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\u00a0S\u00e8phera Gir\u00f3n is the author of many books, including Borrowed Flesh <\/i>(2004 Leisure Books), Weird Tales of Terror <\/i>(2013 CreateSpace), and her latest, Captured Souls <\/i>(2014 Samhain Publishing).\u00a0 Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Slices of Flesh <\/i>(2012 Dark Moon Books), The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One <\/i>(2012 Damnation Books), Campus Chills <\/i>(2012 Stark Publishing), and Unnatural Tales of the Jackalope <\/i>(2012 Western Legends Press).<\/p>\n
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1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?<\/strong><\/p>\n I write horror, erotica, non-fiction, and almost everything else. My first love is horror. I\u2019ve had over twenty books published since 2000, and numerous short stories.<\/p>\n My birthplace is New Orleans and I currently live in Toronto. My two boys have grown into amazing adults.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Why do you write horror? \u00a0What draws you to the genre?<\/strong><\/p>\n As a kid, I wasn\u2019t exposed to a lot of horrific images or situations. My family life was stable, summer vacations spent in Maine at grandma\u2019s house, nothing terribly dramatic. So if I\u2019d see or read something \u201chorror,\u201d it struck a chord. And as we all know, horror can be found in the most benign genres and art.<\/p>\n My reading interests leaned towards dark, weird, unusual, mysteries, and science fiction. I was a voracious reader and read books, comics, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias. \u00a0If there were words on paper, I was reading them.<\/p>\n Stephen King came on the scene when I was a teenager and of course, it was love-at-first sight. There was some point I said to myself after reading one of his books that I wanted to scare people with words like he scared me. By then, horror was a genre so it was easier to find as I grew older.<\/p>\n I loved all the small press, the magazines, even the photocopied ones. I witnessed the dawn of splatterpunk and two rounds of the zombie movement. The genre ever evolves and it\u2019s fun to be part of it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve experimented with several tones and styles since I\u2019ve worked in many genres. Likely a recurring element in my fiction is that I\u2019m not afraid to look under the rock.\u00a0 Other than that, I\u2019m not sure how to describe my stories.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 4. Who are some of your influences? \u00a0Are there any women authors who have particularly inspired you to write?<\/strong><\/p>\n Certainly the themes of Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein<\/i> seem to keep appearing in my work. Captured Souls,<\/i> which came out in February 2014 from Samhain, is about a mad scientist experimenting with love and lust. In July 2014, Flesh Failure<\/i> will be released from Samhain, and it too explores a Frankenstein-inspired theme, although it takes place in the year of the Ripper.<\/p>\n I often relay Beautiful Joe<\/i> as one of the first horrific novels I read as a young child. There was an old copy at my grandmother\u2019s house, and one rainy day in Maine, I read it. I cried all the way through. I\u2019ve never revisited it as an adult because I\u2019m certain it won\u2019t hold up even though I have that copy. It was written by Margret Marshall Saunders who was born in Milton, Nova Scotia and died in Toronto. I never realized until today that book was written by a Canadian woman. I had always associated it with Maine though likely an American author.<\/p>\n As many girls of my generation, I was in love with Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and desired to be a writer too.<\/p>\n Some of my work is written in journal form (such as Captured Souls<\/i> and Mistress of the Dark<\/i>) and it is likely an influence of all these works.<\/p>\n A Wrinkle in Time<\/i> by Madeleine L\u2019Engle absolutely fascinated me. I invented landmarks around the neighbourhood where I played make-believe from the book in my head when I was young.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5. What authors do you like to read? \u00a0Any recommendations?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Up until I had children, I was a voracious reader, and averaged a book every couple of days. These days, I\u2019m often working on several projects, marketing, working at my day job (which is editing other people\u2019s books), and by the end of it all, there\u2019s very rarely time to read for fun. I\u2019m badly behind. However, I will say that having been around so long, I know dozens of authors in the genre, both male and female. Every time I pick up work by a peer, I\u2019m entertained. It\u2019s very rarely I\u2019ll see a clunker. My recommendation is read whatever sounds enticing to you. There are always wonderful new authors to discover, as well as the classics and those of us who have been writing for years. You can\u2019t go wrong if you\u2019re reading. I also would like to add that the face of publishing is rapidly changing, as we all know. These days, an author needs readers to support him or her. If you read a book and like it, and even if you don\u2019t, please take a minute to review it on Amazon, Goodreads, or the author\u2019s publisher\u2019s site. It will help your favourite author to build sales and be able to keep writing more books for you. The usual suspects: \u00a0Samhain Publishing, Necon E-books, and Ravenous Romance, as well as Amazon, Kobo, \u00a0and Barnes & Noble.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Interested in learning more? Check out Sephera Giron’s Amazon page<\/a>, and her pages at\u00a0Samhain Publishing<\/a>, Necon E-Books<\/a>, and Ravenous Romance<\/a>. You can also visit her website, Sephera’s World<\/a>, or her blogs, Sephera’s World<\/a>\u00a0(focused on writing and editing) and TarotPaths<\/a>\u00a0(focused on fortunetelling and the paranormal). And here’s a slightly more detailed interview <\/a>she did last August.<\/p>\n Enjoy!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0S\u00e8phera Gir\u00f3n is the author of many books, including Borrowed Flesh (2004 Leisure Books), Weird Tales of Terror (2013 CreateSpace), and her latest, Captured Souls (2014 Samhain Publishing).\u00a0 Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Slices of Flesh (2012 Dark Moon Books), The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One (2012 Damnation Books), Campus<\/p>\n
\n6. Where can readers find your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n