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Women in Horror Fiction: Who’s Where? An Index to Women in Horror Month, 2014

It has been a huge month for participation by women writers in horror here. I thought that it would be easier on people trying to find information on a particular writer if I just compiled links to this month’s posts here. I am awed by the variety of the women who write horror. They’re everywhere!

I also found all kinds of great links to posts by or about women writers in horror this month, and I shared most of those on ML’s Facebook page, but I’ll compile a list of those links as well. Not in this post, though. 🙂

Introduction

V.C. Andrews 

Joan Aiken

Tonia Brown: Guest Post “Romancing the Groan”

Debbie Cowens

J. Lincoln Fenn

Wednesday Lee Friday

Sephera Giron

Hannah Kate

Sarah Pinborough

Angeline Hawkes

Karen H. Koehler

Michele Lee

Lori R. Lopez

Lisa Mannetti

Elizabeth Massie

Ann Ward Radcliffe

Suzanne Robb

Mary SanGiovanni

Mary Shelley

Alexandra Sokoloff

Becky Siegel Spratford: Guest Post “Discovery of Women Horror Writers for Public Library Collections”

Barbie Wilde

 

Women in Horror Fiction: Wednesday Lee Friday

 

Image of Wednesday Lee FridayAfter deciding against being a ballerina, an ichthyologist, and a famous singer, Wednesday Lee Friday decided to become a novelist just before starting kindergarten.  Her books include A Stabbing for Sadie (Crossroad Press 2014), The Cat’s Apprentice (StoneGarden.net Publishing 2008), Kiss Me Like You Love Me (Crossroad Press 2013), and The Finster Effect (Crossroad Press 2012). Her short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with some carnivorous plants, a few cats, and her husband. She is a very busy woman of horror!

 

1.) Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

Hi readers!  I am Wednesday Lee Friday, author of A Stabbing for Sadie, Kiss Me Like You Love Me, and The Finster Effect in addition to a bunch of wild short stories.  I’m also a TV and movie reviewer, a sex writer, and the managing editor of Under the Bed Magazine, a horror fiction monthly.  I’ve studied theatre and broadcasting and have worked as everything from a reptile wrangler to a phonesex operator to a manager at a now defunct video store chain (almost rhymes with Lackluster).  Mostly though, I love horror.

 

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


The horror genre is about exploring our limitations as humans and discovering what, if anything, could drive us to do things well outside out established morality.  Some people insist that there must be a supernatural element in horror, but I couldn’t disagree more.  Horror is in the everyday things that haunt us with their impending possibility.  Horror is what turns us against our fellow humans out of fear and desperation.  Horror is in every act of violence, every lie, every glare from a stranger, every wish that some annoying fuckwit would get hit by a truck just so we don’t have to deal with them anymore.  Horror is all around us.  Horror writers just want to make sure you notice.

 

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


I’m a firm believer in first-person narration.  To my mind, it’s the best route for intimacy, immediacy, and understanding.  I write horror with the desire to help people get their heads around the unfathomable.  Kiss Me Like You Love Me follows a very damaged man as he commits deplorable acts of violence on truly innocent people.  Readers have reported being extremely uncomfortable by experiencing the killer’s point-of view—that it makes them feel complicit in his deeds.  This perspective also makes the reader watch helplessly as the killer repeats his pattern over and over.

 

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


I confess, a lot of my favorite horror writers are fellas.  Stephen King, Jack Ketchum, Christopher Moore are my big three.  But I’ve been influenced by plenty of ladies: most notably Shirley Jackson, Mary Shelley, and the great Margaret Atwood.  I know Atwood isn’t typically called a horror writer, but her books scare the hell out of me.  The Handmaid’s Tale gave me nightmares for years afterward.  I’m still depressed over the end of Maddaddam.  I’m continually amazed at how Atwood uses such lyrical, beautiful prose even as she’s describing terrible people and horrific brutality.

 

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

I read a good one by Kate Jonez recently: Candy House.  Amy Grech also has a splendid collection called Blanket of White.  I enjoyed a collection recently by Antoinette Bergin called Bedtime Stories for Children You Hate.  I read those Hunger Games books recently.  Those should probably be called horror books, especially given the ending.  Yeesh!
6. Where can readers find your work?

My website is a great place to catch up with all my insidious deeds.  In addition to Amazon and Smashwords, my books are also available from Macabre Ink Digital and Crossroads Press. 

Thanks so much for letting me be a part of Women in Horror month.

 

Interested in learning more? Visit Wednesday Lee Friday’s Amazon author page, her Smashwords page, or the website for Under The Bed, the online horror fiction magazine she edits. And check out this incredibly awesome nonfiction piece on point of view and how it can make or break a story– something she mentioned briefly above.

 

 

 

Women in Horror Fiction: Debbie Cowens

 Debbie Cowens is a New Zealand-based writer and teacher. Her short stories can be found in the collection  Mansfield with Monsters with Matt Cowens and Katherine Mansfield (Steam Press  2013) , the novella At the Bay of Cthulu with Matt Cowens and Katherine Mansfield, and the anthologies  Baby Teeth (2013 Paper Road Press), Steam Pressed Shorts with Matt Cowens (2012 Amazon Digital), and Shades of Sentience (2010 lulu.com).

 

1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

I’m a writer of a variety of genres – horror, SF, fantasy and crime. I co-authored the book Mansfield with Monsters, published by Steam Press, which is a collection of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, adapted to include the monstrous and the macabre. I have also written numerous short stories, including the story “Caterpillars” in the recent horror anthology Baby Teeth. I’m currently working a short novel, Mother of the Baskervilles, a darkly comic mashup of Pride and Prejudice and Sherlock Holmes, which casts the Mrs Bennett-style mother as a ruthless serial killer and Elizabeth as an aspiring detective.

 

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

 

I’ve always been fascinated with the horror genre. One of the first films I remember making a strong impression on me as a child was the Christopher Lee film version of Dracula, which I watched unbeknownst to my parents as a five year old at my uncle’s house. It didn’t scare me as so much as enthrall. I would often sneak up after bedtime to watch the late night horror movies as a kid and most of the books I would choose to read had a horror or mystery element. As soon as I started writing my own stories, they tended to focus on monsters, which unfortunately worried one of my teachers who didn’t think seven year old girls should be writing about blood and guts or scary things. However, what draws to me the genre is as much the human element as the darker content. I’m fascinated by people and what drives them. Placing characters in truly terrifying situations often reveals more about who they really are and what matters to them than their everyday life. Our fears are an important part of human nature and often the monsters themselves reflect a lot about people and society. The scary ‘other’ in horror is often just a twisted and magnified reflection of ourselves.

 

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

 

I’m a bit of a writing chameleon, adapting my style to suit the characters and scenarios I’m writing. In Mansfield with Monsters I faced the challenge of blending my writing with that of one of the pioneers of Modernism. I’d say the linking element in a lot of my fiction is a sense of humour, often dry and somewhat dark, and a compassion for the characters – even when they are being murdered by possessed children, torn apart by zombies or facing their werewolf packmate and husband drifting away despite the thrill of the chase and the promise of blood. While I love stories of horror and harm, I do tend to like a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel – a suggestion that the sun might rise again, that there might be, if not salvation, then at least a reprieve before the next onslaught. Like a weekend, or a holiday break away from the being killed.

 

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

 

I really enjoyed reading Margaret Mahy as a kid and The Haunting was one of my favourites. As a teenager, I devoured a lot of Stephen King and I’m still a fan of his writing. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was one of the first classic horrors that I read. I loved it; it was moving and compelling, and both beautiful and horrific at the same time. I’m also really fond of the nineteenth century horror classics like Poe and Lovecraft. The Cthulhu mythos sort of redefined my notions of what terrible monsters could be in terms of scale, strangeness and terrifying power. In terms of writing style, I’m more influenced by more modern or at least less florid prose and storytelling.

 

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

 

I enjoy reading a wide variety of books – anything from historical mysteries, young adult, fantasy, science fiction and of course horror. I like a lot of writers who blur the boundaries between genre and literary like Kate Atkinson, Margaret Atwood and Haruki Murakami. I’ve also recently read a lot of translations of traditional Japanese ghost stories, which are fabulous, and the short stories of Ryunosuke Akutagawa. I just finished two brilliant novels by fellow New Zealand Writers; The Unspeakable Secrets of the Aro Valley by Danyl McLauchlan and The Wind City by Summer Wigmore. Both weird, surreal and darkly humorous tales with more moral complexity than I had anticipated. Next on my to-read list is Wake, a horror novel by New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox.

 

6. Where can readers find your work?

 

Mansfield with Monsters is available from Steam Press or on Amazon. At the Bay of Cthulhu, a Lovecraftian take of a Katherine Mansfield novella is available of Amazon. Baby Teeth, the horror anthology is available from Paper Road Press   and a selection of my stories are included in Steam Pressed Shorts on Amazon, which includes a range of horror, steampunk, SF and fantasy short stories.

Interested in learning more? Check out Debbie Cowens’ Amazon page, and  her blog. For a little more detail on Mansfield with Monsters, take a look at this interview, or this video, which also include her collaborator, Matt Cowens.