Lindy Ryan's Blog, page 6

Interview: Rachel Harrison Unleashes "Bad Dolls"

This interview originally ran on Rue Morgue.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedConfront the thing you don’t want to confront. There’s freedom on the other side.

From her debut. The Return to 2021’s witchy Cackle and 2022’s feminist body horror Such Sharp Teeth, Rachel Harrison has been taking horror literature by storm. Her newest, BAD DOLLS, a collection of four tonally consistent short stories is available now in ebook and audio from Berkeley. Recently, Rachel took some time out of her busy schedule to speak with Rue Morgue and share more about her BAD DOLLS.

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Following Cackle and Such Sharp Teeth , BAD DOLLS contains four short stories that address the horrific nature of the female experience and complex relationships, both thematically resonant with your other work. Can you tell us about the origins of these stories? How did this collection come to be?

I wrote two of the stories, “Goblin” and “Bad Dolls” before I wrote my first novel, The Return. Prior to writing that novel, my focus had been on speculative short fiction. I wrote a bunch of stories with protagonists that make questionable – okay, bad – choices. I loved the idea of including them in a collection called BAD DOLLS, and I continued to write stories between novel drafts and edits, etc. I wrote “Bachelorette” and “Reply Hazy” after my most recent novel, Such Sharp Teeth. Of all the stories I’ve written, these four are the most similar, thematically and tonally – the baddest of my dolls. Luckily, Penguin Random House Audio and Berkley were interested in publishing stories, and here we are!

The stories in this collection reflect “normal” women’s experiences in absurd and sometimes tongue-in-cheek ways: a bachelorette party hinged on blood sacrifice, a dieting app that comes with a monstrous manifestation of hunger and so on. You’ve traversed everything from complex romantic relationships to deep familial issues. Can you share more on how you fit together these themes into one collection?

If I were to pick the meat off these four stories and get down to the bare bones, they’re all about the same thing. A woman reckoning with something she doesn’t want to reckon with. And messing up in the process! Making mistakes. I love a protagonist who makes mistakes. We all make mistakes. And tonally, these mistakes lead to a mix of humor and horror in each story. The stories get darker and scarier as the collection goes on, but they all felt like they could exist within the same universe [and] be in conversation with each other.

Is any one of these stories most personal for you?

“Goblin” for sure. I wrote it in 2016 and think about it every day. There are actually a lot of personal details throughout the collection, things I plucked from my own life. None of which I’ll cop to here!

Cackle , I think, taught us to harness our inner power, and Such Sharp Teeth provided another lens to consider that same lesson: to embrace the monster within. What is the larger message you’d like readers – perhaps women – to come away with from this collection?

Confront the thing you don’t want to confront. There’s freedom on the other side. That sounds preachy and weird, but it’s what I got!

I have to ask, would Jordan, Natalie, Meg and Mac all be friends in real life?

I think so! They should start a support group. Lord knows they need it.

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Interview: A Conversation with "Gallows Hill" Author Darcy Coates

This interview originally ran on Rue Morgue.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published "I think a lot of young girls have this shared experience of concocting strange things in their back yards… jars full of water and flowers and leaves, cakes made from mud dried on stones, strange little toys formed from twigs and old string. Witchety is one of those girls who never grew out of that phase, but instead leaned into it and learned to harness it into something a little bit powerful."

If you’ve been reading horror lately, chances are you’ve come across Darcy Coates. A USA Today bestselling author, Darcy has more than a dozen horror and suspense titles on the bookshelf with her byline, including Hunted, The Haunting of Ashburn House, Craven Manor, and more. Her newest, GALLOWS HILL, which released last month (September 6) from Poisoned Pen Press, the adult mystery fiction imprint of Sourcebooks.

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Recently, Darcy took some time out of her busy schedule to speak with Rue Morgue and share more on GALLOWS HILL—and what’s up next for the Australian author.

Hi, Darcy! First off, what inspired you to write Gallows Hill —anything in particular? I’ve had the pleasure of reading several of your books, but Gallows Hill now reigns as my new favorite.

Thank you! Gallows Hill had its earliest inspiration from a small boutique winery my family stopped at about a decade ago. Until then, I’d thought you could only make wine from grapes, but they used unconventional bases—everything from oranges to flowerheads to chili peppers, all grown in their own garden.

I always thought that would be an amazing place to set a story. Even though Margot’s family business morphed to feel more of a traditional winery, it still carries some traces from its source: a storefront that’s open to the public and the close-knit feeling of a small business.

The crux of the story, though, actually came from a bad dream. I won’t spoil the ending, but Margot’s final discovery was something quite literally out of a nightmare!

Gallows Hill is a masterpiece of gothic horror, about an estranged daughter who comes home to inherit much more than the family business. But the family business itself is interesting. Do you have any background in winemaking, or did you undertake any special research to get the details quite right?

So much research went into the story! My favourite piece of trivia: some of the most expensive wines come from grapes that are allowed to grow moldy on the vine. It’s nicknamed Noble Rot and adds a natural sweetness that’s difficult to get otherwise.

I absorbed an incredible amount of random trivia in the months before and during writing Gallows Hill to make sure the winery would be (mostly) accurate. Only one problem: Margot couldn’t know any of it. I wanted her to feel entirely out of her depth in the business, so her knowledge of wines had to be kept absolutely bare-minimum, and almost all of my research was left on the cutting room floor. (Tragic!)

I loved Witchety’s character, and her sculpture, The Watcher. She’s such a welcome bit of sunshine in a dark book. As the mom of a golden retriever, I loved her pup even more! Combined they brought such a wonderful tenderness to the story. Can you talk a little more about the “goodness” of these characters in contrast to the darkness of Margot’s own ancestors?

It’s so, so important for me to have those little measures of warmth in a story. They give us a reason to care for the characters and create moments to breathe between the heavier segments. Plus, they can heighten the sense of dread we feel when things turn bad; shadows appear at their fullest when there’s some light to contrast against them.

I love Witchety. I think a lot of young girls have this shared experience of concocting strange things in their back yards… jars full of water and flowers and leaves, cakes made from mud dried on stones, strange little toys formed from twigs and old string. Witchety is one of those girls who never grew out of that phase, but instead leaned into it and learned to harness it into something a little bit powerful.

Gallows Hill is rife with beautifully macabre imagery and immersive atmosphere, balanced with a delicate spiderweb of a horror story. Where do you draw inspiration to craft this type of story?

Every story I write starts with the same question: What would scare me the most? It’s a great question; it means I’m always excited to write (since I’m telling a story I desperately wish I could read), and I can re-ask that question as often as I need if I’m not certain where to take a scene.

That’s why you’ll see some themes pop up across different books–old houses, old trees, lost graveyards, things that are dead, whispers in a dark room. Those are all themes that fascinate me and make it hard to sleep at night, and I can’t get enough of them.

What are you working on next?

Oh, I’m excited about what we have coming up!

First is a very dark survival thriller. A tour group finds themselves stranded in a snowbound cabin as they’re picked off one by one. Any of them could be the killer, and no one’s coming to save them. It’s fast and a bit gory and was incredibly fun to write. It’s called Dead of Winter and is due out next July!

The next story—the one I’m writing right now—is a YA horror story set in a small town where people go missing with no explanation. It’s called Where He Can’t Find You and leans into my love of urban legends and monster horror, with a really strong found family dynamic. I asked my editor how dark I was allowed to go, and she told me to lean into the horror. I didn’t mean to take it as a challenge, but it’s unraveling to be a deliciously creepy, deeply horrifying story, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

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Interview: Documentarian Bryan Fuller and "Queer for Fear"

This interview originally ran on Rue Morgue.

Having premiered on Shudder (and via the Shudder offering within the AMC+ bundle), Queer for Fear: The History of Queer Horror, is a four-part documentary series about the history of the LGBTQ+ community in the horror and thriller genres from executive producers Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, Pushing Daisies) and Steak House (Disney Launchpad, The Mustang).

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From Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker to legendary gay director James Whale, the tragic end of Oscar Wilde, and a touching tribute to closeted gay heartthrob Anthony Perkins—Pyscho’s Norman Bates—Queer for Fear “re-examines genre stories through a queer lens, seeing them not as violent, murderous narratives, but as tales of survival that resonate thematically with queer audiences everywhere.” Illuminative, intoxicating, and deeply moving, Queer for Fear shines a spotlight on those queer pioneers of horror whose works have commanded the page and screen while the stories of the people behind some of horror’s most fundamental scares have all too often been erased from history.

Rue Morgue recently had the opportunity to sit down with executive producer Bryan Fuller to talk more about this unabashedly brave and passionately poignant new docu-series.

From Star Trek to Pushing Daises , you’ve done it all. What attracted you to this project?

I’ve been watching horror films and consuming horror stories my entire life, so it felt exciting to have that conversation on a bigger platform with folks who’ve also been having that conversation and that experience: watching these films and seeing queerness in them, wondering if it’s just their projecting onto the storylines or if there’s something actually there. As we wanted to illustrate very clearly with Queer for Fear, there is something there and those projections are valid. There’s something about the “other “experience as a queer audience member and as a queer storyteller that brings these stories into a greater clarity of how we see ourselves in the movies, television, and stories we consume. Queer for Fear just felt irresistible on that level.

It’s certainly irresistible to watch! Can you tell us a little bit more about the development of the series—how you’ve curated the people profiled and those you’ve invited to help tell their stories? Personally, I had such an emotional experience watching the series—even tearing up at the recounting of the tragedy of Oscar Wilde. How did you make some of the darkest horror stories so incredibly resonant?

Queer for Fear started as a sort-of offshoot of a wonderful documentary horror noir Shudder released a few years ago. The producer of that documentary—Phil Noble, editor at Fangoria—wanted to do something from the crew’s perspective. So, we had a straight white guy as a queer ally, who pushed this storyline into being, and in a way that goes to show that we have allies outside of our community that want to hear our voices just as much as we do (did).

It’s such a sprawling canvas, queer history and horror stories, and so much bigger than any of us realize on an individual level. As a fledging documentarian, I didn’t know that Mary Shelley was queer; I didn’t know that Bram Stoker was queer. Yes, I knew about James Whale, but I didn’t understand that he got bit by the “theatre bug” as a prisoner of war. So, what started as a 90-minute movie soon began to burst at the seams. By the time we got to Oz Perkins (son of Anthony Perkins), he was so incredibly vulnerable and honest and refreshing, we knew what we could make a lasting impact if we stopped to tell the right story. We had to make room; it wasn’t going to do anybody any good to give information that was a quick Google away. We didn’t want to shave things down but expand them and give them that emotional context. You talked about tearing up over Oscar Wilde, and it makes me so happy because that’s the experience we want viewers to have. It’s heroic, and it’s foolhardy, and it’s arrogant, and it’s dumb, and yet brilliant and savvy at the same time. We tried to get as much information out with enough emotional context that we’re able to tell complete stories at pace without short-shrifting any of the material, so I’m glad you had an emotional experience, because that’s exactly our intention in sharing these stories.

You’ve referred to yourself as a fledgling documentarian, but it’s impossible not to feel the love you hold for the subject matter and see your passion for storytelling in every episode. And, in a way, Queer for Fear is a love story to the people who have shaped horror as we know it. What do you want audiences to take away from watching this series—how can we embed these stories and these truths into their lives?

I think, especially for queer audiences, we would love our audiences to see themselves and a validation as to why horror means so much to them—to claim ownership of the genre, because foundationally, queers own the horror genre in a way that no one else does. And that deserves a Pride parade in and of itself, as far as I’m concerned. For straight audiences, I think there’s going to be a lot of folks who get angry that things they love have queer associations (tweet about it, just make sure to hashtag us). Then there will be people that see, or find an affinity for, an association with the queer community, because they can relate to these things and to the queer people who created these things—like, I have more in common with queers than I perhaps do with anybody else in terms of feeling marginalized, like a monster, or ideologically queer even if not sexually queer.

There’s a lot of commonalities to be found in the horror genre for straight horror bros to look at the genre and say, “You know, I have more in common with queerness than I realized, and therefore queerness is more acceptable, or less demonized, or less different than I once thought it was.” Because queerness is about this experience, this human aspect, of an audience member seeing themselves in a monster and relating to Frankenstein’s monster, because they too felt unloved in some circumstances in their lives. If we can bring straight people closer to associating and understanding the queer experience and accepting that, and then also give queer people a home for conversations about art and storytelling, where parables and metaphors and euphemisms all run rampant, you get to dissect and interpret them and project yourself onto them. This makes the experience of watching a horror film both more communal and more personal.

QUEER FOR FEAR is available now on Shudder.

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