A Woman Like Jo is the most formally successful, but “The Third Woman,” probably the most serious work of fiction in the bunch, was the most engaging to write because of its form, which lacked the finite bits of “The Academic Hearing Committee’s…,” thankfully. I also knew exactly where it would take me and how it would get there, and that was a new experience for me, too.

6. Academic Horror. As an English professor, you’re writing what you know when you make an academic committee the focus of a horror story, but you’re also participating in a long tradition, some call it a subgenre, referred to as Academic Gothic or simply academic horror (consider recent work by Cassandra O’Sullivan Sachar and David E. Grinnell). Are you familiar with this tradition, and, if so, how do you see yourself contributing to it? Whether or not you had the tradition in mind, what’s horrifying about academic life? One example comes up in both “The Academic Hearing Committee’s Final Decision” and your nonfiction “It’s Never Been About Beauty”—the status of contingent faculty. What are you saying about the plight of adjuncts? Higher education in general?

KJ: I’m vaguely familiar with the subgenre (I didn’t know it was called Academic Gothic. That certainly suits!). However, I don’t see it as often in horror as I’d like. It really ought to be more popular as there are plenty of horror authors in academia, and the internal and external politics involved in and around our work are pretty horrifying. As for the treatment of adjuncts, that is just the tip of a problematic system that is unbalanced and unfair by design. I spent far too many years as an adjunct, trying to get hired full-time at my local college all the while working several other part-time jobs to make rent and pay my bills (of course, medical care was out of the question since I’d no benefits.). Writing a horror story about a contingent faculty… revolt… seemed fitting.

Also worth noting, I live in Florida where all facets of public education are being actively dismantled before our very eyes. Granted, Florida is a sampling of what seems to be happening all over the country. This is already a horror story underway, bit by book-banning bit.

7. Repetition Compulsions. Readers familiar with urban legends will recognize the basic scenario in “Habits” within a few sentences, so like most urban legends and campfire tales, the art, as well as the fear, is in the retelling, the repetition. The twist you put on the end makes it particularly about repetition. As the title indicates, “Same Booth, Once a Year” also involves repetition, particularly a repeating, escalating horror. When and why is repetition scary? When retelling a tale as in “Habits,” how do you make the repetition scary? In “Same Booth, Once a Year,” which is scarier, the booth visitor’s repetitive routine, or what he is? Why?

KJ: To me, it’s the deeply unsettling feeling of repetition that’s scarier. Routines and habits, layered repetitions, feel eerily unnatural. I don’t know why that is, and I don’t know the art of it (how to craft it well), but I think, in horror, it kind of feels like the Other is getting ready to perform. It’s that sort of sensation. It’s like Patrick Bateman getting ready to go about his day, or the pod people practicing facial expressions in a mirror, or a Stepford wife having to reboot after going haywire… When I read that sort of thing, I get the creeps.

8. World Building. “About Her Given Name” is the only story in the book for which I wish I’d read your Author’s Notes first: I enjoyed the story on first read, but knowing it’s an origin story for a larger world you’ve written other stories in makes it seem cooler in retrospect. Other than to answer questions that came up in related works, why focus on “her given name?” Why is naming so meaningful for these characters and their world? How deep are the ramifications of this story’s central conflict—how much does it shape the world you’re building? Your notes mention a work in progress set in this world. Do you see yourself using this world in many works to come? Why or why not?

KJ: “About Her Given Name” is a love letter to readers who enjoyed Red Station (my contribution to Death’s Head Press Splatter Western series of novels and novellas) and its heroine, Clyde Northway. The title is important in particular since the story focuses on her name’s origin and the beating heart of her strange world. The name “Clyde” has often been brought up by readers and critics, which I somewhat understand since Clyde is more notably a conventionally male name. However, in that era, it wasn’t a particularly uncommon name for women. Names in her world, one of secret societies and trained killers, though, are important since the orphaned girls brought in and trained in that world enter without an identity, so once they’ve established some sort of name for themselves, that becomes a step closer to their own sense of individualism. Red Station, however, reveals none of this, as its story, a slasher, centers around a family of serial killers who trap travelers in their station home in order to kill and rob them. Clyde is, essentially, the badass final girl.

Northway is my current work-in-progress, a novel that focuses on who Clyde is and what happens to her after the events of Red Station, going back and forth in time. “About Her Given Name” is a taste of what’s to come. The story introduces her nemesis and her mentor, as well as the primary characters’ motivations, so they certainly help shape Northway and establish the conflict happening. I liked having the short story as a launchpad for the world-building of the larger work.

9. Problems and Solutions II. The creative nonfiction piece that closes the volume, “It’s Never Been About Beauty,” brings back the issue of patriarchal scopophilia (I’d say) by charting how you’ve been affected by an appearance-obsessed culture of abuse among girls and boys, women and men, from age five through adulthood. Would you call it a horror story? Does it imply a call for change? The story alludes to how this belittling culture affected how you saw yourself as a writer. How much does it affect your writing now? This piece is very effective. Should readers expect more creative nonfiction from you?

KJ: Thank you! “It’s Never Been About Beauty” is definitely a horror story, one with a very adult lesson learned. It may imply a call for change, but I don’t think it’ll have much readership to enact it. I published it in this collection so that people could see me through an individual, authentic experience, but I know that it must resonate because this sort of abuse is so far-reaching. So many of us have been through it and continue to go through it. It doesn’t help that the current political landscape here in the U.S. has brought out a constant stream of misogynistic personal insults on physical attributes rather than valuable intellectual discourse. That being said, there’s more activism as a result of that happening. This generation of women in particular isn’t tolerating it whatsoever, and I admire them all for it.

As for expecting more creative nonfiction from me, absolutely. I love writing it. It grounds me.

10. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

KJ: Readers can find me at kenziejennings.com (my website that is still in serious need of a storefront) and can find my work on my Amazon author page (Kenzie Jennings), through Dead Sky Publishing (and their bookstore links), and through Godless.com.

I am also all over the chaotic social media landscape:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kenzie.jennings

Instagram: @kenziejennings2

X & TikTok: @kenzieblyjay

About the Author

Kenzie Jennings is an English professor and the author of the collection A Woman Like Jo & Other Dark Pieces as well as the Splatterpunk Award-nominated books Reception, Red Station, and Always Listen To Her Hurt. Her short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Queens of Death (Bludgeoned Girls Press), Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror (Grindhouse Press), Baker’s Dozen (Uncomfortably Dark), and Hot Iron and Cold Blood: An Anthology of the Weird West (Death’s Head Press).

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Interview with Author Jason Nickey: Rural Decay and Past Due: Rural Decay II

Highly readable and relatable, even as he freaks you out with taboo-breaking scenarios, Jason Nickey is here to discuss two recent extreme horror novellas, Rural Decay and Past Due: Rural Decay II.

Rural Decay

Jack Buckley always admired his father, even after he found out he was a serial killer. As Jack grows older, and he begins helping his father, he begins to develop an unhealthy obsession with him, an obsession that would send both of their lives crumbling into decay.

From Jason Nickey, author of Wreckage, comes a new story of extreme horror.

Click the pic for more on Amazon! Past Due: Rural Decay II

While adjusting to a new work assignment in rural West Virginia, Jake Bailey begins to notice a strange man in a creepy yellow truck following him. As time goes on, the frequency of his encounters with this man continue to increase until, one day, he finds himself tied to a chair in the man’s shed. What follows is a nightmare beyond anything his imagination could conjure, and an outcome even Jake himself would never have expected.

From the mind of Jason Nickey comes another twisted tale of Rural Decay.

The Interview

Rural Decay

1. Sex and Violence. From a very early age, mostly thanks to his father Hank, Rural Decay’s narrator, Jack, associates sexual acts with acts of violence, and later in life he finds sex less satisfying when not associated with violence. How does connecting sex and violence relate to the “monstrosity” of Hank and Jack? Is the connection primal, insane, both, or neither? Should sex and violence be disconnected? Why or why not?

JN: Sex and violence seem to go together quite often, both in real life and in fiction. In the case of Jack, however, I see the connection as both primal and insane. He experienced his sexual awakening alongside the violence his father inflicted, which skewed his perception of both. While the two should absolutely be disconnected, the line that separates them was blurred for Jack because of his upbringing and the violence he witnessed.

2. Masculinity. One of Jack’s early admissions is that his father was a serial killer but also his “hero,” in part because he “just emanated masculinity.” What does masculinity mean to Jack, and what, if anything, does it have to do with violence and killing? We’re discussing a story called Rural Decay: do you think there’s something particularly rural about this brand of masculinity? Why or why not? Do you think your book puts this brand of masculinity in a critical light? Why or why not? What is your personal definition of masculinity?

JN: I remember, as a young boy, being drawn to what most of society deems as masculine features on men. Facial hair, body hair, abrasive personality, etc. It wasn’t until later in life that I realized it was a sexual attraction. Men in rural areas are often more likely to carry these features, or at least carry them in a more rugged way. As I’ve grown older, I’ve realized that these features don’t necessarily define masculinity, but for this story, I was writing from the perspective of Jack through his childhood, so he’s not going to have an educated view on such a topic at a young age. I wouldn’t say this story is a critique on masculinity, but I think most boys at a young age will look at the men in their lives that fit the masculine stereotypes that society has created as a building block for what they’re supposed to be when they get older, even if it’s in a non-sexual way.

3. Misogyny. Men in Rural Decay (as well as its sequel) treat women as objects to be used for sex and violence and then discarded. Why do they have this attitude, and what does it say about the world they live in? Jack reacts positively to his father’s treatment of women, so readers don’t get women’s perspectives on the men or their behaviors. How do you think women would perceive Hank and Jack? Jack doesn’t objectify women completely—he identifies with women as they get fucked. Do you think Jack’s attitude toward women is fundamentally different from Hank’s? Why or why not?

JN: Sadly, men often treat women as objects in real life. It’s something we see happen on a regular basis, though not always to this extreme of an extent. In a way, Hank from RD1, along with Henry’s family in RD2, are a critique of men using women in such a way. Just like many of the men who do this in real life, we don’t always know the driving force behind it. In some cases, there are childhood events that lead to such acts, but there are also some people who, in my opinion, are just born monsters. It’s why many women, and some men, choose the bear.

Jack also sees women as objects, but not in the same way as his father. They’re a way for him to bond with his father, but also an obstacle in his eyes, as he wants to be the recipient of his father’s sexual violence. I think the women in the story would see that the same way. They would see Hank as a monster and Jack as a boy who’s lost and has his mind twisted by his father’s actions.

4. From Father to Son. Both Rural Decay volumes focus primarily on relationships and the unusual forms of love that make them work. In the first volume, the focus is on the father-son dynamic between Hank and Jack. What inspired you to write about rape and murder as father-son bonding, and how does that bonding relate to more typical father-son bonding? Hank tells Jack he acts on unusual homicidal urges, and Jack later thinks he inherited his own urges from his father. Where do you think the passing of murderous impulses from father to son falls on the spectrum from nature to nurture? Jack’s admiration for Hank turns into sexual attraction. Does this attraction stem from some pathology, inherited or otherwise, or might there be a sexual component to male bonding (kind of like Freud took some bad acid)?

JN: While sports are more common, I often see hunting as a father-son bonding activity, especially in rural areas. While not remotely comparable, what Jack and his father did together was a form of hunting, just taken to a much more extreme and twisted level. While there’s never been a case in real life of a serial killer’s child also becoming a serial killer (as far as I know), I thought that would be an interesting direction to take it in. It’s pretty clear early on that Jack is mentally unwell, even at a young age. To me, it’s quite possible that someone in this situation who has been subjected to the things Hank did could have their views of family bonding and sex skewed to such a ridiculous level, especially living in the isolation of a rural setting.

5. (Gay) Porn. While Hank is interested in women, Jack is interested in men, and like his father, Jack gets to act on some fantasies related to his interests. To what extent—considered in the broadest way possible—is Rural Decay about acting on forbidden fantasies? Reading parts of the book, I thought of common categories of gay porn on the internet. For example, very early on, Jack is excited by seeing his dad naked with an erection, the type of image he could find in a “Daddies” category. “Dads for Sons” and “Stepdads for Stepsons” are other common categories. Were you thinking of porn, particularly gay porn, when you created Jack’s sexual desires and activities? The book includes diverse eroticism. How do you want readers to respond, and can you provide any examples of responses you’ve gotten?

JN: I knew going into the story that I wanted it to be taboo. In my first collection, Static and Other Stories, there is a story called “My Father’s Eyes.” In this story, a young man discovers that his recently deceased father was a serial killer. After this discovery, he decides to try and follow in his footsteps. This felt like a very powerful story when I wrote it, and originally, I was just going to expand on that story some more. It was around this time that I realized, through all of the extreme horror I had read, it very rarely contained any queer eroticism, much less taboo queer eroticism. I wanted to push that boundary and give the reader something they haven’t seen done before. From that, this story was born. I took the father-son aspect of my original story and added the sexually taboo aspect. I personally found it easier to write such scenes by giving Hank features that I typically find attractive on a man. My goal with this was to make the reader as uncomfortable as possible, and from the responses I’ve gotten, I feel like I achieved that.

One last thing I’ll add is that I originally wrote the rough draft of this story about a year before I released it. I sat on it for a long time because I was a newer writer and was afraid of the accusations that may follow from readers who are unable to realize the author is not their story. Now that I’ve released it, the response has been quite the opposite. Not only have I not received any backlash (so far), but people seemed to appreciate something both twisted and queer delivered in what is mostly a heterosexual dominated sub-genre. I’ve even had many straight men tell me they loved this story, which is something that will never cease to amaze me.

Past Due: Rural Decay II

6. Rural Fear. Past Due: Rural Decay II offers more direct commentary on the rural dimension of the series, opening with comments about ways in which rural encounters are likely to be a little more intense than encounters in other areas. Do you think rural horror is intrinsically scarier than its urban or suburban counterparts? Why or why not? Other than the initial setup, which involves the narrator, Jake, driving around a large rural territory on business for the power company, why does the setting for Rural Decay II need to be rural? What is rural about the decay you depict?

JN: The easiest way for me to answer this is to explain my job. I work as a contractor for a local power company. While I live in the city of South Charleston, my work area is often the rural areas of the surrounding counties. Doing this work regularly puts me in locations that, to me, are quite creepy. Remote locations where sometimes I’m probably the only person around for at least a mile, and let me tell you, that realization alone can sometimes get the mind wandering. There’s also the poverty I see in these areas: decrepit houses, yards filled with junk and abandoned cars, and residents that are rougher around the edges than the typical people you encounter. In saying that, it’s not so much that I feel a rural setting is scarier than an urban one, but it’s one that I’ve become more familiar with while working this job. It goes without saying that my job is a big influence on my writing. The places I’ve been while working this job have inspired the setting for many of my stories, including both Rural Decay books, Road Hazards, Don’t Look in the Trees, and selected stories from both Slush Pile and They Come from Within.

I want to close this question by saying that using these settings is in no way an attempt to insult or criticize folks who live in poverty or in rural areas. It’s simply just a setting that inspires me on a daily basis and one I’ve become familiar with over the last few years.

7. Humiliation/Infantilization. One of the most extreme horrors of the second book is the dehumanization Jake suffers while he is captive and immobilized. He has no choice but to urinate and defecate on himself, and then he feels humiliated when his captor, Henry, must clean him up like a “baby.” For the sequel, why did you focus on this type of violence, arguably a kind of psychological torture, as opposed to the more physical extremes of the first book? How do the types of victimization compare? Going from Rural Decay to Rural Decay II, you switch from the perspective of (primarily) a victimizer to the perspective of a victim. How did the writing experiences compare?

JN: While both Rural Decay books have a psychological aspect to them, I wanted to lean into that aspect more with this one. I wanted it to go beyond captivity but felt like going the torture route would be too much like other books that I’ve read. I decided to go the humiliation route instead because it’s one I haven’t seen done as often. It was a bit easier for me to write this one because I’m a more passive person by nature. Since the main character wasn’t participating in most of the violence being depicted, it was easier for me to put myself in his shoes.

8. Stockholm Syndrome or…? During his captivity, Jake learns about Henry’s abusive family and develops sympathy for him that turns into a form of attachment. Is this attachment genuine, or is it more the result of Stockholm Syndrome, the sense of a positive psychological bond that sometimes forms between captors and captives? What draws Henry to Jake? What makes Jake receptive to Henry? How do you expect readers to feel about their relationship?

JN: This is a two-part answer that is heavily based on some of my own life experience.

I’m a survivor of an abusive relationship. It’s a life I lived for about ten years. For myself, and many others I’ve spoken with who have also been in an abusive relationship, it’s like a form of Stockholm Syndrome. Your abuser or “captor” is someone you love, but also makes you feel trapped.

On the flip side of this, my current partner is also a survivor of an abusive relationship. That history was a part of how we connected early on. Working together to adjust to not being with an abuser, along with getting over the PTSD that can come from such a relationship was like a form of trauma bonding for the two of us, and we have a great relationship as a result of this.

I decided to take both of these factors and use them for the dynamic between Jake and Henry. Jake, like me, is an abuse survivor, so after seeing Henry being abused by his family, he grows compassion for him. I wanted both Jake and the reader to both fear and empathize with Henry.

9. Horror Story, Love Story, Extremes. The relationship and unusual love that Rural Decay II focuses on is between Jake and Henry. Would you call this book a love story? Why or why not? Unlike the cover of the first volume, the second volume’s cover doesn’t advertise the book as “extreme.” Is it extreme horror? Why or why not? How are love stories and horror stories connected? What do you want readers to take away from the extremes, horrific or not, that you visit?

JN: My goal with any story I’ve written is to bring something the reader hasn’t seen done before, or at least hasn’t seen as often. I do consider this an extreme story; however, I don’t see it as extreme as its predecessor. I do view it, in a way, as a love story built on horror, and that was my intention. To me, fear (horror) and love are the two most extreme emotions a human can experience. They’re usually emotions that are kept on opposite ends of a story, but I wanted to make them meet in the middle.  

10. Access! How can readers learn more about you and your works (please provide any links you want to share)?

JN: Links to my Amazon page, along with my bigcartel store for anyone interested in purchasing signed copies of my books can be found at https://linktr.ee/bibliobeard. There are also links to my socials there.

About the Author

Jason Nickey is a horror writer from West Virginia, where he lives with his partner and three cats. He focuses on short stories and novellas. His writing style ranges from general horror to extreme and everywhere in between.

The post Interview with Author Jason Nickey: Rural Decay and Past Due: Rural Decay II appeared first on L. Andrew Cooper's Horrific Scribblings.