Tag Craig DiLouie

Fiction Fragments: Carol Gyzander

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week, Jill Girardi joined me to talk about her book to film project, Hantu Macabre, and why Kandisha Press anthologies are a labor of love.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes Carol Gyzander. I met Carol at NECON in 2019 when I released Invisible Chains, and I am looking forward to spending more face to face time with her when we are able.

Carol Gyzander read classic science fiction and Agatha Christie mysteries non-stop in her early days. Now that her kids have flown the coop, she writes and edits horror, suspense, dark fiction, and sci-fi stories from her couch—with her black cat firmly Velcroed to her side. 

Her stories are in over a dozen anthologies including Stories We Tell After Midnight fromCrone Girls Press; Across the Universe: Tales of Alternate Beatles from Fantastic Books (amidst stories by Cat Rambo, Spider Robinson and David Gerrold); Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse from Camden Park Press; and The Devil’s Due: Nothing is Ever as it Seems. She also has stories in Hell’s Highways: Terrifying Tales of Tormented Travels and Hell’s Mall: Sinister Shops, Cursed Items and Maddening Crowds from Lafcadia Press. 

As editor-in-chief and one of the founders of Writerpunk Press, she’s edited four anthologies of punk stories inspired by classic tales, including Merely This and Nothing More: Edgar Allan Poe Goes Punk and Hideous Progeny: Classic Horror Goes Punk. The latest, Taught by Time: Myth Goes Punk, comes out summer 2021. Carol works with James Chambers as Co-Coordinators of the Horror Writers Association New York Chapter and as co-hosts of the HWA-NY Galactic Terrors online reading series on the second Thursday of every month. She is also one of the overall Chapter Program Managers for HWA. 

Carol’s a member of Horror Writers Association, Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Broad Universe, and Historical Novel Society. Find her at www.CarolGyzander.com or on Twitter @CarolGyzander

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Carol. It has been one year since many of us went into quarantine and had to rethink how we work as writers in terms of promoting our work, connecting with our communities, and just finding the motivation to keep writing. How has the pandemic changed the way you think about writing? What have you done to adapt to the needs of being in quarantine while continuing to promote your work and engaging with the writing communities you belong to? What do you miss about the before times? What do you like about the new ways of doing things within the writing community?

CG: Thank you, Michelle! I love what you’ve been doing with this project.

Can you believe this has been a year? I had a hard time buckling down to do any writing during those first few months but was lucky enough to have several editing projects that kept me busy—it was so much easier to just edit and look at one word after another than it was to create anything. With a freelance schedule and working from home, every day is Blursday.

I usually do a lot of in-person writing with various groups, and of course that went out the window. Pretty soon I was able to pivot to doing group writing events in person! We all sign onto the Zoom session and chat for the first bit, then mute ourselves and work away while the camera is on. Knowing the other people are there working and expecting me to do the same keeps me on track (it’s sometimes called body doubling). People can do this themselves with an inexpensive service at http://www.Focusmate.com .

The most exciting thing I’ve done to stay engaged came through our HWA NY Chapter. We used to do live readings every few months. When it became clear that wasn’t coming back anytime soon, Jim Chambers and I figured out how to host a monthly reading called Galactic Terrors on the StreamYard platform (every second Thursday at 8pm—see HWANY.org for details; replays available at our YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/y4gj654q ).

We’ve done seven shows so far with writers from our local chapter, and fabulous guests from all over including Lisa Morton, Linda Addison, Craig DiLouie, Jeff Strand, Lee Murray, Kaaron Warren, Nicole Givens Kurtz and Angela Yuriko Smith. I really miss hanging out and chatting with writers, so we tried to build that into the GT show by having people ask questions in the chat, then doing a Q&A with the writer after their reading. We bring everyone together at the end. One of the things that I do like about this strange new world is that I’ve been able to attend and participate in various online cons that I would not have been able to get to in person. My local sci-fi cons HELIOsphere and Philcon were cool. Getting to WorldCon, the SFWA Nebulas, and a lot more was awesome! I’ve also been able to do more readings with Broad Universe at cons; we’re actually starting an online series that will continue into the future.

GMM: Tell me about Writerpunk Press. How did you get involved, and where did the idea for the anthologies come from? What types of “punk” fiction are covered in your anthologies?

CG: We started from the Writerpunk facebook group of writers who like punk genres. One fellow suggested it would be fun to write punk stories inspired by Shakespeare and we were off! We did two anthologies of stories inspired by the bard, which was my first time being published. It’s a cooperative effort with volunteer writers, editors, artists, layout folks, and marketing people; profits are donated to PAWS Lynnwood, an animal shelter and wildlife rescue located in the Pacific Northwest.

I started out helping with editing and moved into the role of Editor-in-Chief/Managing Editor with our third volume of stories inspired by Poe because I wield a clipboard and spreadsheet well. I work with a crack team of editors and we help writers with content editing, as well as doing copy edits and proofreading the entire novel, of course. I have to say that reviewing the stories as well as the edit suggestions from the editorial team has been really educational and has helped improve my own writing! We followed the Poe volume with one inspired by classic tales you likely read in high school English class, and then classic horror.Taught by Time: Myth Goes Punk, our sixth charity anthology, will be released this summer! We’ve taken the myths, legends and lore that readers love and turned them upside down and inside out. With a wide range of punk genres represented—steampunk, cyberpunk, dreadpunk, nanopunk, biopunk and atompunk—there’s sure to be something for everyone in this volume. Details will be on my website.

GMM: You write in several genres, but I know you through the horror community. When did you begin writing horror? What subgenres of horror do you write? Do you cross genres, or stay true to the conventions and tropes of the genres by keeping them separate? Which genre(s) are your favorite to write in? What are you currently working on?

CG: It was actually Writerpunk that drew me into horror! I was writing cyberpunk tales for the anthologies, which is a pretty dark genre to begin with—one of the themes is that the common person tries to better their circumstances against the corporation but winds off worse than before they started. Then, rereading almost all of Poe and the classic horror stories really hooked me (I read the originals to ensure that some key component is represented in the new story).

I was also going through a pretty dark period five years ago, having taken both of my parents through Alzheimer’s. Writing horror really helps me explore some of the dark stuff and bring it into the light where it can be released. I think it’s one of the genres that truly allows us to do that well.

I do indeed like to blend genres. Most of my horror writing is quiet or soft horror; I aspire to do what the Twilight Zone tales did, where everything starts out normal and then starts going subtly … wrong. I blended this approach with the satanic bargain sub-genre in the “Face It” excerpt (which gives you a hit of where the story goes next!). I also love cosmic horror; one of my stories, “Stars the Color of Hope” is a cyberpunk tale inspired by Lovecraft’s “The Colour out of Space.” Currently, I’m writing short stories for various places (I love kraken stories) and working on a novel that links together two of the Shakespeare novellas I wrote—can’t beat cyberpunk Macbeth!

Call back to Women in Horror Month

CG: I did an online reading with Syosset Public Library and HWA NY Chapter for Women in Horror Month. Readers were Linda D Addison (an HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient), plus three writers from HWA-NY: Meghan Arcuri, April Grey and me. We each came up with five women horror writers we recommend people follow (hint: Michelle is on my list!) and I made a short video to showcase our selections.http://carolgyzanderauthor.com/2021/02/25/women-in-horror-month-our-recommendations/

“Face It” by Carol Gyzander, published in The Devil’s Due: Nothing is Ever as it Seems (2020)

Connor drove down the two-lane highway, heading to their country house after their latest visit to the hospital. Amy, his wife, sat dozing in the seat next to him. It was late at night and she was exhausted from the rounds of medical testing she had undergone. Again. None of it had shown any difference.

No good news.

He sighed and rubbed his face to try and wake up, his blue eyes bleary with fatigue. Wouldn’t do to run off the road. I’m just so tired—tired of it all.

His glance flickered over to his wife. The side of her face that was toward him was smooth and unlined, but he knew what the other side looked like. Had been staring at it over breakfast every day for the past two years. Creased and full of pus-filled blisters—and part of the cheekbone eaten away. Her eye was sunken down into her face.

It was just a matter of time until it spread to the side nearest him. Or her brain. For now, in this moment, he could almost pretend she was not affected by the terrible disease.

But deep down in his heart, he knew she was dying. Knew what the doctors told them every time—there was no cure, no way of arresting the progress of the flesh-eating disease. They even had a name for it—ETR—that made his fists clench and his stomach roil. He knew the letters stood for some technical terms but could never make himself remember the acronym. He couldn’t get past the idea that the damn disease was eating his wife alive and just called it EATER.

Her head lolled a little as she slept, turning toward him, and when he glanced over the next time he saw the ravage of the other side of her face, which extended down her neck and shoulder into her arm. Her hand was clenched and twisted in her lap.

EATER? Fuck me.

He replayed in his mind the reaction of the people at the hospital as he’d brought her in. The way even the medical professionals had pulled back from her. Not to mention the way ordinary people reacted to the two of them. It’d gotten difficult for them to go out in public anymore—people feared she was contagious, which she wasn’t, and countless times they had been refused service at a restaurant or asked to leave a cocktail lounge.

People wouldn’t even shake his hand.

Connor and Amy had been the “it” couple for years, with money, prestige, society connections. Then their busy social life, once so bright and vibrant, had slipped away as her EATER disease progressed. They spent most of the time home alone. Friends no longer stopped by to visit. What kind of life is this—for either of us?

She had pleaded with him to help her finish the struggle. “I just can’t do it myself,” she’d said. “But I can’t stand what this is doing to you. To us. But mostly to you. I know I’m going to die. Where’s the quality of life anymore?” Her one good eye had searched his bright blue ones, looking for some kind of a response.

He had refused, of course. How could he kill his wife? Even if she begged him, which she had. In a stunning display of the power that desperation and anxiety could have over a strong person, she had let her normally capable veneer slip to show her inner fear.

And he had turned her down. What does that make me?

Don’t I love her anymore? Or maybe I’m just afraid of going to jail.

Of course, he already felt like he was in jail. No friends, no life, just stay home and watch Netflix while he took care of his sick wife. She didn’t deserve it, but then again, he didn’t, either.

Only one part of his mind was on the driving, as they were the only car on the road at that late hour. He took a corner on the rural road a bit too fast and the car swerved along the shoulder. He gave himself a scare as he yanked the wheel to pull the car back into the lane.

Wow. Almost drove right off the road there. Would’ve hit the trees … and at this speed. Damn. Well, if it killed us at least she would’ve gotten her wish.

He mulled this thought as he drove along at a more sedate speed. She had not even woken when the car swerved. Had no idea of the danger they had just averted. The steady consumption of painkillers her condition required left her mostly absent from his world.

But if I do that, it kills us both. Is that what she wants? I don’t think so. She just wants to end her suffering and therefore end mine. She doesn’t want for me to die too.

Right?

He looked over at her again and then reached out to hold her hand where it lay on her lap. I love you, darling. But maybe you are right. This is no life for you.

Or for me.

He released her hand and slid his fingers down to the buckle of her seatbelt. Pushed in the button. Released the belt, controlling it to let it retract quietly into the door.

Okay. I’m not really going to do it. But if I do fall asleep on the road, she wouldn’t want to walk away from the accident.

Right? She wouldn’t.

Of course, I would be okay. Oodles of airbags in this car. I mean, with my seatbelt on and the airbags, I’m sure I’d be fine. What about her? He looked over at the dashboard on her side of the car. Saw the button for the passenger airbag. Idly reached up a hand and stroked the button. Pushed it in. It lit up.

Passenger airbag OFF.

Do you have a fiction fragment? How about your friends? Would you like to recommend someone to me aside from yourself? Drop me a line at chellane@gmail.com. See you next week!

Guidelines: Submit 500-1000 words of fiction, up to 5 poems, a short bio, and a recent author photo to the e-mail above.

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Interview: Craig DiLouie, Suffer the Children

Michelle R. Lane 4 Comments

Craig-DiLouieSome critics of horror fiction have speculated that the zombie sub-genre has reached its saturation point with an almost infestation-like abundance of zombie novels, movies, and TV shows paying homage to the flesh-eating undead. But, in a recent interview with George Romero for Quora.com, Bradley Voytek, Zombie neuroscience expert (it’s totally a thing) and Zombie Research Society advisor, examines data that suggests that the popularity of zombie fiction is actually on the rise. He attributes some of its success to the fact that the genre is “more or less a blank slate upon which a writer can cast any number of big, unfathomable societal and psychological fears or concerns.” This week I talk to apocalyptic horror writer Craig DiLouie about his 2014 Stoker-nominated novel SUFFER THE CHILDREN to find out why writing about zombies really matters.

ML: Many people consider Horror the redheaded stepchild of speculative fiction. Why do you write Horror fiction? Why not another genre?

CD: I came to horror through an interest in apocalyptic fiction. The end of the world has fascinated humanity throughout recorded history; in fact, some of the world’s oldest literature, from the tale of Gilgamesh to Genesis, contains apocalyptic elements.

As a young man, I found wish fulfillment in these stories. As an older man with a family, I face my worst fears and survive them.

There are so many storytelling possibilities with such scenarios, all involving ordinary people dealing with crisis. Some rise to the occasion, some fail, the ethical choices are often horrible, but the struggle to survive is heroic, particularly when people fight not only to live but to preserve what makes them human.

Several of my books deal with a zombie apocalypse and allowed me to explore these themes and more wrapped in an action-packed thriller. My first major foray into real horror was SUFFER THE CHILDREN, a story in which the world’s children become vampires who need blood to survive, the parents are compelled to feed them out of love, and once the blood supply starts to run out, the parents begin to prey on each other. Many parents will admit they’d put their arm in a shredder for their kids, but would they put somebody else’s arm in a shredder? Two people’s arms? Five? Would they kill an innocent person? Good horror holds up a fractured mirror to that which is dark in us, and it makes us uncomfortable. The question in SUFFER THE CHILDREN is, how far would you go?

ML: Why zombies? Why not other monsters? What broader meaning do they have for you as part of your creative process?

CD: I like zombies because they’re us, which multiplies the sense of tragedy. I’m not the kind of zombie author who says, These people are zombies, shoot them without conscience. The zombies may be monsters, but they wear the faces of people we love. I also like apocalyptic stories where the protagonists must work together against a common monster enemy. I think that makes the story more unpredictable, the struggle to survive more heroic, the stakes more dire. The trick is to make the reader believe that these monsters are real.

For me as an author, anyway. Zombie novels may be considered either akin to AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD or Syfy’s Z NATION. THE WALKING DEAD takes its subject matter seriously. Everything is fairly realistic and has consequences. The people suffer. The stakes are higher. This is really happening. It’s a visceral experience for the reader. Z NATION is more like a comic book. The characters are likeable people fighting their way through difficult situations involving zombies, there are no mind-bending ethics or people dying or wondering what they’re surviving for. It’s just plain fun, and it doesn’t pretend to strive for pathos.

My favorite zombie novels, and the ones I like to write, are of THE WALKING DEAD flavor, but they’re harder to pull off. They tend to be loved, but frankly, I think the Z NATION-type books have broader appeal.

ML: While I was reading SUFFER THE CHILDREN, I couldn’t help making parallels between your book and Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND. Like Matheson’s monsters, your undead aren’t clearly defined as being zombies or vampires. They’re somewhere in between. Did Matheson’s work inspire you? Who are your Horror heroes?

CD: I love I AM LEGEND. It’s one of my favorite apocalyptic stories. It didn’t directly inspire SUFFER THE CHILDREN, however. The story came from my worst fear, which is if something bad happened to my children. The question of how far a parent would go to protect his or her child. In that, I guess influences might include “The Monkey’s Paw” and PET SEMATARY. Whether doing the right thing based on the purest love in the world could end up being an instrument of evil.

The result is a different kind of vampire story, though the children are hardly vampires in the traditional sense. The children aren’t monsters. The real monsters in the book are the parents. They become monsters one little decision at a time, and they do it out of love. It’s a dark, horrible book—the most authentic and disturbing thing I’ve ever written.

Otherwise, I admire different horror authors for different things. Jeff Long for his imagination and original ideas. Stephen King for his empathy with ordinary people and slow builds. John Skipp for channeling the inner hilarity that is part of horror. Jack Ketchum for his lack of inhibition. Peter Clines for his easy voice. Joe McKinney and Jonathan Maberry for their productivity, with each book better than the last they wrote. David Moody for the realism he builds into characters in crisis. Stephanie Wytovich for being able to boil fear and loathing into a simple poem. The list goes on.

ML: H. P. Lovecraft has been quoted as saying, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” By the end of your novel, we still don’t really know what caused the epidemic. You play on multiple fears for your readers. Which of your own fears did you delve into to create this sense of dread?

CD: I went through an emotional journey with each of the characters as they each dealt with the unending crisis differently. Nobody becomes a monster as a sudden thing. It happens as a matter of one little decision leading to the next. Some of the characters try to resist the madness, others are swept along, others embrace it and go all the way. I really came to love the characters over the course of the book, making the writing a harrowing experience. It was painful to watch them go through what they did.

ML: Talk a little bit about your writing process. When you sit down to write an apocalypse novel, zombie or otherwise, what inspires you? Where do your ideas come from? How do your keep your genre fresh (there’s a zombie joke in there somewhere)?

CD: Writing a novel is like climbing Everest. You look up and you say, No way am I doing that. But then you take a step, and then another, and then another, and you look back and you’re suddenly halfway up. That first step is the hardest. To take that step, you need inspiration. For me, it’s an idea that needs to be written. Something fresh and powerful.

I’m a commercial writer by trade; I write about an industry, and I write as work. A novel is different. If I were a commercial fiction writer, I’d take a familiar idea, add a little twist, and write it in accordance with the bestseller formula to have the broadest appeal to the greatest number of people. But I’m not a commercial fiction writer. I’d never take that first step in the climb because I really wouldn’t care about the idea or the story. So for me, the idea is everything. Something compelling that hasn’t been done before, or a familiar idea that in my view hasn’t been done right. Everything inspires me. I immerse myself in the genre and find tiny bits of inspiration in little things. The little things add up to big ideas.

ML: What advice would you give to new Horror fiction writers? What do you wish you had known as a beginning professional writer?

CD: It’s a great time to be a horror writer. Digital media has democratized publishing and created new paths to publication, each of which has its pros and cons. Whether somebody else publishes you or you publish yourself, be prepared to treat your writing as a business and take an entrepreneurial approach, particularly with marketing your work.

Typing is not writing. There are many approaches to writing a novel, but one I use is to think an idea through for a few months and then start typing after that. Writing isn’t just typing, it’s also thinking, taking notes, planning and researching. If you like this approach, keep a small notebook in your back pocket and a pen in your front pocket at all times. Think about your book in the still moments during the day and write down snatches of character, plot and dialog. When you reach a critical mass, start typing.

One approach is not better than another, though one will be better for you. Some writers like to crank out a horrible rough draft, get notes from beta readers, and then do a polished rewrite. Others like to write a close-to-finished draft from the get-go, editing the whole way. Do what feels good to you, while being open to innovation and new ideas.

It pays to know where you’re going. The idea should start with a killer point A (the hook) and point B (the climax and perhaps a denouement that leaves the reader thinking). After that, do a general outline of the plot so you continually ramp up tension (increasing stakes punctuated by critical change) without long empty stretches where you have no idea how to fill the page. A great book on plot structure is STORY ENGINEERING. I highly recommend it.

You’ve asked a big question where the answer could go on quite a while, so I’ll end it there. For more advice on how to write a horror novel, here are links to a series I wrote about that subject on my blog:

Fright for Your Write, Part 1: Why Do We Read/Write Horror

Fright for Your Write, Part 2: The Horror Element

Fright for Your Write, Part 3: Plot

Fright for Your Write, Part 4: Character

Thanks for inviting me to visit your blog, Michelle! I enjoyed it.