Mastodawn

Author Spotlight: Welsh Husband and Wife Horror Fiction Duo, Writing as TM Ellis

TM Ellis is the pen name of Tommy (he/him) and Margot (she/her) Ellis. They are Wales’ bestselling husband-and-wife horror writing team, and they specialise in short-form horror. They have released three books to date: Grisly Deeds, Grisly Deeds 2 and Grisly Deeds: Mini Edition. Their first book hit five, three and two in three separate Amazon bestseller charts as well as sharing a top five with Stephen King. “A Good Idea at the Time” was a story chosen from Grisly Deeds 2 for the world’s biggest horror podcast, No Sleep, which peaked at number two in the Apple Podcast Chart.

Tommy also writes under his own name and has a comedy-thriller trilogy called The Midas Cat and three middle grade adventures: The Puddle People, The Puddle People 2 and The Keepers of the Arkle.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website: tommyellisauthor.wordpress.com

Book Links with Samples:
Grisly Deeds (Amazon UK – Look Inside to read a sample)
Grisly Deeds 2 (Amazon UK – Look Inside to read a sample)
Grisly Deeds Mini Edition (Amazon UK – Look Inside to read a sample)

Pitch for Readers/Book Clubs:

The Grisly Deeds series is an homage to the classic horror anthologies of the 1960s and 70s. Filled with tales of cold war experiments gone wrong, medical terrors, Victorian and Edwardian gothic, this is a collection to read with all the lights on. That shadow, though… The one in the corner… Did it just move on its own?

As a husband/wife duo writing horror, can you tell us how this works for you as a process, and how your publishing journey has been so far?

We both come up with horror short story ideas with Margot coming up with the majority of ideas.

Tommy writes them by hand, then does a second draft on the laptop.

He prints out the story, Margot reads it, suggests edits, then they both sit down and polish the story together.

Your latest releases are short story collections, Grisly Deeds. Tell us more about the themes of the collection, and how these stories fit together.

The books are collections of unrelated short stories ranging from Victorian and Edwardian gothic, through to weird cold war experiments that might have been.

They are a modern take on the old anthologies of the 1960s and ’70s, like The Pan Book of Horror series.

There are a lot of “what if” stories. E.g.: What if you could fast forward through time without aging? This would make prison sentences useless, therefore what crimes would you be willing to commit?

The series is also full of jet black humour, some of which is designed to make you feel guilty after you’ve laughed!

Margot comes up with most of the twists.

There are also a smattering of fairy tale retellings. You’ll never view Pinocchio in the same light again! (Grisly Deed: Mini Edition).

There are also a fair amount of medical horrors: The next time you go for an operation, be afraid!

How did you choose the order of the stories in the collection, and can you tell us more about the one you decided to be first? What do you think makes that one the best to kick off with?

We sit down and work it out between us, basing the order on how music albums are constructed. We front load the books with a twist shocker first. Something that will leave the reader exclaiming.

A few people have approached us having read book 1 and quoted the last line of the first story entitled “First Do No Harm”. This was a story of Margot’s.

Tell us more about the story you picked to be last – what makes that one a banger to end on, and what do you hope readers will take away from the collection once they’ve closed the book?

Again, we use the music album formula, ending on something memorable. The last story in book 1 is an atmospheric Victorian gothic piece entitled “Letters From the Attic”.

In book 2, we end with another Victorian, this time a ghost story.

In our latest release, Grisly Deeds: Mini Edition, we end with a Georgian tale which is based on a true story and entitled “The Bruton Street Murders”.

Which of the stories, if you absolutely had to pick, were your personal favourites to write, and why?

We both loved “The Bruton Street Murders” as it was an era we’d never worked with and great fun.

Margot’s personal favourite is “Line of Duty” because it’s in the realms of possibility.

Both tales are from Grisly Deeds: Mini Edition.

What’s next for you and your writing – what should readers look out for, and how should they keep updated on your work (sign up to a newsletter, subscribe to a mailing list, are you at any upcoming cons/events etc)?

We are working on Grisly Deeds 3 right now. More tales of terror!

Keep updated by logging onto tommyellisauthor.wordpress.com and, if you are in Mid or West Wales, look out for a solo saxophone entertainer performing one man tributes to 70s rock and roll, 80s ska, The Blues Brothers or 50s/60s rock and roll. There will always be a merch table set up, and you can get signed copies of all the books.

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Author Spotlight: Welsh Husband and Wife Horror Fiction Duo, Writing as TM Ellis

Meet Wales’ bestselling husband-and-wife horror writing team, writing as TM Ellis. They specialise in short-form horror with 3 books out and more on the way!

by cmrosensMay 20, 2026April 3, 2026

Classic Short Horror Stories by Women (Part 2)

Another list of classic short horror stories by women (1800s-1930s), this time ones you can find on Taesha Glasgow’s podcast, Just Chills – Short Scary Stories. Here you’ll find 35 authors to check out!

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Classic Short Horror Stories by Women

A list of classic short stories by women which can be found narrated on the HorrorBabble podcast.

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Author Spotlight: Sci-Fi Author Chloe Clark

Meet Chloe Clark (she/her), a Sci-Fi author of Collective Gravities, Escaping the Body, Patterns of Orbit and more. This spotlight focuses on her latest collection, EVERY GALAXY A CIRCLE. Follow Chloe on Bsky @pintsncupcakes.bsky.social

by cmrosensJanuary 7, 2026January 8, 2026

Author Spotlight: Paranormal Author Jason A. Kilgore

Meet Jason A. Kilgore (he/him), and his collection of paranormal tales, perfect for a spooky Christmas gift!

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Author Spotlight: Fantasy Author Odessa Silver

Meet UK-based author Odessa Silver (she/her) and her Japanese-inspired fantasy short story collection, Tales of Yamato.

by cmrosensSeptember 24, 2025January 7, 2026 #AuthorInterview #AuthorSpotlight #MenInHorror #shortStoryCollection #welshHorror #WomenInHorror

Mitzi Szereto May 17

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Amazon.com: Florida Gothic (A Book for Horror Lovers) eBook : Szereto, Mitzi: Books

cmrosens May 6

Author Spotlight: Gothic Horror author Julie Lew

Julie Lew (she/they) loves all things fantasy and horror, the darker and queerer the better. They are the author of adult gothic horror novel, THE WIVES OF HERRICK HALL (May 2026), and the YA fantasy mystery, DEATH IN VERSE (Fall 2026). She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her partner, and when she’s not writing books about the magical and the monstrous, she’s likely playing endless games of fetch with her chihuahua-terrier mix pup Kody.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website: www.julielew.com

Instagram: @julielew

Links to books: linktr.ee/julielew

BOOK PITCH:

Herrick Hall doesn’t let anything go without a fight. Least of all its masters’ dead wives…

After a dalliance with another woman leaves her reputation in shambles, Josephine Carter is banished to the isolated manor to serve as lady’s companion to Herrick’s mistress. Lady Nora Blake is a headstrong, capricious woman, who spends her days convalescing from a mysterious illness—and her nights witnessing her imminent death over and over. Shackled to her side, Josephine is certain life could not get worse. But then she meets the Herrick wives.

Ghosts veiled in shadow stalk the halls and trespass into Josephine’s dreams, trapped forever in the fury of their last dying wish: to destroy Herrick and everyone beneath its roof. Josephine determines to escape by any means necessary. Until she and Nora fall in love.

Together, Josephine and Nora must confront Herrick’s curse to battle their way to freedom. But Herrick has already claimed them as its next ghostly brides, and neither the house nor its vengeful wives will relinquish them without bloodshed…

Wives of Herrick Hall by Julie Lew, published by Quill & Crow

The Wives of Herrick Hall is your Gothic Horror debut novel, released in May 2026 by Quill & Crow. Can you tell us where the seed for this novel came from, and what came first – setting, character, premise, or something else?

The seed for The Wives of Herrick Hall was planted way back in 2019, while I was balancing working in the entertainment industry by day and attending film school at USC by night. Back then, I wrote screenplays during my free time (like literally everyone else in LA!), and after watching Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite” and then Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” I began toying around with an idea about two women falling in love in a cursed house.

I’ve always adored sweeping historical romances and eerie gothic tales (both as a reader and moviegoer), but as a queer person, it’s always been hard to find myself in those stories—that someone like me could conquer evil or find joy or deserve a happy ending. I knew I wanted to play in that sandbox and that my protagonists would be sapphic, but I struggled breaking that story out as a screenplay. I kept wanting to slip inside my protagonist Josephine’s mind and explore what she was thinking—something that’s more difficult to get away with in a visually-driven form like screenwriting. But when I decided to tinker with the idea as a novel instead of a screenplay, everything just fell into place and the story began to work at last.

Although it’s Gothic Horror, a major theme in this novel is Queer Joy, specifically a romance between the central characters Josephine and Nora. Can you share what you think about the importance of sapphic/queer stories in a genre like gothic horror/historical fiction, and especially in context of queer joy as a theme, rather than tragedy?

From the outset, I knew that while the book wouldn’t ignore the homophobia and discrimination queer people faced in the time period in which the book is set, it would never be solely *about* that.

Traditionally, mainstream media tends to tell queer stories (when it tells them at all) as ones predominantly steeped in trauma and tragedy. While these types of stories are absolutely valid and powerful, we deserve stories that are as diverse as we are.

Dark and horrible things can and certainly do happen in Wives, but I’ve always wanted Josephine and Nora’s romance to be the light at the heart of the book. We get to fight ghosts and the patriarchy AND win the girl at the end.

What other Gothic themes can readers expect within the book, and how does centering female characters and their experiences help to draw out these themes? (Mirroring/Doubling is a pretty Gothic thing, would you say that there is an element of this in their experiences too?)

The theme of doubling definitely appears in Wives! Josephine is well aware of her limitations as a woman in her time period, and as a newcomer to Herrick, she sees her own fate in both her mistress Nora and the ghosts who are trapped in the house.

The phantom wives and their undying fury show Josephine what she stands to lose if she remains at Herrick: she’ll be stripped of humanity, reduced to a single potent emotion, and lose complete control over herself for eternity.

Some of my other favorite gothic themes that make their way into Wives’ pages are curses and nightmares, as well as psychological stability and doubting your own and others’ minds. Josephine’s mistress and eventual love interest, Nora, has received the medical diagnosis of her female mind being unstable and untrustworthy, and so it’s easy for men (and even Josephine at first) to dismiss her—especially when she makes claims like she witnesses her death every night in her dreams.

Society tries to condition us to doubt people who are not straight, white men, and I wanted to explore this through the gothic lens of heightened emotions and the appearance of the supernatural.

Where did the concept for the ghosts come from, and what ghostly traditions were you drawing on to create/develop them?

The concept for the ghosts came about as I was thinking about the patriarchy and the entitlement men feel towards women’s bodies. What does that look like in this house that is a mirror to society?

For me, that meant the house holding onto them like property even after death. The previous wives of Herrick cannot pass or leave Herrick after dying, but are still shackled to it like the silverware in the cupboards or their portraits on the walls.

Women as victims is a common trope in classic gothic fiction, and I wanted to subvert that—yes, they find themselves trapped in a house and their circumstances don’t permit them to escape, but they are going to fight back and be their own saviors.

How did you develop Herrick Hall itself – is there a real place/places that it’s based on? How much detail did you go into to create it as a setting?

I love creating stories in isolated, contained settings like a sinister mansion or a remote boarding school. Setting becomes such a microcosm of the story’s world that puts a magnifying glass up to our own world and politics, and tension immediately becomes that much higher (how do you get out? how do you survive?).

With Herrick, I was inspired by the eerie mansions of gothic tales like Thornfield in Jane Eyre and High Place in Mexican Gothic. I wanted Herrick to feel like another character in the book, though the house remains inanimate (or does it??), another foe Josephine must contend with to win her happy ending.

I created a detailed look book for Herrick and the book’s characters, back when it was originally conceived of as a screenplay. Before every writing session, I’d listen to a few songs from my themed playlist (lots of eerie instrumental music) and revisit the look book while taking a walk. Then when I felt really immersed in the world and like I could envision the cinematic trailer in my mind, I’d hurry to my laptop to get more words on the page.

Do you have anything else to plug here that is currently out or coming soon? What should readers look out for?

I am so incredibly lucky to be publishing two debuts in 2026! My young adult debut comes out this fall, a dark fantasy murder mystery called Death in Verse.

Set in an alternate 1920s with a poetry-based magic system, it follows a nonmagical girl whose search for her missing mother leads her to an abandoned school where she and a group of kidnapped poets are tasked with finishing the final lines of a spell before the clock runs out. It’s a bit different from The Wives of Herrick Hall, but it is also steeped in a gothic sensibility and I hope readers enjoy it as well!

Get the book #AuthorInterview #AuthorSpotlight #GothicFiction #WomenInHorror

cmrosens Apr 22

Author Spotlight: Gothic Weird Fiction author Nikoline Kaiser

Nikoline Kaiser (she/her) resides in Denmark, and writes short stories, novels and poetry. She has published several pieces in both English and Danish, and been longlisted for the Lee Smith Novel Prize. She writes about grief, love, horror, sexuality and one time about a woman turning into a tree.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website: nikolinekaiser.dk
Social Media: @nikolinekaiser on Instagram, bluesky and reddit

Read a free sample:
The Dreaming of Man (Amazon Look Inside feature)

Book Club/Reader pitch for The Dreaming of Man:

A queer spin on Lovecraft meets Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a historical crime-turned-horror novella.

Get The Dreaming of Man from Neon Hemlock
Cover art by J.J. Epping.

Your novella, The Dreaming of Man, was released in 2025. What was the writing journey like from first idea to query-ready?

I wrote the novella all the way back in 2019, and I actually wrote the first draft – which hasn’t changed a whole lot, aside from being cleaned up – all in one afternoon. I don’t think I took any breaks. It was one of those stories that had to come out all at once, or I feared I wouldn’t finish it.

It received a lot of rejections over the next couple of years, until it landed with dave at Neon Hemlock Press.

It sounds tacky, but I truly believe it found it’s right home with Neon, and the experience I had with the press has been wonderful. I had huge input in the final version, including getting to pick the artist to make the cover — J.J. Epping, a dear friend and someone I knew could nail the creepy feeling I wanted the cover to convey.

What are the pros and cons of being a Danish author writing in English, and what advice would you give others writing for an Anglophonic market?

The biggest con is definitely my own insecurities about playing with the language; I feel I can’t get away with as much, because publishers and readers might perceive it as a mistake instead of a deliberate bending of the language rules.

And then there’s the time differences for events, and not being as physically close to the market, particularly for events.

For anyone else in the same position, I would recommend familiarizing yourself as much as possible with both the Anglophonic and your local publishing world. Some works might fit better in one cultural context than the other.

What are your main Weird Fiction and Gothic Horror influences, and what are your favourite themes and elements from these genres? Which can readers expect to find in your novella (if you can let us know in a non-spoilery way)?

I am actually fairly new to these genres; I used to avoid horror at all costs, until I fell over some video essays on how much queer exploration there often is in horror. And then we started reading gothic fiction at university, and I fell in love with the genre.

Ann Radcliffe’s works – especially “The Italian” – are amazing and show so much of what still works in horror today. And for anyone writing in these genres, I recommend reading “The Castle of Otranto” by Horace Walpole, the first every Gothic horror. It reads as fairly silly now, but it is basically one long checklist of what to include in a classic Gothic story.

“The Dreaming of Man” contains a bit of body horror, which has always fascinated me. People’s relationship with their bodies, the things we think of as “horror” about bodies across history and cultures, can vary so much.

And then I’m just a big fan of the eerie, which is something Radcliffe nails, and which always unsettles me more than some big, scary monster. Not that a big, scary monster isn’t fun, too. I’m a big Godzilla fan.

How did the title come to be, and were there any alternatives you considered?

The title was inspired by a passage in Macbeth, which is also included as a prelude to the beginning of my book. The last part reads: “… Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse / The curtained sleep.”

There’s a lot of layers to this quote, starting from the top: nature is dead, and sleep often seems like death to the casual observer. And then of course we dream in our sleep, and that’s both an obscuring and a revelation of the real world. And then “curtained sleep” which can be taken quite literally as a bed curtained off, creating another barrier against the real world, even on top of the barrier of sleep.

Basically, the characters have done everything they can to cut themselves off from the horribleness of the real world, but it still comes back to haunt them in their dreams.

I think that’s ultimately what horror is: not just “what if your nightmares were real?” but also “and what if you couldn’t shield yourself from them?” Not physically or mentally. And then there’s also a double-layered meaning in the title, but I’ll let the text reveal that on its own.

The working title was “Lovecraft goes Queer, Shakespeare goes Queerer”. I’m not sure that would have gone down for publishing.

The town of Osmund has been compared with Innsmouth (The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft) and Dunsinane (Macbeth, Shakespeare) – were these conscious influences, and were there any others that inspired the setting?

Definitely very deliberate influences, especially Innsmouth. The style and feel of the town is one that permeates modern Weird Fiction and Gothic Horror, so even without reading Lovecraft, I think it can latch onto you. But there were a lot of inspirations from real life as well.

I’ve always lived in port cities, and I grew up sailing with my family, so sometimes you would arrive at some really small places, with old boats and older buildings. Thankfully never as scary as those places in fiction, but then again, we mostly went there during the summer. Things look very different in the dark, or during Fall and Winter when everything’s gray and only a few plants are still blooming.

What queer representation can readers expect in this novella, and also in your other available work?

There will almost always be at least one stray lesbian somewhere — though not always! And I try to be broad in my understanding and love for the whole queer community. I figure out myself a lot through the stories I write, even when the characters and settings have very little to do with my personal life. Fiction is both exploration and understanding, and like a dream, I think it can reflect both the reality we live in and the reality we hope to see one day. So, the answer is: mostly lesbians! Or bi women! I love women of all kinds, so I’m biased. There’s technically no lesbians confirmed in “The Dreaming of Man”, but just because I didn’t write it in the text doesn’t mean the women aren’t kissing behind-the-scenes!

Do you have anything else to plug here that is currently out or coming soon? What should readers look out for?

I have two short stories coming out, one called “Puppet Show” with Estrella Publishing, in their publication “Celestial Glossary”. It’s an introspective piece about re-defining yourself after an accident and following your stranger impulses despite what the world around you is telling you to do. It’s out January 30th.

And then later this year – date still unconfirmed – I am part of a sci-fi anthology, with a short story about people living in huge, moving, mechanical animals after the end of the world. I try to post more on my socials as we get closer to publication, so keep an eye out.

Get it now!

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Author Interview

Author Spotlight: Gothic Weird Fiction author Nikoline Kaiser

Meet Gothic Weird fiction author Nikoline Kaiser (she/her) and her novella THE DREAMING OF MAN, out with Neon Hemlock.

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Author Spotlight: Paranormal Ecohorror author S.M. Mack

Meet S.M. Mack (she/her), author of DEATH VALLEY BLOOMS. Find out more about this queer ecohorror novella and how it came about!

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Author Spotlight: British Gothic Horror author Laura Clarke Walker

Discover a new seaside town of Gothic secrets – COLDHARBOUR, by Laura Clarke Walker (she/they). Meet this British author and find out more about her work.

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Author Spotlight: Queer Cyberpunk author A.E. Bross

Meet A.E. Bross (they/them or xe/xem), a nonbinary author of queer cyberpunk Snow White retelling, CyberSnow. Find out more about their latest novella!

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Author Spotlight: Queer Cyberpunk Author Stefanie Carter (AKA Wayward Sparx/Fox N. Locke)

Meet author Stefanie Carter (they/them) who writes as Fox N. Locke and Wayward Sparx. They are a UK-based English Sci-Fi author, working on a nonfiction book about cyberpunk, and here to talk about their Trans+ collection of stories, TRANS_LUCENT.

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Author Spotlight: Gothic SFF Author Morgan Dante

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cmrosens Apr 8

Author Spotlight: Paranormal Ecohorror author S.M. Mack

S.M. Mack (she/her) is a 2019 MFA recipient in popular fiction from USM Stonecoast, the 2017 first place winner of the Katherine Patterson Prize for Young Adult Writing, and a Clarion 2012 grad. Her short fiction has been published in Fireside Fiction, Vine Leaves Literary Journal’s “Best of 2015” anthology, and the Clarion class of 2012’s seven Rainbow Anthologies, among others. Her novella Death Valley Blooms is part of Neon Hemlock’s 2025 Novella Series.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website: whatsmacksaid.com

Bluesky: @whatsmacksaid.bsky.social
Instagram: @what_smacksaid

Death Valley Blooms Links

Neon Hemlock Publishing
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

READ A SAMPLE: Amazon Look Inside Feature

PITCH FOR READERS/BOOK CLUBS:

Every decade or so, vast quantities and varieties of wildflowers bloom all at once in Death Valley. But unbeknownst to the wider world, these super blooms are powered by a woman’s life. Mar’s mother was called a decade ago, pulled underground to be used like a battery, and she herself has begun to feel Death Valley’s presence. Mar has an ace up her sleeve, though: neither she nor her brother will ever have children. Is it enough for the desert to release its grip on her family?

Death Valley Blooms is out with Neon Hemlock. Cover illustration by Rose Meyer. Cover design by dave ring.

What was the seed for your novella, Death Valley Blooms, and how did this sprout into the novella published by Neon Hemlock?

My Clarion class put out seven charity anthologies to help raise money for attendee scholarships.

Clarion lasts for six weeks from June to August, so we challenged ourselves to write a story from scratch each year, focusing on a different color of the rainbow.

My Yellow Volume story started at the (erroneous) assumption that all dirt in the southern Californian deserts is yellow, or at least yellow-ish.

From there, I did some daydreaming about how the ground might interact with people; I went from “skinning your hands and knees when you fall down” to “what if the blood spilled from a minor injury isn’t enough? What if blood isn’t enough? What if the ground eats you whole? Why would it do that?”

By the end of the first draft I knew I had something special, but I also knew I’d never be able to tease out the subtleties hiding in there under our short timeline. So I set it aside for a few years, and picked it back up during grad school.

Within the novella are themes of consent and autonomy, but also the futility of people’s actions against a landscape that will outlast them. Where did these themes come from, and why explore them here?

One of my childhood refrains was “I can do it myself!” even when that was not objectively true. It insists on boundary-setting for both consent and autonomy—anyone who overrides one will inevitably override the other.

Death Valley Blooms’ main character, Mar, is very much a product of that mentality. She is determined to break her family’s curse, even though generations of women have succumbed to Death Valley’s call. She fights for her autonomy and nurtures a lifelong grudge against the curse for stealing her ability to consent. Because, of course, that’s what curses do: render those trapped under its power unable to protect their emotional, mental, and physical selves.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about climate change versus an individual’s effect on their environment. The physical world does not care how frightened or overwhelmed you and I are by wildfires, flash floods, or water scarcity. But if one small part of the world—Death Valley, in this case—reached out and demanded payment or help from an individual, how could we possibly say no? Even culpability and guilt aside, how could a single family of individuals possibly resist nature’s force? They can’t.

What to you was psychologically interesting about a family dealing with constant absences and returns?

I had a lot of undiagnosed anxiety when I began writing Death Valley Blooms, and one of the things I obsessed over was my parents’ ages. I have a good relationship with both, and for a year or more I just could not see past the knowledge that I’d outlive them, and that that was somehow the best outcome.

One of the more tragic ideas I couldn’t shake was the prospect of losing time—losing years—that could be spent in one another’s company: how much better would it be to “only” lose your mother (or sister, or aunt) for twenty years, rather than forever? Furthermore, how difficult would it be to accept and move through the resulting grief, then have those feelings and growth invalidated when the missing loved one returns? What does that do to a close-knit family when it happens over and over again?

What LGBTQIA+ rep can readers expect to find in this novella, and why is this rep important to you to include?

There’s no reason not to make characters queer in one way or another—or rather, there’s no more reason to make them queer than to make them straight. A story doesn’t hinge on the gender or sexual orientation of side characters, and even “boring,” everyday representation is a good thing.

For example, Mar’s closest friend is openly bisexual; she’s divorced from a man and dating a woman. It comes up in casual conversation a few times, but that’s all.

I identify as simply queer now, but I spent many years identifying as asexual, then as aro/ace (and so on and so forth as my perception of myself changed), while living in a near-constant state of fury and frustration at how hard it was to find ace main characters at all, let along ace main characters outside romantic subplots.

I didn’t plan for Mar’s aro/ace identity to become a strength, but it’s an important part of who she is. Part of why she’s so family-oriented is that she doesn’t care about finding a romantic partner. Her family is perfect the way it is, if only she could defy Death Valley and bring everyone together again.

The other queer rep I’d like to highlight is Mar’s aunt, Lucy, who is a trans woman. She’s got her own issues going on over the course of the story, but she doesn’t stand in the spotlight, either. I wanted to create a path for her to simply exist as a regular person dealing with a family curse and an increasingly desperate niece. (“Regular” is doing a lot of work here, I know.) But I wanted to remind readers that the environment does not give a rat’s behind about human-imposed boundaries, whether those be gender strictures or geographical boundaries.

Death Valley’s curse falls on the women of Mar and Lucy’s family, and both Mar and Lucy are women.

Death Valley is a character in the novella, much like the human characters. What was it like to develop this aspect of the novella?

As a younger writer, I participated in a workshop where one colleague had a television background, and we talked a lot about the “white room syndrome,” where a scene entirely ignores its setting. The discussion left an impression, and over time my writing evolved from dutifully including setting descriptions to centering the setting alongside the characters.

Our surroundings in real life aren’t sentient, but speculative fiction is the perfect place to look beyond that natural end place. I’ve really loved trying to get into the headspace required to embody an inhuman, unpredictable, and nearly all-powerful true-neutral character, a vast ecosystem with little to no way of communicating directly with my human characters—sometimes I think of Death Valley’s character as alien as the actual location feels when visiting. And I’m definitely going to keep doing this in future stories!

For example, I have another story I’m working on about eating disorders with a gargoyle sent to live in exile in a different California desert.

Do you have anything that you want to share with readers, anything out now, or coming soon?

I’m in the middle of a companion novella for Death Valley Blooms! It picks up slightly before the end of Death Valley Blooms and is from a different character’s point of view. I have a beautiful cover created by the incomparable Rose Mayer, who also did the original, and I’ll be releasing the companion story sometime during summer 2026. I’ll be posting updates on bsky and via my author newsletter, which readers can sign up for on my website.

gRAB A COPY

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January 2026 Media Round-Up Date February 1, 2026 In relation to media round-up
The Sussex Fretsaw Massacre Date November 4, 2023 In relation to Book Review
#AmReading Shout Out! Paranormal Debut SOUL’S CHOICE by Kerri Davidson (@bagoflettuce) Date October 8, 2019 In relation to Book Review
Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Frankie Sutton Date February 28, 2025 In relation to Author Interview
Author Spotlight: SFF Short Fiction Author Elad Haber Date July 10, 2024 In relation to Author Interview

#paranormalBooks #queerAuthor #WomenInHorror

cmrosens Apr 6

Independent Girlies, Ruin Your Life With This 1 Weird Trick…

Overexposure, a short story about addiction to a person and the total obliteration of oneself in the pursuit of the impossible, is the closest thing to Pink Horror I’ve ever written. It’s also very firmly Weird Fiction, or New Weird.

“Pink horror takes back all of the real-life horrors that we who identify as femme experience just living our everyday life and shoves it back in your face”

Wendy Dalrymple

I would say that losing yourself in pursuit of a relationship, especially with a man who comes off as ‘special’ but gives you nothing of substance, is part of the femme experience. I would also say that, although this story is Weird with a capital W, it’s also a riff off this kind of personality strangulation that happens when people, especially femme people, put their own needs below those of someone they want to ‘save’ or ‘understand’. Charlie never interacts with another woman throughout the whole story – and that’s the point.

I’ve recorded it myself for the Eldritch Girl podcast, but this is the first time that it has been sold. You can now listen to it on The Weird Library, narrated by Bridgette Brenmark. Honestly, she did such a good job I cried on the train.

https://youtu.be/KSoH4lfuwqw?si=bBE4WyUg8mqOasF5

This is probably my favourite short story to date. I wrote it in 2021, but hearing it read by someone else made it so fresh and I fell in love with the story again. That’s a very weird thing to say about a character whose life I ruin, but there we are.

About the Short Story

Charlie Eversley-Smith, an award-winning photographer, has an eye for detail and a love for London life, but this proves to be her undoing.

When she meets a glamourous man at a party and immediately forgets what he looks like, she has to see him again. And again. And again. The more Charlie sees him, the bigger the black hole in her head becomes, and even photographs won’t capture a memorable image.

As Charlie’s obsession consumes her, how far will she go to keep his image in her head?

OVEREXPOSURE is a one-shot psychological horror short with Weird elements, which contains a scene of on-page self-mutilation, gore, and features mental health deterioration. Reader discretion is advised.

This is a standalone short story in my Pagham-on-Sea universe. If you enjoy this, there is a lot more to discover!

The Crows and Thirteenth are both published with Canelo, and other titles are available directly from me.

Get it Now

#overexposure #paghamverse #Podcast #WomenInHorror

Jendia Gammon Apr 1

Thank you to my publisher (of DOOMFLOWER), Encyclopocalypse Publications, for this lovely feature in which I'm mentioned alongside so many great horror writers and narrators, "Horror's Leading Ladies." https://encyclopocalypse.com/blogs/encycloblogalypse/horrors-leading-ladies!
#horror #horrorwriters #womeninhorror #books

cmrosens Apr 1

Author Spotlight: British Gothic Horror author Laura Clarke Walker

Laura Clarke Walker (she/they) is a writer, teacher, and lover of all things Gothic. When she’s not immersed in the world of Coldharbour, she can be found drinking espressos darker than the night, listening to podcasts in other languages, and running around her local lakes.

AUTHOR LINKS:

Website: lauraclarkewalker.com

Instagram: @lauraclarkewalker

Amazon: Coldharbour

PITCH FOR READERS/BOOK CLUBS:

Three generations preyed upon by pure evil. Two lost souls drawn to each other in the darkness. One compelling story of love, loyalty, and betrayal. A spellbinding mix of murder, magic, and romance, Coldharbour is a thrilling Gothic fantasy full of Nineties nostalgia.

Coldharbour by Laura Clarke Walker

Your debut novel Coldharbour is out now with Rowanvale Books – congrats on your debut! Can you tell us about your indie publishing journey from the premise of your book to publication? How did we get here?

Thank you so much! Well, this is a long story, as I came up with the first character in 2005 and wrote the first draft in 2009. However, I only started taking Coldharbour seriously as a project to be published around 2021, especially as it had become a very personal story to which I really wanted to do justice.

In 2024, I queried agents for a while, but ultimately I decided that maintaining a certain level of creative control was more important to me than gaining literary representation. It’s a completely different journey for every author, but I’m so excited to be hybrid publishing and for Coldharbour to be now out in the wild!

Coldharbour is a Gothic paranormal mystery with 1990s nostalgia, set in Essex. What brought these elements together for you in terms of genre, tone, and setting?

I’m really passionate about the state of British seaside towns, which have been on the decline for a long time, and decayed settings are a huge feature of the Gothic.

Also, we think of the Millennium and we think of looking towards the future, but I can also remember the dread over the millennium bug and how everyone became extremely retrospective – there was a sense of the fin de siècle to everything.

Plus, the paranormal was having a heyday in the Nineties – shows like Charmed and Buffy were an important influence on me growing up, so I definitely pay homage to them in Coldharbour.

What sort of representation can readers expect, and what makes this rep important to you as the author?

There’s a whole variety of representation in Coldharbour, including a range of sexualities and gender identities, ethnic backgrounds, and neurodivergences and disabilities. It can sound a bit like I’m ‘box-ticking’, but it’s just my reality as a neurodivergent Queer person of colour.

I really craved representation growing up and I think the way that the sociopolitical landscape is shifting at the moment, hearing from diverse voices is more important than ever.

What is your favourite trope/theme that appears in this novel? Can you tell us about any that you play with or subvert?

My absolute favourite trope in Coldharbour is the haunted house that reflects the protagonist’s psyche, which really is as Gothic as it gets.

The house in question, 1 St Augustine’s, is loosely based on some that I’ve lived in and I really feel that it, like the town, is a character in its own right. There are locked doors, mysterious bloodstains, things in wells which shouldn’t be, all hinting at the dark family secrets Alex must try to unravel throughout the novel.

However, the love story between Alex and Elizabeth is unconventional: Alex is a single mother in her thirties and Elizabeth has certainly had her own life, so they come together with a certain maturity (and reticence) that comes from being a bit older compared to a lot of relationships depicted in fantasy works.

Also, I really try to avoid the standard romance tropes around love triangles and miscommunication, mostly because the characters have bigger things to worry about!

The most significant trope I subvert is ‘bury your gays’, in which Queer characters tend to die in service of the plot or their loved one’s character development. It is a harmful trope that’s still used prolifically, so while Elizabeth does die, it’s only temporary – because her Power is resurrection. Whether the resurrection always goes to plan, well, that’s for readers to find out!

Let’s talk about your main character, Alex Wilde. How did you develop her from the initial idea, and what makes her who she is? What has been your favourite reader response to her so far?

To be honest, the initial Alex was a very generic protagonist. I was only sixteen when I first devised her and she was very active, enthusiastic, enquiring, just not necessarily interesting.

Alex has evolved as I have.

I really needed to go out there and experience everything adulthood has to offer (both good and bad) before Alex could become a well-rounded character. Homecoming and grief run through the current Alex like Brighton rock, neither of which I could’ve written authentically when I was a teenager.

This Alex is an unreliable narrator and reluctant heroine, which is influenced by many of my favourite books.

Shirley Jackson’s work has been a crucial part of my writing journey and I can definitely see aspects of Eleanor from The Haunting of Hill House in Alex, especially in terms of her mental health.

Readers are usually very sympathetic to Alex as a character, but they tend to respond particularly to her relationship with Elizabeth. The word ‘compelling’ has come up several times and I can’t ask for much more than that!

Elizabeth also sounds really intriguing; where did she come from as a character, how did she develop as you drafted & revised? Were there any moments between her & Alex that you ended up cutting but wanted to keep, or any bits you really enjoyed writing that you couldn’t part with in the final edit?

I recently described Elizabeth as ‘cold but also compassionate, confident in her abilities but self-conscious as a person, secretive but protective’, so she’s definitely one of the more complex characters in Coldharbour!

She’s also one of the last ones to reach their ‘final form’, as she was an amalgamation of three characters from the pre-2021 story, but once she came together, there she was: Elizabeth the Unkillable.

Elizabeth is particularly morally grey and like Alex, that’s influenced by some of my favourite characters in books and other media. I don’t think I’ve ever cut anything significant for Elizabeth, but I always say that the night of the storm in the first Coldharbour is one of my favourite ever scenes of the entire series.

Minor spoilers, but both Alex and the reader finally have enough pieces of the picture that is Elizabeth Black to decide exactly who she is.

What has been your favourite feedback on the novel so far/favourite reader response?

I have loved all the reviews that have mentioned the atmosphere and the tension in Coldharbour – this was an area of the book I spent a long time cultivating, so to have seen it pay off with readers has been fantastic. I know that Gothic literature can be very particular, so I was really worried that people just wouldn’t get it and I’ve been so happy to discover that actually, people both understand and enjoy the book.

Get a Copy

Like This? Try These!

Author Spotlight: Gothic Fantasy Author Nadine Bells Date February 4, 2026 In relation to Author Interview
Author Spotlight: Horror/Paranormal Author Amanda Leanne Date May 30, 2025 In relation to Author Interview
Author Interviews ~ C. M. Rosens (it me!!) Date July 26, 2021 In relation to Author Interview
My Own Author Interview! Date October 13, 2024 In relation to Author Interview
Gothic Horror Looks – Meet the Author Date January 8, 2021 In relation to aesthetic
Author Spotlight: Horror Author PD Alleva Date February 11, 2026 In relation to Author Interview

#AuthorInterview #AuthorSpotlight #GothicFiction #queerAuthor #WomenInHorror

semantichrist Mar 31

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas from 1000 Women in Horror has hit a rough patch and could use some help:
#horror #womeninhorror
https://ko-fi.com/horrornonna

Support Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Ko-fi

cmrosens Mar 30

Classic Short Horror Stories by Women (Part 2)

Part 1 looked at a list of classic short horror stories by women narrated on The HorrorBabble podcast, which is mostly comprised of USA authors, and now I’ve found the podcast Just Chills – Short Scary Stories which has a few UK and Irish women authors! It’s narrated by Taesha Glasgow, who also hosts Just Sleep. (Buy Taesha a coffee here)

This podcast has more modern horror stories by women too, but I’m only including ones from the 1800s-1930s in this post; there are 35 authors listed below, with each name linked to their bibliography entry in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Again, as with the first list, do not assume these women are less racist and/or -phobic than their male counterparts writing at the same time.

If you type the title of the story into the podcast search bar in your platform of choice, you’ll find the episode; same if you search by author name. These are ordered alphabetically by author surname.

Alcott, Louisa May (1832-1888)

Baldwin, Louisa (1845-1925)

Bird, M.A. [Mary Ann] (1815-1896)

Bowen, Majorie (1885-1952)

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth (1835-1915)

Broughton, Rhoda (1840-1920)

Cholmondeley, Mary (1859-1925)

Clark, Georgina C. (unknown)

Clifford, Lucy (1846-1929)

Croker, B.M. [Bithia Mary] (1847-1920)

D’Arcy, Ella (1857-1937)

Dawson, Emma Frances (1839-1926)

Dickens, Mary Angela (1862-1948)

Edwards, Amelia B. (1831-1892)

Forrester, Izola (1878-1944)

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins (1852-1930)

Gaskell, Elizabeth (1810-1865)

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins (1860-1935)

Hooper, Lucy H. (1835-1893)

Jacob, Violet (1863-1946)

Kerruish, Jessie Douglas (1884-1949)

Molesworth, Mary Louisa (1839-1921)

Montgomery, Lucy Maud (1874-1942)

Mulholland, Rosa (1841-1921)

Nesbit, Edith (1858-1924)

Penn, Mary E. (unknown)

Ponder, Zita Inez (1900-1936)

Riddell, Charlotte (1832-1906)

Shelley, Mary (1797-1851)

Sigerson Shorter, Dora (1866-1918)

Stewart Drewry, Edith (1841-1925)

Stuart Phelps, Elizabeth (1844-1911)

Tynan, Katharine (1859-1931)

Wharton, Edith (1862-1937)

White, Ethel Lina (1876-1944)

Alcott, Louisa May (1832-1888)

Birthplace: Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA

“Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse” (1869)

Baldwin, Louisa (1845-1925)

Birthplace: Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England

“The Real and the Counterfeit” (1895)

Bird, M.A. [Mary Ann] (1815-1896)

Birthplace: Taunton, Somerset, England

“A Tale Told by the Fireside” (1865)

Bowen, Majorie (1885-1952)

Birthplace: Hayling Island, Hampshire, England

“The Crown Derby Plate” (1931)

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth (1835-1915)

Birthplace: Soho, Westminster, Middlesex, England

“The Cold Embrace” (1860)
“At Chrighton Abbey” (1871) – this story is misattributed in the podcast to Louisa Baldwin in the show notes.
“The Face in the Glass” (1880)

Broughton, Rhoda (1840-1920)

Birthplace: Denbigh, Denbighshire, Wales