INTERVIEW: Koji A Dae
Born in Virginia, dark speculative fiction author Koji A Dae spent a total of six months there before starting a wander that spiralled from the United States to the world. Now she finds herself strangely settled in Bulgaria with two kids, a cat, and a whole lot of responsibility. She enjoys reading, dancing, and being tied up (or writing about it). She also writes about all varieties of human relationships—with each other, with technology, and with the greater universe. Her three published books to date are Mazi, Casual, and Hold My Heart. Her work has also appeared in Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, and elsewhere.
[GdM] Hi Koji, thanks for chatting. Your new novella, the intense, thematically rich, deliciously written Hold My Heart has just come out from Ghost Orchid Press, and I think it’s safe to say that it’s your darkest story yet, full of more uncompromisingly disturbing themes than the devil’s memoirs. Can you give us a brief plot overview of it, and explain why you think readers might like it?
[KAD] Well, that’s quite the intro to it. You’re so kind. The quick and dirty is that this is a dual POV novella about a serial killer, a depressed woman looking for relief, and the creature that connects them.
Emma, having suffered deep depression for years, goes on the dark web and hires a serial killer to take her life. At the last minute, she backs out. But by then the killer—or what’s driving him—has already gotten a scent of her. While the serial killer and Emma explore the relief they can offer each other in the form of an intense sexual relationship, something more sinister moves between them—exploring the exchange of pleasure and pain and the borders of life and experience.
I think readers are going to like this because it’s a bit genre-bendy. Not quite dark erotica, not quite extreme horror, but borrowing from both genres to build a story that’s both a visceral and emotional exploration of the pain of depression and guilt.
[GdM] Although not the only theme explored by any measure, a key part of the early plot is the idea of someone consenting to their own death by a serial killer. This is a fascinating exploration of consent, suicidal ideation, and mental health—where did you get the idea from, and why did you choose to lead the story with this?
[KAD] Hold My Heart actually started as a short story that was supposed to be just the first scene in the tunnels—with Emma dying at the end of the scene. It came about when I was still very new to horror (I thought I was a fantasy writer for many years before I found my groove in dark sci fi and horror) and a writer friend and I were exchanging spicy horror stories as a form of flirtation. These stories weren’t just a way to expand our writing skills, but were actually letters that allowed us to reveal aspects of ourselves to the other, sparking conversations and deepening our friendship.
Perhaps it’s embarrassing to admit this publicly, but the concept of the heart being held, beating and bloody with all the scars of the past visible on it, was a way of me opening myself to this person. I just needed a way to make that believable in a story. Who would be ripping hearts out of chests? A serial killer. And what could make it sexy? Consent.
Disclaimer here: I want to be clear that suicide is not sexy. I really don’t want to glorify it—and I suppose that’s why, when I took the story out of the personal realm and decided it was something I wanted to share with the world, I decided to explore what would happen if Emma didn’t go through with it.
[GdM] This feels like a work whose darkness is the point; this is unflinchingly visceral and disturbing at times. Why was it important to examine desire through such a shockingly transgressive work?
[KAD] Here’s where I admit that I have a rather dark outlook on a lot of things, one of which is desire. I think, at its core, desire is a violent emotion. It’s wanting. It’s needing. And we as a society do a really good job of either denying our desires or wrapping them up in acceptable packaging. I like to strip things down to their naked core. For desire, that core is visceral, a bit bloody, and sometimes violent.
This doesn’t mean desire is a bad thing. It keeps us alive. It makes us go to work and survive. But I really wanted to get complicated and messy with what it is.
[GdM] This is your second work, after your 2024 novella Mazi, to explore kink and BDSM in horror. I know it’s tough to discuss this without spoilers, but how did it inform the story you are trying to tell in Hold My Heart, and why is it a recurring theme in your work?
[KAD] I feel like I really wanted to see more stories that explore kink, and especially BDSM, in a messier context than what you see in most dark romance novels. Because I wasn’t seeing it, I decided to write it, and because I’m not a romance writer, I focused on the emotional and erotic aspects as opposed to the additional complicating layer of romance.
I remember reading Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House in 2020, and she talks about how people who write queer stories are forced to write perfect queers, and so queer abuse is swept under the rug because, to explore it would be to admit that queer relationships can be abusive, and that would harm the public image of an already hated group—something the gay community was unwilling to do. (I’m saying this very awkwardly. Really. Read In the Dream House. It’s speaks super powerfully about this).
Anyway, books about BDSM are often the same. They approach BDSM from a stance of protecting the reputation of the community. (Or sometimes disregard the community altogether and are downright exploitative). Either way, they tend to be sanitized and perfect when in reality BDSM is a constant negotiation that builds trust and depth over time. More importantly, people practicing BDSM make mistakes, and people can get hurt. I think writing a picture of BDSM that is more messy—with characters exploring rather than being instant experts as soon as they engage, or seeing characters cross lines and make mistakes—presents a more realistic picture of BDSM, and something I find way more interesting to explore than perfection.
[GdM] I’m interested in your sense of place in your books. You live in Bulgaria, and your previous two novellas have been set in modern Bulgaria and a near-future Bulgaria respectively—but this one is set in an unnamed country, which feels distinctly American. Why the change, and how important was it that this was a non-distinct setting?
[KAD] As an immigrant, I find writing place really difficult. I often feel like since I wasn’t born and raised in Bulgaria, I don’t have the right to write about places here. In a lot of ways, even though I’ve lived the majority of my adult life here, I feel like I’ll never fully integrate into the deepest cultural depths of the country. Because of that, setting things here feels scary a lot of the time. I’m afraid of getting things wrong or that I’ll somehow misrepresent people and places.
At the same time, it’s really hard to write a book set in the United States since I’ve been there a total of fifteen days in the past twenty-five years. The US I write about is one that no longer exists, and that’s visible when I try to write a modern story set there.
But with this book—since it is quite a bit darker and more violent than other books I’ve written, I didn’t feel quite right setting it in Bulgaria. I have plenty to say about violence in Bulgaria, but I want it to have a deeper cultural context. Plus, I feel like serial killers, though they exist in all countries, are (in literature) an American archetype. That, and drawing inspiration from William Lindsay Gresham’s Nightmare Alley for the noir feel, I really wanted the ability to pull from the American imagination of serial killers and carnivals.
[GdM] I’d like to ask you about Casual, your previous work published earlier this year from Tenebrous press. For the reader’s sake, this is a near-future sci-fi/horror about a pregnant woman whose gaming implant manages her mental health but as she’ll be a single mother, the law says she’ll have to have it removed before she gives birth. In my review I called it “a stunningly written near future parable about class, mental health, women’s autonomy and all the myriad ways a controlling society can challenge these in a future so real I could almost touch it.” I think it’s fair to say it wasn’t just me who wasn’t impressed; Lit Hub said it was “up there with Atwood, Bradbury, Dick and Gibson.” How does it feel to have critical affirmation of your work—helpful, or meaningless?
[KAD] I feel like the correct thing to say is it’s nice but meaningless, that I write solely for my passion of writing. But honestly? It feels pretty great. Writing is something I’ve done my whole life and I never see myself stopping, but to know that people have read my words and found something interesting or beautiful or thought-provoking or really… just SOMETHING is really rewarding. And to be in any way associated with the likes of Atwood? That’s an absolute dream.
[GdM] You’ve written publicly about how you have lived with depression and mental illness, as well as how you identify as bisexual, gender queer, and polyamorous and how you explore all these themes in your work. As a writer myself who uses my own books to explore my own self-identity, mental health, and in some ways as therapy, do you think you do this in your own books? Or is it less directly personal, and you are simply exploring the themes you think it’s important to explore?
[KAD] I definitely write what I know, and all of my books are highly personal. For me it’s super important that my books have emotional depth and resonance, and the only way for me to achieve that is to write personally and emotionally. I don’t necessarily set out to explore these themes in my books —they just appear entwined with characters because they are my reality.
For example, with Mazi I didn’t set out to write a book that explores mental health and a poly D/s relationship. My intention when I started was to explore an interesting Bulgarian myth in a dark erotic fashion. And the same with Hold My Heart. I had no idea how deep into exploring mental health the story would eventually get. But because of who I am, those themes get pulled into my work. Once they end up on the page, I tend to go “oh, I can take a jog over and explore this, too!” As in, I’m here now, what truths about my lived experience can I pull out of this situation I’ve written myself into?
[GdM] This is your third full-length published work now. How do you feel about your career as a speculative fiction author now compared to when your debut came out?
[KAD] Honestly, I’m not sure that much has changed. These three books happened to find homes in a really short period of time. It’s been just a year since I released my first book, and now I have three out. Which feels almost a bit magical and I think it might take awhile for it to really sink in.
Right now I’m working on my next book, and I’m still dreading the process of submitting it to publishers, going through rejections, and finding the right team for it. It’s still a bit terrifying. I think the difference is that now I have more confidence that I will eventually find people who appreciate my stories, even if they are a bit dark and weird.
[GdM] What’s your experience been working with indie presses? Are there any notable advantages or disadvantages you’ve encountered?
[KAD] It’s been amazing so far! The teams at both Ghost Orchid and Tenebrous have been super communicative and supportive, and the end result is a book that’s better than the one I submitted getting out to a wider audience than I would have reached on my own. I think my favourite benefit (though there are quite a few) has been seeing the covers for these books come together. Both Ghost Orchid and Tenebrous care a lot about the art on their books, and so they have connections with some great artists that I probably wouldn’t have found on my own—and they know how to communicate with them to get some really great covers. I absolutely love the cover on Hold My Heart, which the art was done by Claire L. Smith and the layout was (I believe) done by Antonia. It really fit my vision for the book and it was so cool to see it come alive that way.
I can’t speak to the differences between indie presses and the larger traditional presses, but I can say that for me, I wouldn’t have been able to self publish these books. I have no desire to handle the financial, administrative, or artistic side of book publication. I just want to write, and working with indie presses allows me to concentrate on putting stylus to glass and getting my words out.
[GdM] What can we expect from you next, that you’re able to talk about at least?
[KAD] Well, for starters you can expect a slower release schedule! Though I do hope to still publish a couple of short stories a year, it will probably be a while before I get another book out there. At the moment I’m working on another weird horror that involves alternate realities and is a critique of AI and social media. I’m going for “Severance if Clive Barker was the showrunner” vibes, but like everything I write, it will probably end up morphing quite a bit during edits. I’m having a lot of fun writing it, but it’s still in early stages.
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