Tag women fiction writers

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.

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Fiction Fragments: Deesha Philyaw

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Christopher Golden about his new novel, Red Hands.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes National Book Award finalist Deesha Philyaw.

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, THE SECRET LIVES OF CHURCH LADIES, is a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The collection focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church. Deesha is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, dead housekeeping, TueNight, Apogee Journal, Barrelhouse, Harvard Review, The Baltimore Review, Electric Literature and elsewhere. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Deesha, and congratulations on your nomination for the National Book Award for Fiction. Tell me about your collection of short stories, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Where do the stories come from? Which stories are your favorites in the collection and why?

DP: Thanks, Michelle! The stories come from a few places: a deep nostalgia that I have for my childhood, growing up in the South; memories of growing up in the church, and in particular, of church women; memories of women outside of the church, including my mother and my grandmother; and primarily, my decades-long interest in dissatisfied women, driven by my own dissatisfaction at various periods in my life. I love all the stories in the collection, but my favorites are “Peach Cobbler,” because the main character and her awful situation just get inside you, and lots of readers have told me that it’s their favorite; “How to Make Love to a Physicist,” because it’s a nerdy love story with a happy ending in an otherwise fairly dark collection; and “Jael,” because the main character is incredibly brave, and I just want to hug her.

GMM: The Church plays an important role in Black communities in the United States, and has almost become a trope in fiction about Black people since it seems to be such an integral part of culture. I didn’t go to church as a kid and didn’t have the experience of going to service on Sundays. What would you tell a heathen like me about The Church and why it is important to Black communities?

DP: It goes back to slavery, when belief in a better life to come sustained our ancestors. At the same time, for some enslaved people, Christianity fueled rebellion. Post-Emancipation, the church became a cornerstone of Black community; the first schools for freed people were in churches. HBCUs grew out of churches. And of course, the church was at the crux of the Civil Rights Movement. And now, even as the church holds less sway in the lives of younger generations, it’s influence is still felt–sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And it’s important to note that Black Christians are not a monolith, though we typically think of the conservative Black evangelical denominations when we talk about “the” Black Church.

GMM: Many writers create stories based on personal experiences and even base characters on people they know. The vampire in my novel, Invisible Chains, is based on a real person with the same name. Not to put you on the spot, but is anyone from your past or who you currently know going to read these stories and say, “hey, that story is about me”? Will they be happy, or will they be upset?

DP: The story “Dear Sister” is about five half-sisters who have the same father. I have four half-sisters. There are aspects of that story that are drawn from our lives, but not in ways that any of my sisters would point to a character and say, “Hey, that’s me!” I wanted to respect their privacy, so I started with a premise that reflects our real-life situation, but fictionalized from there. One of my sisters is a nurse, but she is nothing like Tasheta! Also, there’s lots of mother-daughter stuff in these stories, some (but not all) of it influenced by my complicated relationship with my late mother. But there’s no mother character that’s my mom, and no mother-daughter situation that is us. I lost my mom to breast cancer in 2005, and even though we made peace before she died, there was emotional unfinished business that it seems I needed to work out in these stories. There are pieces of me and pieces of us sprinkled throughout, and that happened organically, subconsciously. I didn’t set out to write a collection about mothers and daughters, but that’s what it is, in some respects.

Also, “How to Make Love to a Physicist” was inspired by a real person, a physicist who I had a crush on. Alas, the crush was unrequited, but my interest inspired this story. This person knows he inspired the story, and he gave me some technical help with the science stuff in it.

A fragment from “Peach Cobbler,” a story from Deesha’s short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

My mother’s peach cobbler was so good, it made God himself cheat on his wife. When I was five, I hovered around my mother in the kitchen, watching, close enough to have memorized all the ingredients and steps by the time I was six. But not too close to make her yell at me for being in the way. And not close enough to see the exact measurements she used. She never wrote the recipe down. Without having to be told, I learned not to ask questions about that cobbler, or about God. I learned not to say anything at all about him hunching over our kitchen table every Monday eating plate after plate of peach cobbler, and then disappearing into the bedroom I shared with my mother.

I became a silent student of my mother and her cobbler-making ways. Even when I was older and no longer believed that God and Reverend Troy Neely were one and the same, I still longed to perfect the sweetness and textures of my mother’s cobbler. My mother, who fed me TV dinners, baked a peach cobbler with fresh peaches every Monday, her day off from the diner where she waited tables. She always said Sunday was her Saturday and Monday was her Sunday. What I knew was that none of her days were for me.

And for many of those Mondays off and on during my childhood, God (to my child’s mind) would stop by and eat it—the entire 8 x 8 pan. My mother never ate any of the cobbler herself; she said she didn’t like peaches. She would shoo me out of the kitchen before God could offer me any, but I doubted he would have offered even if I’d sat right down next to him. God was an old fat man, like a Black Santa, and I imagined my mother’s peach cobbler contributing to his girth.

Some Mondays, God would arrive after dinner and leave as I lay curled up on the couch watching Little House on the Prairie in the living room. Other times, my mother and God would already be in the bedroom when I got home from school. I could hear moaning and pounding, like a board hitting a wall, as soon as I entered the house. I would shut the front door quietly behind me and tiptoe down the hall to listen outside the bedroom door. “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God!” my mother would cry. I could hear God too, his voice low and growly, saying, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Even before he started coming by on Mondays, I had suspected that Pastor Neely, the pastor of Hope in Christ Baptist Church, was God. He was big, black, and powerful, as I imagined God to be. My very first Easter speech, memorized in kindergarten during Sunday School, was “Jesus is the Son of God,” but I didn’t find it odd that Black God could have a blue-eyed, blond son. Pastor Neely was dark, his wife was pale, and their son, Trevor, who was around my age, had gray eyes and wasn’t too much darker than the Jesus whose picture hung all over church. Plus, midway through every Sunday service, Pastor Neely, his wife, and Trevor stood in the front of the sanctuary and collected a love offering from the congregation as the choir sang, “I Love You (Lord, Today).” So it was easy for me to deduce that Pastor Neely was the “Lord.” My mother’s cries of passion through our bedroom door confirmed it.

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 in 2021!

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: Jade Woodridge

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week I chatted with Curtis M. Lawson about his new short story collection, Devil’s Night.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes fellow Seton Hill University alum, Jade Woodridge.

Jade T. Woodridge is a Washington D.C./Maryland native, currently living in Southwest Michigan. While her short fiction dabbles in various genres and styles, Science Fiction and Fantasy seems to be at the forefront. Her works can be described as emotionally driven, with the question of spirituality beneath its layers.

Jade has a BA in English Literature from Seton Hill University (2016) and a MA in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Maryland (2020). Her works have been featured in the Chiron Review, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, WitchWork, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. [Untitled] is her first novel.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Jade. Tell me about the fragment you submitted. Something sinister seems to be happening, but maybe it’s just the imagination of little girls. Without giving away too many spoilers, can you tell us what’s happening to Marie and Louise?

JW: Marie and Louise are two little southern girls at the wrong place at the wrong time. Children are so innocent but very perceptive and I’ve always wondered about their response to tragedies like suicide. The girls don’t really know what’s going on, but they know that, whatever they are seeing, it feels wrong and scary. The comparison of Marie’s hair to a rope is the only thing little Louise — a black child living in the past — could think of to associate with death.

GMM: We share a table of contents in the recently released Midnight & Indigo anthology featuring 22 specualtive fiction stories by Black women. I just read your story, “Millenium,” and wondered if, like “The Sweeper Man,” if more of your stories feature children in really dark situations. Do you have a preference for writing younger characters, or is this simply a coincidence?

JW: Haha! Quite a bit of my shorts feature children. I have a piece of flash fiction in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature titled “Pigeons” about a little girl learning about acceptance and differences while feeding pigeons with her grandmother. It’s a fluffy piece compared to “Millenium” and “The Sweeper Man”. A longer work in progress of mine also features a little girl and, like Marie and Louise, she does go through a few things in her childhood that no child should have to go through. I was not very emotional as a child; though I was never put in situations like Marie, Louise, or my other young characters, it’s cathartic to write from the perspective and emotions of innocence. I’ve noticed that it is only in my short fiction that I have child characters, and perhaps that is the coincidence.

GMM: I’m writing these questions on election night, which is only three days from when this post goes live. I usually don’t wait to the last minute to get questions out to my guests, but I’ve really been struggling to stay focused with everything happening in the world. Are you having a similar experience? How have current events affected either your ability to write, or what you choose to write about?

JW: Current events haven’t affected the content of my writing. Writing has always been an escape for me. Sometimes I feel I need an escape at more times than others, though, and this has been one of those times! I told a writing friend recently that sometimes I just need to retreat into the worlds that I created where I am in control of what goes on. I can’t live in my own little world forever, though, and therein lies the problem.

Excerpt from “The Sweeper Man”

It was a hot day and Marie and Louise ran barefooted by the little lake looking for frogs and those slippery newts. Their toes dug into the cool dark muck and wiggled like worms. Marie’s toes stuck out like a sore thumb; the nails and little white toes wiggled like the long pale bellies of trout. Louise could barely distinguish her toes from under the mud they blended in so well.

“Your toes look like a trout when they go belly up.” Louise giggled.

Marie crouched down and frog-hopped her way to the grass, her long silky plat swinging. “Well your feet look like them bullheads wriggling in muddy water,” she said with each hop.

Louise giggled and frog-hopped after her. Her hair would never swing the way Marie’s did and Louise frowned some. Her long plat was like a tail. Seeing Marie crouched down in the grass with her long plat made Louise think of a wild cat. She wanted to be a cat too, just like Marie, so she crouched down real low in the grass too, crawling up to where Marie lay beneath the bushes, mesmerized by something. Her little feet sticking out plain as day made the perfect target, but Marie wasn’t playing anymore. “I got you frowg!” never escaped Louise’s smiling lips as she saw where Marie was looking: a girl was crying on the other side of the lake. She was a little older than Marie and Louise. They could tell by the way her breast buds jutted out from her stained shirt and the way her hips curved just a little as she waded through the water. She looked sick, Louise thought. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dark spots blotted her face, the type of spots you got when you get hit with the smooth lake stones when the school boys got to sneaking after you and tease you when no one was looking.

“Lou, she can’t go no farther, can she? Daddy said the lake’s too deep to go out too far.” Marie’s voice quivered just a little with uncertainty. Louise got this cold feeling all over her body as the girl went farther and farther out in the water until it was up to her shoulders. She had a far gone look in her eyes like she wasn’t seeing, and her white face seemed almost gray. She wasn’t in there, the girl with the water up to her neck now. She looked dead.

“No!” Marie screeched, jumping to her little feet. She darted across the grass to the muddy bank, “You come back here! Come back!” she cried, but it was too late: the water was up to her chin, then ears, as if she were using her last bit of strength to balance on the very tip of her big toe.

“Do something, Lou!” Marie screamed back to the bank under the bushes to where Louise lay frozen with dread. She knew what was going to happen. She had heard her grandmamma drown some pups before. She’d seen the life bubble from their lips with her own wet eyes. The girl was too far away, and Louise was too little; she didn’t have the powerful arms her daddy had to swim out and fetch her and back again.

Time seemed to go in slow motion just then. The girl in the water sputtered and coughed as if she had sudden begun seeing the error she had committed and her arms began to flail. She slipped. She went under. She bobbed up, lungs too clogged with water to scream. She went under. She bobbed up, closer to the center of the lake, arms flailing. She went under.

Silence.

Marie just stood there on the bank breathing hard. Her shoulders rose and fell with each breath and her little body shook. She didn’t quite understand what had happened. She was half expecting the girl in the lake to bob back up smiling and swim back to the bank, “I fooled ya real good, didn’t I?” she would say.

But nothing happened.

“I don’t wanna play anymore,” Marie’s voice went high at the end as if she were to start crying. She turned and walked away. Louise jumped up and followed after her, shaking uncontrollably. What just happened?

Marie’s plat swung with each hurried step she took and Louise watched it as it swung. It didn’t look like a tail anymore. It looked like a rope, a rope slowly tightening itself around her pale neck.

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: V. Castro

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week I chatted with New England horror writer Renee S. DeCamillis. She took a deep dive into her novel The Bone Cutters, and the inspiration for the book. Go check it out.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes indie dark speculative fiction writer, V. Castro to talk about two of my favorite subjects: erotica and vampires.

Violet Castro is a Mexican American writer originally from Texas now residing in the UK with her family. When not caring for her three children, she dedicates her time to writing. She is also the co-founder of Fright Girl Summer, a website dedicated to women in horror and dark fiction.  For More information about her books and other publications, please visit www.vvcastro.com

For More information about her books and other publications, please visit www.vvcastro.com

You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram @vlatinalondon

Three Questions +1

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, V. I’ve been enjoying your posts on Instagram that feature beautiful Isle of White landscapes and spooky old cemeteries. My first question is, are you open for house guests? And second, what circumstances led to you becoming an expat from Texas to live in the UK? Aside from changing the settings of your stories, what impact has this cultural shift had on your writing?

VC: Writers are always welcome in my home and to join me in my adventures! I will be more than happy to travel everywhere once the pandemic is under control. Fingers crossed for StokerCon next year!

I moved to the UK with a previous relationship. We now co-parent our teenage son so that is why I am still here. The cultural shift has not impacted my writing as much as the travel. Since living in the UK, I have travelled across Europe, Japan, Africa, and Iceland. Experiencing various cultures and seeing different settings has broadened my world view.

My own cultural influences everything I write because it is who I am, and I am proud of my skin.

GMM: As you’ve probably guessed by now, I love vampires. And, your fragment is enough of an enticement for me to pick up this series of books. Vampires are definitely sexy and work well in erotica, but they are also monsters. How do you navigate the complexity of scary versus sexy? What makes vampires scary? What makes them sexy? Do you think male vampires are scarier than female vampires?

VC: I think what makes vampires scary is their superiority over humans. We have an arrogance that we are at the top of the food chain but with vampires in the mix we are not. Humans are also driven by a moral compass whereas I imagine as a vampire it would be easy to not live with the moral boundaries we find ourselves bound by. Why subscribe to monogamy when you might live for thousands of years? That is not how humans evolved. How is taking a life wrong when you must to survive.

I find vampires sexy because the act of draining someone of their fluids is very erotic. Someone allowing themselves to be submissive is sexy. The possibility of not having the same hang-ups as humans is also alluring.

As far as balancing scary and sexy, I write what feels right. I write the story in my mind guided by my own emotions, desires, past experiences, and pain. Vampires were once human too.

I don’t write many male vampires because so much time has been spent on male versions of everything. I think female vampires are scarier because we are often driven by more than base desires. I also feel if women had the power of the vampire, we would be unstoppable. Even male vampires would not know what to do with us.

GMM: When did you start writing erotica, and when did you first see a connection between horror and erotica? I mean, what is it about vampires, or monsters in general (werewolves, demons, ghosts) that turn people on?

VC: I wrote my first erotic piece in high school. I am a huge Danzig fan and would listen to music while writing. Having very strict Baptist parents at the time, it was something I had to hide. Despite this, my emotions and imagination gravitated towards the two. I can’t explain it any other way except it felt right. I wish I had kept my journal of writing, but I didn’t feel good enough and put thoughts of writing away.

During a difficult third pregnancy, I began writing again seriously because I needed an outlet. As a woman, age has only made me more sure of who I am. I haven’t stopped. Life is short and I want to live to the fullest not hampered by fear.

Why are we turned on by dark creatures? Human lives are dominated by the mundane and fear. Making oneself vulnerable carries consequences. It’s exciting to think about an existence that isn’t bound by time and age. What would you do knowing you had incredible strength and very few vulnerabilities? Creatures have a freedom we don’t believe we have. I think during sex there is an exchange of being in the dominant role or submissive role. Vampires take that concept further because there is an element of danger. Vampires can afford to take more risks. And again, the morality humans cling to is not at play. I often have my creatures in consenting, ADULT polyamorous relationships.

GMM: Polyamory seems to be a bit more normalized these days in terms of more people being open about their relationships. Plus, there are podcasts, blogs, books, social groups, conferences, and the concept of polyamory is also becoming more prevalent in romance and erotica. One of the most famous series of novels featuring polyamorous relationships is Laurell K. Hamiliton’s Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series. I just finished reading her latest novel, Sucker Punch. I enjoyed the novel, but my two major complaints were that I felt like she was hitting me over the head with her discussion of polyamorous relationships, and there wasn’t a single fucking vampire in the novel. Jean-Claude, Asher and Damien were mentioned but none of them made an appearance. How do you incorporate polyamory into your stories? Is it a focal point of the narrative? Are you trying to be the spokesperson for polyamory like Hamilton seems to be, or are you simply incorporating it as a preference for your characters?

VC: I’m not trying to be a spokesperson for polyamory. I just think life is short and people should explore themselves and their desires. Just as gender and sexuality can be fluid, I don’t see why relationships can’t be. Writing these types of relationships in my stories just reflects my open mindedness towards life and the unexpected that it usually lays at our feet. I also don’t feel horror has to follow a formula. It can be sexy, dark and fun. It is an escape to those places of fantasy we don’t venture in our daily lives.

An excerpt from The Erotic Modern Life of Malinalli the Vampire

It is my last night in Dublin before I head to the south coast of Ireland. Even though it is summer, there is always a damp chill in the evening air. What a change from the southern hemisphere of the world, the part I am most used to. This is exactly why I have decided to cross the pond and explore the Old World.

I am on my final pub and third glass of white wine with “Big Love” by Fleetwood Mac playing. What a great way to end the evening. The paunchy bartender bellows last call over the din of the bar. People neck whatever they’re drinking and shuffle towards the door. Through the thinning herd, a corner booth comes into view.

There he is, sitting with his mates at a table covered in Stella Artois bottles and pint glasses. A box of books, the contents of which all look the same, rests at his feet. Was he peddling them? Did he write them? Doesn’t matter. I want him.

We don’t find chemistry, it finds us. Perhaps it is a sign that all those long-lost particles blown to bits in the beginning of time have found their way to one another again. Stardust finding itself in another body. Until we reunite with it, our thoughts and desires will burn like meteors, scalding skin, brain, bone, and soul. Fate has decided I’m not going back to my room anytime soon.

The question is, will he notice the only brown girl in the place with the leather jacket, dress too short to bend over, large hoop earrings and lips tinted so red they’d leave a ring around his cock?

The bartender shouts last call again for those of us that remain. I drink the dredges of my wine, waiting for a glance from the stranger in a tweed newsboy cap, jeans, and black t-shirt that reveals the bottom half of tattoos on both arms. I watch him take the beer bottle into his mouth then lick his lips. Now I’m convinced I want to take him home. Just one last souvenir from my time in Dublin. He’s perfect.

Our gaze locks. His eyes are the colour of stormy coastal waters and mine so dark they look nearly black, or so I’m told. Suddenly my thighs are slick—something I notice since I’m wearing nothing underneath my thin jersey dress. The wetness between my legs becomes harder to ignore the longer I stare. His look says, “I’m here,” and my body answers, “I’m coming.” In this moment I’m a piece of driftwood being pulled to shore by a current I can’t control.

I walk over to the table; his friends eye the brazen woman with a hungry look on her face. They are certainly drunk, talking too loud with heavy lidded eyes, but he’s not. He knows I’ve come for him.

“Hey fellas.” I only greet the others to be polite then turn my attention to the man I’m even more attracted to the closer I get. A stubbly five o’clock shadow covers his face, but not so thick you can’t see his cleft chin. I touch his shoulder to let him know my presence is a formal invitation.

“So, can I help you carry those books home?” A cupid bow mouth curls to a slight smile. He looks at his friends who are too gobsmacked to say anything except stifle their boyish schoolyard giggles. I could give zero fucks what they’re thinking, because all I have on my mind is fucking this guy tonight.

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: Renee S. DeCamillis

Michelle R. Lane 2 Comments

Last week I chatted with Sonora Taylor about the zen of drinking tea during an alien invasion. Go check it out if you haven’t already.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes Renee S. DeCamillis. A few months ago I participated in an online coffee house where we both read some of our work. I really enjoyed listening to Renee’s reading from her novella, The Bone Cutters. I haven’t had a chance to read it, but it is on my TBR list.

Author of the psychological thriller/horror/supernatural novella The Bone Cutters, published through Eraserhead Press as part of their 2019 New Bizarro Authors Series, Renee is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the New England Horror Writers, and the Horror Writers of Maine.

She is also an Editorial Intern for the 5-time Bram Stoker award-winning speculative fiction and dark fiction publisher Crystal Lake Publishing, and a writer for Phi3 Comics. She has her BA in psychology from the University of Southern Maine, earned her MFA in Popular Fiction Writing from the Stonecoast Graduate Program, and attended Berklee College of Music as a music business major with guitar as her principle instrument. Her short fiction appears in Deadman’s Tome: The Conspiracy Issue, Siren’s Call eZine Issue 37 the 6th Annual Women In Horror Month Edition, The Other Stories Podcast. She has a story forthcoming in the 2020 anthology Wicked Women, a collection showcasing women writers of the NEHW. Also forthcoming is her first comic book, with a publication date TBD. Her poetry appears in The Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase Volume IV. Renee is a former model, school rock band teacher, creative writing teacher, private guitar instructor, A&R rep for an indie record label, therapeutic mentor, psychological technician, and preschool teacher. She is also a former gravedigger; she can get rid of a body fast without leaving a trace, and she is not afraid of getting her hands dirty. Renee lives in the woods of Maine with her husband, their son, and a house full of ghosts.

Website: reneesdecamillis.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ReneeDeCamillis/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renee_s._decamillis/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReneeDeCamillis

Three Questions

GMM: Hello, Renee. Welcome to Girl Meets Monster. I’m so glad to have you here for a chat. After listening to your reading from The Bone Cutters back in July, I got very excited about reading your book. I’m slowly working on the sequel to Invisible Chains, and an asylum will be one of the main settings. My novel is set in the mid-nineteenth century, but your book opens in a more modern setting. A lot of mental health facilities closed in the 1980s and 1990s, what time period is The Bone Cutters taking place in? Is it an asylum or a hospital with a mental health ward? What kind of research did you do for the setting?

RSD: The time period for The Bone Cutters is now, today, and the setting is a psychiatric hospital, inspired by one that I used to work at as a psychological technician. That last part—the position I held while working there—is a bit of a funny because Dory, the main character of my book, really rips on psych techs because of her horrible previous experiences in mental health facilities with subpar staff who go unchecked by those in power. (Though I say it’s a bit of a funny, I do not mean that mistreatment of patients by staff is funny at all. I’ve witnessed neglect and mistreatment of patients by co-workers, and I reported all of it, which is part of what inspired me to write about horribly inept psych hospital staff.) I didn’t really need to do much research for this book because I have a degree in psychology, and I worked in the mental health field for quite a few years in various positions, providing various services. So, my research for the setting consisted of simply recalling memories from my experiences working in the mental health field, including my time as a psych tech in a psychiatric hospital.

GMM: The internal dialogue of your protagonist was fantastic and really conveyed the sense of confusion and discordant thoughts she’s experiencing while trying to come to terms with her new environment and her own mental illness…if she is really mentally ill. Without too many spoilers, can you give a little bit of background on your protagonist, what she’s experiencing, and what inspired this character?

RSD: Dory is quite a mixed bag of fucked up and beautiful. She is someone trying to stay safe while traveling through this crazy fucked up world that’s filled with predators and betrayers and manipulators. She’s a creative-minded loner who has suffered from multiple traumas and has no “real” family to speak of. She’s been betrayed and severely harmed by people who had claimed that they loved her, and she has developed serious trust issues from those experiences. This makes connecting with others and developing friendships exceedingly difficult for her because she feels like everyone is going to harm her eventually. She has also experienced multiple traumas while seeking mental health treatment in the past. The culmination of all her experiences has also created some festering anger issues within her that she tries hard to keep under control. Then when she gets blue papered, involuntarily committed, to this dysfunctional psychiatric hospital, they keep pumping her with all sorts of different psychotropics, which makes it difficult to tell who the real Dory is and what is just the medication taking over her mind and what are just rumors from those around her.

These days, where many teachers and doctors and social workers want to label “unusual” behavior as something other, we all pretty much can say we have a “psychological disorder” of some kind: anxiety, depression, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, etc. That aspect of our society makes me feel like Dory is a relatable character for many people. Dory is an odd duck with some quirks others don’t understand, but people around her want to label every single “odd” action as some sort of mental disorder. Maybe she does have a disorder, maybe more than one, but does she really have all the disorders that she’s accused of having? Which disorders does she truly have, and which ones are misdiagnosed or simply assumed by people incapable of making such claims? This is all left up to the reader to figure out as they read the story and get to know Dory.

GMM: Mental illness is a familiar trope in horror fiction, but the idea of harvesting bone dust to be used as a form of drug is not. The harvesting really is a horrifying process, but you execute the imagery in a way that makes it almost beautiful. Enticing. Which is why I suppose there are willing “Donors”. Where did this nightmarish idea come from?

RSD: Well, your word choice—”nightmarish”—hits the nail right on the head. The idea was inspired by a nightmare of mine. Isn’t that where it all begins anyways—in our nightmares? That crazy group counseling session from chapter one that you heard me read, that is where the story began, the part pulled out of my nightmare, though it didn’t happen exactly that way in my dream; I changed it to fit the story and the characters.

In my dream, I was at a First Friday Artwalk in Portland, Maine with a close friend of mine. She asked if I’d mind if we made a quick stop to see one of her friends. She had told him she’d swing by while we were in the city, and she promised me it would only take a few minutes. I agreed. When we stopped to see him, we walked into a large open room that had a big group of people all gathered and sitting around on the floor in a circle. There was no furniture in this room. I had no idea what was going on or who any of the people were. I noticed that one man, an extremely skinny guy with a gapped-tooth grin and a large grotesque scar around his collarbone (He is now my Slug Man in the book.), was addressing the whole group. My friend and I stood off to the side and remained quiet. While we stood there, I was trying to figure out why they were all gathered here and what they were doing. As I looked all around the circle of people, I noticed that every person there was grotesquely scarred, all in different locations on their bodies. I thought they might all be cutters, or maybe they had all attempted suicide and that this was a counseling group for people in those situations/mindsets. Trying to figure this all out, I focused in on what that man was saying. That’s when I realized that this was an NA group for people who harvested bone dust and used it as a drug, like heroin. They harvested from themselves, as well as from others. I was mortified. I was even more mortified when I realized that the man speaking was the “friend” my friend was there to see. She knew these people, was friends with these people. That’s when another realization hit me—this friend of mine, someone I’d been close friends with for many, many years, all of a sudden seemed like a complete stranger to me. I woke up after that and I immediately knew that scene needed to go into a story. I started writing The Bone Cutters (titled Chiseled High back then) that same day.

Once I sat to write the story, I decided to change the setting and circumstances, and, of course, I changed the character who discovers this group of addicts from me to Dory. (She is not me, though there are aspects of Dory’s character that I can relate to.) I’d been wanting to write a dysfunctional psychiatric hospital story for quite some time, and I had made other attempts before—some of which are still works-in-progress—so I went with that setting, finding it very fitting for this situation. Also, I have a love for the unreliable narrator, so I thought it would be great to cast the main character as someone of questionable mental faculties and often under the influence of “questionable substances”, which is how Dory was born.

Also, where the whole crazy, villainous drug addict type of character came from: throughout my life I have known many drug addicts, some former friends, former partners, some family members, some simply acquaintances. Some of them I had long, close relationships with. Because of those relationships and experiences I had with them, I had once tried to write a novel, my first novel, with a main character who falls into heroin addiction. I tried my best to make her a sympathetic character, as I was simultaneously trying to sympathize with and understand the loved ones in my life who were struggling with lifelong drug addictions. That character in my book started out extremely sympathetic, but where many beta readers lost that sympathy was halfway through the book when she started using heroin and fucking up her life even more than it already was. That book and that character, along with what began happening in my life with those close to me who were abusing drugs, made me realize I was not writing the right story or the right character for me. (I guess you could say that my beta readers lost their sympathy for my fictional drug addict character in my novel, just as I lost my sympathy for the real drug addicts in my life.)

The Bone Cutters goes much, much darker than my first novel, showing just how far certain addicts, like the ones I had once been close to in my real life, will go to get their fix. They hurt themselves. They hurt others. They’re sneaky. They’re manipulative. They lie about everything. And the depths to which they’ll stoop to get what they want or need is lower than low. No, not all addicts are the same, but I am a firm believer that there are many addicts who cannot be saved. No matter how much help they get, no matter how much support they have, they never stop using, they never stop their harmful and destructive behavior. I may get some hate mail for saying that, but it’s the truth; I know addicts like that. The ones that never change. To the people in their lives who aren’t users, it appears as though they enjoy the life of drug addiction, they enjoy all that goes along with the drug addict lifestyle. If they didn’t like it, wouldn’t they try to make changes? The Bone Cutters takes this idea and puts a dark spin on the why of this type of drug addict. Why can’t they stop using? Even when they have all the support and all the resources to help them get clean—why do they not stop? What makes them keep using? What makes them keep hurting themselves and others? What makes them keep destroying their life? What is their motivation? What is it pushing them to go that low with their behavior? This is where my horror-brain kicks in.

No, my book is not all about looking down on drug addicts and making them the bad guys, the villains, the monsters. It’s not like that at all, as readers will realize when they get to the ending (or maybe I should say the “non-ending”, since there’s a sequel coming). I do also know addicts who have recovered and moved on to do amazing and wonderful things with their lives, ones that move on to have success and happiness in their work and personal lives, and I do include characters like that in my book as well. There are many, many wonderful people out there who recover from drug addiction. So, my story wouldn’t be a truthful look at drug addicts if I made the users all bad guys and lost causes.

Excerpt from the sequel to The Bone Cutters (The title of the book is withheld for now.)

Chapter 1: The Carver, The Collector, and The Stitcher

A cloth is secured in his mouth, knotted behind his head, to keep him from screaming. A blindfold stretches across his eyes. The white-hot sting of the blade slicing through the skin of his shin makes him grit his teeth.

Only a whimper escapes.

Buck knife in hand, The Carver gets down to the bone quickly. Twin serpent-like scars run up the outside of both of The Carver’s forearms. They writhe and pulse as he reaches out and swaps the knife for a chisel and mallet. Like a modern-day Michelangelo, he begins whittling away at the victim’s tibia, the bigger of the two shin bones. Serpent scars slither around while he works.

Every hit of the mallet sends a shaking jolt through the restrained man. The chair legs rattle against the tiled floor with every jostle. His ankles are zip-tied to the wooden chair legs. His wrists are zip-tied to each side of the back of the chair. Tears soak the blindfold and leak down his cheeks from underneath. Snot bubbles at his nostrils. Strands of his shaggy brown hair stick to his sweaty temples.

Rather than creating a work of art, The Carver extracts bone shavings to crush into dust at a later time. With the help of The Collector, who is beside him, curls of shaved bone are caught onto a sheet of tinfoil.       

The foil is filled fast.

From behind The Carver, someone with gnarly scarred knuckles passes The Collector a second sheet of tin foil. The filled foil is switched with the empty.

The Carver reaches for a new tool. The chisel and mallet are swapped with a small utility knife.

Rapid shaving motions slide down the tibia over and over and over again.

More whimpering.

More chair rattling.

Sibling serpents shake and slither along with every movement of The Carver’s arms.

Bone dust is collected this time. The second batch is for immediate consumption.

Mixed with blood, the dust looks like sticky black tar heroin. Bone Cutters call it Dark Heaven or Red Sugar or simply Dust.

Deal done, The Stitcher steps out of the shadows, thread and needle held in grotesquely scarred hands, to seal the wound.

The victim is no longer whimpering.

The victim is no longer crying.

The victim is now passed out, head hung low, chin to chest. Whether from shock or blood loss is of no concern to The Carver or The Collector or The Stitcher.

All they’re here for is the Dust and the high that will come with it, as well as—

the money they’ll make off what they don’t smoke or inject themselves.

The Stitcher is thankful. Not just for the high-to-come and the money they’ll make—

It sure is easier to stitch the wound without all the shaking and blubbering that was going on a few moments ago.  The needle and thread zips back and forth through the flesh as smoothly as a whisper floating with the wind.  

Wound now sealed shut, it’s time to clear the scene. With two tips of the chair by The Collector and The Stitcher, The Carver carefully slides out the blood covered plastic tarp that is spread out underneath the victim and the chair. He rolls it up, preps it for disposal.

Then the zip-ties are snipped from the victim’s wrists and ankles and tucked securely into the tarp. Add in a few rocks from the park on the walk back to their den, and these Bone Cutters will send all remnants of this event down river.

All except the product and—

The buck knife.

The hilt of the knife is wiped clean. Then it’s placed in the victim’s hand, with his fingers wrapped around it, assuring only his prints are found.

The Carver, The Collector, and The Stitcher are good at covering their tracks. Maybe not the tracks in their skin or the scars that double as their own living entities (Those they wear with pride, like badges of honor.), but definitely the tracks of the assaults against all their unwilling victims.

Not all victims are unwilling.

Some enjoy the rush of the slice like a bite from a vampire.

The Donors.

Minions or Lackeys if you’re a non-dust-user.

Some might call them Renfields.

Many Bone Cutters (A.K.A. Dusters) also get a rush from the slice, but it does wear you down after a while. All that blood loss. All that pain. It’s much more satisfying and stimulating to inflict that pain on another. But when times get desperate—

they will again slice into themselves.

Scene all cleaned and sparkling, as though only the victim has been present, the three junkie-cutters vacate the premises. The tarp is rolled up tight and worn like a backpack by The Collector. After one last wipe of the outside doorknob, the three practically skip down the hallway and out onto the sidewalk, as giddy as children approaching an ice cream truck.    

While strolling away from the scene of the crime, as though nothing unusual has taken place, they hear the flutter of large wings overhead. The sound is moving towards the house they just left behind.     

They all look up, wondering if it’s what they think it is. A glimpse of huge, black wings zooming past the beam shining from the streetlight is confirmation.

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: Sonora Taylor

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week, Paul Tremblay stopped by Girl Meets Monster and we talked about impostor syndrome and how he deals with it, and he shared an excellent fragment from his short story, “We Will Never Live in the Castle.”

This week, I have the pleasure of speaking with Sonora Taylor. I haven’t had an opportunity to meet her in person, but I’m hoping to change that soon.

Sonora Taylor is the author of Little Paranoias: Stories, Without Condition, The Crow’s Gift and Other Tales, Please Give, and Wither and Other Stories. Her short story, “Hearts are Just ‘Likes,’” was published in Camden Park Press’s Quoth the Raven, an anthology of stories and poems that put a contemporary twist on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Taylor’s short stories frequently appear in The Sirens Call. Her work has also appeared in Frozen Wavelets, Mercurial Stories, Tales to Terrify, and the Ladies of Horror fiction podcast. Her latest book, Seeing Things, is now available on Amazon. She lives in Arlington, Virginia, with her husband.

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Sonora. I really enjoyed your fragment, because I love when horror/science fiction blends with humor in a story. There’s something about the humor that makes the horror a bit more unsettling while simultaneously more palatable. Like a cup of tea you drink while watching an alien invasion. Where did this story come from? What inspired it, and do you often include humor in your horror/science fiction?

ST: Thank you! I wrote this in 2016, which was when I’d gotten back into writing short stories and was seeing what forms, themes, and genres stuck with me. I’d been reading Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett around this time and was definitely influenced by their style of writing. I love absurdist and humorous horror, and I found myself thinking it’d be funny to write in the style of one of those self-care articles, but for how to relax during one of the least relaxing experiences I could think of. I originally considered writing a book of these sorts of essays called Consider This, but I didn’t have enough ideas. Then I started writing my first novel, Please Give; and all my attention went to that.

GMM: You mention the importance of self-care rather ironically in your fragment, but the idea of self-care has become a cultural phenomenon that has social, political and economic relevance, especially at this moment in our history. We obviously aren’t facing an alien invasion (not yet, but 2020 isn’t over), but we are facing a pandemic and an outcry for social change. How do you view self-care in this time of uncertainty, and what do you do to look after yourself on the darker days?

ST: I see self-care as a way to step back and focus your attention on taking care of you, especially in a time where we feel an even more pressing need to look out for each other and be caretakers–for loved ones, for marginalized people, for the greater good. Many of us, especially women, are taught to put ourselves last after we’ve taken care of the kids, the spouse, the world. But to me, this is all backwards because you can’t do those things if you haven’t been tending to yourself! I find I’m a better wife, daughter, dog mom, friend, writer, and activist when I’ve taken a breather and set aside time to reset myself.

I like to decompress with simple beauty rituals, which I can fortunately do at home since I still don’t feel comfortable going to a salon (though I do miss getting pedicures and massages). I love taking baths with nice bath bombs and music. I also like to use face masks and sheet masks to give myself a boost. Drinking tea is one of my self-care practices, but that’s more a daily habit than anything special. I also like to plan and prepare really nice meals. I made a pasta last week with chanterelles and I felt so good serving it and eating it.

GMM: What can we expect from you next? What are you currently working on? Have the events of 2020 had an impact on your writing, either your process or what you’re writing about?

ST: Right now I’m working on my next short story collection. It’s called Someone to Share My Nightmares and will focus on romantic/erotic horror. I’m also formulating my fourth novel, an apocalyptic nature novel called Errant Roots.

I do find that it’s harder to sit and write this year than in previous years. My mind is in a lot of places and it can feel exhausting to sit down and write a whole other reality. I’ve written, but it’s been slower than normal. When I finish a piece, though, it feels fantastic.

Tea Time by Sonora Taylor

You should always take the time to make yourself a cup of tea.

With the stress of the day-to-day, it can often be difficult to remember simple acts of self-care. Or we remember, but choose not to partake because they seem selfish, or mundane, or useless. This could not be farther from the truth. Any act of self-care is worthwhile, and this includes the pouring of hot water onto cold tea leaves.

Consider the practice itself. You take a mug, you choose your tea, you warm the water, you pour the water, then await the allotted time for your tea to steep. The preparation itself is meditative. To make yourself a cup of tea is to close yourself off from the stress around you, be it an obnoxious co-worker or a troublesome spaceship landing outside of your building.

The relaxation does not end with preparation. The act of sipping tea is one of the most relaxing things you can do. Each sip delights the tongue with flavor, steam, and comfort. Picture yourself sipping tea. Notice how the noises around you, like phones ringing or people screaming, just seem to disappear as readily as the tea in your cup.

Once the cup is gone, the sense of ease remains with you, warming your hands like the sun or an errant laser. Tea transports us to worlds we never knew, worlds where we are alone and comfortable, not visited or invaded. To make yourself a cup of tea is to grant you an escape from everything.

Many have shared their wondrous experiences with tea. Consider Martha, an accountant who never missed her morning tea. Each morning after breakfast, no matter what she was doing or who was in her presence, she’d stop and make herself a cup of tea in the company kitchen. She found the ritual conducive to her work. One morning, Martha heard her phone ring and several emails ping in her inbox. But alas, it was 9 o’clock – tea time! She ignored the shouts from her office and went to the kitchen to make her tea. She was not gone for five minutes, yet when she returned with her mug, she found not her office, but a smoldering crater where her desk and wall had been. Had she not held to her morning ritual, she too would have been blown to smithereens! Thankfully her morning tea that day was soothing chamomile, otherwise the sight might have scared her dead.

Tea is much valued for its life-saving properties. Green tea is often seen as the healthiest, with its antioxidant power. But all teas have some sort of health benefit to them. Black tea improves your breath. Peppermint tea aids in digestion. Hibiscus tea seems to frighten off the invaders, seeing how they recoiled in fear from Mrs. Thompson’s hibiscus plants when stomping through her garden. All tea has something special to offer.

But perhaps what is most special about tea is what it can do for you. Even when you are most alone, a cup of tea is there for you, warming your hands as you stare out your window and watch your neighborhood, city, and state burn to ash. The skies have turned red and the ships have grown in number, but your reliable kettle burns on the stove and whistles to you, calling from the rabble and chaos, “Time for tea!”

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: Cindy O’Quinn

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week, Girl Meets Monster talked with John M. McIlveen about his forthcoming collection of short stories, A Variable Darkness, and the fact that he is somehow able to function on only 4 hours a sleep each night.

This week, I am thrilled to welcome Bram Stoker Award nominated writer, nature lover, and extremely kind and supportive cheerleader of her fellow writers, Cindy O’Quinn.

Cindy O’Quinn is an Appalachian writer who grew up in the mountains of West Virginia and is now living, writing, and homesteading in northern Maine.

2019 HWA Bram Stoker Award Nominee in Short Fiction for “Lydia”, and multiple Rhysling nominated poet. “Lydia” was published in the anthology, THE TWISTED BOOK OF SHADOWS, edited by Christopher Golden and James A. Moore, which was nominated in the anthology category for the Bram Stoker Award, This is Horror Award, and it won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Anthology.

Works published or forthcoming in Shotgun Honey Presents, Twisted Book of Shadows, HWA Poetry Showcase Vol. V, Star*Line, SFPA Halloween Reading, Sanitarium Magazine, Eerie Christmas Anthology, Space and Time Magazine, Speculative City, Chiral Mad 5, and others.

Social Media:
Facebook @CindyOQuinnWriter
Instagram cindy.oquinn
Twitter @COQuinnWrites

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Cindy. I loved your fragment and definitely want to read more. The fact that your protagonist is a writer reminded me of how Stephen King often writes about characters who are writers. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a trope in his fiction. Are there certain tropes you rely on in your own fiction? Do you create characters who are similar to other characters you’ve written about, or are there distinct qualities about them that set them apart? Without too many spoilers, can you give a synopsis of “The Handshake”?

COQ: Michelle, thank you for having me on Girl Meets Monster. I’m glad you enjoyed my fiction fragment. Yes, my novelette is about a young writer. I enjoy Stephen King stories with writers, as well. I loved The Dark Half, and Misery. It isn’t a trope of mine. Most of my characters have been fairly different from one another, thus far.

A quick synopsis of “The Handshake,” which was first published in Sanitarium Magazine Fall 2016. The magazine has since changed hands, and the issue is no longer available. I’d love to see it accepted in the future as a reprint.

Torrence Eastlin is a young writer. He has the chance to meet his favorite author, Hudson Greenbrier. Something happens when the two shake hands, at least it feels that way to Torrence. His writing improves, and he begins getting one acceptance after the next. When Hudson requests a private meeting with the young writer, Torrence knows his feeling must be true. He fears whatever transferred with the handshake must be what Hudson Greenbrier wants back. To what lengths will someone go to keep their gift or to take another’s?

GMM: What defines you as an Appalachian writer? Is it simply the fact that you were raised in Appalachia, or are there specific elements within your writing that make you an Appalachian writer? Settings? Characters? Tone? Plots? How would we recognize the work of other Appalachian writers?

COQ: In the beginning, my bio would simply state I was a writer who lived in West Virginia or Virginia. That changed when I moved to northern Maine. I felt disconnected from myself. It no longer felt right to say I was a writer who lived in Maine. That became evident when I spoke. People made sure I knew I was “from away”. I dedicated my novel to my husband and sons, but also to the Appalachian Mountains that stood guard around me for so many decades. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, You can take the girl out of the mountains, but you can’t take the mountains out of the girl. It’s true in my case. The Appalachian mountains are a part of what makes me, the person I am. All of it, the way I talk, write, cook, parent, homestead, down to how I dress.

I’m not sure one would recognize another Appalachian writer unless it’s known. It’s known of writers like Ron Rash, Silas House, and David Joy. If I’m drawn to a writer’s work, I’ll check out their bio.

GMM: Aside from short stories and poetry, have you written any longer fiction or nonfiction? Have you written any novels? If not, why? What projects are you working on right now?

COQ: I self-published my first novel, Dark Cloud on Naked Creek in the fall of 2016. I went through a couple small runs with it. Return to Graveyard Dust was my first collection of poetry. I have a novella currently out for consideration, I’m working on my second poetry collection, and another novel.

Fragment from “The Handshake” by Cindy O’Quinn

I glanced back at the line of fans and realized I’d hogged far more time than I should have. I stood and reached out my hand to my favorite writer. His enormous hand clasped down around mine, causing it to all but disappear. That’s when, once again, I felt that magical haze that had been hovering close all day. I was back in that tunnel, just like before when the writer was speaking at the podium. This time, there was actually a white glow around the two of us. Our hands together produced an electrical heat that I could feel up my arm and into the base of my skull. It felt like it lasted an hour, when in all actuality it was probably only a matter of several seconds. When the tunnel and light melted away, the writer was handing me the novel he so graciously autographed for me, and saying, “Good luck with your writing.”

“Okay. Thank you,” I said. Before walking away, I saw something in Hudson Greenbrier’s eyes that hadn’t been there before. Fear.

The drive back to Charlottesville was nothing like the drive to Sweet Wine. My mind was in a fog, and I was unaware of my surroundings. The fall foliage could have turned black, and I wouldn’t have noticed. I wasn’t fully alert again until I pulled into the driveway at home. I looked down in the passenger seat and saw Hudson Greenbrier’s book. I picked it up and looked inside. I hadn’t even bothered to look at what the author wrote. It read:

Here’s to Torrence Eastlin, the next big deal. I know there will be many who love your words. Hudson Greenbrier

I read the words over and over. I couldn’t remember, for the life of me, having told him my name. I must have, though. In my star-struck state, I must have told him my name. How else would he have known? There was a peck on my window that caused me to slam the book shut like I was hiding a secret. It was my brother, and he was laughing at having caused me a fright. Dell asked, “Well, did you meet him?”

I answered as I got out of the car, “Hell, yes, I met him. Here’s the selfie to prove it.” I handed my cell over to my brother. “He signed his book for me, and we talked a while.” I went on to tell my brother how I’d made an ass out of myself outside the bookstore. He got a real kick out of that. I didn’t tell him about the tunnel, the light, or the fact that I didn’t recall having given Greenbrier my name.

Later that night in my room, when the day had finally started to calm down, I wrote a three-thousand-word short story. I thought it was the best I ever wrote, and I wasn’t the only one to think it was good. My parents and my brother all agreed that I should submit it to Word Burner Magazine, so I did. A day later, I received an email saying they wanted to publish my story in their next issue. I received three hundred dollars for that short story. I went on to write seven more short stories, and they all sold. With each story published, my paycheck grew. Every time I sat down and started writing, I could feel myself floating back into that tunnel I was in the day I met Hudson Greenbrier. Never once did I question it. I just chalked it up to having been inspired by my favorite writer. As I look back, deep down I knew it was much more than inspiration. It went on this way for three months, until I decided it was time to move on from short stories and on to writing my first novel. Within a month, I had written a three-hundred-page murder-mystery novel, and had gone back over it twice to weed out any mistakes, which were few. My contact at Word Burner Magazine referred me to the editor at Nelson County Books, a small publishing house in nearby Afton, Virginia.

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: L. Marie Wood

Michelle R. Lane 1 Comment

Last week, I chatted with P. D. Cacek about what it means to be a NECON legend, and she gave some sound advice on writing a sequel. If you missed it, check it out.

This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes award-winning horror writer L. Marie Wood. I’ve had very limited face-to-face interaction with her. I’m hoping to change that fact in the coming year, because I have so many more questions for her that go beyond the scope of Fiction Fragments.

L. Marie Wood is an award-winning author and screenwriter.  She is the recipient of the Golden Stake Award and the Harold L. Brown Award for her fiction and screenplays.  Her short story, “The Ever After” is part of the Bram Stoker Award Finalist anthology Sycorax’s Daughters.  Wood was recognized in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Vol. 15 and as one of the 100+ Black Women in Horror Fiction.

Her first two novels, Crescendo and The Promise Keeper are available as audiobooks, which is fun!  The Promise Keeper‘s re-release is also scheduled for 2020.  She’s a member and mentor of the HWA, an officer in Diverse Writers and Artists of Speculative Fiction, and the programming director for the horror track at MultiverseCon.

Website:  www.lmariewood.com
Twitter:  @LMarieWood1
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/LMarieWood/

Three Questions

GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster! Your involvement in the horror community goes way beyond writing fiction, and I wanted to highlight some of your different roles that support the work of other writers and help to educate people about the horror genre. Can you tell me about your roles within DWASF and MultiverseCon? How has the pandemic made your roles more difficult? What experiences have helped you in your role as an HWA writing mentor? What other ways are you supporting the work of horror writers?

LMW: I’m so excited to be a part of Girl Meets Monster! Thank you so much for letting me talk about some of things I am most passionate about. I am the Director of Curricula and Outreach at Diverse Writers and Artists of Speculative Fiction (DWASF), which allows me to pair my love of teaching with the genre I hold dear. I created the soon-to-be-launched horror fiction curriculum at DWASF and continue to find new and interesting ways to bring industry knowledge to diverse communities. Alongside horror, we will have science fiction and fantasy modules available in the future and we look forward to diving into the intricacies of world building and character development from unique genre perspectives. At MultiverseCon, I serve as the Director of Horror Track programming. This allows me to create panels that speak to real considerations in the genre – topics like writing strong female characters, accessibility, and LGBTQ+ representation in horror fiction hold court alongside how to build a better monster and horror antagonists in folklore. The conversations that come are invigorating, to say the least.

The pandemic has presented challenges, for sure. Not being able to gather in person has been difficult to navigate and will continue to impact things like conventions and signings. But we are all adjusting. MultiverseCon will be virtual this year and while that will be different than our inaugural event, different is kind of what we do. I look forward to the ways that MultiverseCon shows what it’s made of as we navigate this pivot.

Being an HWA mentor was a natural next step for me. I am an English Professor and, at one point in my career, I created a taught an introduction to horror writing course. We explored the classic antagonists, the role that tone plays in the genre, the nuances of the many sub-genres. It was wonderful – I was absolutely in my element. At the same time, I write a lot. Stories, novels, novelettes, novellas, flash fiction, micro fiction. I did a stint as a freelance journalist. Did a little ghost writing. I used to write poetry and I still write screenplays. I’ve been writing psychological horror since I was a kid and doing so professionally for the better part of 20 years. I live and breathe this thing – I’ve learned a lot along the way and I still learn something new about what I do every day. So, when the opportunity to help an author get their footing presented itself, I jumped in with both feet and have not looked back.

What other ways am I supporting the work of horror writers? In short, I read. And then I talk with people about what I’ve read and encourage them to try it out too. As an author, I understand that to be the ultimate goal – to have someone read my work and enjoy it, be touched by it. So, I too am dedicated to that cause so that other authors – their dreams – can be realized. Sometimes I step outside my genre, serving as a sensitivity reader or as a line and/or developmental editor. Occasionally I host workshops for young writers. For all writers who are serious about their craft, I am a tireless cheerleader, a high-fiver, and a virtual hugger.

GMM: Tell me about winning the Golden Stake Award. What story won? Can you give a synopsis of the story? What do you think set your story apart from the other nominees? How cool was it winning an award for vampire fiction while attending The International Vampire Film and Arts Festival in London? Have you written other vampire fiction?

LMW: Winning the Golden Stake Award was nothing short of amazing. My novel, The Promise Keeper, won the award in 2019 – the 100th anniversary of Polidori’s “The Vampyre”… the vampire tale that is credited with starting it all. It is the first vampire tale to be written in English; it was a product of the night of storytelling he shared with Mary Shelley and her husband, poet Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron where Mary Shelley famously wrote Frankenstein as he wrote this groundbreaking work – so this anniversary was an important moment in the genre. I remember thinking that I was just excited to be a part of it – me, with my unconventional vampire story about a young African girl who is swept into the world of the undead before she even understood who she was or the woman she could become – a female vampire who travels continents over centuries of time to outrun her destiny… to keep her promise. Over the course of the festival I met people who were familiar with vampire lore that I had never heard of before and exchanged ideas with people I am happy to call friends now. When my name was called, I almost missed it. I could not believe they were talking about me. The moment was so surreal.  Here’s the back-cover copy for The Promise Keeper:

A young girl, on the cusp of maturity, in what is now known as Benin, West Africa, is seduced by a beautiful stranger, a man the likes of which she has never seen before. Their encounter changes her forever. She runs, her travels taking her to Europe and the Caribbean over centuries to escape him.  She finally settles in New York City, convinced that she has eluded him, until she falls in love. 

When I did a reading the day before the awards ceremony, several people in the audience commented on the detail and description that I use in my writing and how it transplanted them from the space we shared together to the apartment where blood stained the bed. Perhaps the judges agreed – I don’t know… all I know is that the trophy is literally a golden stake replete with a blood-stained tip. So incredibly awesome.

Yes, I have written more vampire fiction. Apparently, this is the antagonist I go for when I want to write something outside of my sub-genre (who knew?). My short story, “The Dance”, about a chance encounter with a vampire at the club, will be part of Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire from Mocha Memoirs Press later in 2020. I wrote a story years ago about a vampire who had to choose between love and need called “Baie Rouge”. And the second book in my series, The Realm, may or may not have a vampire lurking in the shadows. The first book in the series comes out this year from Cedar Grove Publishing (exciting!), so part two is a little way off…. I guess that means I may need to write another vampire short story in the meantime.

GMM: How do you find balance with all of your roles as a writer, mentor, con organizer, and all of your other responsibilities? Do you have any advice for other writers, especially women of color, who are trying to write and publish, while attending school, and/or working a full-time job, and/or caring for a family? Do you find yourself saying yes to every project that comes your way, or have you learned to say no? Asking for a friend.

LMW: To be honest, I don’t think about it. Let me say it differently. We all know people who drive miles and miles to get gas because it is cheaper across state lines – either we know that person or we are that person. As ridiculous as it might seem to that person and many others, I don’t think about the price of gas or go hunting for cheaper. I need gas to drive. I need to drive to get where I want to go. So, I just buy it. Along those same lines, I need to write. I don’t plot out time to do it, devise a schedule, set a word count, etc. I just do it or something related to it, like research or character development, because I have to. Just like I need to breathe to live. 

Writers write. 

When I had such debilitating writer’s block that I couldn’t string together a full sentence if it was even remotely frightening, I wrote gardening articles and community feel-goods until the block lifted (and boy did it take a loonnggg time – several years). Because I had to write something.   Recognizing my drive helps me understand other people’s needs. Someone needs a second eye on a piece they are excited about; panels need to be pinned down; edits are needed to help move someone’s story forward – it sounds like a lot but all of these tasks are in the same family and they are associated with the thing that I greatly respect in others and recognize in myself as well – the burn. It’s what makes us do what we do – it’s what makes us push. I’ll never get in the way of that.

1 a.m. is a great time to be productive. 

My advice to writers who are trying to get it all done is to do exactly that. On the surface that doesn’t sound helpful but let me explain. I did that very thing – I was working full time, writing, going to school, and had familial responsibilities all at the same time. And the burn that I mentioned before – the desire to be present in my home life, to earn well, to ace the class, to finish the story… to scratch the itch – I let it propel me every day. Sure, I got tired sometimes. Sure, it was hard. But there’s nothing like coming out on the other side accomplished. There’s nothing like showing the children in your life that they can succeed with hard work and dedication – that pushing themselves is absolutely worth it. They see. They understand. And they admire. So, keep at it. Try and fail – it will make you stronger. Try and succeed, then assess what worked so that you can keep that strategy in your toolkit. Share both the triumphs and failures with those closest to you not only to unburden (which is important), but also so they can see you picking yourself up and trying again. Maybe it will inspire them to help you dust off and go again. Maybe, just maybe, it will encourage them to go after something they want too. I do not say yes to everything because spreading yourself too thin is real. I would rather do well with a few things than have a finger in a lot of things that I ruin because I am not giving them the attention they deserve. This can be difficult because sometimes you end up turning something away that sounds interesting. But stress never helps anyone, so sometimes ‘no’ is the answer.  At 1 a.m. I am pretty productive. Not so at 4 a.m.

Fragment from The Realm

It didn’t happen the way they said it would.

No angels came to greet him; no bright light funneled a path through the darkness. No relatives called to him from the beyond.

He didn’t feel warmth, acceptance, or love – he felt emptiness.

He saw nothing in the moments before death. Just an impenetrable darkness that crowded his vision like oil spreading in water, encroaching on the faces of his son and daughter-in-law, blackening them: obliterating them. He could hear them after his eyes dimmed, standing open and blind like black holes. His tear ducts dried up as his son cried over him.

The sound of Doug’s grief, the guttural moans roiling and meshing with his pleas—his barters with God to save his father—was more than Patrick could take. Trying but failing to lift his hand from his side and stroke his son’s head, Patrick silently prayed that his hearing would dissipate as quickly as his sight had.

Patrick could only imagine what Doug and Chris were seeing as his body broke down in front of him. Images of eyes ruined by broken capillaries filled with blood, his slacked mouth allowing a discolored tongue to peek through tortured his mind. He struggled for every breath now, death’s grip holding fast and firm. The thought of the kids seeing him fight for air, his face a twisted mass of pain and effort, upset him more than he thought it would. Death was not pretty.

Doug moaned and Chris cried while Patrick’s eyes grew drier and his skin grew paler. He thought it would never end, the display, the sick, cruel game death was playing. That he should witness it, that he should have to hear the calmness his son usually displayed crumble and fall away, was torture if ever there was a definition of the word. The devil, then. It was his work after all, he supposed. He was on his way to Hell and this was but a taste of what was to come.

And then there was silence.

Utter silence.

The sound of his son’s anguish was gone, mercifully. The hum of the respirator, the clicking of the rosary beads the man in the next bed held, the squeak of rubber soles on the sanitized tile floor as the nurses and doctors hurried to his side – all sound had disappeared. He wondered what would be next to go. His memory? He quizzed himself just to see if it was already gone. What’s my name? Patrick Richardson. How old am I? 59. Was is more like it, he corrected himself. After all, he was dead. Dead. Gone. Finished.

Patrick stood in the pitch-black silence confused and unbelievably sad. He was dead. He would never see the baby that Chris was carrying, his first grandchild. He wouldn’t ever watch another boxing match with his son and friends over beer and pizza. He wouldn’t get the chance to watch the waves break on the shore from a beach chair in the Caribbean. He wouldn’t do anything anymore—not eat, drink, or fuck—ever again. Because he was dead.

And death was dark. Impenetrably so.

How did this happen? he asked aloud using a mouth he could no longer feel. He thought back to that morning, when he was taking out the garbage. He could remember walking to the back of his house and getting the garbage can. The damned cat had gotten into it again; the little stray he left food and water for had knocked the top of the can off, torn through the garbage bag, and gotten to the trash inside. The little monster made a hell of mess too, strewing soggy newspaper, chicken bones, and juice cartons all over the brick patio. Patrick remembered cursing out loud and casting his eyes around the backyard, looking for the cat. He remembered turning back to the bowl he’d left out the night before and finding it full of food. ‘That’s what you were supposed to eat, damn it!’ he’d said as he bent down to clean up the mess.

On his way back into the house to get another garbage bag, a piece of the dream he had the night before came back to him. It hung in front of his eyes like a transparency over real life, framing everything with the hazy film of familiarity, all soft edges and anticipation.

Déjà vu.

As usual after those dreams, the dark ones that made him wonder if he was there, really there, walking, talking, living within them, he wondered if he was the character whose face the audience never sees.

The memory was faint, as it always was the morning after, but he knew what happened next. This time the scene was identical to his dream. There was usually something askew, some crucial piece off center, but this time nothing was out of place. He knew he would turn away from the door instead of going inside to get the garbage bag. He knew he would squint from the sun when he did, and that he would place his hands above his eyes, shading them like a visor. He knew it just as well as he knew his name, for as easily as that knowledge came, it dragged heavy fear and worry in its wake.

He obliged. It wasn’t like he had a choice.

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.

The Cuckoo Girls, An Interview with Patricia Lillie

Michelle R. Lane Leave a comment

Patricia Lillie grew up in a haunted house in a small town in Northeast Ohio. Since then, she has published picture books, short stories, fonts, two novels, and her latest, The Cuckoo Girls, a collection of short stories. As Patricia Lillie, she is the author of The Ceiling Man, a novel of quiet horror, and as Kay Charles, the author of Ghosts in Glass Houses, a cozy-ish mystery with ghosts. She is a graduate of Parsons School of Design and has a MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She also knits and sometimes purls.

Follow her on Twitter @patricialillie.

Patricia Lillie’s collection of disturbingly beautiful short stories, The Cuckoo Girls, takes on a journey through the darkest parts of the fairy tale forest, into houses haunted by memories as well as ghosts, and reminds us that there is horror in everyday events if we’re willing to peek behind the curtain and allow the madness to seep in. If you haven’t picked up a copy of The Cuckoo Girls, I suggest you do.

GMM: Welcome back to Girl Meets Monster, Patricia. It’s been, what? Two years since your first visit for Fiction Fragments way back in July 2018. You were one of the first writers I featured in that series and since then, you’ve had quite a bit of success. What have you been up to? What are you currently working on? And, what can we look forward to from you?

PL: Wow! That was two years ago? It doesn’t seem like it, which is odd since January of this year feels like ten years ago. As for success—congratulations on Invisible Chains and your Stoker nomination! You should have seen me doing happy dances for you. I take that back. You’re lucky not to have seen me doing happy dances since I’m a klutz. But, do know dances were danced.

What I’ve been up too? A handful of the stories in The Cuckoo Girls were written after the Fiction Fragments piece. As I mentioned there, I had lots of fragments scattered all over my hard drive and I needed to organize them. I did. Which led to some of them turning into stories. Which made me happy—so thank you for setting me on that path.

Aside from that, I have the beginnings of two novels which both keep changing direction. It sometimes takes a while for things to gel with me. I’ve also refilled that fragments folder with more beginnings. I’m evidently good at getting down the first 500–800 words of a story, and sometimes I even know the end, but finding the story that goes in between often takes time. A lot of time. This year, like for many people, hasn’t exactly been conducive to writing, but I’m slowly finding my way back. At least, I hope I am.

GMM: I finished reading The Cuckoo Girls recently and I really enjoyed the collection. I’ve always been able to lose myself in your writing, but there were a few stories that really pulled me in. One of my favorites is “The Robber Bridegroom,” which is a delightfully dark fairy tale about a young woman who is spurned by her family and community because she isn’t as attractive as her younger sister. In fact, she has some sort of deformity that requires her to wear a veil in public. But, she has a secret lover that she meets at night in the forest, and each night he confirms his desire for her even though they know almost nothing about each other beyond their carnal interests. Despite the fact that she suspects that he is dangerous she continues to see him night after night, and even chooses to be his after she finds out the truth about him.

Fairy tales are obviously an influence on your work. Not just this story, but other stories in the collection like “Mother Sylvia.” What is it about fairy tales that draws us back to them again and again? What fairy tales inspired “The Robber Bridegroom”? Which fairy tale was your favorite as a kid? What’s your favorite now? Why?

PL: Thank you—I’m so happy you enjoyed the collection!

I do love fairy tales—or folk tales—but not the idea of “fairy tale” that springs to mind for a lot of people. I didn’t have a favorite fairy tale as a kid. I didn’t dislike them, but none of my favorite stories fell into that definition. I came to love them as an adult when I studied them in conjunction with children’s literature and discovered they weren’t all the happy-ever-after, prettied-up, suitable-for-children stories we’ve come to accept. Oral tradition stories change as they’re told and retold, but some of the greatest changes come when the stories are collected and published. Those changes are often designed to make the stories more palatable to readers.

In the original 1812 edition of the Grimm Brother’s collections, the stepmothers in “Snow White,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and others were biological mothers. The idea of a birth mother planning to slaughter and eat her seven-year-old daughter (Snow White) was culturally abhorrent to the sanctified ideal of motherhood. The bad-mothers were changed to step-mothers in later editions.

Rapunzel and the prince enjoy a “merry time together” resulting in pregnancy, which leads to discovery by the witch. Imagine that in a Disney movie.

At the same time, I discovered stories from cultures beyond the familiar (to me at the time) Western European tradition. As striking as the diversity of these stories is, there’s also a surprising commonality. There are over three-hundred cultural variants (from all over the world) of what we (in our Euro-centric outlook) think of as a Cinderella-story. I’m rambling, but what I’m getting at is the fairy tale tradition is both darker and richer than the “she meets her prince and he is her salvation” idea so many of us were sold. At the same time, many revolve around women. Sometimes they are a prize to be won. Sometimes they are the protagonist. But (at least in the Euro-centric tales) they are often robbed of their agency, either by other characters or by the roles they are expected to fill in family and society. The pressure to be a good girl and find that prince is immense.

“The Robber Bridegroom” uses the main theme from the Brothers Grimm tale of the same name along with elements from Norwegian, British, and other variants of the story. The original story differs from the “meets her prince” fairy tale trope. A young woman escapes from an arranged marriage to a rich man who is not what he appears to be. Which all sort of happens in my story, but as you noted, I took it in another direction. Both of the sisters in my version are expected to fill the role which provides the most value to the family. Because they are female, they’re commodities, and their value is determined by their appearance. Both rebel. It works out well for one of them—because she makes it work out.

GMM: Your stories are often about girls and women who have experienced some form of trauma, or have been given a responsibility that weighs heavily upon them. Where does your inspiration for these characters come from? Do you consider yourself a feminist writer? How much of yourself can be found in the pages of this collection?

PL: When I began to pull this collection together, I was more than a little surprised to discover, “Oh. Hey. There is a theme here.” Where did it come from? Hell if I know. My best guess is from my coming of age during the decades of Second Wave Feminism. It’s hard to imagine now, but I was in high school when women were given the legal right to get credit cards without a man co-signing for them. That’s hardly the only change, but I like to use it as an example because it’s so inconceivable today and it wasn’t that long ago.

Of course, young and optimistic me thought things would continue to get better. Of course, they didn’t. Women’s rights came to a standstill and then moved backwards—as has the fight for equality for POC, LGBTQ people, and anyone who doesn’t fit into the 1950’s standards of power and perfection. It was all supposed to be better by now and it’s not. Life for anyone who doesn’t fit those standards is often a trauma.

As a straight, white, cis woman, the trauma inflicted on women who don’t fit into predetermined roles—or choose not to fill them—is the situation I understand the best. It’s the one I know, and apparently it creeps into my writing. I am a feminist. Am I a feminist writer? I think that’s for others to decide. I always thought I just liked spooky shit.

GMM: The theme of motherhood can be found in many of your stories. Motherhood can be really challenging and sometimes traumatic for many women without the added terror of body horror and supernatural pregnancies. “The Cuckoo Girls”, the first story in this collection, speaks to the horrors associated with pregnancy and motherhood and is an extremely unsettling tale. Why do you think this story is scary? What about pregnancy and motherhood frightens you? Why do you think pregnancy is a trope within the subgenre of body horror?

PL: Pregnancy is terrifying. Another being, nestled and growing inside your body, feeding off you—and at the same time being dependent on you for their life—is bad enough, but add in the pain of giving birth—yeah. Body horror, indeed. My fear of pregnancy is so great, it’s the main reason I’ve never given birth to a child. I have been deeply involved in the raising of a few children, and as wonderful and rewarding as that is, it’s also terrifying. So much responsibility. So much love. So much to gain, but so much to lose if things go wrong. Honestly, parenting is the hardest job a human can take on. I made an active choice not to go through pregnancy and an active choice to be involved in the lives of the children of others. I think the unsettling aspect of “The Cuckoo Girls” is there is no choice. Because motherhood is still a default expectation for women, the lack of choice and lack of control is frightening.

To go back to your previous question, apparently there is a lot of me in these stories. Damn you for making me think so hard. <smiley face here>

GMM: “That’s What Friends Are For” is a great haunted house story with a surprising ending. Have you had any paranormal experiences in your life that inspired this story?

PL: Ha. That story takes place in the house I grew up in. (Seriously. I grew up in a haunted house on the corner of Erie and Elm streets. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?) The bedroom with the closet doors? Mine. The sleepwalking brother who peed in that closet? While not paranormal, also mine. The idea that the unseen residents of the house were simply part of our life and our friends? That’s how we viewed them. Not scary at all.

Long after my parents sold the house, my sister met the then current residents. They were having the same experiences we had. However, they were terrified and convinced the presence was evil. Which made me wonder, what if ghosts are a reflection of how we see them?

GMM: What is your favorite story in this collection and why?

PL: I’m not sure which is my favorite, but I’m fond of “Alyce-with-a-Y” simply because of how it came about. You’ve probably noticed I have a habit of dropping references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice into my writing. I decided to embrace it and use Carroll’s world as the basis of a story. Frankly, I thought maybe doing so would break my Alice habit. I started the story with no real idea where it was going, and I didn’t care. I was writing for fun. I was writing to exorcise Alice. When Alyce showed up, I thought she was someone entirely different than she turned out to be, and she took me on a wild ride all the way to the end. It was a story that just happened. Is it the best story in the book? Probably not. But I had so much fun writing it! (It remains to be seen whether or not the exorcism was successful.)

Thank you so much for inviting me back to Girl Meets Monster! It’s been a blast.