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Women in Horror Fiction: Lori R. Lopez

 

Image of Lori R. LopezLori R. Lopez is the author of many books, including An Ill Wind Blows (2013 CreateSpace), The Macabre Mind of Lori R. Lopez: Thirteen Tormentous Tales (2012 CreateSpace), and Poetic Reflections: Keep the Heart of a Child (2010 CreateSpace).  Her short stories have also appeared in such anthologies as Darlings of Decay (2013 Dark Shadows Publishing), Masters of Horror: Damned if You Don’t (2011 Triskaideka Books), and I Believe in Werewolves (2011 NetBound Publishing).

 

1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

Thank you for the invitation!  I’m an indie author, poet, artist, and more.  I have a number of print books as well as E-books out, and I’ve started a creative company with my two talented sons for literature, music, and film.  I’m a vegetarian and an activist for the rights of animals, children, and women.  I care about conservation.  I write dark and speculative fiction with elements of fantasy and humor.

 

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

I didn’t have a happy childhood, so there are personal demons involved.  But I had a fascination for monsters and things macabre since I can remember.  I am a horror fan.  Conversely, in real life I don’t eat meat and can be squeamish.  I do not enjoy especially gory fiction or films that sensationalize violence.  Like my writing, I prefer that there is meaning behind the madness.  I love Horror’s creepiness, the weird and wonderfully gruesome aspects of it all.  Thrills and chills.  That is what I portray in my stories, novels, verse and art.

 

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

I love words.  My tales are more suspenseful and thought-inducing than gory.  They can be quirky.  I like to try different things.  Some of it is edgier, intense, but the majority is suitable for ages twelve through adult.  My writing is intelligent and contains depth, both in the characters and the plot.  There is also a poetic grace to it.  I care very much about the flow of sentences.  The voice can vary from story to story.  The tone can be dead serious or quite humorous; it might shift from one to the other.  I love atmosphere and vivid detail, yet I do not go into a great deal of description.  Instead, I leave a lot of that to the imagination.  Some people do not care for the way I write, because it isn’t simple enough or isn’t what they’re used to reading.  I believe creative writing should be creative.  Mine certainly is.

 

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

Mary Shelley was a huge inspiration.  I read Frankenstein in fifth grade.  I had seen the movies prior to that, along with Hitchcock and  The Blob and many classics.  When I read the book, it was so poignant.  I cried for the monster.  It really affected me, transcending the films.  Not that movies cannot achieve that depth of emotion, but the book was more.  And it was beautifully written.  I like writing that makes you stop and savor the words.  A lot of books just tell a story.  You’re not supposed to pay attention to the words.  I figure, writing can be a lot of ways.  There are many opinions out there on writing.  I like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub.  But I like classics, too:  Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury, Mark Twain, Washington Irving, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Franz Kafka, James Fenimore Cooper, Jack London, Andre Norton . . .  That’s writing.  And Mary is right up there with them.  I also treasure the words of Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame.  Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  Mother Goose.  And William Shakespeare.  Some discovered more recently are Neil Gaiman and Roald Dahl.

 

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

I have stacks of books I want to read, and many I would like to read again!  I haven’t even read all of Poe’s works yet.  There are authors I’ve met who write well, such as Billie Sue Mosiman, Leigh M. Lane, Carole Gill, Lynn C. Tolson, Angela Shelton.  Others I know and have read samples or stories by (and plan to read more as time allows) include Jaime Johnesee, Malina Roos, Uvi Poznansky, Mary Ann Peden-Coviello, Linda Lovecraft, E.A. Irwin, Chantal Noordeloos, Julianne Snow, Anna Taborska, author Suzi M, Kat Yares, Suzanne Robb, Christine Verstraete, Cindy Hernandez . . .  I know there are more.  Guys:  Blaze McRob, Jerry W. McKinney, Trent Zelazny, Vincenzo Bilof, Anthony Servantes, William Cook, Patrick Greene, Paul D. Marks, Bernard Lee DeLeo, Jeffrey Kosh, Mark Parker, Terry M. West.  Most recently, Kealan Patrick Burke.  I enjoy the poetry of Jaye Tomas and Phibby Venable, Aline S. Iniestra, E.A. Irwin, Will Cook, Vincenzo Bilof among others.  Of course, Poe and Carroll and many of the classic poets; Shakespeare.  I have little time to read these days, and my memory has a mind of its own, an absent mind.  I will doubtless think of some I didn’t mention, and it will haunt me to the grave.

 

6. Where can readers find your work?

I’m on Amazon, B.N., and Smashwords.  You can learn about my books on GoodReads, Shelfari, LibraryThing, Pinterest, and my website Fairy Fly Entertainment.  Some of my titles are free:  3-Z and The Fruit Of Thy Womb on Amazon; also, Unleashed, Next Door, and Horrendus, on Smashwords.  My work has been published in anthologies with other authors, including:  Mirages: Tales from Authors of the Macabre; Masters of Horror: Damned If You Don’t; Bones II; Splatterpunk Saints; Darlings of Decay; I Believe in Werewolves; The Epocalypse: Emails at the End; Soup of Souls; Thirsty Are The Damned; Scare Package: 14 Tales of Terror; and In Darkness We Play.

I also write a column called “Poetic Reflections” at my website containing dark verse and humorous prose.

 

Want to find out more about her and her books? Visit  Lori Lopez’s Amazon author page, or her Facebook author page,  You may also want to check out her column, “Poetic Reflections”, at her website, Fairy Fly Entertainment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted on February 20, 2014 by , Reply

Women in Horror Fiction: Suzanne Robb

Image of Suzanne Robb Suzanne Robb is an editor and the author of the zombie novels Z-Boat (being re-released 2014 Permuted Press) and Contaminated: A Zombie Novel (2012 Severed Press), as well as the e-book short story collection Werewolves, Apocalypses, and Genetic Mutations, Oh My! (2014 Dark Continents). Her short stories have appeared in anthologies including Tales of Terror and Mayhem (2012 Evil Jester Press), Canopic Jars: Tales of Mummies and Mummification (2014 Great Old Ones Publishing), Bigfoot Terror Tales Volume 1: Scary Stories of Sasquatch Horror (2012 Coscom Entertainment), Read the End First (2012 Wicked East Press) and Women of the Living Dead: A Zombie Anthology (2012 Open Casket Press).

 

1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

I am horrible at talking about myself. I just want to make that clear in case I start to write about my dog or LEGO’s for no apparent reason. On that note, I have been writing for several years. I started out doing fiction articles on anxiety. A friend mentioned an anthology to me and the premise sounded interesting and that was how it all started. I enjoyed writing short stories, but after a year or so, my stories were getting too long. I moved on to write a novel titled Z-BOAT, and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

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

I write in multiple genres. The horror stories I do usually have an element of something else in them. Paranormal, humor, science-fiction, and fantasy. When I have written a story with horror in it, it is usually because I felt it was the best way to get across what is in my head (Not a pretty place in there sometimes).

 

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

I have no style, and that totally came out wrong. I write whatever comes to mind. If I had to pinpoint some particular tone, I would say it is dark humor. I like to write a funny line, or have a character come up with a funny comeback at a serious moment. I think there is also a very strong message about how we are screwing up the world, and possible results. At least I like to think that is what I am doing.

 

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

Christopher Moore. I love that man. I hope one day to be 1/10 as funny as him. I also like early Dean Koontz (Lightning, Watchers) Jasper Fforde, and Gregory Maguire. There were some very influential female writers when I was younger, Madeleine L’Engle and Enid Blyton being the two at the top. Because of them I became a voracious reader and as an only child would scribble little stories down to keep myself occupied.

 

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

I like to read a variety of authors. I like Suzanne Collins of The Hunger Games fame. As for horror writers, I have read fantastic stuff from are Emma Ennis, Hollie Snider, Rebecca Snow, Tonia Brown, and Jessica Meigs, to name a few.
6. Where can readers find your work?

I have a collection of short stories on eBook on Amazon called Were-wolves, Apocalypses, and Genetic Mutation, Oh My.

In March, Permuted Press will be re-releasing my novel Z-Boat, and later in the year Z-TOPIA and Z-END will be released.

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Thanks, Suzanne, for participating!

Interested in learning more? Visit Suzanne Robb’s Amazon page, her Facebook page, or her blog.

Posted on February 19, 2014 by , Reply

Women in Horror Fiction: What Would Mary Shelley Think?

Miniature of Mary Shelley Frankenstein author by Reginald Easton

 

Any time the topic of women in horror fiction comes up, someone almost immediately mentions Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. It’s a little frustrating to me because usually she’s the only one, or one of a very select few, whose names are repeated over and over, even though there are a wide variety of women writing horror. But I can certainly understand it. She wrote a novel that has resonated with countless individuals on many levels,  reimagined in a variety of media, with varying interpretations. Even people who don’t know who Mary Shelley is and have never read the book are familiar, in some way, with the Frankenstein story. It is that ingrained into our culture. It is an incredible accomplishment that a teenage girl not only had a terrifying vision– we all have nightmares at some point– but that she penned her story with such passion and horror that, if you can get past the clunky beginning, it stirs the reader’s emotions and twists at the heart. In her own words:

When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bound of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together; I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out; and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.

Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handiwork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade – that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter, and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps, but he is awakened; he opens his eyes, behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes! I opened mine in terror.

The idea so possessed my mind that a thrill of terror ran through me…

I returned to my ghost story – my tiresome unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night! Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. “I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.”

In The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein, Thomas and Dorothy Hoobler describe Mary’s life in great detail. At eighteen, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, not yet married to Shelley, was intimately familiar with the creation and destruction of life. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft died eleven days after she was born, an event which shaped the rest of her life.When her father remarried, she was displaced by a stepbrother. At sixteen, she had already run off with Percy Shelley, who was already married (although estranged from his pregnant wife). Before the summer of 1816, she had borne two children, the first of whom died before she had even been named. By the age of eighteen, Mary was very familiar with how easily life can slip away. Percy Shelley, unstable but brilliant, was fascinated with the supernatural and Gothic and also with science, interests that he did not seem to find at odds. Their companions during the “Haunted Summer” of 1816, Lord Byron and John Polidori, were similarly fascinated with both: Polidori, a medical doctor, also began the story that became the classic horror novel The Vampyre that summer. The idea that science, when bent to the manipulation of creating and animating (or, particularly, re-animating) life, could be as destructive and frightening as any supernatural force, was her nightmare, and she made it ours.

I, Frankenstein, yet another interpretation of the Frankenstein story, comes out in movie theaters this Friday. The reviews I’ve seen haven’t been great. Honestly, some of the other versions of the Frankenstein story that have appeared over the years have moved far away from the waking vision Mary Shelley had on a dark and stormy night. Whatever her other tragedies, and there were many in her life, her creation, and her Creature, has changed and grown, and whatever else it has become, there is no doubt that with her novel, she brought them to life. Would she look upon the many incarnations today the way that Victor Frankenstein did when he first saw his creation come to life? Would she be amazed by the tremendous impact a little novel she had to publish anonymously has had on the world?  What would Mary Shelley think of the way so many people have co-opted her “midnight spectre?”

Posted on February 18, 2014 by , Reply
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