Stephanie M. Wytovich's Blog, page 13

On Being a Trans Woman in the Horror Genre: A Guest Post By Larissa Glasser

Good Morning, Everyone:
Today I'm sitting down to have a chat with Larissa Glasser, and I desperately wish we were able to do this in person because I could definitely use some coffee and lovely conversation right now. Larissa and I haven't actually met in person yet, but that's something that I hope changes soon because she is a writer (and super cool chick) who has been on my to-read list for quite some time now, and I'm very excited to be sharing a TOC with her in the Tragedy Queens Anthology recently released from Clash Books. She's a lovely, passionate woman, and I really admire her transparency and strength, and like I said, I'm really looking forward to reading her work soon. 
But yes, so far this month, we've covered a lot of topics ranging from race to sexuality in the horror genre, and today, we're going to tackle issues with gender, and Larissa has so beautifully composed the essay below to talk about her experience with being a trans woman working in the horror genre. 
On Being a Trans Woman in the Horror Genre
By Larissa Glasser
I can only speak from personal experience. Women in Horror Month elicits mixed emotions from me. While I appreciate recognition of our work, the gesture also feels like “othering” to some degree, a small little tent we might stumble into at the risk of being tokenized. However--with the bright sparkling kernel of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley invented our genre when she was only nineteen years old. Her mom Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the first feminist philosophers. It would therefore be nice to be seen and treated on equal merit with our male peers, but I am also realistic about our modern, universally gendered divides and the struggle of not just the creative process, but of bodily autonomy and equal rights.
Another element of this wariness I have for WIHM is that I am not even seen nor treated by many as a woman, because I was assigned male sex at birth. I can only bottom line this for y’all—after decades of navigating a struggle of incongruity between mind and body that much of humanity does not experience (or admit to doing so), I finally took steps to better my situation by taking action.
Being trans is something that happens randomly, seemingly to anyone, as being born left-handed or having green eyes rather than blue. It's like the rain of frogs in "Magnolia"--it's just something that happens. But the global perception of trans people has a long way to go, because post-colonial western society has been conditioned so very many of us to only understand a binary system in gender and sexuality: male or female, straight or queer. Many refuse to admit to the fact this way of thought is antiquated as those who believe the earth is flat. In fact, there are ambiguities in life that directly contradict the flat-earthers and for me, the characteristics of horror fit nicely into that perpetual uncertainty. I’ve lived with constant anxiety for most of my life, and that’s why I’ve always been drawn to the horror genre.
I don’t feel qualified to give a 101 on this topic (I recommend Julia Serrano’s Whipping Girl as a seminal text, and like I said earlier, I can only speak from personal experience), I can paraphrase an excellent distinction I’ve heard: sexuality is about who you go to bed with, and gender is about who you go to bed as.
I didn’t address trans issues in my writing until quite recently, when I attended a summer workshop with other trans writers and many of us bonded over that common experience. It wasn’t as if I needed express permission to address trans issues in my own fiction, but the encouragement certainly helped. 
I set to work last year, as I was recovering from a major health scare that also woke me up to a sense of purpose in my writing. As I crafted “The Mouse,” I wanted to address the “bathroom bills” that were being introduced nationwide in response to increased trans visibility (the radical right has to target someone in the wake of the historic SCOUTUS decision to legalize same-sex marriage). The submission call for the Wicked Haunted anthology (New England Horror Writers Press) solicited ghost stories. I managed to channel and purge a lot of my sadness into the narrative, while also poking holes in the anti-trans sentiment I saw growing with the ascension of Trump.  
I wanted to try my hand at writing a love story with “Ritual of Gorgons,” which found its way into Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath (Clash Books). Another common misconception about trans people is that we are out to trick or deceive non-trans people in the dating scene. “Ritual” is the story of two trans women, both high-profile children of celebrities, who fall in love and exact supernatural revenge upon the paparazzi who stalk them and endanger their privacy.
I combined a few ideas I’d had cooking into my first novella, F4 (Eraserhead Press). More irreverent and hardcore than my previous two stories, I still pitch the book as a trans porn version of “Die Hard” on a cruise ship that is surgically grafted into a giant monster’s body. I combined my struggle with internalized transphobia and sexual yearning into the main character, Carol Stratham. Carol is also an unwilling celebrity, and when she becomes the target of an internet hate campaign, her life goes through upheaval and she flees to work on the cruise ship. Embittered by her loss, she is ultimately called to duty when disaster strikes and must save the other passengers from a malevolent supernatural force. The monster also plays a major role in the development of her character, but no spoilers. Suffice it to say that I wrote F4 as a paean to the bad 1980’s, hyper-masculinized action movies I had devoured as a young boy, wondering what the heck was going on with her internal contradictions.
So there is more to come. My next project is like “River’s Edge” and “Stranger Things” only with trans kids. Literature can address social issues, and I’m thankful to have realized this close to when I had decided to become serious about writing. I think there’s a long way to go (especially in terms of honing my craft), but suffice it to say that I hope more trans people will assert their right to exist, whether it is through their art, trade, and especially politics.
Trans women also deserve to be celebrated during WIHM, especially since we can offer a unique perspective in genre fiction. If you’d like to contact me and ask about other trans writers who have inspired me, totally hit me up on Facebook or Twitter. And always remember Mary Shelley.
Author Bio: Larissa Glasser is a librarian, genre writer, and queer trans woman from Boston. Her short fiction has appeared in Wicked Haunted (New England Horror Writers), Tragedy Queens: stories inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath (Clash Books), Procyon Science Fiction Anthology 2016 (Tayen Lane Publishing), and The Healing Monsters Volume One (Despumation Press). In 2017, Larissa co-edited Resilience: a collection of stories by trans writers (Heartspark Press), which helped launch a new touring media collective of trans women's and (C)AMAB trans writers. Her debut novella F4 is available from Eraserhead Press as part of its 2018 New Bizarro Author Series. Larissa is a Member at Large of Broad Universe, and she is on Twitter @larissaeglasser.

Shut the Fuck Up About Shirley Jackson: A Guest Post by Shane Douglas Keene

Good Morning, Everyone:
Today in the Madhouse, I'm sitting down with my brother-from-another-mother, Shane Douglas Keene, to talk about the state of women in horror, and I have to say, I honestly can't think of a better way to bring this series to a close than with Keene's essay, which I think stands on its own and doesn't need much of an introduction. 
[Insert cheeky smile here].
But before I turn things over to him, I know some people are probably right off the bat grumbling about the title of this essay, and I, as a woman working in horror, want to say that I could not agree more with Keene's sentiment here, and I think it's something that we all, myself included, need to really think about and meditate on when we're posed the question: who are your favorite women working in horror?
Something that I've noticed over the past couple of years is the repetition that seems to go around this month, and it's really frustrating. Sure, we all love and adore Shirley Jackson and Mary Shelley, but come on. Everyone loves them, everyone knows them--even if they haven't read them--and their stories have gone down in history and are taught and talked about in high schools, colleges, and graduate programs throughout the world. But contemporary women working and writing in the horror industry? We're the ones carrying their legacy, and in order for that legacy not to to disappear, we need to start talking about our modern day sisters as well. This is something that I'm going to make a point of personally both in my creative life, and in my academic life, because I'm just as guilty of this, too. So for me, moving forward, I'm going to start paring classic/contemporary works together in my classes, and I'm also going to continue with my short story challenge and try to read at least 30 short stories by female authors this year. 
So I'm curious: what are your goals and who is on your reading list? 
With blood and ovaries,Stephanie M. Wytovich
Shut the Fuck Up About Shirley JacksonBy Shane Douglas Keene
When I set out to write this initially, it was going to be an entirely different thing than it is. I had several hundred words worth of notes alone, and it was looking to be an in-depth, thoughtful piece that in another venue and for another purpose might have some value, but by and large doesn’t address the very real problem that exists in the field of horror fiction and media today. I have a terrible—some would say narcissistic—habit of making the things I embrace about me, and I was doing just that with this column you’re reading today, making it a breathy, confessional kind of thing that served more to describe the nature of the problem, but did very little to suggest ways to fix it or even that it really could be fixed. But it can, and I’m here today to make some simple suggestions to hopefully help get the ball rolling in that direction.
First, a confession. Until about four or five years ago now, I virtually never read work by female authors in the horror genre or any other for that matter. The reason? Largely, nurture. I had a bias bred into me by my father that basically boiled down to this: people with penises couldn’t relate to literature that was penned by one of the vagina-endowed individuals in our genre. Bullshit, I know, but we carry our inbred biases, often unbeknownst even to us, as closely as we carry our own fingerprints, perceiving the world through the tainted vision of our ancestors and further influencing that vision via our own reading and writing habits. And it isn’t just men who suffer from that early life shaping. Some of my sisters share the same attitude towards female fiction authors as my father does, one that essentially says women make great romance and fantasy authors, but if you want some real meat with your potatoes, you must turn to the grittier, meaner, and more meaningful work produced by the swinging dicks in the crowd. Once again, bullshit, but what can be done about it?
Well, for starters, when some luddite to the wonders of female-penned horror approaches you for suggestions about where to start, shut the fuck up about Shirley Jackson, Joyce Carol Oates, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. They don’t need your help. Everyone who ever attended more than one term of college—or attended freshman level high school—knows full well who they are and recommending them serves largely as the equivalent to not making a recommendation at all. In fact, you risk confirming to them that there really is no true depth to the well of women’s horror fiction. If we would choose to be advocates, then our purpose isn’t to draw attention to the only three women whose names are likely to spark a sense of familiarity in the recipient, but to instead somehow demonstrate the vast panoply of outstanding fictions being generated by female authors right now. Suggesting the aforementioned authors or even drawing on slightly more recent voices such as the great Bari Wood or V.C. Andrews certainly has its place in intellectual discussion, but it has no bearing on the problem at large or the eventual solution to that problem.
Instead, you should be drawing their attention to some of our brilliant contemporaries in modern horror. Point them to the exceptional works of authors such as Damien Angelica Walters, whose recent short story collections,  Cry Your Way Home and Sing MeYour Scars are some of the finest in recent memory, or perhaps try the utterly brilliant Lucy Taylor or Karen Runge, two of the best short story authors I’ve ever encountered and whose work leaves me literally stunned more often than not. It would be impossible to list every single worthy individual in a single column, and I won’t even make the attempt. But let me name just a few that I think you should be reading. And if you are already reading them, these are some of the ones I not-so-humbly suggest you should be recommending to newcomers. They are:
Gemma Files, Kathe Koja, Sarah Johnson, this blog’s host Stephanie M. Wytovich, Caitlyn R. Kiernan, Susan Hill, Sarah Langan, Linda Addison, Tanith Lee, Sarah Pinborough, Nancy Holder, Elizabeth Massie, Kate Jonez, Izzy Lee, Editor Ellen Datlow, Lisa Morton, Charlee Jacob, Lucy A. Snyder, Gillian Flynn, Lauren Beukes, Ania Ahlborn, Rena Mason, Seanan McGuire, Nancy Kilpatrick, Rhiannon Frater, Elizabeth Hand, Cherie Priest, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Cina Pelayo, and on and on and on …
And that’s how it goes. That list, or any other you might encounter, is so far from all-inclusive as to be infinitesimal and unquantifiable. There are so many great women horror authors working in the industry that you could devote the rest of your life to their work alone and never get a chance to read them all before they finally submerge your moldering corpse beneath dirt and earthworms. And that’s not a nihilistic or pessimistic statement. To the contrary, its and entirely optimistic statement, one that says, “if you choose to drink from this well, your thirst will be forever slaked.”
So, if you’re like I was just a few short years ago, thinking that the only good horror fiction is born of testosterone, I’m here to tell you to pull your head out of your ass. The girls are fucking scary, people, and they’re scary-fucking-talented too. If you for some reason negate or avoid their works, or if you think it’s only fit for consumption by “like-minded” women, you’re giving yourself a major screwing and you should unfuck yourself as soon as humanly possible. Honor our esteemed Orange Overlord and go grab some women today. For maximum satisfaction, grab their books instead of their pussies. You can open up worlds of depth, wonder, and imagination that you never could have dreamed was real.
Bio: Shane Douglas Keene is a reviewer, columnist, and poet living and dying in Portland, Oregon.  He spends his spare time drinking scotch, playing guitar, and thinking of ways to scare small children and puppies.  He pays meticulous attention to beard maintenance, mostly because it freaks people out, and he writes about dark fiction and poetry in various venues including his blog at https://shotgunlogic.wordpress.com/ and at HorrorTalk.com.

How Lois Duncan Taught Me About Horror: A Guest Post by Janice Leach

Good Morning, Everyone:
Today in the Madhouse, I'm featuring horror poet, Janice Leach, who I've had the absolute pleasure of working with through Raw Dog Screaming Press. Janice and I met about four or so years ago during a writing retreat at a cabin in Hocking Hills, Ohio, and we talked about poetry and marvelous witchy things, and then her husband, James, handed me some homemade mead, and Janice let me sample some of her amazing baking. Needless to say, I love these two for their warmth, laughter, and kindness, but the pies and mead were a nice addition to our friendship, too. 
What I love about Janice's work specifically is that it is delightfully beautiful and macabre at the same time, not to mention grounded in real-life horrors that detail family, friendships, and other significant relationships. She doesn't sugarcoat her work, or her voice, and beyond that, she finds the allure of the grotesque in everyday life, which is something that as a fellow poet and reader, I very much enjoy. 
For today's meditation before I turn things over to Janice, I want you to think about which YA authors you find yourself drawn to, and then I want you to think about what books changed your life growing up. For me, I didn't read a lot of horror per say as a kid, but I was absolutely enthralled with Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House series because it let me travel throughout history and learn the mythologies and stories of famous people and other cultures. As I got older, I fell in love with Ellen Hopkins and it was her books that made me want to grow up to be a narrative poet. Now, yes, yes, I know that these women aren't horror writers, but they helped me grow into the writer that I am today, so for that, I am eternally grateful.  How Lois Duncan Taught Me About Horrorby Janice Leach As it was for other nerdy girls growing up in the pre-internet 1970’s, the library was my search engine, the source of knowledge, and my fortress of solitude. The quiet space and organized shelves drew my attention as much as the seemingly unlimited resources. Here I could ask questions without appearing too curious, too weird or, frankly, evil, and find answers in texts themselves. I systematically read everything in the not-large non-fiction occult section, unconcerned about my checkout record because of my need to get information, and I likewise indulged in stories that took place in realities where witchcraft, astral projection, mind control, and secret murderous conspiracies were daily happenings.
Thank you, Lois Duncan, for writing those books.
With a firm foothold in the emergent field of Youth Adult Literature, Lois Duncan’s books shaped my understanding and expectations of horror. Her books explored speculative topics like witchcraft, possession and channeling, astral projection, and mind control as well as horror tropes of kidnapping, murder, and death. Her narratives also dealt with  life issues like love gone bad, violations of trust, and danger to or destruction of families. Mapped onto fictional worlds, these “relationship horrors” echoed the conditions of my suburban adolescent life: the specter of crushes and dating; rumors, gossip, and betrayal by friends; estrangements, separations and divorces in families that seemed to come out nowhere and happened at an alarming rate.
Duncan’s stories felt like real life. I identified with the heroines, and the characters who populated her worlds echoed my friends or neighbors. Although most of my teachers were kind, decent people, a few were awful and difficult. I could imagine hating a teacher so much that I would help classmates kidnap him to scare him, and we might finish him off accidentally like the kids in in Killing Mr Griffin. I valued my family, and still when teenage me learned some of those truths and secrets kept from younger children, a few relatives turned out to be jerks. Maybe that crazy cousin was actually a witch trying to steal our family like in Summer of Fear.  The adult authorities set limits and dictated instructions, making me feel used and manipulated-- much like the girls in Down a Dark Hall. The journeys of Duncan’s characters paralleled my own questioning of authorities, trust, and truth.
It’s no wonder then, given the foundations laid by Lois Duncan-type fiction, that the horror books and movies that I find most effective aren’t those featuring random invasion killers or monsters, but the narratives where loved ones or close friends turn out to be the unexpected monsters. In typical horror fashion, the recovering alcoholic heroine in A Horrible Way to Die fights for her life when it’s threatened; her other significant struggle is dealing with her inebriated past and her consequent blindness to her boyfriend being a serial killer. Themes of trust, friendship, love, and betrayal in films like the Scream series, High Tension, and I Know What You Did Last Summer (based on Duncan’s book) make my heart pound with worries as well as with fear.
Like many adult readers, I am a shameless fan of YA horror and YA speculative fiction too. I love the monsters and menaces, and I still read for the themes that first attracted me in junior high. The supernatural stories overlaid with the dominant emotional struggles of youth-- guilt, jealousy, suspicion-- provide double the satisfaction. Stories dealing with relationship horrors as well as the more traditional horrors remain my favorites. Books like The Forest of Hands and Teeth, The Reapers are the Angels, Allison Hewitt is Trapped, The Graveyard Book, Amulet series, and the Spiderwick Chronicles give me concern for the emotional health of the characters as well as their ability to stay alive and thrive under the challenges they are dealt. In YA horror, I find stories with both monsters and families, with the weird and the familiar, where characters come of age and fight for their lives at the same time. 

Author Bio:
Janice Leach co-authored a poetry collection with James Frederick Leach titled Til Death: Marriage Poems (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2017), which explores the love story and the "relationship horror" of a long partnership. She also bakes pies with local ingredients; volunteers at a long term garden project in youth detention; loves and defends those around her; and writes about it all in poems, grants, and blogs. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, she received a Hopwood Award for poetry. She tends a rollicking kitchen garden filled with heirloom vegetables and fruit trees. 
Instagram: horrors_and_happy_aftersTwitter: @JanArbor 

Am I a Horror Writer? A Guest Post by Michelle R. Lane

Good Morning, Everyone:

Today in the Madhouse, I'm sitting down to chat with a bloody brilliant lady who just so happens to be one of my most favorite people in the world: Michelle R. Lane. Michelle and I met in graduate school at Seton Hill University and became fast friends after a few classes and a trip to New Orleans together.  Since then, we've traveled the country, drank in more bars than I can count, shared our share of laughs and heartbreak, and probably talked about Hannibal a little too much for it to be considered normal.

But before I let Michelle take the stage, I want you folks to think about how you define horror, and then beyond that, what the social, cultural, and political ramifications are of writing a horror story that primarily deals with issues and topics of/surrounding race. Furthermore, I invite you all to think about the last horror novel/poetry collection/short story that you read by a person of color.  If you're finding yourself coming up short, might I recommend: Linda D. Addison, Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Chesya Burke, and Nisi Shawl.


Am I a Horror Writer?By Michelle R. Lane
I graduated from Seton Hill University in January 2015 with an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction, and was pleasantly surprised to have a full house at my thesis reading. My thesis novel, Invisible Chains, is a slave narrative told from the POV of a teenage girl experiencing the real-world horrors of living on a plantation in Antebellum Louisiana. She witnesses a lynching, she is tied to a fountain and whipped, she is raped repeatedly, loses people she loves to gruesome deaths, hunted by slave catchers, and stalked and seduced by a vampire who claims to love her. I read the following excerpt as part of my presentation:
"The gentle babble of the water should have been soothing, but there was nothing peaceful about having my hands tied in front of me as I embraced the copper statue at the center of the concrete structure. I looked up into the nymph’s face. Drops of water splashed my cheeks and mixed with the tears. I wished my body were solid like the statue the first time the whip struck my back and split it open. After the fifth lash I lost count. Each time he struck me a new gash opened on my back. The pain was so bad I couldn’t catch my breath, which made it harder to scream. My dress was in shreds and so was the skin on my back. Blood and sweat mixed into a salty sticky mess that ran down my sides, stung my open wounds, and dripped into the fountain. Salt, musk, blood, and leather combined into a perfume of odors that on their own usually pleased me. Now, they would only remind me of pain and fear. My eyes were shut tight. I cried and begged, but no one heeded my pleas. Then, all of a sudden, the beating stopped. My back tensed as I waited for the next blow, but it didn’t come.


“What are you waiting for? Strike her again, James,” Lottie shouted.


“Hush, Charlotte. I heard something in the alley behind the house.”


Near the rear wall of the courtyard there was a sound like a low growl. I opened my eyes
and looked down into the fountain. The water had turned pink from my blood. I didn’t recall
throwing up, but vomit floated in the water, too. The growl came again, but I couldn’t see what
made it.


“Jimmy, go see what that is, but come right back. We’re not done here,” Lynch said.


I held onto the nymph to keep my balance, but my grip was slipping. All the strength had
left my body. Pain covered every inch of me. I couldn’t fight now if I had to. More than anything
I just wanted to lie down and die there in the garden. They could bury me under the herbs for all
I cared. I was about to fade from exhaustion, when something jumped over the wall and attacked Lynch. Lottie screamed.


With the little strength I had left, I turned to look at what could only be a wolf tearing its
way through Lynch’s throat and chest. It was the biggest animal I had ever se
en. At least as tall as a man, taller, and covered in course black fur. It stood on its hind legs and treated itself to a meal of that bastard’s flesh. It actually picked Lynch up and shook him from side to side in its jaws and then dropped him to the ground. Then it came at me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lottie crawl across the yard to kneel beside her husband’s corpse.


I was so tired and scared I couldn’t even scream when the animal fell forward onto its
front paws and walked towards me on all fours. Big John came around the corner of the house with an axe in his hands. He raised it over his head and ran at the animal, but he wasn’t fast enough. The wolf turned and snapped his teeth at Big John. He jumped back just in time and didn’t get bit, but the wolf bore down on him and chased him toward the house.  Lottie rose up on unsteady feet. Blood covered her hands and the front of her dress. She pressed her forearm to her mouth to hold in another scream and quietly backed away from Lynch’s body. She followed Big John into the house.


No one was coming to save me."
And yet, when I finished my presentation, people asked me if my novel was really a horror novel. They questioned the fact that I alluded to the real horrors of slavery and the society that allowed it to continue, as opposed to writing about ghosts, monsters, and serial killers. I wasn’t sure how to answer their questions, but I was certain my understanding of horror fiction was broader than theirs.
Genre is a tricky thing sometimes, especially when you’re attempting to write within a genre that has too many rules or assumptions made about it. Horror, is the fiction of fear. In fact, one of the most famous quotes about horror fiction is attributed to H. P. Lovecraft, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Lovecraft is half right. We do fear the unknown, but we also fear the things in our past that have hurt us the most. We fear being hurt again.
As a woman of color born in the United States, my ancestors were slaves. Recent science tells us that the traumas of our ancestors become part of our genetic code. The violence my ancestors experienced as slaves lives inside my flesh, like ghosts. Toni Morrison’s Beloved is one of the best examples of a ghost story about slavery. It shows how the trauma of violence, both physical and psychological, can manifest as a literal ghost. Ghosts have stories to tell, and most ghost stories are about unspeakable horrors.
Despite the fact that my protagonist practices Vodun, has a vampire traveling companion, hides from slave catchers in a circus that only exists behind a magical door, and befriends a werewolf, people still felt the need to ask if I was writing Horror fiction. One of my mentors, Dr. Michael Arnzen, asked me to think about the social, cultural and political ramifications of writing a novel like Invisible Chains, because he was certain other people would be asking those questions.
I had thought about the social, cultural and political ramifications while I was writing the novel. I struggled with the fact that I was writing a slave narrative that not only focuses on the real horrors of slavery, but depicts white slave owners as the real monsters. I worried about how the novel would be received, because it deals with issues that might make some readers very uncomfortable if not angry, including:
●   Rape. When a woman of color writes about the rape of a slave by her white master, focusing only on the violence rather than the sex, it will almost undoubtedly anger the people who subscribe to revisionist history and uphold rape culture in America. Sexual violence is a trope within horror fiction, and aside from the blood and gore, is one of the reasons horror films almost consistently have an R rating. When you strip away the fetishization of female bodies and remove the script of rape fantasy, in a way, you are rewriting an expected aspect of horror fiction. Body horror is almost always in reference to violence done to female bodies. And weirdly enough, no matter how traumatic or terrifying, writers and filmmakers still manage to sexualize that horror.●   Racism. America is not a post-racial society. Racism is alive and well and living in the United States. Racism helped to get Donald Trump elected. Racism is why police officers are killing black people in the streets with little to no consequences. Racism is why it’s not okay to say #BlackLivesMatter. Despite what a lot of people would like to believe, including the people who insist that they are color-blind, racism didn’t end with the Civil Rights Movement. It simply went underground and took on a more insidious guise while pointing fingers at White Supremacists as if they were just a bunch of dangerous crazies. Extremists. The fact of the matter is, Trump’s cabinet is bursting at the seams with racists, and not just their favorite scapegoat, Steve Bannon. Racism isn’t just a specter of our dark past, it is an evil that lives in the hearts of our co-workers, neighbors, family members, and government leaders. It’s worth writing about, and in my mind, it qualifies as a topic for horror fiction.●    Interracial relationships. While my protagonist plans to settle down with a black man, that character is lynched. She later develops a relationship with a white man, and her vampire traveling companion is also white. I worried that writing about a woman of color who chooses the company of white men despite her treatment as a slave, would generate criticism from people of color. That hasn’t happened yet, and several of my beta readers have been women of color. Of course, Octavia Butler wrote about interracial relationships in Kindred, which also deals with the horrors of slavery.
So why were people asking if my novel fit into the Horror genre? Was it because I have a vampire antagonist? Vampires are monsters, right? So what if they appear in Paranormal Romance novels and take teen girls to prom? They’re still scary if you’re paying close enough attention, and my vampire is definitely a monster. Black magic is still scary, right? Was my genre in question because I chose to write a slave narrative? What’s more horrifying than slavery? Was my genre in question because my protagonist is a woman of color? I mean, judging by the number of horror films I’ve been watching lately, you’d think the only scary thing out there is crazy white women who nearly kill their children, and yet somehow don’t end up in prison or shot in the streets by police.
Like most writers who receive multiple rejections, I’ve begun to assume that the novel is just terrible. But then, people read it, like it, and keep asking when it’s going to be published. I’m not sure what to tell them, because I don’t know if the issue is a matter of genre, confusion over how to market it, or simply that people don’t think that women of color write good Horror fiction. Of course, I have had short stories included in Horror anthologies, so I must be doing something right.
My fear of rejection has not stopped me from writing. My protagonists are women of color. They are threatened by dark forces, sexual violence, and the realities of the past. And, despite how smart and strong they might be, they all seem to have the unfortunate habit of falling in love with monsters. Horror isn’t just the fiction of fear. It’s the fiction of facing your own demons, the fiction of self-discovery, the fiction of healing. When you write about the things that make people uncomfortable and ask them to look at themselves in relation to those things, most people don’t want to look. Horror writers hold up a mirror to society and have the nerve to show people what they fear the most: themselves. Perhaps, my novel raises too many questions about the past that make people uncomfortable. Or, maybe they just aren’t ready to hear that story told in the words of woman of color.
Author Bio: Michelle R. Lane writes dark speculative fiction about women of color who must battle their inner demons while falling in love with monsters. Her work typically includes elements of fantasy, horror, romance, and occasionally erotica. In January 2015, Michelle graduated with an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. Her short story, “The Hag Stone,” was published November 2014 in the anthology Dark Holidays, available from Dark Skull Publications. She is a single mom who writes digital content for a toy maker and historic restoration company in Lancaster County. She lives in South Central Pennsylvania with her son.
Feel free to stalk Michelle online at Girl Meets Monster: https://michellerlane.wordpress.com/, follow her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chellane72/ or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/themichellerlane.

I'm a Feminist Because: A Guest Post by Tiffany Scandal

Hello Friends and Fiends,
Today in the Madhouse, I'm welcoming back Tiffany Scandal to talk about her work in the horror genre, as well as discuss what it means to be a feminist. Tiffany has her hands in a lot of cool projects right now, but she also works and edits with King Shot Press, a small publisher of radical books.
Their latest release, Nasty!, is an all-female anthology that tackles a powerhouse of important issues in regards to race, sexuality, and gender, which is something that we've been spending a lot of time talking about in the Madhouse this month. I'm actually preparing to teach a class on Women and Activism, and this anthology is definitely something that I'll be adding to my arsenal of books to help me prepare for the semester.  
But now, I turn the mic over to Tiffany, and I invite you all to think about what it means to be a feminist, what the preconceived notions/stereotypes of it are, and how you, personally, plan to take a stand for gender equality.
I'm a Feminist BecauseBy Tiffany Scandal
I’m not a feminist because I hate men. I’m a feminist because I believe women’s rights are human rights. Because queer rights are human rights. Because we still have a long way to go and I am happy to stand with my sisters and allies to create platforms to have our voices heard.
I recently curated an anthology benefiting Planned Parenthood. The anthology features non-fiction essays from 19 very different, fierce women. While it doesn’t encompass all of the various aspects of the female experience, it’s a good start to hopefully initiate and seek out more conversations about what’s wrong with society and what we can do to fix it. I aimed to capture conversations about race, gender, sexuality, means, and various other angles of struggle. After reading the collection as a whole, I felt really fucking proud because while this book isn’t perfect, it’s a start, and it feels important.
But putting together a book like this is risky. I expected backlash because we live in a society where a large portion of the population still views women as second-class citizens. All-female ToCs get instantly dismissed as novelty books. “Allies” mansplain feminism to me, tell me what my role should be, and how I could best support them on their mission to earn equal rights for all. Planned Parenthood is grossly misunderstood and constantly under attack. Female colleagues called me brave and applauded me from a distance. I pumped myself up, ready for a fight. Ready to stand by this book and its authors. Ready to not let this book drown and get lost. I was expecting a monster to come out from the shadows and attack, but nothing, except unconditional love and support for this project, came.
Then one morning, I woke up and my phone was blowing up with notifications from various social media outlets. A contributor to Nasty! was the focus of a conservative/alt-right attack. My name was attached to hundreds of tweets in a short period of time and I had trouble keeping up with it all. Scrolling to figure out what was happening, I saw men AND women make hurtful, violent comments in an effort to shut down a strong-willed woman. People were flinging curses, threatening boycotts, sending private messages, even creating troll accounts with our press’s name. I got called a hag and a witch (like those are bad things… pfft), and a lot of contradictory insults where I eventually just gave up on trying to figure out what the other people were trying to say. So much hate was being thrown in our direction that it sparked the interest of people who have never heard of us before. Support came from strangers, orders fired in faster than our laptops could keep up with. Conversations we were hoping to inspire started taking place and the book hasn’t even been out for a month. The scary, unpleasant thing I was worried about, made the book and our press stronger. I’ve never felt more proud.
As of today, Nasty! is our number one bestseller. 
Author Bio: Tiffany Scandal is the author of Jigsaw Youth and the Wonderland Award nominated Shit Luck, and holds a degree in Feminist Studies from UCSB. She has modeled and worked as a photographer for Suicide Girls, and as a social worker, providing counseling services for at-risk women and LGBTQ youth. 
Website: Twitter :  Patreon : Instagram

AT THE INTERSECTION OF HORROR AND SCIENCE: A GUEST POST BY ASHLEY DAVIS

Good morning everyone:
I'm pleased to introduce our next guest for Women in Horror Month (WIHM): Ashley Davis (Katherine Gethin). I had the pleasure of mentoring and getting to know Ashley a few months ago, and folks, this is one writer who you want to keep your eye on because she's doing some truly wonderful work in the horror genre.
In addition to being a brilliant dark poet, she's also an incredible woman with a background in astrophysics and a heart of gold. Her poetry is full of imagery that plays with the balance of light and dark, and in her essay below, she talks a little more about how pertinent this is to her and her academic pursuits. When I read her, I feel like I'm reading a mixture of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black and Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come, and if you have a love of the Gothic and the beautiful grotesque, I think you'll find her work quite evocative. 
A Meditation on the Intersection of Science and HorrorBy Ashley Davis (publishes under the pseudonym Katherine Gethin)
I’m not your average writer. I started winning writing awards around the age of 7, shortly after my parents, upon finding out that I’d read every book in their library, realized I had Savant Syndrome and could read as fast as I could turn the pages. English was always my best subject in school, and horror was always my focus. My first chapter book was Stephen King’s IT at age 6. I read it over the course of an afternoon and fell in love with the genre. Of course, in college I majored in liberal arts and started my editing company. Then the unexpected happened. A brilliant astrophysicist I had as an astronomy professor discovered that I had unusual talent in physics. From there, I threw my heart into science all the way to my PhD in astrophysics, which I’m months from finishing. It completed me; I had found my place. But I still had to write. I’ve been writing horror poetry regularly since I was a child, and I never stopped. Over time, the vastness of the universe and the great mysteries of existence captured my soul and began to weave their way into my writing. A deep understanding of life on a quantum subatomic level changes the way you see the world. Once you learn that darkness is only a place where all light is absorbed, a different darkness takes shape in the abstract, in the juxtaposition between the brilliant, delicate precision of the subatomic and the brash colors and world-moving interactions of the unending macroscopic. The brightest nebula is the death of a star. The smallest particle pairs communicate with each other in ways that defy the laws of science. The mathematics of reality can make your heart race and your blood burn as much as any horror film. The beauty and terror in nature are often simultaneously experienced, even if on different levels. Science is beautiful horror. It is horrific beauty. It encapsulates who we are and describes our existence, and it isn’t written about enough. Certainly not by women. My gender identity makes me unique in both of my professions. But it provides a perspective that I think can bridge the two, even if only briefly. What I do in the lab is no different from what I do with a pen and paper: I observe colossal forces of nature, watching our universe shift atom by atom and explode into beauty, death, and rebirth. And I’m there to pick up the pieces and discover their secrets.
Featured Poem:
//The Night is Full of Teeth// The stars have teeth
Sharp ridgesInside their fireBeyond the wisps of dark matterNo moon or planetCould ever master their gravitational pull. 
Author Bio: Ashley Davis (publishes under the pseudonym Katherine Gethin) is a horror writer, poet, editor, ghostwriter, science consultant, and PhD astrophysicist living in central Texas. When she isn’t writing dark poetry or studying the universe, she enjoys bellydancing, Celtic history, Krav Maga, and teaching physics at an advanced-curriculum school. She was also the physics consultant on the Southern Reach Trilogy, of which the first film, Annihilation, is being released on February 23.
Read for Free:http://www.thehorrorzine.com/Poetry/Jan2018/KatherineGethin/KatherineGethin.htmlhttps://www.google.com/amp/s/theoriginalvangoghsearanthology.com/2017/07/06/abditum-by-katherine-gethin/amp/
Current Publications for Sale:https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B077HFFL7R/https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1984378503/

WOMEN DIRECT HORROR: LET'S GET BLOODY

Cheers to all from a snowy, ice-covered Pittsburgh:

We’ve been talking a lot about writing lately in the Madhouse, which is obviously one of our favorite things to do, but something I’ve taken a shine to lately—over the past two years or so, I’d say—is film. I’ve been stretching my wings and getting more involved in the film industry, as well as writing about it and watching more of it, which my god do I have a lot of catching up to do! But I digress. Right now, I want to talk about some of my favorite horror movies directed by women. I’ve been reading a lot about women working in film, about feminist criticism of film, and my personal favorite, how our bodies are portrayed on screen. I’m working on a couple non-fiction projects now, which thankfully to the HWA Rocky Wood Scholarship, I’ve really been blessed to be able to get my hands on some fantastic research, so again, my continued thanks and appreciation for that. 
But now, let’s get bloody. 
First up is one of my absolute favorite films: American Psycho (2000) directed by Mary Harron. Christian Bale is already one of my favorite actors (I loved his work in The Machinist), and his portrayal of Bret Easton Ellis’ character Patrick Batemen is superb. The entire movie is shot beautifully, and right now, I’m specifically thinking about the scene in the beginning when Batemen is getting ready for work and we get a peek behind the mask at the routines and rituals he does in order to try to be more human. Ah! Chilling. And if that’s not enough to keep viewers glued to the screen, the movie’s black humor and catchy one-liners certainly will. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to return some videotapes.

The second movie on my list is near and dear to my heart: Pet Sematary, directed by Mary Lambert. Now Pet Sematary (1989) was the first Stephen King book I read, and I remember reading it in the middle of the night in my childhood bedroom, all the while sneaking quick looks outside to make sure that my recently departed rabbit (Fluffy) didn’t decide to come back to life and murder me in my sleep. The movie itself scared/continues to scare the living hell out of me, and I don’t think I’ve ever quite gotten over seeing Gage’s lone bloody shoe tumbling across the road. And the Zelda scenes? Christ, I’m still not ready to talk about those. 
 
Next up on the list is Near Dark (1987), directed by Kathryn Bigelow. I only watched this movie for the first time recently (shameful, I know), and I remember telling my mom, who first introduced to me The Lost Boys, that if I would have seen this film first, it would have trumped David and his gang. Now don’t get me wrong, I love a greased up saxophone player as much as the next gal, but Near Dark had the grit and blood transfusions that I apparently so desperately craved. Plus, the burn scenes in this movie were beautiful and I love the scene where they’re in their van with black spray paint and blankets to shield themselves from the sun. That horror-western vibe actually made me think of the scene in Devil’s Rejects at the end when they are in the car, guns blazing. 

Speaking a vampire films, Kiss of the Damned (2012) by Xan Cassavetes is another favorite, and not just because I saw a lot of similarities to Only Lovers Left Alive, which is my all-time favorite vampire film. In this film, there’s love, sex, bloodlust, and an interesting commentary on sisterhood, which is a plot point that I’m always interested in talking about because I’ll be forever interested in how women treat each other, especially when it comes to family and the need to honor blood ties (no pun intended) over everything. Watching it, I fell head over heels with the fashion choices, sense of community, and the notion of monsters in heat, so if you’re a vampire fan, this is an absolute can’t miss.
Raw (2017) by Julia Ducournau was my second favorite movie of 2017, and I loved how beautifully grotesque it was. Cannibalism movies are a brand of horror that I either love or hate, i.e. not a fan of Wrong Turn but I adored We Are What We Are, so the slow-burn, art film tends to work better for me in these cases. But here, Ducournau worked her skills with suspense and foreshadowing to create a storyline that is not only a coming of age story, but a deliciously meaty one at that. If you can stand the sight of blood, I’d highly recommend this one, and for all of those who are saying this movie is disgustingly unwatchable, I strongly have to disagree, but hey, maybe I just have a stronger stomach?

And finally, I can’t have a women in film post without talking about Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014). To put it frankly, this movie scared the hell out of me when I watched it, and I can remember it vividly because I was taking breaks throughout the movie to bake gingerbread cookies in my very well-lit, no-shadows-allowed kitchen. Boogeyman stories have always freaked me out, and as someone who has battled insomnia for years and has a strong penchant for nightmares, psychological films where creatures lurk under beds, in closets, or live in basements have always got under my skin. What I especially love about this movie, aside from the creepy book and nursey rhyme, is the social commentary is makes about a widowed mother who’s not only dealing with the loss of her husband, but with her son’s fears as well. Motherhood isn’t a walk in the park, and this movie makes a lot of great points in regard to strength, mental illness, and survival. Definitely add this one to your list if you haven’t watched it already.

On Being a Word Witch: A Guest Post by Leza Cantoral

Today in the Madhouse, we're celebrating our second #WomeninHorrorMonth guest writer: Leza Cantoral. Leza is the Editor in Chief of CLASH Books and the host of the Get Lit With Leza podcast. I asked Leza to talk about how her work with ritual and writing influence and intertwine with one another, and her post is not only educational, but magical as well.

This week, I invite you all to write down and check your bias about what you think it means to be a witch, versus what it actually means, because as writers and wordsmiths, our energy is directly in tune with the incantations and stories we're putting on the page, fact or fiction, memoir or poetry. Let's never forget that words have power and so do their creators.

On Being a Word Witch By Leza Cantoral
I am a writer & I am a witch & I do not see them as separate things. My magical practice is entwined with my writing. To me, magic is focusing the Will to make visions manifest upon the physical plane. Every outline I write is a spell. Every story, an incantation. To me, the Word, is sacred. Because the Word is the Imagination made flesh.
I light candles on my altar and lay out objects, herbs, & crystals, to set my intention. I use Tarot cards to consult during the outline process so I can see my characters as real people with fates, destinies & consequences for their actions.
I summon various spirits to aid me. For example, I conjured the wolf as a spirit animal when I was working on my Cultural History B.A. thesis about Werewolves & the evolution of the Little Red Riding Hood narrative in folklore and fiction. I wanted to see through the eyes of the wolf, while analyzing Werewolf lore and the history of the human & wolf's sociobiological relationship & evolution. Humans learned how to hunt in packs & how to organize social hierarchies from wolves. I learned how alike we are. The spirit of the wolf helped guide my heart through this journey. When I was scared, the wolf gave me courage. When anxiety blinded & froze me, the wolf gave me the eyes to see & the fierceness to finish.
I have recently begun working with Santa Muerte on what will hopefully become a Dark Fantasy YA series. I am working with her to plant the seeds. The way it works is I spend time at her altar, giving her offerings, showing my devotion, & she gives me ideas, either about the project or about other innovative ways to share her energy with the world. She encourages me to share pictures of my altar on Instagram & to tell my friends about how fun she is to work with. She is a smart one. She is probably better at self-promotion than most writers I know!
Here is an incantation for a Death & Rebirth Santa Muerte ritual that I wrote. The purpose of it is to let go of old modes of thinking & behavioral patterns that are no longer serving me.
Death is Rebirth
Death is Rebirth
Death is Rebirth!


I die tonight to be reborn,
I die tonight to let go
Of the person I used to be,
So that I can really be me.


Santa Muerte, bear witness,
Santa Muerte, bury my bones.


I am awake
I am aware
I am the fire & I am the light


Santa Muerte bless this rite tonight!
As an artist, I see myself as a chaos magician. I use all archetypes & energies that speak to me & inspire me. Today it might be Santa Muerte, tomorrow it might be Ganesha, Persephone, Hecate, La Virgen de Guadalupe, or nothing at all. I blow with the wind of my inspiration.I think of it this way: if my spirit is fulfilled, I will be more able to create meaningful & beautiful art.
Buy Cartoons in the Suicide Forest hereI do yoga, self-guided meditations, ecstatic trance dancing, and ritual baths to get mentally prepared, especially at the beginning of big projects or when I am struggling with mental blocks at critical junctures.
I use my writing as spiritual cleansing. For example, I have two stories in my collection, Cartoons in the Suicide Forest, where chakra meditations are embedded within the stories themselves. With ‘Green Lotus,’ I was letting go of relationship baggage and trauma in my energy body in a scene where the female character is being charged up with magical flowers at a very strange spa.
In the titular story, the protagonist is being attacked by malevolent spirits. The process of writing through the chakras (beginning with the red root chakra) was extremely cathartic for me & I was sobbing as I wrote it. I let go of some deep wounds with this scene & unlike my character, I was able to come out of it alive & a little bit lighter from having exorcized my demons upon the page.

Excerpt from ‘Cartoons in the Suicide Forest’
Soundtrack album for story: Rihanna, Anti

“My colors are bleeding out like a broken rainbow. My heart is an exploding Jackson Pollock painting. My brain is a smear of confused muddy blues and greens swamping up my memories.
My head swims in darkness as the colors explode. I cough and convulse. There is a spinning in my chest like a fiery pinwheel, faster and faster at warp speed. The black wave comes, crashing down like icewater, like oil flooding my lungs. I can’t stop crying. Each deep sob brings out a new shade.
Red tears, like a stone saint in a miracle sign. The red of desire, of pain at its purest and rawest. Meat red. My meat cut up with surgical instruments. My heart, my tongue, uterus chopped sushi. Fuck me harder red. Hit me red. I hate you red. Die for me red. I cut myself red. I bleed to feel alive red. I carved WHORE into my arm red. Abortion red. Guilty red. I am meat red. They nibble on my pain like emo vampires. These pain sluts. These vampire whores. I am the birthday cake at their Pity Party. Carve me up. They all want to be the girls with the most cake.
Live through this, bitch.”

Author Bio: Leza Cantoral is a Xicana writer & editor who lives on the internet. She is the Editor in Chief of CLASH Books & host of the Get Lit With Leza podcast where she talks to cool ass writers. Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath is an anthology of stories that she edited that’s coming out March 13th from CLASH Books.
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook: @lezacantorallezacantoral.comclashbooks.com

On Being Queer: A Guest Post by Lucy A. Snyder

Good Morning, Everyone:

Today in the Madhouse, I'm featuring Lucy A. Snyder. For those who aren't familiar with her or her work, Snyder is a five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author and she wrote the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess, the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide, and the collections While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. 


I first met Lucy at Seton Hill University when I was attending graduate school. She's a brilliant, kind, and strong woman who I learned, and continue to learn, a lot from, and I highly recommend her work. Personal favorites for me are: Orchid Carousals and Chimeric Machines.
The essay that Lucy wrote for us today is personal, raw, and inspiring, and I hope you enjoy it. Something that I want you to ask yourself before, or even after reading it, is: who are the last five LGBTQIA authors that you've read? If you're having a hard time answering that question, or if no names are coming to mind, again, I invite you to broaden your minds and your reading preferences, and explore the range of literature that is out there and available to you.
On Being QueerBy Lucy A. Snyder
I grew up in a socially conservative town in West Texas, and I wasn’t raised to feel good about being born female. Boy stuff was cool. Girl stuff was either tedious or worthy of mockery. My parents tolerated my being a tomboy when I was little, because of course I wanted to do interesting things like the boys did. But they made sure I knew I wasn’t really a boy; they made sure I knew I was the weaker sex, that the world was a hostile place full of dangers ready to devour girls who didn’t follow the rules. Growing up in a fear-based household gave me a strong foundation for becoming a horror writer!
The residents of my hometown, despite it being one of the few cities out in that part of Texas with an actual gay bar, weren’t the least bit woke on LGBTQIA issues. Being gay was worse than being a commie; boys threw “queer” and “faggot” around as insults with impunity. Lesbians were sinister, humorless figures doomed to tragic childless deaths and, afterward, everlasting hell. Bisexual people just plain didn’t exist as far as I knew.
I didn’t know how to process the feelings I had for other girls, who as a group didn’t accept me anyhow because I was a quiet, awkward weirdo who liked to do nerdy boy stuff. And boys didn’t really accept me, either, because I was a girl and girls sucked. Friends were hard to find and easily lost once I inevitably did something uncool.
My feelings of isolation, loneliness and despair peaked when I was twelve; I knew I was a nerd, and I knew from movies that adult male nerds suffered endless rejections and indignities. How much worse would it be for me? I couldn’t envision a future where anything would get better because I had no models for life turning out well for a girl like me. Even in the books I devoured as my main escape, novels where dragons and unicorns and monsters danced across the pages, there was nobody like me. I felt like I was something that should have never been born.
In 6thgrade, I went through my first suicidal depression. My father, a psychiatrist, took it as a professional affront, and his first-line treatment was to shout at me about how I had scared my little friends with my talk of wanting to be dead, and that I had embarrassed him and should feel ashamed of myself. My entirely well-meaning mother (and I don’t say that sarcastically) told me, years later: “Well, I knew you were miserable, but I figured, kids that age are just miserable!”
As much as I wanted my pain to end, I couldn’t work up a plan to kill myself. Feeling so thoroughly dismissed and disregarded awoke a bitter determination inside me: I decided I’d live just to spite everyone.
So I lived with my pain and feelings of isolation. Other kids did not. And I can’t shake the feeling that if I’d just been able to see myself in the books I loved, maybe I wouldn’t have felt so worthless and alone all the time.
Things are better now. Publishers are far more accepting of LGBTQIA characters, particularly in YA fiction. But the political climate in our country makes me worry that things will slide back to the bad old days.
I don’t identify just as bisexual but as queer. I deliberately identify with the word boys threw around in the schoolyard as an everyday insult. And I recognize that other folks still recoil in horror from it as a loaded slur.
But “queer” is a good word. It’s about being strange, curious, odd. I’m strange as hell. I’m curious about everything. I think odd thoughts. “Queer” probably comes from an old German word that means oblique, cross, adverse. And that’s a pretty good way of describing how I approach my writing: it’s a little cross, and I like to look at things slantways and sideways and upside down.
I am queer. My life is queer. My stories are queer: they’re rooted in my dreams, my fears, my experiences. I’m not for everyone, and my stories aren’t, either. But I know from my own life that representation matters, authenticity matters, and I represent as hard as I can.

About the Author: Lucy A. Snyder is a five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author. She wrote the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess, the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide, and the collections While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. 
Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Czech, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, and Best Horror of the Year. She lives in Columbus, Ohio and is faculty in Seton Hill University’s MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction. You can learn more about her at www.lucysnyder.com.
If you enjoyed her blog post, please consider supporting her on Patreon.

SPEND WOMEN IN HORROR MONTH IN THE MADHOUSE

Tomorrow kicks off #WomeinHorrorMonth (WIHM), and this year, I’m doing a blog series that discusses gender, race, and sexuality through the scope of the horror genre. I’m going to be chiming in here and there with some of my own thoughts and opinions, but you’ll also be hearing from a handful of women and men who would like to further the discussion and open a dialogue about how and why we talk about certain topics in our writing.
Confirmed guests (so far) will include: Lucy A. Snyder, Tiffany Scandal, Ashley Davis, Leza Cantoral, Shane Douglas Keene, Larissa Glasser, and Michelle Renee Lane.
I'm very much looking forward to this, and if you're interested, you can follow along here at: http://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/. I'll be sharing posts and updating my blog weekly, if not more, and I'm hoping that we all ask questions, share our thoughts, check our bias, and educate one another in a respectful, kind way.
I also encourage you to follow the discussion happening over at http://www.womeninhorrormonth.com/, too. Get involved. Say hello. And most importantly, use your voice to tell the stories that you want the world to hear.  Before we dive in and start tomorrow, I invite you to write down the last five books (or stories/poems/essays) that you've read by female authors.  For me, it's: The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler, Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes, The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi, and You'll Be Okay: My Life with Jack Kerouac by Edie Kerouac-Parker.  Also, for those interested in my last WIHM series, you can check out the links below:This is Not a Female Horror Writer I Am Not a VictimTake the Whore out of Horror Tell Me I Can't