While we’ve moved on from February and Women in Horror Month, there is absolutely no reason to limit our celebration of women writers of horror to any particular time of year– so even though we interviewed Yvonne Navarro months ago, May is a perfect time to draw attention to an excellent writer of horror who also happens to be a woman.

Yvonne Navarro is a prolific horror author, having written such books as Afterage (2002 Overlook Connection Press), Final Impact (1997 Bantam), and Dead Times (2000 DarkTales Publications).  Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace, and Misery (2013 Evil Jester Press), Skull Full of Spurs (2000 Dark Highway Press), V-Wars (2013 IDW Publishing), and The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One (2012 Damnation Books).

1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

Hi, everyone.  I’m Yvonne Navarro, and I’ve been writing since way longer than I care to admit.  As of right now, I’ve gotten twenty-two novels published.  Seven were solo novels, and the rest were media-related.  I did seven novels in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Universe, five of which were originals, and won the Bram Stoker Award for YA writing for one of the Buffy tie-ins.  Some other awards and such—it’s always fun to have people appreciate your work.  I’ve also written a big bunch of short stories, somewhere over 100, but I have no idea of the final count because, well, I’m always going to get around to updating that bibliography document “later.”

2. Why do you write horror?  What draws you to the genre?

The first movie I remember watching was Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963).  I guess I’ve always thought there’s nothing better than a great, pulse-pounding, scary story.  Nowadays it’s a little harder to entertain me in that area, but when I was a kid Creature Features was a staple in our house every Friday night, and I hit the matinee at the local movie house every Saturday without fail.  My mom liked scary movies, so maybe she’s where I got it from, along with the desire to draw and write.  The first adult horror book I read was Scream and Scream Again by Peter Saxon (originally titled The Disoriented Man, 1968).  I saw the edge of it on top of the fridge where my Mom had hidden it.  I was hooked.

3. Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?

That’s a hard question because normally I don’t think I have a specific style.  I write the way I like to read—total involvement in the characters and stories, so much so that I forget I actually am reading.  When I write I don’t think about writing.  I “see” the characters in their environment and it’s like I’m just putting down what they see and do in their own element.  I always have a little romance in a story because if a character can’t care about someone else, he or she probably isn’t memorable enough for the reader to care either.

4. Who are some of your influences?  Are there any women authors who have particularly inspired you to write?

My biggest influence was without a doubt Robert R. McCammon.  It was his book, They Thirst (1981 Avon Books), that made me want to try my hand at writing to begin with.  When I wrote and asked him questions, he responded positively even though I was an absolute green-behind-the-ears person who was about as much of a non-writer as I could be.  There are lots of good women writers out there.  I “grew up” with Elizabeth Massie, in particular; we met at the first World Horror Convention I attended and have been friends ever since.

5. What authors do you like to read?  Any Recommendations?

I still adore the work of Robert R. McCammon (who recently started writing again after taking quite awhile off), and I have an entire collection of Stephen King.  Right now I seem to be on a YA fantasy craze.  I’m reading Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments Series (Margaret K. McElderry Books) and Veronica Roth’s Divergent Series (Katherine Tegen Books).  I’m always looking for the next Barbara O’Neal novel, which isn’t horror but consistently has some small supernatural thing going on.  And I can’t wait for the final Laini Taylor novel in her Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers).
6. Where can readers find your work?

Most of my solo novels are out of print but I still have copies of lots of stuff (signed, too) available off my website at http://www.yvonnenavarro.com/offerings.htm.  I’m notoriously bad about updating the blog on my main website page (just like my bibliography), but I do keep up with Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/yvonne.navarro.001.  And I’m always trying to cook up something new.  I have big plans for this July, when I’ll be a Writer In Residence for two weeks at the Golden Apple Studio in Bangor, Maine.  I plan on world-building and cooking up a brand new series while I’m there.  I also write the Double X Chromosome column for Dark Discoveries magazine (http://www.darkdiscoveries.com).

Thanks, Yvonne, for your patience, and for participating in our Women in Horror project, even though it’s already May!