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.<\/p>\n
Yvonne Navarro is a prolific horror author, having written such books as Afterage <\/i>(2002 Overlook Connection Press), Final Impact <\/i>(1997 Bantam), and Dead Times (<\/i>2000 DarkTales Publications).\u00a0 Her short stories have appeared in anthologies such as Deep Cuts: Mayhem, Menace, and Misery <\/i>(2013 Evil Jester Press), Skull Full of Spurs <\/i>(2000 Dark Highway Press), V-Wars <\/i>(2013 IDW Publishing), and The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One <\/i>(2012 Damnation Books).<\/p>\n
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1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?<\/strong><\/p>\n Hi, everyone.\u00a0 I\u2019m Yvonne Navarro, and I\u2019ve been writing since way longer than I care to admit.\u00a0 As of right now, I\u2019ve gotten twenty-two novels published.\u00a0 Seven were solo novels, and the rest were media-related.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Some other awards and such\u2014it\u2019s always fun to have people appreciate your work.\u00a0 I\u2019ve also written a big bunch of short stories, somewhere over 100, but I have no idea of the final count because, well, I\u2019m always going to get around to updating that bibliography document \u201clater.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2. Why do you write horror? \u00a0What draws you to the genre?<\/strong><\/p>\n The first movie I remember watching was Alfred Hitchcock\u2019s The Birds <\/i>(1963).\u00a0 I guess I\u2019ve always thought there\u2019s nothing better than a great, pulse-pounding, scary story.\u00a0 Nowadays it\u2019s a little harder to entertain me in that area, but when I was a kid Creature Features<\/i> was a staple in our house every Friday night, and I hit the matinee at the local movie house every Saturday without fail.\u00a0 My mom liked scary movies, so maybe she\u2019s where I got it from, along with the desire to draw and write.\u00a0 The first adult horror book I read was Scream and Scream Again<\/i> by Peter Saxon (originally titled The Disoriented Man, <\/i>1968).\u00a0 I saw the edge of it on top of the fridge where my Mom had hidden it.\u00a0 I was hooked.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 3. Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s a hard question because normally I don\u2019t think I have a specific style.\u00a0 I write the way I like to read\u2014total involvement in the characters and stories, so much so that I forget I actually am<\/i> reading.\u00a0 When I write I don\u2019t think about writing.\u00a0 I \u201csee\u201d the characters in their environment and it\u2019s like I\u2019m just putting down what they see and do in their own element.\u00a0 I always have a little romance in a story because if a character can\u2019t care about someone else, he or she probably isn\u2019t memorable enough for the reader to care either.<\/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 My biggest influence was without a doubt Robert R. McCammon.\u00a0 It was his book, They Thirst <\/i>(1981 Avon Books), that made me want to try my hand at writing to begin with.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There are lots of good women writers out there.\u00a0 I \u201cgrew up\u201d with Elizabeth Massie, in particular; we met at the first World Horror Convention I attended and have been friends ever since.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 5. What authors do you like to read? \u00a0Any Recommendations?<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 Right now I seem to be on a YA fantasy craze.\u00a0 I\u2019m reading Cassandra Clare\u2019s Mortal Instruments<\/i> Series (Margaret K. McElderry Books) and Veronica Roth\u2019s Divergent<\/i> Series (Katherine Tegen Books).\u00a0 I\u2019m always looking for the next Barbara O\u2019Neal novel, which isn\u2019t horror but consistently has some small supernatural thing going on.\u00a0 And I can\u2019t wait for the final Laini Taylor novel in her Daughter of Smoke and Bone<\/i> trilogy (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers). 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<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019m 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<\/a>.\u00a0 And I\u2019m always trying to cook up something new.\u00a0 I have big plans for this July, when I\u2019ll be a Writer In Residence for two weeks at the Golden Apple Studio in Bangor, Maine.\u00a0 I plan on world-building and cooking up a brand new series while I\u2019m there.\u00a0 I also write the Double X Chromosome<\/i> column for Dark Discoveries magazine (http:\/\/www.darkdiscoveries.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Thanks, Yvonne, for your patience, and for participating in our Women in Horror project, even though it’s already May!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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<\/p>\n
\n6. Where can readers find your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n