Mason Hawthorne and Australian Gothic: Crafting Queer Gothic Short Stories

Author Bio

Mason Hawthorne

Mason Hawthorne writes horror, dark and urban fantasy, and studied writing and English literatures at the University of Wollongong. Most of his work is in speculative fiction, usually dark or horror themed.

His stories often feature body horror, transformation, hunger, and anxiety. Queer thematic elements are always right below the surface, or in line with the surface. Sometimes bobbing along the very top.

Portfolio of Published Work: https://mason-hawthorne.jimdosite.com/portfolio/

Romancing the Gothic Talk: Gender and Adaptation in the Hannibal Lecter Franchise

Twitter: MasonHawth0rne

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Introduction

CMR: Well hello! Welcome back to Eldritch Girl, and today we have Mason Hawthorne over from Australia with us. Mason, would you like to introduce yourself.

MH: Sure, so my name is Mason Hawthorne, I studied creative writing at the University of Wollongong and I’ve been published in Unspeakable, a queer Gothic anthology, and Monsters we Forgot anthology and a few podcasts. I mostly write horror queer fiction and Gothic fiction and I’m sharing some of that today.

CMR: And you’re reading an extract from Leadbitter House today, right.

MH: Yes, so it’s Leadbitter House, which was in the collection Unspeakable a queer Gothic anthology, yeah.

CMR: I’m excited! I love this story. When you’re ready and if you’d like to read it, go for it.

MH: All right, here we go.

Extract from ‘Leadbitter House’, Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology (Nyx Publishing: 2020) ed. Celine Frohn

A Gothic anthology, filled to the brim with exciting new queer voices!

UNSPEAKABLE: A QUEER GOTHIC ANTHOLOGY

• Let Down by Claire Hamilton Russell
• Moonlight by Ally Kölzow
• An Account of Service at Meryll Point, as recollected and set down by C.L.
• The White Door by Lindsay King-Miller
• Doctor Barlowe’s Mirror by Avery Kit Malone
• Laguna and the Engkanto by Katalina Watt
• The Moon in the Glass by Jude Reid
• Brideprice by S.T. Gibson
• Lure of the Abyss by Jenna MacDonald
• Hearteater by Eliza Temple
• Quicksilver Prometheus by Katie Young
• Homesick by Sam Hirst
• Rodeo by Ryann Fletcher
• Lady of Letters; or, the Twenty-First Century Homunculus by Heather Valentine
• Taylor Hall by Jen Glifort
• The Ruin by E. Saxey
• The Dream Eater by Anna Moon
• Leadbitter House by Mason Hawthorne

Cover and interior artwork: Jenni Coutts
Cover designer: Charlie Bramald

The dark under the mangroves is not absolute. Reflections, refractions of light from the water dazzle and gleam between the tangled roots and the drooping canopy, the whole dim thicket pulses and hums with insects, with the water lapping, Elijah sways on his feet, staring into the shadows, listening, his whole body bending toward it, while a hand curls over his stomach, his nails digging into his skin hard enough to leave marks, even through his t-shirt.

The sarong tied around his waist is damp at the knee, dark splotches on the hand-dyed fabric, and as he steps forward it slaps against his leg, clammy, and he twitches and glances down at himself, at the tangle of white roots and torn foliage at his feet, at his fingers, black with soil and clawing at his belly. Elijah shakes himself. The sun is hot on his shoulders, and the top of his head, and when he glances across the property and over the jetty, between the dark clouds of the casuarinas the river is bright as magnesium, and after a moment, Elijah blinks and the river’s negative is imprinted over the garden as he turns away.

Everything smells herbaceous, green and wet, though it hasn’t rained for, oh, months probably, and the paddock over the fence all brown grass and thorny weeds, the horses there forlorn and seemingly abandoned.

Elijah has lost track of the time he has been in the garden, pulling the weeds, upending clods of soil into his own lap, barefoot in the slippery grass, nor can he remember what it was that caught his attention in the mangroves, what it was he heard, or saw, or…his efforts with the weeds are ineffectual, he could keep going until sunset and hardly make a dent, the whole garden is overrun, overgrown.

A shadow falls across Elijah, and he turns. Behind him is a weathered man, shy of six feet with curling white hair that falls to his shoulders, and a great white beard, stained nicotine yellow around his mouth. His skin is raw and broken, sunspots and cracks and spidery veins cross his cheeks, and his nose glows red. There is a boil under his left eye, inflamed and fit to burst.

“Are you—Mr Davies, right?—are you the, uh, gardener?”

The man has a coiled green hose in his arms and he scowls, “Groundskeeper.”

“Oh.” Elijah’s hands curl and uncurl, twisting the hem of his shirt until the fabric strains and his knuckles creak. “But you do look after the gardens, yeah?”

Davies expression doesn’t change, he scowls, nods once and lifts a gnarled hand to scratch at his cheek. A drop of blood wells from the boil, but if it hurts he doesn’t react to it.

“This garden, I mean, those tomatoes are going crazy, but everything else…there are so many weeds, and the zucchinis are all rotten, they’re mush!” Elijah is out of breath, his heart thuds so hard his pulse flutters in his throat. His knuckles are white.

“I take care of it.” Davies scratches again, and this time his ragged nail catches skin and the boil splits. Something green sprouts out of the hole in his face, and blood drips all the way down to his beard. The green thing unfurls, standing up out of the hole in his cheek.

“What? What does that mean?” Elijah’s voice pitches high and strained, and he gestures to the overgrown garden beds, the weeds, and the thorns, “this doesn’t look taken care of, I don’t…I mean I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but this isn’t taken care of.”

“I work for the house,” Davies spits. He picks at the thing growing out of his face and pulls it free, and it comes out long, and greenish-white, and the crater in his cheek is a pit of blood.

Elijah gapes at Davies wordlessly, then skirts around him and backs toward the kitchen porch.

Davies watches him the whole way until the door is shut between them.

“Fuck,” Elijah says to the stillness of the kitchen, “what the fuck?”

He drifts through the house, feeling the hardwood floor and then the hall carpet under his bare feet. Vaguely the thought occurs that he ought to change, or bathe, or something, but then he is in the sitting room, where he has begun to work at clearing the mantle. He’s been doing a half-arsed Marie Kondo, the stuff sorted into three piles, to chuck and to donate, and so far the keep pile has a single small figurine of a bird.

In the morning he’d gotten into a kind of rhythm, clearing out junk, making some small progress in claiming the house for himself. Now he struggles to begin again, picking things up and shuffling them around, and then the rev of a car engine outside makes him jump and he looks out just in time to catch the taillights of his cousin’s flashy car.

Biting his lip, Elijah turns back to the mantle. He holds a garbage bag open and sweeps the rest of the clutter into it. China tinkles against metal, and there is the loud crack of something breaking. Every last thing gone. Taken care of. He ties the bag off, and it splits down the side. He wraps it in another bag and hauls it out to the bins. The pile of donations goes in a cotton bag and onto the front porch, and he sets the little bird figurine back on the end of the mantleThe rest of the sitting room, the rest of the house swims with stuff, a grotesque assortment of items tossed together by his aunt’s dedicated hoarding. 

Interview with Mason Hawthorne

CMR: I love the little moments of body horror it in that with like Davies and the boil and the little tiny sprouting thing, which is a little garden friend. Do you find yourself drawn to certain repeated themes or motifs in your writing and is Leadbitter House a good example of some of these? And why did these come up for you a lot? Sorry, there’s a lot of questions in there.

MH: Yeah, so in terms of themes or sort of motifs, yeah so body horror comes up a lot I’m not sure if that’s a theme, or like a genre I suppose. I tend to end up writing a lot of stuff that I think is like, Oh, this is a nice story, this is interesting, and then people read it and they’re like yeah you’re writing body horror again, like thanks… thanks for showing me that before I’ve had my breakfast, like love that.

So yeah the body horror stuff does come up a lot. I think the other big thing for me is like, descriptions of natural world. So a lot of plants and animals and sort of natural features being very present in the story is a big part of what I write, yeah, and that – yeah, so both of those sort of turn up a lot in Leadbitter House, yeah.

CMR: Why do you think… what’s the appeal of those for you, why do you think you find yourself writing those sorts of things?

MH: Well, the body horror I think is kind of like. I never really think of it as body horror until I’ve written it and then I’m like, oh yeah, like you know, doing a little bit of surgery on yourself is probably… probably body horror, I’ll put that on the list… so it’s just kind of like, I don’t, I don’t set out thinking I’m going to write some body horror I sort of start off and I’m like, here’s an interesting idea. What if you were doing, you know, this thing, and then you sort of end up down the garden path a bit, and then it ends up with like, you’re going to have a boil that has a plant growing out of it, that’s the perfect image for this moment.

So yeah it’s just kind of like, I don’t know sort of the permeability of the body into what else is happening in the story is kind of the way I get there, yeah.

CMR: Mm, I love the Gothic-ness of a lot of your stories as well and that you play with those sorts of themes and the aesthetic. Because you’ve got some interconnected short stories right, so this is one and then it’s all kind of set in the same universe of the same world with some crossover characters and that sort of thing? What was the other story that you had that was connected to this?

MH: So I think the other published ones I’ve got out is Banksia Men, which is set on a nude beach and involves some vagina dentata and cannibalism, and the other one is Darlin’ You’re My World which is like a little road trip with your vampire friend.

[Read Mason’s interview about Banksia Men here: Monsters out of the Closet]
[Read-along and Interview with Mason Hawthorne on Darlin’ You’re My World here: Romancing the Gothic Interview]

CMR: Yeah.

MH: Yeah, so I’ve [got] a few stories written in this setting. I think only those three are published so far, yeah.

CMR: Yeah. And they all touch on themes of – I guess you could call it Australian Gothic.

MH: Yeah I think it is pretty important for me to sort of ground my stories in Australian… Australian-ness, because, like obviously I don’t really have any other experiences. And I feel there’s a, you know, when I was studying and stuff there was a lot of sort of push of like well, if you want to write you’ll have to appeal to a mainstream audience, and that means people overseas and people overseas don’t want to read about Australia unless it’s set in the desert or it’s set in like, Sydney. You know you’ve got your opera house or you’ve got your red dirt, that’s it, there’s no other options, if you want to do something, if you want to do anything else, move to Germany or America, basically.

It was very it was very restrictive in that sense, and I sort of thought, like, I mean I read about small town America, like why shouldn’t they have to read about small town Australia? So that’s where I am, yeah.

CMR: I think that’s fair, yeah. There’s something about the small town experience itself though actually quite universal though as well, I think, if you do come from a small town, you see that mentality, even though it’s embedded in a different kind of culture, you still see how that works and how people work within it, I think there’s something universal about that that appeals to different – you know, you can appeal to a wider audience in that way, but also, it’s like, Oh, this is interesting, there are cultural differences that I’m able to pick up on in the context of the story and it’s like this is actually really interesting, so I think it’s more of a hook.

You know, like, if you want to learn about different things, but there’s also other influences on your work as well, so what what particular things influenced you with this story, but then in your work in general?

MH: This story – it’s been a while since I wrote it. This story, I think I had just read The Picnic at Hanging Rock which is sort of a classic Australian Gothic short novel, and I think I had not long since had my top surgery, and so I was kind of like, writing this character who’s kind of like not… not like sort of immediately post-hospital but sort of still in recovery and then having had like a big life change kind of thing.

And so that’s kind of where I came from with Elijah as a character, and sort of, at the time I was, I think I was Oh, I think it was like when The Haunting of Hill House [Netflix Series] had just come out and I think I’d watched that and I’d also read the novel, the novella, I can’t remember, it’s like a short novel as well, so I… read The Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Haunting of Hill House and I kind of was like, yeah. What if you did have like a weird house that, you know, [some] sort of a relative had left you?

And so yeah so he had this aunt, you know, it’s not explicitly said in the story, but I think his aunt was probably the only person in his life, who was … his family life, who was accepting of what he was doing and where he was going, and so, then she’s passed away and the rest of the family is kind of like wait, why does he get the house, that’s not fair so there’s like this sort of antagonism from her actual children who she had not gotten along with, so it was kind of the two outcasts of the family had bonded and been quite friendly together, and then she’d remarried and inherited the house from her late husband and then passed it on to him and the rest of the family went, well, we were going to get what’s ours… Which didn’t work out for them, yeah.

CMR: It’s a really good story! I was wondering what in general is the appeal for you in terms of the Gothic mode and how you choose to use that in your work?

MH: So. I think it’s second nature when I’m writing. I always – like ever since I was a little kid – I was always reading horror, like, I think I read my mum’s whole Stephen King collection when I was 12 and I was on school holidays one year and I was like Oh, I found all these new books in the cupboard here. Let me just take those down. And I just read them one after the other sort of lying on the spare bed [in the] spare bedroom.

So, when I was a kid I used to be able to create… my bedroom looked directly through into the living room so when we were put to bed, and my parents were watching movies, I could peek out, and I think the first time I saw like Alien was peeking out through my bedroom door when I was supposed to be in bed, probably far too young, but I liked it. So I’ve always been into sort of like horror and creepy things and dark fiction and stuff and when I’m writing it’s just kind of like. It just goes that way without really sort of trying so yeah I didn’t really consciously set out to be writing Gothic fiction, but it just kind of really fits the way that I think when I’m writing.

CMR: Yeah that makes sense to me I think it’s just you sort of find that’s part of your voice don’t you? I think it’s just something that makes a lot of sense to write.

MH: yeah like my current project, I’m working on a novella at the moment. I’ve got a writing group that I share work with them, we critique each other’s work and I sent them the first part of this current novella I’m working on. And I hadn’t said anything about it, I was in a rush I just sent the email here’s my piece this week and it’s just sort of a section of like a guy sitting in a garden peeling and orange and they were like this is going to be really scary isn’t it, I was like oh boy yeah but how did you tell and they were like well you didn’t – you didn’t use any scary words and you didn’t say anything explicitly was happening, but there was a sense of dread in the garden, and I was like good. That’s working well.

CMR: I love that! I like the little atmospheric moments so you’re like…  Oh crap.

MH: I think that’s my favourite part honestly, it’s just like I want to be able to describe a garden and say nothing overtly, but just by reading about the flowers, or whatever, you go oh shit something bad’s gonna happen, yeah.

CMR: Yeah you like gardens a lot though, you write about –

MH: Yeah.

CMR: – the natural world is a big thing for you isn’t it?

MH: I think cuz like you know, because the town that these stories are sort of based around is based on the town I live in, and so a big part of growing up for me was, you know, walking over to the beach and walking along the cliffs and looking at the… so we have stone quarries here so like just big chunks taken out of the landscape and also there’s the largest subtropical rain forest in the southern hemisphere is 10 minutes that way, so you know there’s a huge variety of natural landscapes and sort of different things that you can see, but also sort of, you know, backyard gardens and vegetable gardens and flower gardens and things, and mangroves showing up a lot because there we’ve got a river here that has beautiful mangrove swamps, so yeah it’s all the stuff that I’ve liked being around and looking at and exploring my whole life and it kind of works really well for the stories that I want to write.

CMR: I think there’s a lovely synergy, though, as well, between like writing about plants and trees and that kind of thing and then thinking about the permeability of the human body as well because, like. I’m just thinking of that episode of Hannibal where everyone’s like covered in mushrooms.

MH: Yeah. That’s sort of the connectivity that, yeah. I’ve been reading a lot of books, I read like the secret life of trees, or the secret world of trees, or something like that, [The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, Peter Wohlleben, Mike Grady et al.] about how trees and their roots use mycelium to connect and share nutrients and communicate in tree language and whatever and I also read the Merlin Sheldrake book, the one about mushrooms, obviously I can’t remember what it’s called [Entangled Life] but it’s by Merlin Sheldrake I think he just won an award for it, which was like it’s an amazingly written book like really beautiful and I really enjoy reading nonfiction stuff about you know plants and the natural world and stuff so.

Yeah it all kind of comes together, and I feel like it gives me a better sense of like what I can express what I know like what the real thing is.

CMR: Yeah and you always tend to do it in and i’m always in awe of people who write really good contained short fiction, which I think you do—

MH: Aw, thank you.

CMR: Have you ever written anything in a longer form or is short fiction just where you live?

MH: I’ve written longer things, I’ve just never really finished longer things. So I have like a third of a big fantasy novel written.

I wrote a novella, sort of 20/22,000 words or so, which is part of this collection of stories. I’ve got a 40,000 word novelette skulking in the shadows somewhere, the one I’m currently working on I’m aiming for about 25,000 words.

Yeah so sort of I’ve been working on a lot of shorter fiction in the last couple of years, but I do have that novel, but I do intend to finish. Because. Yeah I’ve been slack on that one but short fiction’s fun, because you can just sort of jot it off and then a lot of people go oh no, why did you show me that?!! So.

[laughs]

CMR: Yeah I was thinking like I I’ve always struggled with the short form for a long time until like the last couple years and I don’t know if that’s just because you know some premises don’t work as short stories and some premises don’t work as novels and you know, you know what I mean?

MH: Yeah yeah for sure, like, I think it’s also like a completely different process like writing a short story versus writing a novella or writing a novel it’s like, you know, in a short story conceivably you could sit down and finish it in a couple of hours, with a novel it’s like no you’ve got to hold the idea in your head and keep it working for the whole time it takes you to type it out, and you know, maybe you’re like a sort of amazing fast writer and you do it in six weeks and that’s great, but I can’t do that or I haven’t so far, you know.

So I think for me that’s kind of the biggest hurdle, being able to hold that clarity of purpose together for long enough to actually get the piece finished.

CMR: What is it about the short form for you that makes a good vehicle for the premises of your work? Like, why do you think it works better that way?

MH: I think a lot of the things I think of, it’s like well a lot of the short stories I write it’s ideas where I’m like, yeah I like a lot of them as a concept, but I don’t think it really has legs.

I’d rather give it like a short flash in the pan, like yeah that’s great and rather than sort of … With some of them that’s definitely the danger that I would sort of run them into the ground. Like, yeah this idea is great for 4000 words but at 60,000 it’s getting pretty thin, you know? Um yeah so I feel like it’s…

You know, I leave my options open. I think I could you know, there are some things where I think how that’ll work in a longer form, but when I get to it.

But yeah I think yeah but also you know, having said that no shame in redoing the same idea: if it’s a good idea, it’s worth doing twice. Yeah I could write longer things,

CMR: Expand, yes, but then that’s it isn’t it because, like with the short form as well, you can just layer those things on. So it’s more like you’re building it upwards, with like here’s the premise, you’ve got the beginning middle and end that’s 4000 words done and then you can kind of layering things into that instead of stretching it.

MH: Yeah. I think that’s kind of like with the novel that I’ve sort of stalled at on 30,000 words, which I will finish one day, it’s sort of similar ideas, the concept is… I was like Oh, I want to write like a fantasy story, but I want it to be based on Ancient Rome rather than Medieval. I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction about Ancient Rome and that sort of thing, and I was like Oh, but you could do some really cool weird stuff with that the way that they did things and the way that they thought about things, and so that was kind of the concept of that, but yeah I was finding first planning that novel, it’s trying to stack things in rather than trying to stretch things, because I really hate reading a book and going like okay yeah I get it, we got this at the first third of the novel, please just give me something new.

I kind of want to keep building things in but have them feel like Oh, of course, that’s how the world works, that makes sense given what we’ve seen, so it’s a little bit complicated.

I’ve actually got like three books about Carthage and Hannibal sitting over there because I kind of got into a Punic War phase.

I find it really interesting the way that like Roman religion becomes sort of mechanism of state control. Like yeah that whole thing of like no, you have to do it our way because that’s how we keep the state actualised, it’s really creepy but also like very interesting.

CMR: Yes, fantastic! Yes, sorry, back to Gothic-ness… [laughs] so yeah so in your short stories actually as we said you’ve got some linking ones and I’m wondering what the difference is between, for example, instead of doing a series of novels in which you follow these arcs through and in a novel you can have like be plots and all sorts of things, and so you know this linear story with short stories, how do you handle arcs into linking ones?

MH: Yeah so with my short stories I generally try to have – every one should be able to be read on its own, I think I have one or two, I think really one actually in the lot that I’ve written so far, which depends on having read the previous three or four stories that it’s related to. So, like overall, I would like to have the sort of arc that’s going through the multiple short stories be completely optional. It’s just that one story really where it really needs the other ones to prop it up, so it makes sense.

And I think it works in the context of producing a coherent collection, based on a single setting and using the same characters. I think it works for that. It’s not something that I think is sort of approach that I want to be taking all the time, like, I feel like that’s kind of a one off where I kind of thought oh yeah the reason that happened was because I’d written the story called “Junkyard Dog”, which is about some boys who come across a vampire and that all goes pretty horribly. And I’d written a story about a baby minotaur, he’s been raised on a farm in isolation. And at the end of the minotaur one I was thinking like oh it’d be cool for the vampire boys to show up and befriend him and then that didn’t fit.

A lot of these things where it’s part of the interconnecting stuff, it’s like, I had the thought early on, of oh it’d be cool if these people showed up here like in the background. And then, it just ends up for not for whatever reason, not working, but because I liked the idea of it so much I’m like, I could write that story on its own, you know.

And it’s kind of kicking the can down the road and bringing more stories into it, because it just didn’t fit into what I wrote to start with, but yeah so Leadbitter House kind of has one of those as well, so originally that there’s a character for the other novella that I wrote, so the other novella in the collection is “Outside Angels” and is about a reverse werewolf.

CMR: Yeah!

MH: The reverse werewolf was supposed to be a character in Leadbitter House, but I sort of got to the end of Leadbitter House was like oh there’s really no room for this here it’s just not going to work. I’ll just cut that and do something else with it later. And that turned into Outside Angels, yeah.

CMR: That’s cool. Yeah. Do you plan on expanding the world that you introduced in Leadbitter House a little bit further? I mean how many… so you’ve got three stories now…?

MH: Yeah three published so far. I’ve got two novellas, a handful of short stories and the novella that I’m working on currently are all kind of set in the same world. I’m hopeful of publishing the collection altogether, but if it comes back from the submissions I’ve sent it on and isn’t there’s no takers, I’m probably going to start trying to publish more of the short stories individually and then try again later for the collection.

CMR: Yeah.

MH: Yeah, it’s eventually, you know, it’s all – I don’t have a time limit.

CMR: Is there anything you’d like to plug or like to mention while you’re here?

MH: Um… at the moment, not really. I think 2021 has been a bit of a slower year for me in terms of publishing, mainly because I haven’t been sending stuff out, like that’s the big problem.

CMR: That’ll be why!

MH: That’s, that’s why it’s so slow, I would say check out if you haven’t, if you haven’t read it, check out Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology because that has some great stories in it even aside from mine. Yeah, there’s a lot of like really cool stories in that so if you haven’t read it, check it out.

CMR: And also you’ve got a talk with Romancing the Gothic.

MH: Oh, yeah, so I did a talk with Romancing the Gothic. So I did my honours’ thesis on the Hannibal Lecter novels, doing structure and characterization in the Hannibal Lecter novels which was fun, and then I wrote a paper about gender specifically, which was also fun yeah. And then I did it for Romancing the Gothic, which was great.

CMR: I think that was a Sunday talk, wasn’t it, not a Saturday one?

MH: It was a short one, yes.

CMR: It was a short one, yes – found you! It was: “Is this our Great Becoming? Gender and Adaptation in the Hannibal Lecter Franchise”. And that’s on YouTube. That was a really good one. I did a live tweet of that. It was one of the first ones I did a live tweet for, I think. [live thread below: see also slideshare.net for the slides to download].

https://twitter.com/CMRosens/status/1264482446407618561

MH: Oh nice.

CMR: yeah. Yeah it was great.

MH: I think I also have a published version of that paper in a Horror magazine. Digital Horror Magazine? Or something like that. Yeah, my memory is not great for things.

CMR: Same. It’s fine. Words. What. Why. [laughs] Thank you so much for that Mason, it’s been really lovely to chat to you.

MH: Yeah no worries.

Next Episode of Eldritch Girl: Thirteenth Part 15!

#banksiaMen #darlinYouReMyWorld #gender #hannibalLecter #Horror #leadbitterHouse #MasonHawthorne #MenInHorror #shortStories #shortStoryWriting

Author Spotlight: Horror Author Stuart Tudor

Stuart Tudor (he/him) has been devouring stories since he was little, a habit cultivated by countless bedtime tales. It was during his high school days in 2015 when, after reading The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and playing Fromsoft’s Bloodborne, he began to appreciate horror.

He has always been creating his own stories, reflecting his fascination with the imaginary. This motivation to write would quickly lead him to explore dark themes and settings. His love of writing and horror would produce the Eight Nightmares Collection: A collection of stories about the dreamlike, the surreal, and encounters with the fantastical. An entrepreneur at heart, he has embraced the self-publishing route- delivering horrifying tales that will scare and thrill people the world over.

When away from the word doc, Stuart is studying for his degree in English or working in managing properties and real estate. If he is not doing that, he is taking a breather with a good book like Berserk, playing Baldur’s Gate 3 or watching the latest Scream movie.

All Author Links: https://linktr.ee/stuarttudor

Tell us about the setting for your book, Where Dreams Are Lost; was this story always set in 2008 Detroit when it came to you as an idea, or did you play with other ideas first before settling on this location? 

Not really, although when I was writing it, I did consider changing it to the 1920s. But I decided to move that setting to Black Masquerade, which suited the themes and tone better. 2008 was a blessing and a curse to the story because people complained that the themes were too relatable, too close to what had happened in the past, and what was happening during production with Covid.

As of now, Where Dreams Are Lost is the most difficult to market cause of all the terrible memories it can trigger in the reader. Reading about the closure of the Owings Mills Mall as showcased in the Contrapoints video Opulence inspired me to write Where Dreams Are Lost. It saddened me to see all that prosperity go, the optimism vanishing to be left with a hollow shell. I also was influenced by Covid. In South Africa, we have been struggling economically for a while with unemployment. As someone who worked hard to find a day job throughout my 20s before Covid took the little job opportunities I on the table, I felt it. My family protected me and my brother from the worst of 2008, making it somewhat palatable to me to write something set in that era rather than Covid. Detroit was a prime target for me. Rather stereotypical, I know, to select Detroit as the symbol for the dead American dream, but it has been well deserved. Detroit has struggled with urban decay and loss of prosperity ever since the 1970s, I believe. It was also the first US city to declare bankruptcy in 2008. Detroit in this instance was at the forefront of the great recession, one of the worst hit. It would make sense to have Where Dreams Are Lost set in that time, in that location.

What atmosphere were you hoping to capture in the book, and what writing techniques did you use to create it?

Silent Hill influenced me a lot when making this story, chiefly SH2 PT and SH3. I hoped to capture that surreal, nightmarish atmosphere through the imagery and themes. I wanted to imagine how the town would behave if some poor sap got lost during that terrible year. Now, a video game is very different from a book.

The lack of a visual medium can make it difficult to translate the feeling of Silent Hill into a nonvisual medium. I tried to use lighting, sound and personification to drive home the hostile environment, the fact that the monsters have a personal connection to our heroes was also important. It was my responsibility to make sure that the audience grasped (without spoon-feeding them) the fear James and his pals encountered in the mall and how it impacted them. There was a lot of fun, so many monsters, so many were cut from the final release.

There was also the aspect of the mall itself I wanted to use to help convey the atmosphere. I wanted the reader to feel like they weren’t sure if the mall was alive or just mimicking life. Much like Silent Hill, the Grand House Mall had to have a mind of its own, but how much is up for debate?

It thrills me to keep my readers on their toes; I want them to think as they read; I want them to wonder about the story they have read. I think a quote from PT sums up the sort of atmosphere I wanted to create for Where Dreams Are Lost: I walked. I could do nothing but walk. And then, I saw myself walking in front of myself. But it wasn’t really me. Watch out. The gap in the door… it’s a separate reality. The only me is me. Are you sure the only you, is you?

How did you build the characters of James, Harvey, Latisha and Alice in the novel, and did they develop organically through the drafting process or did you have them planned out before you began writing?

Originally, in the first draft, it was just James, Harvey and Alice. They didn’t change much as the drafts continued, but they were all rather sad down on their luck people who get trapped in their own hells. Some complaints of that draft were because of the lack of hope in the story. Everyone lived miserably and died as such. So, I invented Latisha following the advice of a friend to include someone who isn’t destitute. That was what the story needed, someone who could help her friends through their troubles and her own. She becomes the mama bear in a sense to the group after the mall starts messing with them, protecting all of them as best as she could.

In the first draft, James and Harvey had feelings towards each other but ultimately don’t express it and they all die. That also had to change, to make the story a bit more hopeful. They do express themselves and hopefully get together (at least I hope so). There were a few monsters that got cut from the first draft that would reference the character’s struggles, such as starvation and prostitution, among others. These were too dark and cruel for me to include, so I reduced the number of things potentially suffered by my heroes.

Do you find yourself returning to specific themes in your work? If so, which ones?

When I wrote Where Dreams Are Lost, I was still working out what sort of writer I want to be. I would say that this story, along with in part Black Masquerade, helped me understand a core theme of my stories: survival. I am a noble dark writer; having studied some of the darkest moments in human history; I live in a country that is often violent and filled with struggles from all walks of life. All my characters encounter and endure hardship (mental or physical) but they fight through it. They want to fight; they have something to look forward to. I think this is an important aspect of the human condition, the need for hope and the desire to find the good times. There are other themes, of course, such as mental health, friendship, family, the march of progress among some others. Those who follow Eight Nightmares will notice how certain stories rhyme thematically to others with the collection. Crimson Dolphin is a bit of a mixed bag of themes, except for survival.

What is the scariest thing that has happened to you in real life?

I think that might have been when some baboons broke into our car at Cape Point, one of us left the window open and they got in and did their thing. Pretty scary, as baboons can be rather violent if you try to get in the way of their food.

Tell us about your other work: what should we be looking out for, and where/when can we find it?

The ongoing project, Eight Nightmares, has already released three of the eight, with the fourth, Our Broken World, hopefully releasing this year. The rest (A Farewell to Humanity, The Fang and the Claw, Divide the Zero and Praise the Morningstar) will be released as I complete them. Once completed, there will be a single volume for Eight Nightmares called The Eight Nightmares Collection.

Additionally, I have Crimson Dolphin, a collection that will be released in its entirety once it is completed. About half of the stories have their final edit pending, there are eight total. I am also part of an anthology coming out on October 30th called Macabre Multiverse. My contribution will be Fast Radio Bursts, an apocalyptic short with cosmic horror elements.

You will find Eight Nightmares, Crimson Dolphin and Macabre Multiverse basically everywhere. But Macabre Multiverse will be the first time a story of mine will be in a physical book. That is cool as hell. You can keep updated on every project’s progress weekly on my Patreon or monthly on my newsletter.

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Author Spotlight: Horror Author Matt Corton

MC Author, in some worldly circles known as Matt (he/him), carefully balances horror, fantasy, dystopia…basically the darker side of human nature to ensure what is created is relevant, challenging, enriching and most importantly enjoyable to his readers.

He wants you to see in his books real people behaving in real ways whilst they battle very not-real-world demons, sometimes literally.

Author Links:

Threads: @mattcauthor
Instagram: @mattcauthor

Website in development!

Author page: Amazon Author – Matt Corton

What draws you to punk horror in general, and can you tell us more about this subgenre for those not familiar with it?

So it’s a subgenre that whilst I wouldn’t claim I have created, I hadn’t seen very much elsewhere. I love horror, and I love creeping people out with my writing, but the horror I was attempting wasn’t really working. The punk concept was born from forcing myself to write much more quickly, loosely and with more freedom – I found the best way to do that was to think about how to get the writing “in your face”, writing with attitude. Punk seemed to fit, particularly as I’m dealing very much with concepts like society’s underbelly, the things that lurk in all of us and rejecting what’s being fed. With that said, punk also pretty much always had a message and I like to think that what I write not only entertains, scares/creeps out and shocks, but that it has something to say as well.

What makes punk horror the best genre for your novel Cannibal Pete? E.g. punk often rages against consumerism, so does cannibalism as a central theme/element fit into this?

Not consumerism as much as the standards of society that everyone accepts and what happens when you don’t abide by them. It’s perfect for Pete, and the ones that will follow in the “universe”, that they find themselves apart from what everyone else believes, but also desperately want to make things better – Pete is just a little confused about the best way to do that, it would seem!

So it’s not very much about punk fashion, or even ’90s (the period it’s set) fashion or culture, as much as it’s about the attitude and ambition of it.

In addition to that, the short, punchy writing style I adopted – I was determined to keep it under 70k words – forced me to focus on moving things forward, creating and maintaining the energy. I think this came off as by far the most common compliment I’ve received is that it’s a “page-turner”, which is, to me, something created by that punchy energy.

What gave you the idea for Cannibal Pete’s main character, and how did you develop him from that first idea to the final version?

Pete started off like a lot of my novels start off – as a short story idea. I’d been toying with the idea of a cannibal having an apprentice, something which did carry over into the finished version, and once I’d started writing the short story I found there was a lot more there. (NB, this happens a lot and I very rarely finish writing short stories!). I had also been mired in constant edits (version 16 now) of a WIP called Ghosts, a horror novel set in a fictional future, as well as resurrecting another WIP called The Thirteenth, also set in the future and whilst I was desperate for something new, I realised that the recurring themes in those fitted very well with Pete, so I borrowed a few characters and themes from those WIPs and set to it.

It was by far the easiest book to write that I’ve written in part, I think, because I could see how it could fit into a universe of novels around the same concepts. I was excited, not just “trying to finish it”.

Pete himself grew from a caricature of a misguided do-gooder to what I think is a fleshed-out stark consideration of whether ends justify means, both from him and those who helped make him that way.

The main horror of the book is Pete himself, and I love the idea that I’m playing with that you can fight evil with a bigger evil, not because you want to but because you might have to.

What was the premise of your alternate 1990s UK, and how did you develop the worldbuilding for it?

A lot of this will be revealed in future books – but essentially, the world is the same as it was then, or at least so far as people can see. What’s different is what’s going on behind the scenes, the things that Joe Public doesn’t know about.

I very deliberately set it before the internet and mobile phones were commonplace, which instantly gives you more scope with the worldbuilding because characters aren’t just looking things up on a search engine and the idea that things could be occurring completely in the shadows seems much more believable in that time.

Part of that underbelly that I’ve expanded is what corporations, governments and other organisations are doing when they’re all working to make sure nobody is looking (Pete is, for instance, an assassin working to rid the world of criminals that can’t be caught the traditional way, with the full cooperation of senior police and politicians).

The occult also features as part of this underbelly – something that will definitely become a central point later in the universe. London is very familiar to me so I wanted to start there but the rest of the books will jump about a bit more, although staying focused in the UK. In short, I wanted a very real sense of “what lies beneath” the happy facades.

What inspired the idea of connected books, rather than a series?

I think this is more because that’s what I like to read! I’m a huge fan of the Dresden Files, for instance, which whilst it’s advantageous to read previous instalments, you can read each of individually and still enjoy the ride.

Same with Marvel movies, each one is a self-contained thing and can be watched in a variety of orders, but they all interlink in some way. That’s how I want the Punk Powerful series (I really need to stop changing the name of it) to be – books that people can read and they’re a standalone story.

They can be read out of order almost, but there’s themes, characters and the like that will swap about between them and by the time the universe expands, you won’t have to read 12 books to get the idea of number 13. I also liked the idea that it makes easier to bring other authors into the fold on the universe, making it easy for people to carry on the stories themselves, write other stories in the universe I’ve created and expand it – which is hard to do in a closed off series because everything else then becomes a prequel (no shades to prequels, just not my thing).

I like the idea of a universe of writers all writing in the same vein, in the same time, with the same characters and telling a vast array of different stories. Just too hard with a set order.

Do you have any future publication plans, anything we can look out for? 

Cannibal Pete and Tara will be out in 2025. Next year will also see The Casebook of Dr Archie Lagoon (my stab at folk horror) and after that, a reworked Ghosts will see it brought back from the future to the ’90s and I’m sure you can guess the subject matter of that from the title! In all, I’ve got 10 books planned, hoping to release one a year.

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Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Lucius Valiant

Lucius Valiant (he/him) is a Danish-British author inspired by Gothic classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as horror and speculative fiction from authors like Anne Rice and Stephen King.

His work is known for its vivid, cinematic style and darkly humorous tone.

Author Links:

Linktree: linktr.ee/luciusvaliant

Amazon Author Page: Lucius-Valiant

Author Shop: lucius-valiant-shop.square.site

TikTok: @authorluciusvaliant
Instagram: @authorluciusvaliant
Threads: @authorluciusvaliant
Facebook: @authorluciusvaliant

We’re spotlighting your Vampire Chronicles series: introduce us to your books and tell us where the core idea came from!

The Thornhill Vampire Chronicles is a Gothic urban fantasy series set in the UK. It follows the Thornhill vampires, and those bound to them by blood or fate, as they navigate the complexities and dangers of their afterlives. It’s hard to say exactly where the core idea came from.

Some of the characters have been with me for more than half my life, as has Thornhill Mansion, the all-vampire family’s ancestral home. I’ve been visiting Thornhill Mansion hundreds of times in my mind since I was about ten, long before I started writing about it.

What I can pinpoint, though, is the moment that sparked the writing of Dark Roots, the first volume in the series: discovering Highgate Cemetery. I had just moved to the area and was out walking when I turned a corner and suddenly found myself at the foot of Highgate – the two magnificent, eerie sides of it rising on either side of Swain’s Lane. Something about the place’s sombre beauty and unmistakably haunted atmosphere whispered to me. It told me that this was where the mansion I’d always imagined belonged. I began researching the cemetery and immediately stumbled upon the urban legend of the Highgate Vampire, a real vampire said to haunt the graveyard in the early 1970s. The legend sparked a media frenzy and culminated in a vampire hunt. Do yourself a favor and Google the newspaper images from that time, because they’re pure Gothic theater. My point is, the fuel was already there in my imagination – discovering Highgate Cemetery was simply the match that set it alight. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, but it wasn’t until I stumbled upon Highgate that everything finally came together into a coherent story.

Tell us about your vampire influences, and then how you made vampires your own in your series!

I’ve been obsessed with vampires and everything they represent ever since I first read Dracula as a precocious preteen. Shortly after, I discovered Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, so the vampire archetype branded itself into my soul early on, at a crucial time when my brain’s neurons were busy clicking into place and forming their pathways.

I’ve never consciously tried to make my vampires my own. They arrived in my mind fully formed, already themselves.

In many ways, they’re classic Gothic vampires, marble-pale skin, unnaturally vivid eyes and hair, superhuman strength and speed, heightened senses, and sometimes supernatural abilities like hypnosis or mind-reading. Not all of them have powers – it’s a bit of a lucky draw. The abilities they develop often reflect who they were in life.

Gabriel, for instance, is a master of hypnosis, but he was always a skilled manipulator, even before vampirism gave him that extra oomph.

My vampires stay reasonably faithful to the core of traditional vampire mythology. They freeze in time at the moment of transformation, never age, are impervious to disease, and heal at an unnatural speed. Their hearts only beat on special occasions. They struggle with (or embrace) bloodlust, and a stake through the heart or exposure to sunlight can kill them.

At the same time, I’ve discarded aspects of classic vampire lore that I find unrealistic or just unnecessary. My vampires do have reflections, and religious iconography has no effect on them. They’re probably closest in spirit to Anne Rice’s vampires. The biggest difference is that my vampires don’t default to bisexuality. Whatever their orientation was in life, so it remains in the afterlife.

When you become a vampire in The Thornhill Vampire Chronicles, you are exactly who you were when you crossed over, only more so. Vampirism frees you from the limitations that bind mortals to behave in certain ways. It doesn’t make you evil, although you do acquire a bloodlust – it simply amplifies everything you already are.

Tell us about your MC,  Harlan Thorne. How did you develop him as a character, and what influences went into creating him? You’ve mentioned Dracula by Bram Stoker – does Harlan bear any resemblance to Jonathan Harker in that novel?

Like the rest of my key characters, Harlan feels more conjured than invented. He wasn’t consciously inspired by anything. He just arrived. He’s a professional vampire hunter.

That said, comparing him to Jonathan Harker isn’t a bad place to start. In Dracula, Jonathan Harker is very much an ordinary man, unwittingly drawn into a dangerous supernatural world when he agrees to travel to Transylvania. He’s a classic Stephen King-style protagonist – Joe Everyman who suddenly finds himself facing the forces of darkness.

Harlan is… not that. By the time we meet him in Dark Roots, he’s already spent twenty years immersed in the supernatural. His parents were killed by a vampire when he was very young; he was raised by the hunter who saved him, and his own career is largely driven by a thirst for revenge. Killing vampires is, in many ways, his not-entirely-healthy way of coping with trauma.

Harlan is a study in contrasts. In some ways, he’s everything you’d expect a vampire hunter to be: bold, stubborn, proud, impulsive – with a pronounced streak of arrogance and a complete inability to back down from a challenge. He doesn’t view vampires with awe or fear, but with jaded contempt and a cutting, sardonic wit. But beneath all that – though he does his best to bury it – he’s wounded, sensitive, and emotionally complex, as any proper Gothic hero should be.

Whether I shaped him that way or the muse delivered him whole, Harlan is ethereally beautiful, more fallen angel than typical rugged action hero.

Aesthetics are a vital part of the immersive atmosphere I strive to create, and I tend to emphasize my characters’ appearances. In Harlan’s case, his striking resemblance to a certain Victorian-era ancestor becomes part of his fate. It makes him a grudging magnet for attention from Gabriel, my most controversial character, and sets the stage for some danger-laced tension as the series unfolds.

What went into creating and maintaining the Gothic-ness of the series, what Gothic tropes do you love to write, and what can readers expect to find as the books go on?

I couldn’t keep a sense of Gothic-ness out of my books even if I wanted to! I don’t make any deliberate effort to maintain it; it’s simply there, part of the DNA of my inner world and my writing. I never really felt like I belonged in the “normal” world. I’ve always sensed that there are other worlds – richer, deeper, more vivid and beautiful layers of reality – hidden just beneath the surface of what’s immediately visible. That, to me, is the essence of the gothic: a deep yearning for someplace else, for something more intense, more beautiful, more dangerous than the mundane. So I fill my books with the things I yearn for – eternal life, beauty that doesn’t fade, love that burns with an eternal flame, a mansion full of ghosts and secrets.

How many books will be in the series in total, and what can you tell us about Book 5, Grave Matters? Should people begin with Book 1, or can they jump into the series at other points?

I have no idea. I’m a certified pantser – I pants every book, and I pants the series. There’s no roadmap, no planned-out arc, no set destination. I trust the story and the characters (some more than others, of course). Right now, I can’t say when the series will end, but I don’t suspect it’ll be any time soon. Harlan is the series’ main MC, but ever since volume two, I’ve given myself the freedom to shift perspective from book to book. So I’m not locked into only documenting Harlan’s fate. In that sense, the series has much more scope, room for a multitude of interconnected stories told from different vampires’ points of view.

Can you share some of your favourite reader comments and reviews with us?

“If you grew up loving Anne Rice with her multi-layered characters and rich storytelling, this is the new series for you. It bridges the gap between the generation of Anne Rice and the Vampire Diaries, giving us a modern vampire tale with believable, unique characters.”

“Dark Roots is a contemporary Gothic vampire novel with an urban fantasy twist that makes it perfect for crossover fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Tim Burton’s Wednesday or Dark Shadows. Although it’s clear Valiant has a firm knowledge of nineteenth-century Gothic classics, there’s a contemporary spin to his approach that goes beyond Dark Roots’ modern setting and draws on a rich camp horror tradition of intertwining modern and historical setpieces.”

“I couldn’t put this book down! It is the best most emotionally inclusive vampire book I’ve read. The plot is full of angst and family love. It is so original. The characters are real as far as emotions and personalities go. They are warm for cold blooded undead.”

“By far, the best vampire series of the year. Each book takes us deeper into the Thornhill world… a magical place with people you would love to know.” “Anne Rice and Dracula himself would be fans of L.V. too.”

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Author Spotlight: Horror & SFF Author Andromeda Ruins

Andromeda (he/him) is a queer, disabled, and neurodivergent author from a small town in the Midwest. He sits comfortably in the ‘I don’t know what’s going on’ category in just about everything, leading to him writing a lot about queer, disabled, and neurodivergent characters. He recently graduated his undergrad program with a Classics major and loves to take the themes and stories he learns about and adapt them to the modern day.

Author Links:

Website: andromedaruins.com

Book Links: ΔΆΙΟΣ | Incorrect Eyes

@andromedaexists on everything

You have 2 books out at the moment,  ΔΆΙΟΣ and Incorrect Eyes, which are quite different to each other! Can you tell us a bit about each of these, and especially shifting from  ΔΆΙΟΣ to Incorrect Eyes in terms of your themes, genre and writing focus?

Of course I can! ΔΆΙΟΣ (pronounced die-ohs) is the first book in the Call Me Icarus series, an anti-establishment retelling of the fall of Icarus. It is a grimdark story following Icarus as he accidentally becomes the face of the rebellion after spending ten years hiding under the nose of ATLAS Corp. It is dark and gritty, toeing the line of grimdark, but not quite horror.

I started writing ΔΆΙΟΣ while I was in my undergrad program. I have a bachelor’s degree in Classics (with a concentration in Classical Civilization and minors in Latin and Attic Greek), meaning that all day every day I was surrounded by stories far older than I could ever imagine.

At the same time, I am a very politically active person. I wouldn’t say I’m an activist by any means, but I do what I can.

Those two aspects of my life came crashing together during the pandemic, and what came out of that is the story of a disabled trans man who hasn’t yet come to terms with his disability. One who harbors a hatred and resentment towards the world around him that puts him in the position of having to fight for things he never even considered because of the propaganda he was raised in.

I guess all of this to say that I really like taking the stories of our ancient past and molding it to fit the world we live in today, which is also where Incorrect Eyes comes in.

Incorrect Eyes is a psychological horror novella following an unnamed transmasc MC as he deals with severe paranoia and an Angel with too many eyes. This was a hard shift from my established Greco-Roman retellings to Catholic based horror, but it really comes from the same place of taking the old and molding it to the new.

This time, though, instead of the story being an overtly political novel about overthrowing a fascist government, it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of bottling up emotions and stress. I think, if both stories are read next to each other, that you can see a lot of the same through lines. There’s just more of an emphasis on horror and mental illness in Incorrect Eyes than in ΔΆΙΟΣ (for now).

Let’s focus on Incorrect Eyes, your psychological religious horror novella. How did your own Catholic background weave into the novella, and how did this shape it?

Incorrect Eyes is a bit of a unique case for me. The initial idea for the story was the title, something that was thrown around in a group chat with my closest writing friends. I was granted the use of it by Cryptic, the friend who came up with the name, and I knew I wanted to do something paranoia-related with it, but I wasn’t quite sure what that would look like.

The first few drafts actually had Incorrect Eyes staying in my Greek Mythology lane, with it revolving around the Hekatonkheires. It was something more archeology based, with the main character uncovering just so many eyes in a dig site before his spiral. But that didn’t feel right, and when I was talking with my best friend she pointed out that it sounded like I was trying to create a “biblically accurate angel” that wasn’t an angel. So I took that and ran with it.

Only, I do have a degree in classics. And I was raised in a very strictly Roman Catholic family. So I chose to take the more academic route and draw from the Book of Isaiah and refrained from calling it a “biblically accurate angel” because all angels are biblically accurate, they’re just different tiers of angels. Once I had that piece in place, the rest of the story really fell in place. I am really happy with how it turned out, though I still think the archeological Hekatonkheires would have been fun.

What is the context of the Biblical passages your MC is studying, and why did you choose to build the novella’s focus around them?

The passage that the main character is studying in Incorrect Eyes is Isaiah 6:1-7. This is a passage in which King Uzziah enters heaven and is greeted by the Holy Host, only to have a Seraph put a coal in his mouth in an act of atonement.

Even the simple description of that passage sounds like the set up to a horror novel to me, the premise of being greeted by the Divine (something that I personally view as terrifying after being raised in the Church as I was) only to have them mutilate you in the name of the Lord… it sends shivers up my spine, truly.

I built the novella around a different passage, originally; a combination of Isaiah 6:2-3 and Ezekiel 1:5-28.

However, I had a hard time keeping the tone of the story when drawing it out to incorporate the entirety of those passages, so I cut it down to just Isaiah. As for why… well, that ties into my area of comfort. I am a scholar, one who studies and translates ancient texts. This is a realm I am comfortable with! I love taking an existing tale and creating a narrative around someone interacting with it, though academic means or through living the story themselves!

What draws you to psychological horror, and how did you develop the sense of dread and mental deterioration of the main character?

Honestly, my life experiences draw me to psychological horror. I have been very open about the use of hallucinations in Incorrect Eyes and that they are modelled of my own hallucinations, though they are much worse than anything I’ve experienced.

It took me a long time to come into myself, but with that came a love for horror. Particularly, a love for body horror and mental fuckery. With that came an appreciation for the unwanted and the discarded. I grew to see the art in the way humans cope with things, with the way the mind will do whatever it needs to do to survive. That’s what I wanted to instill in the story of Incorrect Eyes. I wanted it to feel like no matter how bad things were getting, the main character was still functioning on a base level and trying to survive. He experiences hallucinations that grow worse as time goes on, and all he wants to do is make it through the night. That desperation to make it home mixed with the general “God, why me?” vibe created a mental spiral that drags the reader down with it. The only reprieve is realizing that you’ve reached the end, really.

In the novella, your MC is unnamed. Was this a deliberate choice, and if so, why? If this happened organically, why did you choose to stick with not naming him?

Yes, this is an intentional choice! He actually does have a name in my notes, however that does not come up on page. This was a deliberate choice I made while I was writing, one driven entirely by the narrative. I had always intended for the story to be told in the first person. I personally feel that horror stories thrive when told in the first person because it forces you to face the horrors as the characters do!

So when it came to writing Incorrect Eyes, I didn’t even think about how I could incorporate information about him. This extended to more than just his name!

He is a college kid, one that’s so deep into his degree that he’s counting down the days to graduation. That man does not care at all about how he looks or how he presents to the world. He is there to do a job, and that is it. The only interaction he has with people are with strangers on the street and through texts with his close friends and family.

The strangers don’t care who he is and while his name could have been mentioned in the texts, I can’t remember the last time I used someone’s name in that setting. It felt unnatural to me. Once the story was done and I could read it all as one piece, I found that the lack of a name for the main character added to the narrative significance. This man is spiraling into psychosis and seeing the Messengers of the Lord and yet he is not significant enough to have his name remembered as his story is told. He is merely a vessel for the horror of the Angels, not much different from the role of a prophet.

What is next for you and your writing? What can readers look out for in the future?

I’m currently working on my next novel, Desecrate! It’s (hopefully) going to be out next year, it’s a Dark Academia novel about a Seminary-dropout-turned-Classics-student as he begins to experience prophetic dreams about God chained in the basement of his local church. I’m really looking forward to getting this behemoth of a story out into the world. It’s been a time trying to write and re-write and re-write this story as my tastes have changed!

As soon as that’s out, I will be returning to the Call Me Icarus series! ΔΆΙΟΣ was book one in a trilogy, the other two books are zero drafted and waiting to be polished.

I had to take a break from the Call Me Icarus universe for a moment due to the nature of the story and the state of the US Government, but I’m ready to dive back in with a vengeance! I’m hoping book two will be ready for publishing in late 2026 or early 2027.

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Author Spotlight: Horror Author Shawn Winchell

I grew up on Goosebumps, Stephen King, and The X Files and I think that is pretty obvious to the people who read my books. When I’m not busy raising my 5 kids, I write paranormal suspense and horror stories.

Author Links:

@authorshawnwinchell on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads

www.shawnwinchell.com (eBook and paperback versions of all my books are available to purchase from my website, though I’m currently only able to ship physical copies to US readers. I’m hoping to be able to change that in the future. Until then, anyone in a different country can find my books on Amazon or most major retailers)

We’re here to spotlight your body of work, which includes 7 books available in eBook, paperback, and a couple in hardback! What draws you to write horror, and how many subgenres and aspects of the genre have you tried so far? Do you find yourself returning to certain things?

I always wanted to write noir (think Raymond Chandler). I never actually planned on writing horror, but when I write, those are the stories that come out. One great thing about horror is that the genre is such a broad spectrum that there is something for everyone. I like to think that my work represents that – I’ve written all over the genre, from ghost stories to psychological to sci-fi horror and demonic possession.

If you had to highlight 2-3 themes in your body of work, what would they be, and how have you expressed them in the books? Do you find yourself expressing or even returning to these themes consciously, unconsciously, or a mix? 

One recurring theme in a lot of my writing is the concept of an unreliable narrator. I absolutely love them. I think an unreliable narrator gives a story an added layer that can’t exist any other way. Plus, they’re a lot of fun to write.

Another thing that I find myself returning to from book to book is the dichotomy between skeptics and believers – whether that is in regards to ghosts or aliens or anything really. I believe having that contrast is important.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process and style – have you found yourself developing or changing up how you write between your first book and your latest book? 

My writing process has stayed mostly the same except for one major change. I wrote the entire first draft of my debut by hand. It was such a fun experience to put pen to paper and watch as the pages piled up.

Since then, I’ve had quite a few medical issues that have made using my hands difficult on a good day and impossible on bad ones. As a result, I’ve had to give up the handwritten draft.

The rest of my process is still the same, though. I map out between twenty and thirty scenes on index cards and then I start writing. As I’m writing, I try to let the story go wherever it wants to, but if I get too far off track, I use the note cards to redirect myself. And I make a point to never read what I’ve written until I have a finished draft to keep myself from getting stuck tinkering instead of actually writing.

Let’s spotlight some characters! Pick 2-3 protagonists from your any of books, and share what makes them tick, and why you enjoyed developing them. 

It’s funny, my favorite characters to write almost always end up being side characters. Tommy and Ms. Evelyn in Birdseye were a ton of fun, as was Madame Ethelinda from Eliza (who is actually the only character I’ve ever written that was solely based off of a real person – an old boss of mine from when I used to work at Barnes and Noble).

My favorite protagonist would have to be Lucy, the nine-year-old narrator from Birdseye. She’s socially awkward on top of being at an age where she is still finding herself. She’s confident and smart and knows how to trust herself, even when maybe she shouldn’t. She’s also kind and compassionate despite someone (me) putting her through some really awful experiences.

Let’s zoom in on your favourite antagonists to write. Tell us how these characters/entities came about, and what your process was for developing them as you wrote their stories. 

I had a lot of fun with Eliza in my first book. The idea for her came about as an amalgamation of a ghost story from an old asylum near where I live and a Native American legend about what they call “Stick Indians.”

My favorite antagonist that I’ve written so far is Gus from Liminal. I’m not going to say much about him other than if you read the book, I think you’ll see why I like him so much.

As an indie author, what have been the main challenges for you in terms of publication? What have you learned over the course of 7 books?

The biggest challenge for me is and always has been social media. I very rarely used it before publishing my first book and it is still a struggle for me. But, over the course of releasing more books and starting to build a bit of a following, I’ve learned that it is absolutely necessary. And thankfully, for the most part, the people that aren’t interested in what you have to say usually just scroll by.

Can you tell us about your future publication plans? What can we look out for next?

For 2025, I have two books planned for release – Googly Eye (a possession/occult horror novel) in April, and the first book in a new series called The Many Terrors of Creekbed Hollow that will be published in October.

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