Tag Horror Writers Association

Women in Horror Month Fiction Fragments: Kenesha Williams

Michelle R. Lane 3 Comments

Monday, I kicked off this month-long series of posts for Women in Horror Month and Black History Month and had the chance to chat with serious horror fan, Dimi Horror. If you haven’t had a chance to read that post, check it out.

Today, Girl Meets Monster welcomes horror writer and soon-to-be filmmaker, Kenesha Williams.

Kenesha Williams is an author, screenwriter, speaker, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of Black Girl Magic Lit Mag a speculative fiction literary magazine. As an, essayist she has written for, Time Magazine’s, Motto and Fireside Fiction. She is also a screenwriter currently in pre-production on a horror web series and a short film. You can catch up with her on her website www.keneshaisdope.com

Ten Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster and thank you for being part of my first Women in Horror Month series, Kenesha.  What projects are you currently working on? Is horror your primary genre, or do you write in other genres? If you write in other genres, which do you feel most comfortable writing, and why?

KW: Thanks for having me! I’m currently working on a proposal for a one-shot comic that’s a Zombie Western, it’s really exciting and a great opportunity to show how racially diverse the West actually was in the 1800s. I’m also writing a pilot script for a contemporary horror series that I like to think of as Insecure meets The Magicians. Horror is my primary genre, even when I try to write another genre, I usually throw in horror elements, LOL! I also write science fiction, urban fantasy, and mystery. Since I can’t help but throw some horror into most of what I write, I’d say that horror is the genre I feel most comfortable writing in.

GMM: When did you first know that you were a horror writer? How did you develop an interest in the genre? What initially attracted you to horror stories? Which writers influenced you then? Which writers influence you now?

KW: I think I knew I was a horror writer when I couldn’t write something without someone dying, LOL. My mother was a big horror fan, so I read from her stacks of books and got into the genre myself. She also took me to my first horror film, so she definitely influenced my love of horror. My initial influence was Stephen King because my mom was a big fan, so his were the first “adult” horror novels I read. I would also be remiss not to add in R. L. Stine with his Fear Street series and Christopher Pike’s YA horror novels as well.

When I was in my early twenties, I went looking for horror authors that looked like me and I found Dark Dreams: A Collection of Horror and Suspense by Black Writers. That collection introduced me to Brandon Massey and Tananarive Due. Then I started buying everything they put out and got put on to LR Giles (Lamar Giles) as well. Then that search lead me to Octavia Butler, who I had read, but her Patternist series, which was Science Fiction, because my mother had it in her library. But then I started to read her horror with Kindred and Fledgling. Finding all these new to me authors had me wondering, where had they been all my life and also like, hey we do write horror!

GMM: The documentary, Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019), explores Black horror and the portrayal (and absence) of Black people in horror movies. As a definition of what Black horror means begins to take shape, Tananarive Due says “Black history is Black horror.” What do you think she meant by that? Can you give an example of how this idea shows up in your own work?

KW: I believe the phrase Black history is horror means that our history in this country (the United States) has been one that’s been marked by horrific acts like the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the years of enslavement for our people, and of course the legacy of Jim Crow that we’re still fighting against. We can mine any of those moments in history for horror stories. 

The work I’ve done so far deals with the legacy of Black history in America and how it manifests today, though it is not always the source of the horror. For example, the story you’re featuring today I wanted to explore the idea of the reconciliation of the horrific past Black Americans have endured with the present climate, i.e. replacing statues of white slave owners with more progressive figures.  My main character believes that the changes that are being made are just lip service, and I think that’s a feeling that a lot of Black people can identify with. President Obama was voted in with the slogan of Change, but then his successor was a harkening back to the bad old days. It showed that a good portion of the country didn’t want change, in fact they wanted to Make America Great Again by returning to a time when whites were in power and minorities knew their place.

GMM: As a WOC writing horror/dark speculative fiction, do you feel obligated to have a deeper message in your stories? Can writers of color write stories without broader messages about identity, class, and racism? Is it possible to divorce yourself from that ongoing narrative within our culture when you set out to write a story?

KW: Often that is my biggest question, does everything I write have to have a deeper message? I don’t think I can write a story without infusing identity in it when I write Black characters, it’s not realistic to me to disregard identity. Black people are not a monolith, of course, but there are some experiences that I believe are universal. But I also want Black people to have genre literature that is fun without it having to be an issue book. So, I try to balance that. There are some of my stories that the horror ties back specifically to race, and then there are others where the horror is just horror with Black main characters. 

GMM: What are your top five favorite horror movies, and why? Top five horror novels? Which book or movie scared you the most?

KW: OMG, this is so hard. Okay, first I’m going to go with the horror movies that shaped me growing up:

  • Pet Sematary—This was the first horror movie I saw, and my mom took me to it. I couldn’t have been more than 11 because we were still living in Germany. My mom loved horror and had a sick sense of humor, so she kept making the slashing the ankles motion to me, scaring the bejesus out of me.
  • The People Under the Stairs—I probably watched this around the same age. I think this movie stuck with me because it was the first movie I saw where people were being cruel to children and as a child; I was just like, wow could this really happen. Also, it was the first horror movie I saw with a Black protagonist. I heard that Jordan Peele is remaking this movie and I’m excited to see what he does with it.
  • Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween—These two were my introduction into slasher films, which I still love. I mean, they’re classics for a reason.
  • It Follows—I know people either love or hate this one, but I loved the atmosphere and the idea of an apparition spreading like an STD was innovative.  

Top five horror novels in no particular order and exceptionally hard to narrow down:

  • Firestarter—I am a big Stephen King fan, and this was the first book of his that I read, borrowed from my mother at thirteen years old.
  • The Goode House by Tananarive Due—This was a “freezer” book for me, I had to put it on ice for a while so I wouldn’t freak myself out reading it. I’m a fan of the Haunted House subgenre of horror and I really loved this one. I am also a big Due fan and will read anything she puts out, so it was hard to narrow it down.
  • Thunderland by Brandon Massey—Another freezer book, this is a really atmospheric novel that made me look over my shoulder several times. 
  • Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix—This was hard because I’m a big Grady Hendrix fan and I really love all of his books for different reasons. The sad thing is I couldn’t say My Best Friend’s Exorcism because I didn’t finish it because it was scaring the heck out of me. So, I put it back in my TBR pile. I need to finish it. But Horrorstör was amazing because he took a setting that most people don’t see as scary and infused the everyday horror of working retail and doing repetitive, seemingly pointless tasks, with the supernatural underpinning of a haunted store. 
  • Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones—This is a new favorite of mine. I don’t want to spoil anything because it has a nice twist, but let’s just say it’s weird in wonderful ways and if you like slasher-who’s next to die types of books, then you’ll enjoy this.

GMM: How do you feel about white-identifying writers who write stories about non-white characters? What problems have you encountered? What potential issues do you see with white-identifying writers telling BIPOC stories? What advice would you give those writers?

KW: I don’t have a problem with it if the white writer has done their research, doesn’t rely on stereotypes, and doesn’t act like their non-white character is just a white character with a tan. And I’ve seen it done well and I’ve seen it done marginally well, and I’ve seen it done poorly. A criticism I have that I see that happens a lot is that they’ll make the character disconnected from “Blackness” and I’m guessing that’s because they don’t really know what it’s like to be in community with Black people. We are never in isolation even if you live in a predominately white area, so if your character has no family to talk to or connect with or if they don’t have any friends of their same race, it makes me think you haven’t done your research. The advice I’d give is for the writer to ask themselves, why do you think your character should be non-white and why should you tell their story. Bonus question: Are there own voices writers telling this story, and would your time be better spent amplifying them? Nothing hurts more than a white identifying writer getting praise for writing something similar to something a POC has already written.

GMM: All writers have experienced some form of impostor syndrome. What has your experience with impostor syndrome been like? Did you ever have a particularly bad case of it? If so, what caused it and how did you manage it?

KW: OMG, yes. Every time I sit down to write. So, my bad cases have been at conventions. I am a big fan of both Grady Hendrix and Paul Tremblay, and I got to be on panels with both of them. I was like OMG what am I doing here, does anyone want to hear what I have to say, etc. etc. I had to call my husband, and he was like, Babe they asked you there for a reason you’ll do great. And he was right, I got asked for a reason and I ended up having a great time on both panels and both Grady and Paul are just really amazingly nice people, so that was even better. They say, never meet your heroes, but I can say that everyone I’ve met in the horror community has been just great, so I’m lucky.

GMM: Aside from writing, what other contributions are you now or have you made to the horror community, or to other speculative fiction communities?

KW: Aside from my own writing, when I created Black Girl Magic Lit Mag in 2016, I created a platform to amplify other WOC’s writing in the speculative fiction genre. It’s one of my proudest accomplishments. Currently, I am part of several FB groups for diversity in speculative fiction and I use those to amplify other voices and encourage other WOC to join the community.

GMM: Has social media helped in getting you noticed as a writer? What has worked for to date? What hasn’t worked? What advice would you give new writers who are trying to build a social media following?

KW: Yes, social media has definitely helped with getting noticed. I feel like it’s a necessary evil because sometimes I don’t want to be “on” and also, it’s a distraction. I can spend so much time on social media and not realize that all these incremental check ins add up to HOURS. 

What hasn’t worked for me is Twitter, in terms of selling anything. I think people don’t go to Twitter to buy; they go to talk, and so it’s not a good promotional tool in terms of direct selling. I think Twitter is good for showing your personality if you want people to be interested in YOU, not necessarily your work.

I think the best advice I’d give to new writers is to use social media to get people to your mailing list because that’s something YOU OWN. Social media platforms owns the audiences on their respective platform and if for any reason you’re kicked off the platform or you just want to be a bit of a recluse you can’t take that audience with you, even if you garnered a million fans, if you don’t own that list it can all be taken away. Instead of traditional social media I think the best way to gain an audience is through websites like Prolific Works or Book Funnel, that unlike social media, aren’t free, but give you ways to build your audience through group promotions with other authors in your genre.

GMM: What are you reading right now? What else is at the top of your TBR pile? What classic horror novel have you secretly never read that you think everyone else has?

KW: Right now, I’m reading Death by Dumpling: A Noodle Shop Mystery by Vivien Chen and The Writing Life: Reflections, Recollections, and a Lot of Cursing by Jeff Strand. Also on my TBR is:

  • Dying With Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire
  • The Lodestone Puzzle by Lynn Emery, I preordered it and it arrives on my Kindle on Feb. 16th
  • The Bluesman: Lady of the Grave – it’s a comic based on the horror-adventure novels THE BLUESMAN by Stuart Jaffe, Illustrated by Garrett Gainey, with character design and production by John Jennings

I’m also reading a lot of screenplays because I’m writing a couple right now.

OMG, someone’s going to take away my Women in Horror badge because I’ve never read any of Shirley Jackson’s work. I’ve seen most of the film/tv adaptions of her work, but I haven’t read the books. I’m going to put The Lottery at the top of my TBR.

SERVED COLD by Kenesha Williams

“If you don’t hurry, we’ll be late.”

This didn’t push Trisha any harder to finish getting ready. Only one of them was excited about going to the naming ceremony, and that was only because Ella wanted to see Brent. Trisha didn’t care what they renamed her high school as long as it wasn’t another dead racist. The whole thing seemed like a farce, anyway. They didn’t change the name because they thought it was wrong. They changed it because of public pressure and then finally because someone had in the middle of the night toppled the slaveholder’s statue in front of the school.

Ella walked out of the bathroom to find Trisha lounging on her bed in the same position she’d been in when she left the room, “If you don’t want to come, just say so.”

Ella and Trisha were Irish Twins only eighteen months apart and with Trisha held back–red-shirted–a year because of her emotional immaturity they were in the same graduating class. No one ever mistook them for real twins, however, because Ella was white and Trisha was Black. Or biracial, if you were being technical.

Both of their dads were really involved, and they each called the other’s biological father, Dad, as well as their own. They couldn’t be happier if they lived on a commune, but instead of a commune they lived in a charming house at the end of a cul-de-sac with their Aunt Ginny, who had no children, save them.

“I’m coming. I just don’t see the big deal.”

“It’s history! Who would have thought they’d change the name? EVER. And I bet they choose a person of color or at least a woman.”

Ella was the eternal optimist, but it was easier for her to be. She wasn’t the one who had been stricken with anxiety and a panic disorder since she was eight. The doctor said it was a reaction to their mother’s sudden death, a kind of PTSD. Whatever it was a reaction to, it was hell on Trisha.

Trisha and Ella made their way to the crowd and found a group of their friends. All the kids had pushed to the front, while most of the parents and other adults hung back. There was a new statue in front of the school, and a drop cloth covered it. The signage for the school hadn’t been adhered yet to not give away the surprise, but they had a man in overalls standing in a scissor lift waiting for the signal to begin screwing in the metal letters.

“I wonder who it will be?” Gemma, their shared best friend, stage whispered to them while they stood elbow to elbow. Gemma was wearing something impractical as usual, a crinoline skirt with gym shorts underneath, rubber boots, and a tank top that had a picture of Garfield on it. It was darling. On some people it would be an insane look, but Gemma could make anything work.

“Probably another dead guy that no one remembers.” Trisha replied.

Ella rolled her eyes and then stood on her tippytoes, surveying the crowd. “Have you guys seen Brent?”

Trisha and Gemma traded a look. Sometimes it was like they had ESP. They knew things about the other, even when they were nowhere near each other. Trisha never said it out loud, but she felt closer to Gemma than she did her own sister.

Gemma didn’t have anxiety like Trisha, but she’d been in therapy for a couple of years dealing with her own issues. She’d had an eating disorder in middle school and her parents put her in in-patient treatment for an entire semester. When she came back, she was a healthier weight, but some of the light had gone out of her eyes. Trisha knew what that felt like.

The principal and the mayor made their way out of the school and stood in front of the crowd. They had erected a small podium for the occasion, and the mayor looked at it hungrily. Mayor Collins had opposed renaming the school, but when he realized that all of his constituents weren’t as backward as he was, he changed his tune.

Trisha wondered what meaningless platitudes he’d espouse once he stepped up to the mic.

A gush of wind picked up and teased the bottom of the drop cloth, threatening to unveil the surprise before the mayor. Trisha wished they could get on with it and just announce the damn thing. What were they waiting for? 

The wind played with the drop cloth again, and it looked as if the statue underneath were moving. The cloth undulated in ways that seemed to defy natural physics. It was like someone was trying to free themselves from the shroud of the cloth. Trisha rubbed her eyes, wondering if her meds were playing tricks on her.

Of course, she’d had to pop a few to get through this debacle. Any event with more than a handful of people could trigger an anxiety attack that would sideline her for the rest of the day. These weren’t new meds and she shouldn’t have been seeing things, but she swore someone or something alive was under the cloth and not a statue of brass or concrete.

She looked at Gemma to see if she noticed anything strange, but Gemma was busy snapping pics for her social media. Trisha looked around to see if maybe Ella saw, but Ella had slipped away, probably to stand near Brent. It was the whole reason they were out here, anyway.

This time when Trisha looked at the statue, she clearly saw a foot step forward. So she wasn’t surprised when she heard the first scream from the crowd as the statue jumped down from its perch, cloth still over its head, and rushed over to the mayor.

As the statue ran, the cloth slipped away, revealing that it was a rendering of Nat Turner, of the infamous slave rebellion. It was probably a mistake to have made his likeness holding a sword because the now animate object used it to thrust straight into Mayor Collins’ rotund belly.

The screams got louder as the crowd realized what was happening. Trisha watched the blood drip from the sword and thought to herself that she was so glad she hadn’t missed the naming ceremony. She was going to have to find and thank her sister for bugging her to come.

Once everyone stopped screaming and running.

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 Friday!

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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Fiction Fragments: Brandon Scott

Michelle R. Lane Leave a comment

Last week, I had the pleasure of welcoming two-time Bram Stoker Award Winner, Rena Mason and she talked about her service to the horror community and how she started volunteering for the Horror Writers Association.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes writer and publisher, Brandon Scott.

Brandon Scott scribbles tales of supernatural suspense from the mountains of Western North Carolina. He is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association as well as Co-Founder of Crimson Creek Press and Mimir Press. He has been featured in various anthologies such as, Killers Inside, 19 Gates of Hell, 25 Gates of Hell and Abandoned. His debut novel of the Vodou series was launched in 2019 by Devil Dog Press.

The soon to be released third book in the Vodou series.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Brandon. First, let me congratulate you on the publication of your Vodou series. What can readers expect from this series? Tell me a bit about your process and what it has been like to write a series as opposed to a stand-alone novel? What inspired these books? Did you originally pitch the first book as a series, or did the series evolve after writing the first book?

BS: Thanks for having me! So, I had written Vodou (Book 1) as a stand-alone, originally. I had no thoughts on taking the story further, though I enjoyed the landscape of the world I had created. I had no real plans on coming back, but when the owner of Devil Dog Press reached out, she made it clear that it would do better as a series. So, I had this idea of a magician that I had scribbled down in a steno book many years ago and once I read over that material, it all clicked.

Vodou was inspired solely off two hitchhikers that I saw on an on-ramp to I-40 at 2 a.m. after a short third shift. As soon as I saw them, I started playing a “what-if” game and what I settled on was an early thirties Clint Eastwood type with supernatural abilities. What if he would have stopped? What if they tried to rob him? I’ve always had a thing for Voodoo and the culture, so what if he was cursed and what if he worked for Samedi, what if he was a Grim Reaper of sorts. What if he pulled over with a purpose? So, by the time I got home, I had a strong idea of what I was going for story-wise and before I went to bed I had scribbled down twenty pages in a steno pad, which was later published as a short story by Zombie Pirate Publishing, titled “Associate Boogeyman”, which was basically chapter one of Vodou.

What readers and the feedback and reviews that I’ve seen said, I don’t really read reviews, is a fast-paced trip into the supernatural. So far, many people have enjoyed it. Ultimately, it’s a love story. I think readers can expect that underneath it all. A love story. My writing process is a little weird, so I start everything in a steno book. That is where I write large sections, chapters out of order and leave Easter eggs for my future self. Once I get an idea that feels solid, I write the stories by hand in legal pads, I use fountain pens with a different color for everyday of the week, easy way to keep track of progress and it all takes a while. I have two different keyboards, a modified Velocifire mini, that is a fast fast fast typing board and I use it to pound out the “first” draft as quick as I can and that is straight dictation from the page to the screen, making only slight changes. Then I run a hardcopy and begin the editing process with my Pilot Precise inked with Noodler’s Red. I’ll do that one step about five times except with the other keyboard, Qwerkywriter S with modified keys to slow me down. On Vodou, I did a few drafts and not that process and it showed, a thing that will be fixed when I get the rights back.

GMM: Your series is the Vodou series, but there’s a circus theme to the books. What drew you to this horror trope? Why do you think so many writers revisit this trope in their work? What makes a circus scary? Do you have a personal story about a circus that freaked you out?

BS: Well, the last half of Carnival Fantasmagoria (Book 3), which is still on my desk, takes place in a stationary carnival, one of the old traveling carnivals, but they found a place to stay, so it’s all rustic. I remember being a kid and places like carnivals having that special atmosphere of mysticism about them. It’s in the air and I wanted to try to capture that and what better place for some fallen Voodoo God’s to live.

I wanna say the trope is all about the clowns, I personally love clowns, but there is a real fear for some, if not most people, but sadly I think, along with zombies, we’ve mined those avenues to death. The carnival isn’t a focal point of the story, so let’s hope no one notices. Ha-ha!

GMM: You’re one of the co-founders of Crimson Creek Press and Mimir Press. How did you get involved in publishing? What kinds of fiction do you publish? How strict are your definitions of genre? Where can interested writers find out about upcoming calls for submission?

BS: We, being Brian Scutt, Sarah Scutt, Alex Shedd and me, make up the merry band. I think I can speak for Brian here, but I personally got into this after seeing several injustices and predatory situations with other publishers. I’ve seen budding talents be squashed by our industry and long ago I was disillusioned by the whole gamut. So, at Crimson and Mimir, our #1 priority is the well being and success of the author. Our contracts are structured in a way that the author reaps the benefits of signing with us and everyone gets paid fairly and treated like they matter.

We’re not too strict and Mimir is about crime and noir and mystery, but for Crimson, we do draw the line on no gore for gore’s sake unless it pushes the narrative, no rape (unless it’s in the past, remembered by a character and/or shapes the character’s motivations or arc, but please no graphic scenes even if remembered, just no!), no pedophilia (you wouldn’t believe some of the submissions we get, no…just no!).

So, as far as Crimson goes, stay away from splatter gore and rape and pedo material, then we’ll consider it. 

Our website is under construction, but the best place to scope us out is on Twitter: @Crimson_Creek (that is pushing 9,000 followers and we stay active on it!) and Mimir Press: @MimirPress.  We also have a Facebook page for Crimson Creek Press.  

Thank you for having me, Michelle, and again I loved Invisible Chains!! It had my Bram vote and you should get Jill on!!

GMM: Ha! Thanks, Brian. Jill Girardi is at the top of my list for folks to contact in the coming months.

“At Night” By: Brandon Scott

“Mom!” A small girl cried out, but no one heard her.

The night air blew cold against her face as she ran, but no one saw her. Her heart pounded fierce in her chest, rocking in cadence with her footfalls on the dew laden grass—but she didn’t care, because she could still see its teeth.

It’s going to get you, her big brother teased, it comes in the night and it’s hungry for little girls! And when it sinks its teeth in—

A hateful cry broke her thoughts, but her feet never slowed, pounding the ground, pounding the ground, pounding the ground.

Darkness behind her, closing in on all sides. It reared up in a thick heavy mass and it had teeth. It was gaining on her.

The little girl shook awake in her bed, breathless, in the coldest sweat, reaching for the water bottle her mother had placed on the nightstand.

A hiss rose up from the dark beyond the closet door.

In eerie stillness, she stared at the silhouette of the closed door in the night. There was nothing beyond the soundless world outside her window. For what seemed like a lifetime, she held her gaze until she was sleepy again.

SHHHHH-TA-TA-TA…

The little girl sat up; face fixed onto the oblivion. In silence she got out of bed, standing without the protection of her blankets, as her brother’s words rattled inside her head. She thought back on all the times his blankets had saved him, swearing they were the one shielding force all monsters couldn’t work around. The impossible riddle with an impossible answer she knew it to be true, as her brother had told her so. He wouldn’t lie about something as serious as monsters in the night.

With a deep breath, she began the thousand-mile dim lit walk from the safety of her bed to the closet door. Each step piercing the unknown; enveloping her into the blackness she’d left behind, cut off from all her refuge.

What a big girl you are! Her mother would say, being so proud of her effort. She could only imagine her mom’s eyes as they filled to the brim with marveled wonder, her lips beaming a smile that only a mother’s pride could offer.

The little girl’s steps came together as her journey ended. She stood alone at the mouth of the closed doorway; eyes locked on the tiny glitter shock of brass just under her outstretched hand. The knob inside her shaken grip was an icy room chill, but letting go wasn’t an option. Forcing herself to push on she pulled the door open.

So proud of my little girl! Her mother would say.

She stood in the face of emptiness, staring into a bottomless void.

Hissing echoed from behind her as she realized it had been a trick the whole time. There was never a monster in the closet, there never is. The monster was all around her. Hiding out in the shadows just out of focus in the corner of every glance she gave, and it never left her alone. Sometimes big brothers were right.

She closed the door, turning to face perfect rows of sharp white teeth. “Mom!” A small girl cried out, but no one heard her.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Rena Mason

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week, I had an interesting discussion with veteran horror writer Amy Grech on writing horror while female. If you missed it, go check out her post.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes two-time Bram Stoker Award winning writer Rena Mason to talk about her writing journey and her service to the horror writing community.

Rena Mason is the Bram Stoker Award® winning author of The Evolutionist and The Devil’s Throat, as well as a 2014 Stage 32 /The Blood List Search for New Blood Quarter-Finalist. She’s had nearly two dozen short stories, novelettes, and novellas published in various award-winning anthologies and magazines and writes a monthly column.

For more information visit her website: www.RenaMason.Ink
or follow her at:
Facebook: rena.mason
Twitter: @RenaMason88
Stage 32: Rena Mason
Instagram: rena.mason

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Rena. I’ve been waiting to have you as a guest for a while and I’m glad we were able to get together. Before we jump into talking about your fragment and your writing in general, I wanted to ask you a little bit about your involvement in the Horror Writers Association. In 2019 you received the Richard Laymon President’s Award. Can you tell us about the different roles and responsibilities you’ve had or are currently performing in the HWA, and why this award is such an honor? Have you won any other awards for your service within the organization? When did you first become a member of the HWA and when did you decide to become a more active member of the community? What advice would you give others on how to become more active within the community?

RM: I’m honored to be among the authors you’ve had on Girl Meets Monster. Thank you for having me, Michelle. I’d finished my first novel, which wasn’t The Evolutionist, in 2009 and didn’t know where to go from there or what I needed to do in order to get it published, or even if it was publishable, so I started Googling and then attended writer events, the first being the Pacific Northwest Writers Association event. It was a strange experience, and even though I enjoyed it and learned a bit, I didn’t feel it was exactly right for me. Huge crowd, and not a very diverse one. There was well over a thousand people there. One lady sat next to me, looked at my badge that had Sci-Fi and Horror printed on it and then she got up and left. I glanced at her badge before she bolted—Romance. I know not all romance writers behave that way, but for a very new writer at her very first writing convention of any kind, I’ll admit that stung a bit and has stuck with me since. Long story short, I finally got to a horror writer event. KillerCon was my first in the genre and after that first one, I volunteered to work registration at the next few because I thought that would be the best way to meet people and remember their names. It worked for the most part, although I’m still terrible at remembering names. After deciding these were fellow genre lovers and friendlier folks, I started attending other horror events and was encouraged to join the HWA by people I’d met. I volunteered to work registration and more at their events as well, but after the events were over it was hard to stay in touch with my new writer friends and meet more new ones (I was very new to social media then and am still not very good at it), so I thought volunteering within the organization would help get me more comfortable in this whole new writing world I knew nothing about. I’ve made so many wonderful, lifelong friends in the horror community that they’ve become more like my family. It has meant a lot to me both personally and to my growth as a writer and I wanted to return that in some way, and that’s why I volunteered and have worked so hard over the years alongside so many others, and I’m proud of what we accomplished together. I think I became an HWA Supporting member around 2010 and volunteered to do data entry as the Compiler, and then became head of that department after a couple years, and then I was asked to become one of the awards chairs, finishing my 9+ years serving on the awards committee in 2019. The Richard Laymon Award is a volunteer service award given by the current President of the HWA for “exemplary service and dedication to the organization.” I also received the Silver Hammer Award in 2014, which is another service award given to volunteers who do a “massive amount of work, often behind the scenes.” The organization is always reaching out for volunteers. Whether you’re serving as a mentor or a juror, they’re great ways to meet other people in the community. Attending the events, and volunteering to work them, and volunteering to work in organizations, was and is a great way to network and best of all, make friends.

GMM: When you began your writing career, did you always envision yourself as a horror writer or did you have other goals in mind? What was the first horror story you wrote, and what inspired it? As a woman of color writing horror, have you encountered any obstacles along your journey of becoming an established writer? If so, how did you overcome them?

RM: Being such a big fan of horror and dark sci-fi and fantasy, I knew that whatever I wrote, it would be dark and have horror woven throughout. I started out writing what I enjoy, and that hasn’t changed. The first horror story I ever wrote was a dark fantasy. I was inspired to write it by something my mom had said after my younger sister died in a car accident. And no, I won’t say what it was, but it wasn’t anything bad. I’ll get back to finishing that story one of these days. It’s a very personal story and I wasn’t ready to write it before, but I’m getting there. If there were any obstacles in my becoming an established horror writer, I can’t list any specifically that are related to my being a woman of color that I’m aware of. Any obstacles I felt I overcame were because of my writing and where I was at in my writing career.

GMM: Your excerpt reminded me of some of the experiences the protagonist in Octavia Butler’s Kindred has when she finds herself in the past and has no idea how she’s gotten there. The idea of waking up to discover physical evidence on your body from something you thought was part of a nightmare really is terrifying. Without too many spoilers, can you tell us what’s happening to your protagonist? Did actual events inspire this story? Were you influenced by the work of any other writers?

RM: Kindred is such an amazing story. The way Butler moved Dana and Kevin through time and the way time itself was a changeable character in the story with so many deep and rich layers. I’m smiling ear to ear that you mention my excerpt reminded you of some of the experiences. In my story “Of Earth and Bone” the main character, Qieng, was sent to assay an abandoned and crumbling part of the Great Wall in the desert for a future tourist site possibility. In his gut Qieng knows it’s a punishment for having an affair with his commanding officer’s wife. In his gut Qieng knows he’ll likely die there. In the heat, with his water supply dwindling, he finds himself back in time to when they were building the Great Wall. He’s one of the workers, being treated the way those who built the wall were abused. When he returns to the present time, he records what he’s seen in his journal. What happens to him in the end is karmic in that he was not an innocent character. His journal, which has in essence become his spirit, is able to exact its revenge. A lot of Chinese stories and folktales end this way, everyone dies/no one wins, to keep balance, and I know that has a huge influence on my writing. I think everyone I’ve ever read from nonfiction to fiction has had an influence on me that I interpret in my own way on the page. This has been fun. Thanks again for having me.

Excerpt from “Of Earth and Bone” in the anthology The Forsaken: Stories of Abandoned Places published by Cemetery Dance in 2017.

“Get up, dog! No sleeping. Only work. Bring those rocks over there!”

Clouded in a sleep haze, I looked up at a man standing over me, yelling and pointing. The bright sun behind him shadowed his face.

“What?” I said.

The man raised his arm then brought it down. A hard, sharp sting struck my shoulder. I scrambled onto my feet.

“You heard me,” the man said. “Now get moving or I’ll have the other dogs put you between mud and stone!”

A crack, then another surge of pain through my arm as the man whipped me again. Worn and beaten men trudged past in lines behind the one with the whip. Hunched over they carried large stones and bramble. I hurried in the direction from where they came.

My tent had vanished. The wall section appeared crude and low. Men moved their loads to the north end.

“Hey you,” I said to one of the workers walking past. The man kept his head down and rushed on. Everyone else ignored me or turned away if I approached.

Sun seared the bleeding lashes on my arm and shoulder, slowly cauterizing them, cooking the split wounds open. My white uniform shirt had already browned from the previous day’s digging. The green trousers I wore had powdery tan dirt coating them. Everything worn and raggedy. But my boots and socks…where were they? Had I taken them off when I laid down to rest? I couldn’t remember.

Hot ground burned my bare feet from below and the sun’s rays heated everything above. Any sweat from exertion evaporated too quickly to cool my body. How could these men work in the high heat of day?

By the time I got to the front of the line, I’d had two dizzy spells. A haggard man handed me a large rock and a dried branch of saxaul. Blood in various stages of drying stained what remained of his shredded clothing.

“What’s your name?” the man said.

“I’m Major Qieng—”

“Shush. Speak no more.” The man looked around, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Don’t tell anyone else you’re a soldier. They’ll treat you worse. Believe me, I know. My village rose up against Emperor Wu, and now I’m the only one left. I’m Niu.”

“Emperor Wu? From the Han Dynasty?”

“He’s Han, yes. I’ve never heard of dynasty, though. Is that a new place?”

“What? No.” I thought for a moment on my history lessons.

“It was Wu’s armies that destroyed my village and brought anyone still alive here. Every day since I’ve watched my neighbors and family members die, their bodies used to build up the old wall.”

“Old wall?”

“You two!” The work master stood above them and shouted down.

Niu flinched and shoved the rock and tree branch into me. “Take these and follow the others. Look busy when Feng comes around. He’s heavy-handed with the crop.”

Thinking it lighter, I armed the wood using my injured side. It weighed me down nearly as much as the stone. The course bark of the sauxal and abrasive rock tore through my shirt and scraped my skin.

As I walked in line and kept pace with the others over hot ground, I raised my eyes. Barren desert wasteland dotted with greenery went on for miles in every direction; more than I remembered from when I’d set up camp to survey it. The surrounding hills lower, as well as the wavy sand dune layers that crept toward the wall.

Niu spoke in a crude dialect of old Mandarin, but I’d assumed him an uneducated laborer from a desert village. The more I thought on it, I wondered if I’d become dehydrated and delirious. Besides ruined clothing and slash marks across exposed areas of their skin, the people’s attire looked old, ancient even. I’d thought Niu might be deranged when he’d told me about Emperor Wu, but perhaps he was right and I wrong. Had I somehow traveled to the past? Maybe I’d gone mad.

The most profound evidence stood before me. A long ridge of packed earth that rose only three feet high, lower in some areas, stretching across the desert plain. Very different from the section where I’d staked my tent. These men were tasked to raise the dirt mound with rocks and whatever else nearby that might lend strength to it. Then I passed three wooden carts on my way to the end of the wall, unusual for their primitive wooden wheels. Niu would have more answers, so I rushed back.

“You there! Stop!” the work master said.

Everyone halted. A quick glance up revealed no one on the wall. I turned my head and heard a whoosh before a sharp pain raced across my shoulders. Then another came, slightly lower.

“First you don’t move and now you want to hurry?” said Feng. The task master continued thrashing until my entire back throbbed and I fell over.

—I’ve no idea of the actual date or time.

I woke from a nap with wounds I received during a nightmare. Pain keeps me from getting up and working much, but I did manage to dig down another foot when I came across small bundles of old rope. I’ve placed them into the pack along with the broken bones.

My dreams have become increasingly realistic. I fear I may be suffering from dehydration. As fast as I’m going through the water supply, I’m beginning to doubt I will last until the end of the week. It seems I may have stumbled upon some type of wormhole and am able to travel back into the past. This desert section of the Great Wall is a gateway. On the other side is Hell.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Donna J. W. Munro

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Happy New Year! Before Fiction Fragments took a short break to celebrate the holidays and regroup after a monumentally challenging year, I featured an excerpt from Deesha Philyaw‘s short story, “Peach Cobbler.”

Now, we’re back. It’s 2021 and Girl Meets Monster has some great writers lined up for the month of January, including this week’s guest, Donna J. W. Munro.

Donna J. W. Munro’s pieces are published in Dark Moon Digest # 34, Flash Fiction Magazine, Astounding Outpost, Nothing’s Sacred Magazine IV and V, Corvid Queen, Hazard Yet Forward (2012), Enter the Apocalypse (2017), Beautiful Lies, Painful Truths II (2018), Terror Politico (2019), It Calls from the Forest (2020), Borderlands 7 (2020), Gray Sisters Vol 1 (2020) and others. Her upcoming novel, Revelations: Poppet Cycle 1, will be published by Omnium Gatherum in 2021.

Order Donna’s novel, Revelations: Poppet Cycle 1, here:  Amazon

Contact her at:
https://www.donnajwmunro.com
Twitter: @DonnaJWMunro

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Donna and Happy New Year! Here we are at the beginning of 2021 and I’m sure we’re all hoping for a frest start and a less traumatic year than 2020. What exciting things do you have planned for the new year? What projects are you working on, and what writing goals are you setting for yourself?

DJWM: Happy New Year to you, too. I have a whole lot of hope that things will be better. I mean, the real world shouldn’t be weirder than things we are writing, right? It has been. I felt like we were living in American Horror Story for the last four years.

I’m excited that you’re interviewing me today, because my first novel is out tomorrow! Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book 1 is the first in a trilogy I’m working on, so most of 2021 will be rewrites of book 2 and 3. Besides that, I write a flash fiction story every weekend as part of the Obsidian Flash Writers Group. As far as goals, I think I’m shooting for at least 12 short stories published in 2021. Beyond that, I hope to stay well, get vaccinated, and start hanging out with my Convention friends again. Man, I miss my nerd fam so much!

GMM: Tell me a bit about your fragment. IS it more difficult writing from the POV of a guinea pig than it is for a human, or did you simply imagine Muffin as a human while writing this piece? What was your process like, and what inspired the story? Why a guinea pig?

DJWM:  “He Ate It” is a story I wrote as part of a challenge at Obsidian Flash. We post images there to spark our weekly stories and then share them with each other for critique. One week the prompt was a guinea pig. That, combined with the my anxiety over our current US politics, created Muffin the meglomaniacal guinea pig. His voice wasn’t hard to come up with, since it’s the internal voice I imagined that our President might have. I had a whole lot of fun trying to think about what obstacles would stand in the way of a guinea pig trying to become ruler of the world. The absurdity of its lack of experience and not knowing how big the world is, but still wanting to rule it as it’s first act of sentience tickled my writing fancy. The hubris he had was super fun to write, especially since I got to slap him in it. It’s not a perfect story and the Neitzche joke at the end might be a bit flat, but it makes me cackle every time.

GMM: Tell me about your most challenging writing project to date. Was it a short story or a longer piece of fiction? What roadblocks did you encounter while writing it? How did you modify your process to complete the piece? Did you publish it?

DJWM: Novels challenge me. I force myself to write one every year because I’m told that’s where the big money is (all the writers I know are laughing along with me right now). Short stories naturally come to me. Good or bad, if I sit down to write a short story, one comes out. But novels! Holy cookies, there’s so many moving parts. Continuity and plot vs character arc and description and action and subtext–Oh my! That’s why I surround myself with brilliant people that catch me when I’m lazy. My beta readers are great, but Anna LaVoie of Literally Yours Editing is my savior. Honestly, if you are a writer and you want to make your plot sing, developmental editors like Anna are so, so worth it. My process now includes two to three rounds of Anna combing through my writing and asking hard questions that kill the stupid plot devices and melodrama. She’s incredible. The result of this new process is the beginning of my trilogy that’s dropping tomorrow, Poppet Cycle. Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book 1 has been in my hard drive for probably twelve years. I dusted it off after meeting with Johnny Worthen of Omnium Gatherum a couple of years ago at HWA’s Stoker Con and now it’s about to be born.

Novels are hard. You know what I’m talking about with your fantastic debut Invisible Chains. Writing is just one part of the job. Then, there’s marketing. And keeping track of businessy stuff, which isn’t my thing. I will learn though! Might take the rest of my life, but I’m on it.

Roadblocks? Everything is a potential roadblock. Time crunches, bills, kids, cats, day job as a teacher, depression, shiny things that keep me from putting my butt into the chair and getting work done. How about the fact that all writers are really two people inside. There’s the hopeful creative who keeps throwing out new ideas, even when you need to just focus on the one you are working one. Then there’s the vicious editor. No real life editor I’ve ever met acts like the editor I have inside my own head. It’s the voice that tells me I’m too old to make it as a writer or that my words are childish and no one will ever want to read them. That voice is useful when you can tame it into a true editor voice, but mostly it’s the worst roadblock of all. It takes away joy from the process. It belittles your efforts. No matter how many successes you have it makes you wonder if you’ll ever have another. That little monster is tough to tame.

HE ATE IT
by Donna J. W. Munro

Muffin became self-aware on Saturday at 8pm. Until then, he’d been a carefree guinea pig occasionally living with a stinking cage or water, tinged green. Overall, he’d been well cared for. His human, a female juvenile, picked him up and cuddle warm sweet skin to his fur. This time he realized that he’d never have a better chance. He bit her soft throat where heat thrummed closest to the surface. Fluids gushed from her wound, red gouts wetting him. Her little hands dropped him as they struggled to cover the terrible wound. Exactly as planned.

Her screams drew the larger humans into girl’s room– exactly as planned– and Muffin rushed out the door into the larger world. He hid himself beneath a thing with metal springs and wooden slats and padded with lovely fluff, though it all smelled like human ass. He watched the humans rush by with the little one clutched between them. As they ran, they voices squeeled as he’d done when he’d been a dumb beast. He couldn’t blame them their weakness. After all, he’d attacked their young. But Muffin’s own history taught him that some young must be eaten for the benefit of the stronger. He’d eaten his nest brothers and sisters to keep the milk only for him.

They left and, exactly as planned, Muffin had conquered the world. He waddled into the food room, drawn by the bitter odor real food. Not the tough pellets the young female put in his cage. A tall machine hummed and rattled, doing business Muffin didn’t care to understand. Only the room’s obstacles concerned him. He sniffed the edges of the room, taking in the potential bolt holes as he sought food and water. High above him, the scent of fresh water falling in ringing drips wafted down, but the wall before him rose as a sheer monolith. Somewhere up there sat a bowl of fruit– he remembered seeing it when the female adolescent carried him. Now the cloying sweet of the fruit filled his nose full. He needed to climb the cliff, but how?

He noticed on the floor a bowl of slimy water and a bowl of kibble that reminded him he wasn’t alone. He slunk over to the flapping entrance in the middle of a closed door. It smelled like the other animal. Could he convince the dumb beast to help him reach the food and water, through tricks or taming. Or would the beast be so mindless he’d need to eliminate him? Muffin wanted to assess the situation. He tumbled through the flap into a cold, hard-floored room that smelled of bitter things and danger. Muffin sneezed the scent out of his nose. In the corner, a massive beast lay curled on a stinking pillow. Muffin’s heart hammered as he considered the it.

He sheltered behind a leaning chalky cliff, watching the beast take deep breaths. It had a pointed nose and long legs. So many times bigger than he. Muffin swallowed down the urge to run. Hadn’t he defeated the humans? Hadn’t he conquered the whole world? This creature would work for him or Muffin would kill him. With that thought, he scuttled forward, following the outline of the wall toward the corner the beast lay in. The closer he got, the stronger the creature’s musky scent. Muffin knew this beast from when the human played with this it in front of his glass-fronted prison. Named Nee-chee or some such, it leapt and capered and carried toys in its mouth like a giant imbecile. It could be trained, therefore Muffin just needed to figure out how.

“See here, beastie,” Muffin said, tapping on the wet, triangular nose before him. “Wake up.”

Its eyes snapped open and its lip curled over sharp teeth. But Muffin had come too far to let fear stop him.

“I defeated the humans. Sent them scurrying. Now, I’m the master of this house. You’ll serve me as you served them. Do you understand?”
The creature nodded, teeth parting and tongue sliding out with panting breaths.

“I need food and water. Both are high up. You’ll let me ride your back to get up.”

The beast tilted its head, in deference. Muffin’s spirits soared and he hurried toward it, to climb its back. Then the best fixed his gaze on the exposed Muffin near it’s flanks and snorted.

“Why would I help the one who injured my little human? I’ve been training her for years. Foolish rat thing, do you think you are the only self-aware being in this place? ‘Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster.’” The tall beast lifted itself with a languid stretch.

“Or perhaps you’ll have to deal with a monster,” he said, smiling.

Muffin squealed and started to dart away when one massive paw pinned him to the cold floor. “What will you do to me?”

“Why worry about such things, little mote? I’m the abyss and I’m finished looking into you.”

His massive jaws encircled Muffin’s head, crunching down. Thus, Muffin was self-aware no more.

“I’m going to kill that rodent,” the woman said as she carried her bandaged little girl into the house.

“We’ll have to find it. Could be anywhere by now,” the man whispered, opening the door to the child’s bedroom so his wife could lay the child in bed. Stitches and shots and blood transfusions left their mark. She’d be scarred and fearful, but she’d survived. They checked under the bed, hugged their girl, and shut the door.

The man began searching for the Guinea pig under the couches, but the tick-tack of the dog’s claws across the wooden floor caught the wife’s attention. “Oh, my poor puppy. Are you hungry, Nietzsche Dog? Want dinner?”

The dog woofed and lay the head of the guinea pig at her feet. He grinned up at her, his grey schnauzer mustache stained red with the blood of the dead conqueror.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Christopher Golden

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week I had a dream conversation with one of my writing heroes and fellow vampire enthusiast, Jewelle Gomez. I’m really proud of that intereview and hope you enjoy it, too.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes yet another writer who has been an inspiration to me, Christopher Golden. Not only is he an inspiration as a successful writer of scary stories, but also as someone who supports the work of other writers.

Christopher Golden is the New York Times bestselling author of Ararat, Snowblind, Red Hands, and many other novels. He is the co-creator, with Mike Mignola, of the Outerverse horror comics, including Baltimore, Joe Golem: Occult Detective, and Lady Baltimore. As editor, his anthologies include the Shirley Jackson Award winning The Twisted Book of Shadows, The New Dead, and many others. Golden is also a screenwriter, producer, video game writer, co-host of the podcast Defenders Dialogue, and founded the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival. Nominated ten times in eight different categories for the Bram Stoker Award, he has won twice, and has also been nominated for the Eisner Award, the British Fantasy Award, and multiple times for the Shirley Jackson Award. Golden was born, raised, and still lives in Massachusetts.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Chris. Tell me about your newest book, Red Hands, which I believe is out now. Without giving away too many spoilers, what is the book about and what inspired the story?

CG: Thanks so much! Red Hands opens at a July 4th parade in a small town in the mountains of New Hampshire. A car plows through the crowd and a sick man staggers out of the vehicle. When people try to restrain him, everyone he touches becomes hideously sick within seconds and drops dead. When Maeve Sinclair steps in to stop the man, she ends up killing him, and the death touch he possesses—the Red Hands virus—passes to her. Ironically, I finished the novel in January of 2020, before the world became truly aware of the coronavirus. The idea for Red Hands had been bubbling in my brain for years before I set about writing it. Though it has a killing contagion at its core, and though it resonates strongly with Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” at its most basic it’s really about how much we rely on the people around us, how much we need them, and about what it would feel like to know that you could never touch them again for fear of killing them. Which, of course, has taken on a whole new weight in the current environment.

GMM: You’re obviously a successful writer, with several awards under your belt, as well as being a New York Times best selling author. For many writers, finding yourself on the New York Times best selling author list is like a dream come true. It’s something many of us aspire to. Something any writer could be proud of. How has that success affected you as you continue to write? A few months ago, I interviewed Paul Tremblay, who was very candid about his experiences with impostor syndrome and the feelings of doubt that creep into our brains as creative people. Can you share what your experience as a writer has been in terms of impostor syndrome and how you push through it to keep writing? Were there any negative side effects of becoming a best-selling author?

CG: It’s certainly a mark of pride to be able to call yourself a New York Times bestselling author, but beneath the umbrella of that phrase is a vast array of different experiences. There are NYT bestselling authors who make the list with every book and who consequently make many millions of dollars per year. Then there are those of us who were fortunate enough to break onto the list with one project or another, but who are far from the sort of household names that usually make the list. I’m happy and proud to be able to say I’ve been on the list, but it hasn’t really affected me very much. It’s a constant battle to get readers’ eyes on your work. Some people know who you are, but most people don’t, and some who do have made up their minds about what they think of you without ever reading your work. I don’t know until a book is in readers’ hands and I start to see the results whether or not it’s any good. And I certainly never know if something is going to sell. My sales tend to rollercoaster, with one book doing pretty well and the next crashing into the basement, so I have to start from scratch for the one after that. But I’ve been on that rollercoaster for dozens of books over the course of twenty-five years or so. I don’t love riding it, but I’m used to it by now. As for impostor syndrome…very occasionally I’ll have a day where I’m working and I think I may actually be fairly good at this job, but that lasts about half an hour, and then I’m frustrated with myself again. I always try to explain that when I want you to read my book, I’m not making a quality judgement about it myself. I’m asking you to read it and make that call for yourself, mostly because I love the story I dreamed up and I want to share it with you. Whether I told my story well is really up for you to decide. And that evaluation is going to vary from reader to reader.

GMM: What is one of the most personally rewarding experiences you’ve had as a writer, and what advice would you give to new writers in terms of how to define success in their writing careers?

CG: I’m going to come at this from a certain angle—with a story. Years ago, not long after Bantam published Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, which I wrote with Mike Mignola, we made a deal for New Regency Films to make a movie version. They optioned the rights to the book and hired me and Mike to write the screenplay. By that time, I’d already had loads of Hollywood disappointments, but this was my first screenwriting experience. I was truly excited about it, though still pretty realistic about the odds of making it all the way to a finished film. We had family coming over for someone’s birthday or one holiday or another, and my wife Connie bought a bottle of champagne. She wanted to celebrate the Baltimore movie and screenplay deal with the family. I refused to do that. I said we’d hold off on celebrating until the movie was actually made and released, because that would be the triumph, that would be the success for us to celebrate. Of course the movie didn’t get made—not then, anyway. At first the cynic in me thought that justified my original reaction, but over the years I’ve done a complete one-eighty on this subject. I regret not celebrating then. It was absolutely worth celebrating, an important step for me and a moment I should have been willing to rejoice in. Success is moment by moment. It comes in tiny victories. The really big ones are few and far between, and there are always setbacks, small failures and disappointments. Cherish the small successes, the small victories, every step you take that’s a step forward. Don’t hesitate to celebrate. You’re not going to jinx anything. Just keep your head down and do your work and when good things happen, pause to mark them and appreciate them…and then get back to work.

RED HANDS
by Christopher Golden

~1~

Later, Maeve Sinclair will think of the girl with the pink balloon, and her heart will ache with a sting unlike anything she’s felt before. She’ll feel that sting forever, or for as long a forever as the world is willing to give her. In her mind’s eye, the little girl’s hand will always clutch the balloon string so fiercely, and Maeve knows it’s because the girl lost her balloon at the Fourth of July parade the year before. When you’re three years old, that’s the sort of thing that can scar you, and little Callie Ellroy was three last year when she watched her Mickey Mouse balloon sail into the blue and vanish forever.             

It’s not Mickey this year, just an ordinary pink balloon, even a bit underinflated, as if Callie didn’t want to invest quite as much of her now-four-year-old adoration this time around. Yet she holds the string so tightly and smiles so brightly, showing all of her crooked teeth and every ounce of the joy bursting within her, that Maeve is sure the little girl can’t help but love that balloon. A little deflated or not. Plain, ordinary, boring balloon or not. Her sneakers are the same pink as the balloon, and though Maeve can’t hear the words she speaks when she tugs her mother’s arm and points at her sneakers, the pantomime is enough to communicate just how much delight she’s taken from this moment of pink epiphany.             

Maeve has watched Callie Ellroy grow. She can remember the moment five years ago when Biz Ellroy—short for Elizabeth—had rushed up to her, beaming, and shared the news that she was pregnant with the little bean that would become Callie. Biz had even picked out her name already.

At twenty-nine, the memory makes Maeve feel unsettlingly adult. She’d been standing in nearly the same spot where she stands today, watching a troupe of clowns toss candy from the back of an antique fire truck while the Conway High School marching band blatted on trumpets and thundered on drums in a rough approximation of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” But she’d been twenty-five then, still young enough that older people hesitated to take her seriously. Now she’s on the verge of thirty, unmarried, no children, steadily employed but not in love with her job, and looking for a change.

Maeve gets a little shiver as she watches Biz holding Callie’s hand. The same antique fire engine goes by, probably the same clowns on the back, throwing the same stale candy. Only Maeve figures the fire engine is a little more antique now than it was then, and aren’t they all, really?             

Time is fucking merciless, Maeve thinks. It doesn’t ever slow down for you, even when you need it to. Even when, for instance, you still live in your hometown and can never escape the certainty that there’s another life for you out there, somewhere. Maeve wants to work to improve people’s lives, but after four years studying global health and public policy at George Washington University, dipping her toe in the water of half a dozen D.C. internships, she felt lost. She came back to Jericho Falls and got a job working for CareNH, a White Mountains political action committee. The money sucks, but she loves New Hampshire. She loves her parents, and her brother and sister. Over the past year, she’s foolishly allowed an old flame to reignite, and that makes it harder to leave and all the more important that she does.             

The new job’s in Boston. A non-profit called Liquid Dreams, which she thinks is a stupid name but she admires the hell out of the company’s mission, fighting for clean drinking water in the U.S. and around the globe, and fighting against corporations trying to monopolize control of the water supply. It’s a fight worth having, and so what if her job is as an events coordinator and not impacting the company’s political efforts—she’ll be serving that admirable goal, and that’s what matters to her.             

It’s time to leave Jericho Falls. She just has to tell her family. And she has to tell her…Nathan. Her Nathan. She guesses he’s her boyfriend, but that seems too concrete a word for the tentative way they dance around each other. Or, more accurately, the way she dances around him. Maeve is sure he’ll want to carry on seeing her, even if it means a long distance relationship. Three hours in the car doesn’t seem that long to begin with, but Maeve already knows it’s going to wear on them, and the truth is she never really thought of her thing with Nathan as long-term, just like she never thought she’d stay home for seven years after college. Both things just sort of happened. She wonders if she ought to leave both of them behind—Jericho Falls and her relationship. Nathan’s sweet and a comfort to be around, but so were the plush animals in her childhood bedroom.             

Today’s parade feels like an ending of sorts, and maybe a beginning, too. The Mayor rolls by, sitting in the back of an old Cadillac convertible with his leathery wife, who’s never quite learned how to apply her makeup. Maeve feels a rush of love for the old bat and for her town, because in other places the Mayor’s wife might’ve been replaced by a younger, blonder version, but in Jericho Falls, she looks just the way you’d expect her to look. The future is going to catch up to her town soon, and though Maeve yearns to be a part of the rush of the real world, it saddens her to think of Jericho Falls changing. She thinks, momentarily, that the Mayor’s wife should ditch him for a younger, more attractive husband, and then run for Mayor herself. If the future has to come to Jericho Falls, Maeve wants it to arrive in heels.             

All of these thoughts spin through her head while she glances around the crowd. Her dad munches an ice cream sandwich from a street vendor. He’s with Rue Crooker, maybe his best and oldest friend, so close that when the kids were little they called her Auntie Rue. Maeve’s brother Logan is over beside their mom, on the other side of the street, which is a good illustration of their lives since Ellen Sinclair finally had enough of her husband Ted’s alcoholism and changed the locks on the house. None of it had been as ugly as Maeve feared, but it hasn’t been pretty, either. Her dad’s had a rough time with addiction, but he’s kicked the pills at least, and he’s trying, which is maybe why Ellen and Ted can stand across the street from each other and offer a smile and subdued wave.             

Maeve likes that. They’ll always be family, thanks to the three children they share, so it’s nice if they can manage not to hate each other. The youngest member of Maeve’s family finally arrives, her twenty-one year old sister Rose, who grins nervously as she approaches their mother and Logan while holding hands with her girlfriend in public for the very first time.

This is the Sinclair family today, doing their best to reenact a tradition begun decades earlier. The Jericho Falls Fourth of July parade, held at 11 a.m. on the actual goddamn Fourth of July, no matter the weather and no matter the stink some locals put up because they like the parade but they want to be on vacation somewhere nicer, somewhere with a great fireworks display, on the actual holiday. Other cities and towns cave to the pressure, celebrate a few days before or even after the Fourth, but not Jericho Falls. Fuck that. It’s another thing that makes Maeve proud of her town.             

She’ll dwell on all of this later. She’ll turn it over in her head, wondering if there was something she could have done differently, anything that might have changed the outcome. If she had been paying more attention to her family, or the parade, or the crowd instead of lost inside her head and worrying about breaking the news of her new job and impending departure to her mom, would she have been able to save lives?             

Would she have been able to save herself?              

Of course, she’ll never know.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Donna Lynch

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week I chatted with Tony Tremblay about tacos, reviewing books, and his forthcoming novel from Haverhill House, Do Not Weep For Me.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes poet, lyracist and writer Donna Lynch.

Donna Lynch is a two-time Bram Stoker Award-nominated dark fiction poet and author, spoken word artist, and the co-founder—along with her husband, artist and musician Steven Archer—of the dark electronic rock band Ego Likeness (Metropolis Records).

An active member of the Horror Writers Association and three-time contributor to the HWA Poetry Showcase, her published works include the novels Isabel Burning, and Red Horses; the novella Driving Through the Desert; and the poetry collections In My Mouth, Twenty-Six, Ladies & Other Vicious Creatures, The Book of Keys, Daughters of Lilith, Witches, and the Ladies of Horror Fiction Award-winning Choking Back the Devil (Raw Dog Screaming Press).

She is the founder of the Garbage Witch clothing brand, part-time tour manager, avid cross-country driver, and geography fanatic. She and Steven live in Maryland.

FB: Donna Lynch @GeekLioness
Twitter: @GeekLioness
Instagram: d_note_
Raw Dog: http://rawdogscreaming.com/authors/donna-lynch/

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Donna. Thank you for joining me in these weird times. Has the pandemic and current events had an impact on your creativity? What spooky things have you been cooking up while in quarantine?

DL: It absolutely is having an impact. My focus and concentration are worse than usual, and I’m having to work extra hard at not putting myself down because of it.

That said, I have been able to dive into a new poetry collection: a mix of contemporary folk legends and the lives of my friends and myself growing up in suburban and rural areas. There is a quiet horror that happens in those communities that have traditionally fancied themselves safer and of higher moral ground than urban areas, and as young women growing up in those places, we knew it all too well.

GMM: Tell me about your writing process. Does your process differ between writing lyrics, poetry and fiction? Or, does the same Muse speak to you for all of your creative endeavors?

DL: Lyrics require hooks and there are more “restrictions”. The words not only have to be memorable and impactful, but they have to fit. Everything else feels easy compared to that.

But the words all come from the same well. The bigger challenge is keeping the well from going dry.

GMM: Without giving away too many spoilers, can you tell me about your fragment? Is this part of a larger piece? What’s happening in the story?

DL: My fragment is an excerpt from a work-in-progress collection of short stories that feature the same protagonist: a centuries-old entity who has taken numerous forms throughout time, but during the twentieth century, assumes the identity of a southern gentleman, based on an archetype of the devil they once saw in a film. I won’t share their/ his purpose here, only preface this excerpt by saying they act as a companion to those who need it the most, but in this particular story, struggles with their agenda.

I started this collection many years ago, and I made two mistakes: I made it too big, and I made it too precious. But now, in 2020, enough has changed that I feel ready to carve it into manageable pieces, and I can make the adjustments necessary to feel good about its place in the world, to whatever degree that may be. Offering up this (unedited) fragment here is the first step in me letting it breathe and letting it go.

Miss Abyss

I said it before and it’s always true: some of them are just harder than others.

This one, I can’t say she’s a failure. I wouldn’t ever call her that, no way. But she ain’t made of the same stuff the others are. She’s of something stronger and stranger, and at the same time she’s nothing.

A very long time ago she bound me not to say her name, and I can’t even remember it now, which goes to show how powerful she really is. And pardon my metaphor, but if I’m the stitches, she’s the wound that’s just too wide and deep.

I can’t really save any of my girls, that’s not my job and I couldn’t if I tried, but I especially can’t save her. For her to be who she is, she can’t ever be spared from it. She’s a chasm, a void. But, by god, there’s something deep down in there that is so fragile, and compassionate, and alone, I don’t know how it survives. It’s so far down, I don’t know how it’s fed, but it is. Not much, but enough, I guess.         

Now—for a void— if there’s one thing she’s excellent at filling, it’s your time. Otherwise, she’s a taker. She takes your energy, your sanity, your common sense. But even then, that ain’t her fault. It’s her nature, and she only takes what you offer. It’s a pretty deep hole she’s aiming to fill, so it takes a lot, and there ain’t much point in fighting because once you open your mouth and start telling her your story and she starts listening in a way nobody ever listened before, you’ve already approached the event horizon.         

The problem with little Miss Abyss is that there ain’t no lesson for her. There’s no moral of her story. She’s not a saint, or a martyr, not a demi-god, or a spirit. She’s eternal, but that don’t mean much when you only exist for other people, because they will you to exist. She’s a distraction for anyone looking for an escape, though she doesn’t know it’s temporary. If everyone let her alone tomorrow, she’d just…not be.

She doesn’t know she isn’t real. But that ain’t ever gonna happen, because people ain’t ever gonna stop wanting someone to listen the way she listens. They ain’t ever gonna stop wanting something to fill their time and emptiness.         

It took me a hell of a long time to figure out why we came across each other, but then it hit me: someday, I’m might have to tell her. At least, I think I will. My job is to be merciful, to make the transitions easier, to not let them linger, hurting and desperate. I get mad at myself for letting her go on this long, getting used and thrown away time and time again. I lose track of time, but I’ll tell you, it’s been long enough to make me feel ashamed. Hard truth is, I’m fond of her, and I don’t want to set something into motion I can’t control. Like I said, that ain’t my job. But it also ain’t really fair to her.         

It seems harmless enough, just thinking it through. If she’s nothing, then why shouldn’t people bring her into existence if they need her? She’s summoned by the lonely, the trapped, the insecure. She’s called by people who need a distraction from their boring lives and ugly selves, and they’d rather face the better person they see reflected in her hopeful eyes. “Where’s the harm?” they think. They never remember asking for anything out loud. So when they’ve used her up, or offered more than they could afford to lose to, they always say “Hey, sweetheart, I never said you had to keep coming around,” or “We never said this was forever”, and they send her away, emptier than when she got there, if that’s even possible. It’s like looking at a hole torn in space. You can hardly even understand what you’re looking at. You just know it’s dark and cold.         

But here we are, over and over, and though I see she’s hurting, I can see she’s hoping—hoping to be real, hoping that this time, she’ll be enough—and I let it ride because it feels so good to have her with me. I don’t have to teach her a damn thing. I don’t have to carry her through a trauma or a gate, into her next form. I don’t have to hold her hand while she nestles into place in a folktale or ghost story. We just exist together and I tell her about all of it and she just listens and smiles and makes me forget all of the terrible things I see, and every time, just as I’m feeling so good, it hits me like a shotgun blast to the head—

I don’t set her free because she’s my distraction, too.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Tony Tremblay

Michelle R. Lane 2 Comments

Last week I spoke with horror writer Denise N. Tapscott about her love of New Orleans and Voodoo.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes horror writer and former Cemetery Dance Magazine book reviewer Tony Tremblay.

Tony Tremblay is the author of the Bram Stoker nominated novel The Moore House from Haverhill House Publishing. In addition he has two short story collections The Seeds of Nightmares, and Blue Stars, both from Crossroad Press. He is one of the co-editors of the Eulogies series of horror anthologies, and is a co-editor on an upcoming untitled horror anthology about trains. He has worked as a reviewer for Horror World and Cemetery Dance Magazine. For three years he hosted a television show called The Taco Society Presents which focused on New England horror and genre writers. Along with John McIlveen and Scott Gousdward, Tony is one of the three organizers of NoCon, a horror convention held in New Hampshire. His latest novel, Do Not Weep For Me is currently at the publisher. Tony lives in New Hampshire.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Tony. Tell me a little bit about your forthcoming book from Haverhill House, Do Not Weep For Me, without giving away too many spoilers.

TT: First let me say thank you for having me Michelle. Do Not Weep For Me is my second novel with Haverhill House. I would not consider the new novel a sequel, but it does follow up with some of the characters in my first novel The Moore House. In Do Not Weep For Me, we encounter an old couple that has kidnapped children to use them in a demonic sacrifice. At the end of the ritual, only two of the children survive, but they’ve changed. While we follow the exploits of the children in the novel, the emphasis is more on their parents and other adults, including a certain pawnshop owner who assists them.

There are differences between my two novels. In the 70’s and 80’s, I spent way too much time devouring all those classic horror novels of that era. The Moore House was my homage to that time period with its action packed plotting and cliffhanger endings. Do Not Weep For Me is also action packed, but I gave the characters a bit more room to breathe, and many of the chapters are self contained. The other big difference in Do Not Weep For Me is that it contains a fair amount of sex that is intrinsic to the plot, where as I shied away from it in The Moore House.

GMM: What was The Taco Society Presents about? I mean, I assume tacos had something to do with it, but can you really talk about tacos for three years?

TT: I’m smiling as I’m typing this. The Taco Society Presents was an interview show shown on local television and YouTube. I was the host with two co-hosts, Sydney Leigh and Phil Perron. We interviewed authors, artists, and craftsmen mostly from New England that were involved in horror and related genres. Before the show was conceived, a mutual friend of all three of us brought us together one evening at a taco restaurant so we would get to know one another. We all clicked. Later, when the television station asked me to host the show, I asked the others if they would like to join me. They said yes, and we became The Taco Society Presents. After every show, the three of us, and our guests would drive down to that taco restaurant and spend the evening eating and drinking. The show lasted three years, and we had a great time doing it. And, as I mentioned earlier about my love of 70’s and 80’s horror, The Taco Society Presents is also a nod to one of my favorite books of the time. The Chowder Society is a feature in Ghost Story, a novel by Peter Straub.

GMM: Are you still reviewing books? How has that experience shaped your own writing? Do you think reading the work of other writers helped you become a better writer? Did it change your perceptions of what the writing process looks like?

TT: I don’t review professionally anymore. Nanci Kalanta gave me my start reviewing for her Horror World website which led to me to reviewing for Cemetery Dance Magazine and the occasional review elsewhere. I’ve been an avid horror reader since my early teens so I had a fair idea of what was good, what worked and what didn’t, so reviewing came easy for me. Joining a writers group enabled me to learn the mechanics of crafting a story, and that made a huge difference in the quality of my work. To this day, I lean on guidance from my writers group—they are the best beta-readers anyone could ask for. It was my desire to write my own fiction that put an end to my reviewing.

Excerpt from Do Not Weep For Me

As he did every morning before going to work, Paul Lane glanced at the thermometer on his front porch—74 degrees—and then with a cup of coffee in his hand, stood on the concrete stairs at the front of his house. He took note of the thick cloud cover. It delivered a gray hue, muting the sunshine, dulling the vibrant palette of the season. He dropped his gaze and frowned. The grass covering his yard looked different. The stiff, neatly trimmed blades rested limp on the topsoil. The deep shamrock green had faded a shade; the tips tinged with yellow. He thought it too tired-looking for mid-June.

The flowers on the Rose of Sharon hedge bordering the left side of his home, so proud yesterday, were now listless. Their parade of bright red blossoms absorbed the muted sunlight and reflected a color more akin to copper than candy apple.

Swinging his gaze to the street offered no respite from the gloom. The neighborhood had taken on a dingy appearance. It was as if the brick, aluminum or vinyl siding facades on the homes had bathed in a layer of dust. Not one of the new or more expensive cars parked in driveways or in front of the houses screamed, “look at me”. Their wax jobs lacked sparkle and their chrome trims did not gleam.

Something was off.

People in his neighborhood had pride. They did not neglect their property.

“Daddy?”

The call broke his concentration. “Yes, Cindy?”

“Can I play on the swing for a few minutes before you bring me to school?”

Paul didn’t answer. Instead, he took one more look around. There was heaviness to the area he couldn’t put his finger on, as if the atmosphere had weight. Not only was it oppressive, it was concerning in a way that defied an easy description.

He caught sight of Sheila White, the neighbor across the street, as she retrieved the daily newspaper from the box at the end of her driveway. The woman waved to him, and he returned the greeting. She was a fine looking woman, and the thing was, she knew it. He smiled when she stopped a few feet from her front door and wiggled her ass before she stepped back into the house. Paul’s wife had been dead for four years now, but that didn’t mean he was. Though Sheila often flirted with him, Paul rarely returned the favor. She was off-limits. Her husband, Tom, and he were good friends, and he would never betray that trust. Still, though, she did brighten Paul’s mood on occasion.

“Daddy, can I?”

“Huh?” He had forgotten about, Cindy. “Yeah, sure, honey. Stay in the back, I’ll come get you when it’s time to leave. You want to eat anything before you have breakfast at daycare?”

“No. I’m okay. Can you push me?”

He chuckled. “Sure. Give me a minute to bring my stuff to the car, I’ll be right out.”

“Thanks, Daddy!” She gave him a quick hug and ran back inside the house.

He followed her in and, after chugging his coffee, Paul draped his suit coat over his arm and grabbed his briefcase and backpack. There was a thud, and he mentally confirmed his daughter had gone through the back door to get to the swing set. The forecast had been for clear weather so his car remained in the driveway overnight. He walked to the vehicle with thoughts of the meeting this morning he had planned with the engineers of his company. He made a note to himself to review the cost analysis on the retrofit of the South Willow Street strip mall in Manchester. His thoughts lost on the price of granite and ceiling fixtures, he threw his suit coat and luggage into the rear seat of the Lexus. After shutting the door, he made the effort to clear his head and attend to his daughter. He walked past an area of tall pines and scrub that marked the property line on the right side of his house. When he was about to turn the corner to the back yard, he slowed.

This doesn’t feel right.

He should have heard squeaks from the chains attached to the joints at the top of the swing set. They were rusty. Needing oil. It was something he had meant to do but never got around to. The squeaks were loud, annoying, and you could hear them from twenty feet away. His back stiffened and he unconsciously hurried his pace.

She could be sitting and not swinging. Maybe she went back into the house. God, please, don’t let me have fucked up.

He rounded the corner.

The swing was empty. Cindy was nowhere in sight.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Denise N. Tapscott

Michelle R. Lane 2 Comments

Last week I talked with Jade Woodridge about the significance of why she writes about children in her dark speculative fiction, and she share an excerpt from her story, “The Sweeper Man.”

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes horror writer Denise N. Tapscott.

Denise N. Tapscott was born and raised in California. She left her heart in San Francisco, but somehow managed to leave her soul in New Orleans. When she’s not creating and cultivating her characters, she enjoys dining on spicy tuna rolls, sharing a bottle of red wine with friends and watching the latest flick (especially scary films). From time to time this radiant left-handed pirate will even challenge others to a fencing match or two. But, watch out. This Gemini is determined to win!

As a member of the HWA, one of her greatest joys is publishing her first novel Gypsy Kisses and Voodoo Wishes as well as the short story The Price of Salvation.  She’s currently working on a collection of short stories called The Friends and Foes of Grandmother Zenobia as well as a sequel novel, Enlightening of the Damned.

Website:  www.denisetapscott.com
Twitter:  @DeniseNTapscott
Instagram: @pyratesunny
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TheDeniseNTapscott

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Denise. When did you first become interested in Voodoo? What about Voodoo makes you want to include it as a recurring theme in your fiction? What kind of research did you do for your novel, Gypsy Kisses and Voodoo Wishes?

DNT: Great questions! Voodoo first caught my attention when I watched the movie Angel Heart. It was awesome and freaked me out! Then a few years later I saw The Skeleton Key and all kinds of story ideas popped in my head. I eventually came up with an idea that it would be neat to read about Voodoo battling Romany magic. I traveled to New Orleans several times to research Voodoo and Marie LaVeau. The more information I came across I realized my perception of Voodoo was way wrong. I was mixing and matching Voodoo with Hoodoo. There’s a lot more to both of these African Traditional religions than dancing to drums and poking dolls. I came across an awesome Rootworker, The Broken Prophet in Atlanta who explained there are several kinds of Voodoo from Africa and Haiti, and New Orleans being the melting pot it is, also has it’s own Voodoo! Hoodoo is a whole different ball game as well. I hope Gypsy Kisses and Voodoo Wishes (as well as my future stories) honors some of the things I learned and show that it’s not the evil religion people think it might be.

GMM: My debut novel, Invisible Chains, is an historical horror novel set in Antebellum New Orleans, told form the POV of a young female slave. What drew you to set your novel and other stories in New Orleans? How does the setting shape the narrative of your novel and other stories? Do you treat the city like a backdrop, or like a character in the story itself?

DNT: There are cities that have a certain flavor, but something about New Orleans feels magical. Considering Louisiana’s dark and lively history, I think it’s the perfect setting for my novels and short stories. One of my main characters, Grandmother Zenobia, is also dark and lively so it’s the perfect place for her to exist. I created a fictional area in New Orleans and named it Carrefour Parish (Carrefour means crossroads in French). I treat it like a living backdrop, similar to the zombies in the earlier episodes of the tv show The Walking Dead. In some episodes, you know the zombies are there, but the characters have other life problems to deal with. I hope the reader is aware of how it feels to be in the south, with hints of magic and how the characters move around in its environment without overshadowing what they go through.

GMM: I grew up in Central Pennsylvania and spent sixteen years of my life living in Pittsburgh. I consider Pittsburgh more of a home than the town I grew up in, but like you, New Orleans is in my soul. Each time I visit, I see something new, learn something about its history, and always have a good time. Tell me your best New Orleans story, or your fondest memory of the Crescent City.

DNT: I love New Orleans so much that people think I’m from there! My favorite memory is visiting a small bar on Bourbon Street for my birthday a few years ago. I went to New Orleans by myself and wanted to listen to some live Jazz. Walking past a place called Maison Bourbon, I noticed they had a small band playing so I found a seat at the bar. The band leader asked if anyone was celebrating something special like an anniversary, wedding, or birthday. No one spoke up, which is odd because there’s always someone celebrating something in New Orleans. So I sheepishly raised my hand and said I was celebrating my birthday. They asked my name and I said Sunny, which is one of my favorite nicknames. The entire bar sang Happy Birthday to me and then played “When the Saints Go Marching In”. It was such a treat. The next night some of my girlfriends flew in and I told them my birthday story. We went back to Maison Bourbon and when I walked through the door, the band recognized me. They said, “Hey, Sunny’s back!” They played “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” and “When the Saints Go Marching In” for me. I will always cherish that moment, the feeling that I belong there and in New Orleans.

Thanks for letting me spend time on Girl Meets Monster.

Excerpt from “Price of Salvation”

I dragged myself through the open doorway and when I entered the humidity vanished.  Cool air caressed my face. I stood up straight and sighed.  When was the last time I took an honest deep breath, without coughing or puking? The aroma of freshly baked cinnamon rolls filled the air. My escape from the southern heat was glorious.

“Settle down,” I heard from the darkness.

“Close the door, and have a seat, Mrs. Jurel.”  

The voice of the Voodoo woman was clear and melodic, only slightly tainted with a New Orleans drawl.  

After blinking a few times, I saw a small metal folding chair. My eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness so I fumbled around until I could sit obediently.  The chair was more comfortable than I expected.  Resting in the darkness was wonderful.  Once I regained my focus, I noticed I sat at a small table covered in soft black velvet. I wanted to brush my fingers across it, but my hands were dirty, accented with ragged nails, so I opted to fold my hands in my lap.

Sitting on a large purple and gold throne across from me was a pleasant-looking-dark skinned woman.  Her hair was covered with a purple turban, matching the royal purple on her front door.  She wore a black gauze tunic blouse.  Around her neck, a shiny copper Ankh glowed against her skin.  She didn’t wear any other jewelry, except a large black and gold fleur-de-lis ring that adorned well-manicured fingers.  Was she wearing a skirt or pants?  Why did I care about her outfit?  She was not the toothless, gray-haired woman I expected.  She looked like she was in her 40s?  My assistant Tasha joked “Black don’t crack”.  I could never say that, but she’s right.  This woman didn’t look old enough to be a grandmother.  She reminded me of that lady with the popular television talk show.  Everyone in her studio audience went home with expensive vacations and new cars.  

Three fresh, tapered candles, one black, one blue and one white, formed a triangle on the table on my right.  A thicker, taller, purple candle sat close to the Voodoo Woman. From my research, I knew the black one warded off negative energies and promoted healing. Royal blue was for seeking wisdom and truth. White was for protection, and purification.  Lastly, the purple one was for spiritual protection.  All the candles on this table represented protection but the purple one supposedly canceled negative effects of bad karma.  The Voodoo woman made interesting choices.

I lifted my head to take in my surroundings.  My neck was sore from my head being tossed back and forth every time I vomited.  There were shelves of books, crosses, various kinds of statues and other religious-looking artifacts.  If I was not mistaken, there was a shrunken head in the corner.  To my left, there was a jade dragon perched on a shiny black surface. Was that a human skull staring down at me?  Heavy red velvet curtains with gold trim covered windows, presumably protecting us from the sun.  In another corner there were large, dusty trunks. Simply being in this spooky room was worth my $500 dollars.

“Mrs. Jurel, you look like you could use some water.”

Grandmother Zenobia handed me a chilled, plastic bottle of water.  I was scared to drink it; when I vomited all over the luxurious black velvet table, I would be mortified.

“Go on, drink.”  

I swirled the cool water in my mouth a few times before swallowing. I braced for the burn.  Instead the liquid was sweet and went down smoothly.  It was an ordinary bottle of water, but it felt like I drank tears from heaven.  I paused, waiting for my stomach to betray me. It rumbled for a moment but then, silence.  Carelessly, I chugged the water as fast as I could.  Panicked, I look around for a trash can, for when my body-double crossed me and the water forced its way back out.  

There was no trash can.  There was no vomit.  There was peace, while sitting in a cool room.  I was so grateful that I cried.

“Do you need a moment to collect yourself?”  She asked, while passing me a soft tissue.  Wiping my tears away, I noticed my eyes didn’t sting when I blinked.  I cried even more.  It would take centuries to stop sobbing and catch my breath.

Attempting to compose myself, I noticed that I sat taller. My fever faded away.

“Thank you, Zenobia.”  

“Feeling better?” she asked.

“Yes,” I can’t believe that I do feel better.  Thank you for seeing me.”

“I prefer to be called Grandmother Zenobia.”

The black candle, the one for healing, flared brighter than the others.  The voodoo woman mumbled to herself; the flame obeyed her muttered commands and returned to its regular state. I re-adjusted in my seat and for the first time in months, I was almost my old self.  I took in another deep breath and appreciated the smell of cinnamon again. Aware I was on the clock, I got down to business.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Curtis M. Lawson

Michelle R. Lane 2 Comments

Last week I had a great conversation with Steven Van Patten about vampires and what it means to write horror while black.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes Curtis M. Lawson.

Curtis M. Lawson is a writer of unapologetically weird dark fiction and poetry. His work includes DEVIL’S NIGHT, BLACK HEART BOYS’ CHOIR, and IT’S A BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD WORLD.

Curtis is a member of the Horror Writer’s Association, and the host of the Wyrd Transmissions podcast.

Social Media:
curtismlawson.com
@curtismlawson on Instagram 
@c_lawson on twitter  
facebook.com/curtismlawson

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Curtis. Since we timed this post just right for the release of your new book, Devil’s Night, tell me about the book. Why Devil’s Night instead of Halloween? Why Detroit? How do the short stories in this collection connect to each other?

CML: The book is a collection of loosely connected stories that take place over the course of Devil’s Night, 1987 in Detroit. They explore different urban legends, traditions, and draw upon the troubled history of the city.

Joe Morey at Weird House Press approached me with the idea of putting together a themed collection. One of his suggestions was a Halloween theme. I considered this, but there are a lot of Halloween books out there and I wanted to do something a little different. I’d always been intrigued with the concept of Devil’s Night, going back to the first time I saw The Crow, so I suggested we go with that, and pitched it with the additional hook of the stories intertwining to a degree, kind of like a Sin City vibe.

Detroit is the only place that ever took Devil’s Night or Mischief Night, or whatever you want to call it, to such an extreme. It also has a rich history
and is steeped in urban myth and folklore. There’s a gothic element to the city’s story that appeals to me too – the concept of a once great city that offered economic, technological, and artistic promise but fell into ruin.

As for how the stories connect, there is a mix of thematic and narrative links. Fire, crime, and poverty are fixtures in many of the stories. The myth of the Nain Rouge manifests in various interpretations. Characters in one story are referenced in another, sometimes in a subtle way, sometimes more direct.

And then there is the overall story that the smaller stories tell. Each of the pieces in the book help to form the tale of a single night, shared by many.
I actually chose the order of the stories so that there was a steady thematic shift, but I doubt anyone else will notice. I tend to do stuff like that a lot, more for my own satisfaction and amusement than anything else.

GMM: Which Motor City urban legends inspired you the most, and how much research went into recreating them in fiction? Which one scares you the most?

CML: The legend of the Nain Rouge definitely impacted Devil’s Night the most. Also called The Hobgoblin of Michigan, it is intrinsically tied to the land. The are stories of the Nain Rouge going back to the founder of Detroit and its history seems to be a hybridization of French and Native American myths that symbolize the history of the city very well.

One of the things I enjoy about myths and legends is that various accounts are often incomplete and contradictory. That makes them more mysterious and murky, which I find appealing. I tried to draw off that, using the Nain Rouge in different roles throughout the stories. Sometimes the monster is an omen of terrible things to come. Sometimes it is an active antagonist. Other times it is an unlikely benefactor.

I did a lot of research for this book, not just the folklore, but also the history and geography of Detroit. It was important to me to not only draw upon
the actual myth, culture, and history of the city, but also to approach it with honesty and respect. There are a lot of pitfalls that you can fall into when writing about a city with a history of racial division, poverty, crime, and violence. This goes double when you’re doing so as a middle-class white man who grew up in Boston of all places. I don’t believe in shying away from difficult topics, but I think it is imperative that they are approached in good faith and with as much accurate information as possible.

What myth scared me the most? Easily, the Hobo Pig Lady. Interestingly, I couldn’t find a single written source for this myth, even online. I had several Detroit natives tell me different versions of the urban legend, however, each of them terrifying.

GMM: The cover art for this collection is beautiful and spooky. Who designed the cover? How important is cover art? Can you really judge a book by its cover? What are some of the worst cover art designs you’ve seen on books you actually love?

CML: Luke Spooner of Carrion House did the artwork. I had worked with him on my novel Black Heart Boys’ Choir and I was wildly impressed with his work and his professionalism. When Joe asked who I wanted for this, Luke was the first and only name I mentioned.

Not only did Luke produce the incredible cover for Devil’s Night, he also drew nine full-page interior illustrations, which are all in full color in the limited edition hardcover.

Cover art is important to me. I wrote, colored, lettered, and published comics for ten years before shifting my focus to prose. As such, I place a high value on not just the technical quality of the art, but it’s ability to convey story, theme, and emotion.

You can’t always judge a book by its cover, but you can measure how much value the publisher/author puts on their own product. If I see an amatuer cover my first thought is “this person doesn’t care enough to put a decent package on their work, so why should I care about it?” Sure, sometimes they might lack artistic sense or self-awareness, but more often than not a terrible cover means amateur writing and poor editing.

Worst cover designs from books I love? Well, I really dislike movie tie-in covers. I get the pragmatism of them, but I just don’t typically care for that
aesthetic. More specifically, there is an edition of The Shadow Over Innsmouth & Other Stories with a transparent fish-person in a suit, set against what looks like a desert town in the old west, with bright blue skies. It looks like they superimposed a Scooby-Doo villain over the cover to some forgotten western.

An Excerpt from THE WORK OF THE DEVIL

By Curtis M. Lawson

On Maya’s twelfth birthday she saw the Devil on her way home from school. He sat on the edge of a dumpster in the alley between Little Caesar’s and some bank whose name she couldn’t remember. He stared back at her, a cigarette hanging from his black lips. At first, she thought he was a kid in a mask, maybe a fourth or fifth grader judging by his height.

But when he turned to look at her, she could see that the monster’s face was not made of plastic or rubber. Those ebony lips curled into a smirk, pushing up crimson cheeks. Yellow teeth clenched around the burning cigarette. The bitter October wind rustled the Devil’s midnight locks and his long, patchy strands of beard. Gleaming black eyes, like polished marbles, glared at her with all the warmth of a Michigan winter. When he winked at her, she knew for sure: this was not some kid dressed up a day early for Halloween.

Maya ran from the alley as fast as she could. She sped the whole way home, lungs burning, and didn’t slow until she turned the corner onto Hoyt Avenue. She thought she’d feel safe once she could see her house, but she hadn’t been expecting the flashing lights and uniformed men. She hadn’t been expecting the firetruck and ambulance. She hadn’t been expecting the flames engulfing her home.

Her dad would try to hide it from her, but she’d learn that the fire wasn’t set by some Devil’s Night arsonist. It was the result of her mom passing out with a lit cigarette. That’s what was written in the official report, at least. But Maya knew the truth. The fire had been the work of the Devil.

In the year following her mother’s death, Maya learned all she could about devils and demons. She read the Bible from front to back, watched The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby on repeat, and scoured through the library for urban legends and local folklore. She came to believe that the Devil she had seen was a monster called the Nain Rouge—a terrible imp that brought tragedy upon anyone who caught a glimpse of it.

When her thirteenth birthday came around, Maya saw the Devil again. This time she was on her way to school, and the Devil sat drinking in the wreckage of a junked Charger outside of a rundown garage. Her mind was flooded with anger and fear at the sight of his scarlet flesh and charcoal hair. The instincts to fight and flee battled against each other, leaving her paralyzed.

The Devil drank Jim Beam, the same whiskey as her father. He tipped the bottle out through the car window and poured a swallow onto the ground. The whiskey seeped down through the loose gravel, into the packed, dry earth below.

Panic won out over anger. Maya turned tail and ran to her grandmother’s house, where she and her father had been living since their own home burned down. Horrible visions possessed her thoughts as she sped down sidewalks and cut through alleys. Broken traffic lights strobed red, like the flashers of an ambulance. Dead leaves in varying shades of orange and yellow shifted in the wind, like flickering flames. Passing cars exhaled gray exhaust, like the smoke from melting siding and burning wood.

When Maya turned the corner of the block she lived on, she almost couldn’t believe what she saw—or more accurately, what she was not seeing. There were no emergency vehicles. No rising flames or black smoke. Her grandmother’s house was intact.

Maya rushed inside, afraid that she would find her grandmother dead, but she didn’t. The old woman was just fine. Maya collapsed into her arms, crying her eyes out, babbling on about the devil that killed her mother.

Maya’s grandmother told her that there was no such thing as the Devil and that sometimes bad things happen for no good reason. She let her take the day off and made her a birthday cake—chocolate with buttercream frosting dotted witch chocolate chips along the outer edge. They pored over an old photo album, reminiscing about Maya’s mother. It helped dull the pain of that terrible day—the anniversary of her birth and of her mother’s death.

As the day progressed, Maya’s thoughts turned toward her father. She wondered how he was holding up. He was an old-fashioned kind of man, hardworking and quiet about his emotions, but she knew he was hurting. His pain was as clear in his eyes as it was in the empty whiskey bottles on his nightstand.

The encounter she had with the Devil, or the Nain Rouge, or whatever the hell it was, fell to the back of her mind. Maya was focused on doing something nice for her father when he got home, the same way her grandmother had tried to make the day better for her. Together they prepared her father’s favorite meal—a medium-rare steak with thick homemade fries.

Her father always got home by 6:30, so Maya had the table set and dinner ready by 6:15. By 7:00 p.m. the food was cold, and Maya’s father still wasn’t home. Sometime after 9:00, the police came to the house. Maya watched from the other room as the somber-faced officer told her sobbing grandmother about the car accident.

Her grandmother would try to hide it from her, but she’d learn that the crash wasn’t some freak accident. Her father had been driving while under the influence. That’s what was written in the official report, at least. But Maya knew the truth. The crash had been the work of the Devil.

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.

Fiction Fragments: Steven Van Patten

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week on Girl Meets Monster, I chatted with Jessica Guess about her horror novella, Cirque Berserk (2020) and how she created a space for herself in a genre where she felt absent.

This week, I welcome award-winning horror writer, publisher, screenwriter, and TV stage manager Steven Van Patten.

Brooklyn native Steven Van Patten is the author of the critically acclaimed Brookwater’s Curse trilogy, about an 1860s Georgia plantation slave who becomes law enforcement within the vampire community. In contrast, the titular character in his Killer Genius series is a modern day hyper-intelligent black woman who uses high-end technology as a socially conscious serial killer.

SVP’s short fiction includes contributions to nearly a dozen horror anthologies, including the Stoker Award nominated New York State of Fright. A collection of short horror and dark fiction stories entitled Hell At The Way Station, published by his company Laughing Black Vampire Productions and co-authored by acclaimed storyteller, Marc Abbott hit shelves in 2018.

Along with a plethora of other honors and accolades, SVP won three African-African-American Literary Awards in 2019, two for Hell At The Way Station (Best Anthology and Best In Science Fiction) and one for Best Independent Publisher. He’s written about everything from sleep demons to the Harlem Hellfighters of WWI for episodes of the YouTube series’ Extra Credit and Extra Mythology. He’s also a contributor for Viral Vignettes, a charity-driven YouTube comedy series benefitting The Actor’s Fund. He uses his full name on Facebook but goes by @svpthinks on Twitter and Instagram. When he’s not creating macabre literature, he can be found stage managing television shows primarily in New York City and occasionally on the West Coast. Along with being a member of the New York Chapter of The Horror Writer’s Association, he’s also a member of The Director’s Guild of America and professional arts fraternity Gamma Xi Phi. His website is www.laughingblackvampire.com.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Steven. I am almost ashamed to say that I haven’t read the Brookwater’s Curse trilogy, but it is on my TBR list. I’m interested in reading the trilogy because I love vampires, and I wrote a slave narrative featuring a vampire. Your story is about a male slave who becomes an important part of vampire society, and my story is about a young woman who escapes slavery but still has a lot of obstacles to maneauver while gaining a better understanding of her identity in the context of the antebellum South while traveling with a vampire. My first question is why vampires? And my second question is why slavery? What about these two subjects/characters called to you to tell a story? How does being part of vampire society help or hinder your protagonist? What inspired this trilogy?

SVP: Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I’m thrilled to be talking to a mavin such as yourself. I think I was drawn to vampires because as a kid, I didn’t always see them all as monsters. I mean, I saw Christopher Lee’s Dracula as a monster, but William Marshall’s Blacula was a different case. There were some shades of grey. He tried to end the slave-trade. He was in love. He was misunderstood and in many ways his own worst enemy. And it’s that line from Scream, Blacula, Scream that stuck with me forever. It’s from the scene where he is cornered by two rather stereotypical 1970s pimps after disregarding their hooker. After listening to their nonsense, Blacula said, “You’ve made a slave of your sister and you’re still slaves imitating your slave masters!” Then he proceeds to kill them. But for me, a few things happen there. First, as a kid, I get to see this super dignified brother handle some street mess, but I also get a glimpse of how social ills can get addressed within the horror genre. So the only thing left in my head was, since Blacula, aka Prince Mamuwalde was of direct African descent, I began to wonder what an African-American would experience, feel and say if put in that situation. By the way, in Brookwater’s Curse, I don’t spend a great deal of time on the plantation. In fact, I let him get taken by the supernatural and get himself isolated very quickly. And I let him struggle with a sort of survivor’s guilt, while never losing his soul as a black man. This gets him in trouble more than once, because anytime he develops a relationship with black and brown humans, he ends up going against his marching orders, which are to hunt werewolves and protect the secret society of monsters in general.

GMM: I am intrigued by the concept of a “socially conscious serial killer”. I immediately thought of Dexter Morgan who channeled his drive to murder into a public service by eliminating threats to his community. How is your character different from Dexter?

SVP: Dexter comes up every once in awhile, but the truth is, my Killer Genius series was inspired by Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lector more than anything else. It occurred to me that if someone were to write a story about a black woman killing a bunch of people, it’s usually over some man being an asshole. Like an elongated episode of ‘Snapped’. I never saw a socially conscious black woman, so I invented Kendra, a black woman who is able to keep ahead of law enforcement by being super smart like a Dexter Morgan or a Hannibal Lector. One of the biggest differences between her and Dexter is that she’s actually more versatile. She can kill up close in a disguise, or she can hack into a military satellite and blast you from space. I’m particularly proud of how I came up with her kill for this one misogynist rapper while he’s performing on a 106 & Park derivative. The other big difference is of course, her agenda. Dexter was like a king snake of serial killers and he in a way, was feeding this horrible disfunction born from childhood trauma. While my Kendra certainly has her own childhood and adolescent demons, she’s more focused. I want to say she has a clearer vision and is more of a zealot, or a crusader literally attacking ignorant white and black people as a way of motivating change in society over all.

GMM: I’ve always written about dark subjects and over the years people, especially people with a strong religious background, have asked me “why horror?” As I’m sure you’re aware, there is often a misconception about horror writers being maladjusted people. Have you encountered similar questions about your writing? Have you been accused of being a “bad” person because of what you write? Has your connection to a larger community of horror writers helped you feel more confident about being a horror writer, or have you always felt at ease writing about monsters?

SVP: Here is where I may piss some people off, but since I get pissed off when confronted by the kinds of statements you mentioned, I’m going to just say it. Truth is, I have studied just enough history to see most organized religion as a construct meant to hold certain people in place. I’m not knocking the fellowship, being grateful to the universe, Kirk Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, none of that. But, when our black ancestors were brought here, I can’t say for certain what they all were worshipping, but I’m pretty sure it was not a blonde, blue-eyed Jesus. Unfortunately, a lot of folks can’t get past that, because whatever we had was beaten out of us while something else was beaten into us. Follow that up with Hollywood bastardizing and misrepresenting hoodoo, voodoo, Santeria and Yoruba cultures for white folks to kick up their heels and scream ‘eek’ and now they have us rejecting something we might actually need if we bothered to understand it. At least, those are my thoughts on the subject.

No one has ever come out and called me a bad person, but it’s been insinuated that something is wrong with me. And yes, I have been confronted by the naysayers and I’ve received the shade, particularly if I picked the wrong event to be a part of. But the people looking down their nose at me are often the same people wouldn’t know a decent horror movie if it bit them in the ass AND won’t tell Jermaine that no one cares about his mixed-tape. Because of that, I don’t exactly lose a lot of sleep over those people or their opinions. 

Being a part of the larger community, finding people like yourself is a morale boost. It lets me know I’m not alone in my horror nerdom or my pursuit to write about things that go bump in the night. And it’s funny you should bring it up because growing up around certain kinds of dudes, I only let a handful of friends know I was into this sort of thing. But I’m older now, and not as worried about rejection as I used to be. And yes, I will be comfortable with monsters until the day I die.

Excerpt from “The Patron Saint”

“You’re my motherfucking lawyer! You’re supposed to make this kind of shit go away! As much money as I made the label last year! Y’all got me hiding in this hotel room like some kind of fugitive! This is some bullshit!”

Sitting at the edge of the super king-sized hotel room bed wearing only a bathing suit, Kimberly stared absently at the TV on the wall in front of her. This bore a stark contrast to fully clothed Manuel’s animated pacing back and forth across the room as he screamed into his cellphone. She thought about turning the TV on so she wouldn’t have to listen, but figured in his agitated state that she would only get yelled at or worse.

“Seriously! What the fuck am I paying you for?”

She couldn’t hear the lawyer’s side of the conversation, but could tell that the lawyer was asking uncomfortable questions.

“What? No, she’s fine! She loves me and she loves Vegas. You sound like that punk ass cop that left a message a few minutes ago.”

Another pause.

“What? Her father? I don’t care about him. Fuck him! If he was a real nigga, he’d call me himself. Going to the damn cops like a little bitch!”

No matter what you hear or see, do not turn around. Do not face me, child!

Kimberly’s breath stopped as her mind struggled to process where a disembodied voice could possibly be coming from.

“Sam? Sam! I know this motherfucker didn’t just hang up on me…”

If he hadn’t been in such an angry state, Manuel might have noticed the growing shadow moving behind him as the form of a curvaceous, statuesque woman with undulating hair drifted off the wall and into the room.

Manuel threw the cellphone on the bed, just behind Kimberly. “I’m so fucking mad right now. I need to fuck you again just to calm my ass down. Take them damn clothes off, girl!”

He began to unbuckle his pants.

Kimberly neither moved or gave any indication that she heard him.

“Bitch, perhaps you didn’t hear Daddy! I said…”

Then he heard the hissing. He turned around.

“What the fu—”

The entity grabbed Manuel by the shoulders, accosting him as if he were a small child, with a strength that dwarfed his. The ten snakes in the apparition’s hair lunged forward, each of the mouths burying fangs into his flesh. His chocolate brown skin turned a marble-like grey as the poisons filled his body. He screamed for only a few seconds as the toxins quickly petrified his vocal chords.

Kimberly peripherally caught a split second of Manuel’s agonized last moments before she closed her eyes. The monster must have sensed that Kimberly had peeked because she heard the voice again.

DO NOT LOOK AT ME!

A moment later, Manuel’s lifeless body crashed down to the floor with a ‘thud’ in front of Kimberly. Her eyes drifted down. Whatever had been injected into him was toxic enough to literally melt him. Flesh and muscles bubbled into a jelly. Bones disintegrated to ash trapped inside the jelly. Hours from now, a large black stain on the carpet would be all that remained. She closed her eyes but couldn’t escape the image of the mess on the floor.

Go to your grandmother, that she might teach you the ways of your ancestors and not the way of the idolaters that brought your people here in bondage.

“My grandmother? Who are you?”

I am the one who was defiled by one of my gods, made an abomination by another, and rejected and vilified by my own kind. It was only in the underworld that I found the orishas and loa and ascended ones of Africa. Like me, they want actual justice meted out in this world and the next. I am Medusa, The Accursed One! Evil men feared me hundreds of years ago and they shall fear me again!

The shadow drifted back towards the wall from where it had entered and disappeared. Sensing that the gorgon had left, Kimberly opened her eyes and looked again at what was left of Manuel. Recoiled on the bed, she suppressed a scream and cried quietly for a few minutes.

It would take her some time, but she eventually found the strength to get dressed, grab her things, and leave the hotel.

~*~

“This bastard is gonna act all indignant, like he was parent of the decade! Fucking dream-slaying, hating-ass Negro!”

Cathy drove her white BMW M4 Coupé as fast as New York City’s FDR Drive would allow, which during rush hour on a Wednesday wasn’t nearly as fast as she preferred. Before her girlfriend Nicole called, Cathy had been cursing up a storm as she cut off more cautious drivers with signal-free lane changes and flipped them her middle finger whenever they dared honked their horns in protest.

“So he’s blaming you?” Nicole’s voice blared over the car’s speakers. Nicole, like Cathy, was a dedicated party girl, enabler, and equal opportunity narcissist. She was the shoulder to cry on, the friend who took Cathy’s side no matter how horrible she’d acted or how ridiculous her course of action. “Him and his damn cupcakes! Fuck him! Y’all are doing the right thing! Manuel is going to make your baby a star. He told me so!”

“That’s right. And so what if she lost her virginity to him? Shit, that’s Manuel Hightower! The motherfuckers we lost our virginity to wasn’t even close to that stature!”

“Child! I know that’s right!”

Betrayer of women! Betrayer of your own child! You gave your child’s innocence and honor away for nothing!

“Bitch! What you said?”

“I said, ‘child, I know that’s right’. What you thought I said?”

Cathy’s eyes caught a flash of the gorgon’s red gaze in her rearview mirror. The hair snakes’ fangs found Cathy’s ears, neck, and skull. The last thing Cathy saw was her milk chocolate complexion turning green-ish grey as the car swerved out of control, bounced off an Acura RDX, then slammed straight into a guardrail. Despite the damage to the car, Nicole’s voice could still be heard asking if her friend was okay.

Until the gas tank exploded.

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.