cmrosensAuthor Spotlight: Nicole M. Wolverton
Nicole M. Wolverton is a fear enthusiast who grew up in rural Pennsylvania, wondering what lurked in the cornfields outside her bedroom window. Today, Nicole is a Pushcart-nominated writer of (mostly) speculative and horror fiction for adults and young adults. She is the author of A MISFORTUNE OF LAKE MONSTERS, a young adult speculative novel (CamCat Books, July 2024), and THE TRAJECTORY OF DREAMS, a 2013 adult psychological thriller (Bitingduck Press). She served as curator and Editor of the 2021 anthology of short fiction BODIES FULL OF BURNING (Sliced Up Press), exploring horror through the lens of menopause—the first of its kind. Her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and essays have appeared in approximately fifty anthologies, magazines, and podcasts. She currently lives in the Philadelphia area and still wonders what creeps in the dark.
LINKS:
A Misfortune of Lake Monsters – print book | audiobook
Website: nicolewolverton.com
Instagram: @nicolemwolverton
Threads: @nicolemwolverton
Bluesky: @nicolemwolverton.bsky.social
If you had to pick 3 words that sum up what your novel means to you, as the author, what would they be and why?
childhood, ambition, love
What led you to the plot point and themes of impersonation and fakery in your latest novel?
To start with, when you grow up in a rural place it can be difficult to outrun who and what people think you are. That’s part of the reason I wanted to leave my own childhood home–I wanted to be who I imagined I could be, not live up (or down) to others’ expectations. It’s the weight of those expectations that really drove the themes of impersonation and fakery in A Misfortune of Lake Monsters. While I’m not much like Lemon Ziegler, my main character, the desire to be more and escape to something new is something we share (or shared, since high school is long over for me). But part of small town living is rooted in secrets. Perhaps that’s any setting–urban, suburban, or rural–but it feels so much more intense in rural places because there’s so little true privacy. It takes a lot more effort to keep things private.
What about YA Horror led you to choose this genre as the vehicle for your story and themes?
Being a teenager is horrifying–it’s always been horrifying. Whether it’s other teenagers being bullies or jerks, parents or siblings being bullies or jerks, teachers being bullies or jerks…you’re trapped in this world without much, if any, personal agency. You’re treated like a child but expected to operate like an adult. There’s all this pressure from every direction, and on top of that, you’re expected to at least pick a direction for your future. And, of course, you want to stand out from the crowd and be your unique self while not being too much of a weirdo or too off-putting. Not to mention that the world is a shit-show–school shootings, climate change, civil rights, war. At every turn, it seems like the people in charge are actively trying to make sure the future is dismal. What are you supposed to do with that? I’m barely able to deal with it at 52, let alone when I was 16 or 17. The only way to survive is to imagine that there’s another world where things are different–but it also helps to imagine that there’s another world where things are way worse. Misery does love company, after all. That all sounds really negative–but it’s very much born out of my experience as a teen. I was a miserable.
One of the things that has always attracted me to YA horror is that I can write teens in their crap situations–crappier than normal teen situations–but give them agency to be heroes. Give them agency to fight the bad guy, to find solutions to problems that are both ordinary and extraordinary. There’s a school of thought that even the most messed up, terrible YA books have to offer a ray of hope at the end–a hope that not everything is a nihilistic waste of time and effort. I do agree with that in many ways, but it looks different in horror, and that’s what makes YA horror such a fun genre/category to write in.
Other than your MC, which character do you think readers will love?
There are two characters that people seem to be drawn to. The first is Lemon and Troy’s best friend Darrin; he’s an immature teen boy with a trucker mouth, but he’s also funny and confident and loyal. He gets pretty much all the best lines in the book. The second character is Amelia, the new student at school. It’s not necessarily who people think she is that makes readers love her… it’s who she reveals herself to be in due time. There’s something very brusque about her in a very lovable, human way. Incidentally, while Lemon and Troy are great characters, and I love them, I also have a very big soft spot for Darrin and Amelia.
What was the hardest ‘darling’ for you to kill to get to the final draft?
A Misfortune of Lake Monsters was originally written in a close third person, and I really liked it that way because I could explore a few things–racism, in particular–that it’s far more difficult to explore from a first person POV. I lack the credibility, you know? And so when my former agent suggested I convert to first person, I had to drop some passages that I thought were important–and during developmental edits with the publisher, the editor wanted to bulk up a part of the plot that had been relatively minor, and that also led to simplifying other plots even more simply so the plot wasn’t super-duper and unnecessarily complex. That was kind of a bummer. Another piece I had to lose in editing was a sketch I’d made of something Troy finds. I’m not an artist, and any kind of drawing comes really hard for me… it just about killed me when the editor told me they couldn’t include it in the book. The effort I put into this sketch was… well, it was a lot. Ha!
If you had to pick 3 things you want readers to take away from the novel, what would they be?
1. It’s possible to get what you want you want while managing the weight of others’ expectations–it just takes some finagling.
2. horror doesn’t have to be so serious all the time–it can be cozy and fun and sweet and comforting and romantic, while also being terrifying
3. the ordinary is often the extraordinary in hiding
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