Why do we write speculative fiction with homophobia? A Guest Post by Eric Crumrine

Good afternoon, friends and fiends:

Today in The Madhouse Pride Showcase, I'm absolutely thrilled to host one of my brilliant MFA students and to introduce all of you wonderful folks to him. Let's welcome Eric Crumrine!

From writing classroom plays in elementary school, to writing campaign stories for friends playing Dungeons and Dragons, Eric has always kept writing within arm’s reach. Eric writes queer speculative fiction, and he brings forward voices that traditional speculative fiction has historically left to the wayside. He will continue to push the genre forward for representation of LGBTQ characters, who are not just relegated away as side characters to the plot’s main protagonist. He wants to give future generations the heroes he never saw.

Eric currently lives in Boston, MA. He has a B. A. in English from Bowling Green State University and is currently completing his M. F. A. in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University, with a certificate in professional writing.

His post below opens up an important dialogue that I think we all need to have about gender, sexuality, and identity when it comes to speculative fiction, and I hope that you'll resonate with it, think on it, and learn beside and from Eric about how to create inclusive diverse characters in your speculative fiction without any strings attached.

Best,

Stephanie M. Wytovich

Why Do We Write Speculative Fiction With Homophobia?

by Eric Crumrine

Ryan La Sala’s Reverie asked an important question: “What if you could be in a world that loved you back? What would you be willing to do for that?”

For those unfamiliar, Reverie is La Sala’s debut novel about Kane Montgomery discovering reveries, or daydreams come to life, that he and his friends must work through in order to maintain reality. Kane’s counterpoint (not antagonist) is a drag queen named Posey, who wants to use the power of the reveries to reshape the world into something that will accept them for who they are.

To me, this is one of the most important metaphors that I can think of for authors writing in speculative fiction. We can create vast worlds, systems of magic, and alternate histories asking those questions of “what if?” Yet, somehow, we often instead maintain these human aspects of our current cultures that are so pervasive and negative (homophobia, sexism, racism, etc.) When it isn’t critical to the story itself, I have to ask the question, why did an author choose to include this?

To take a video game example, Disco Elysium is an RPG film noir mixed with Cthulhu inspired adventure, where you’re a detective trying to unravel a murder mystery, all while trying to maintain your sanity. In this weird adventure, for no clear reason, a non-playable character flings vile homophobic language at your character. As I was playing the game – which I typically do for escape, much like reading - this completely removed me from the game. You drop a six-letter “f” word, and suddenly I’m back in the real world. I went back in and kept playing, but there was something lost in that moment.

While this is not always as overt in speculative books I’ve read, there are nearly always moments of homophobia (indirectly or directly) when queer characters are present. This could be characters scoffing at characters for their sexuality, bullying them because of their identity, or having to watch a character struggle to live their authentic self.

In these worlds, as a queer reader, my mind begins to fall out of the story. I now wonder why this culture, society, race, etc. engages in homophobic behavior. Is it religion? Is it rooted in toxic masculinity? How pervasive is it throughout the world? How does this add to the story that I’m currently reading?

In my own writing, I don’t include homophobia if it is not necessary to the story itself, and even there, I approach it in ways that hopefully will keep my queer readers engaged. For example, I have two projects I’m working on that illustrate when including homophobia might be necessary and when it isn’t. The first is a “slightly in the future” story with queer superheroes, where homophobia is an unavoidable side effect of America in its current form. The second, however, is a high fantasy story about the end of the world, where all my beautiful queer, gender non-conforming, and trans characters are free to live in a world that embraces that as part of the norm.

You can write an interesting and compelling story without having to run your queer characters through a gauntlet of hatred just because you want them to come out the other side stronger. Strength comes in many forms. Strength does not have to solely be based on survival.

I want to quickly highlight two authors that have accomplished world creation without homophobia for the sake of homophobia.

First, V. E. Schwab did this in her Darker Shades of Magic series with Prince Rhy. The prince is bisexual, and at no point in the trilogy does he apologize or feel compelled to hide this fact from those around him. He’s had a torrid love affair with the captain of a pirate ship (like you do), and while people are not a fan of the pirate, it is never because he is male identifying.

Second, Tamsyn Muir gives us the world of Gideon the Ninth. The brief summary of this book is lesbian necromancers in space, which was more than enough to sell me on it. There is a lot to talk about with this book, but for purposes of this blog, I’m going to highlight Gideon. There are a lot of reasons people in the book do not like Gideon or take issue with the things she does. However, the one piece that is never a point of contention is her sexuality.

This all brings me back to the question from Ryan La Sala that I shared at the beginning of the post. Queer readers want to lose themselves in a world that loves them back. As authors in speculative fiction, why wouldn’t you want to create that for your audiences?

What does this look like? If you find yourself making an LGBTQ+ character experiencing a challenge related to their identity, it can be something as simple as asking yourself the purpose of the moment. Do you need it? Is there a better way to achieve the same outcome?

How can you normalize queer worlds for your characters and your readers? When you’ve got wars raging, worlds ending, and evils gaining powers that need to be stopped, why are your characters still worried about who is sleeping with you and/or what pronouns certain characters use?

Create a world that creates a sense of belonging in your reader, and we’ll keep coming back for more.    

Carmen Maria Machado, The Wonder of Her Tragedies: A Guest Post by Cynthia Pelayo

Hello Friends and Fiends--

Today in The Madhouse, we're continuing along in our Pride Showcase by highlighting the work of Carmen Maria Machado. I first read Machado's work back in 2014 in Granta when I stumbled across her short story "The Husband Stitch." Not only has it stayed with me for these last six years, but it also turned me into an avid reader of her work. Turns out, my friend and colleague Cynthia Pelayo felt similar, and when I reached out to her to see if she felt like sharing her thoughts with us, she graciously agreed. 

For those of you unfamiliar with Cynthia or her work, Cynthia (Cina) Pelayo is the author of LOTERIA, SANTA MUERTE, THE MISSING, POEMS OF MY NIGHT, and the upcoming CHILDREN OF CHICAGO by Polis/Agora. Her work is beautiful, haunting, and it tackles themes of mystery and solace in an authentic and illustrious way, and I can think of no one better than her to take us into the world of Carmen Maria Machado and her genre-defying work.

Enjoy!

Stephanie M. Wytovich

Carmen Maria Machado, The Wonder of Her Tragedies

by Cynthia Pelayo

Carmen Maria Machado’s biography speaks for itself. She is a brilliant essayist and fiction writer. She is the bestselling author of memoir In the Dream House and her short story collection Her Body and Other Parties was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Tin House, The Paris Review, The New Yorker and more. She is a Guggenheim fellow, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, Bard Fiction Prize, Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and more, so much more.

Machado has been described as a “genre annihilator” destroying the ideas we may have around the definitions of how a horror, science fiction or literary story should be shaped and structured. She plays with form in her writing, switching from vignettes, to catalogues to lists. Her stories also sometimes hold a thread of delight, glowing in the disastrous, and the disastrous things are typically being experienced by women in her stories.

However, what is extraordinary about Machado’s works is that she paints them so that many of us can see ourselves in them. From her “Inventory,” a catalogue of a woman’s past sexual experiences through to a present-day virus that spreads across the continent to “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order: SVU,” a brilliant collection of vignettes following detectives who are tortured by the ghosts of murdered girls, failed cases, and guilt.

Machado writes widely about the identities of queer women and their bodies. While I identify as a heterosexual woman, I found myself greatly relating to her writings that touched upon the disregard of women’s desires and violence. She writes of the feminine experience, of sexual explorations, and sexual trauma, and of our bodies, how our bodies have violence inflicted upon them. I must also add that I rarely, if ever, read stories with sexual content. Perhaps it’s because I can find myself falling into one of Machado’s stories as a character, the somewhat prudish and traditional housewife.  Therefore, I admit that my readings of sexuality and sexual encounters is limited. However, when I do read about sex in a Machado story I do not feel uncomfortable. The sex is very often tied to the character’s development and is crucial in her stories.

I was drawn to Machado’s fiction works by way of her literary criticisms, essays and articles. She has said her early influences included Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ray Bradbury, Helen Oyeyemi, Angela Carter and more. She was raised on magical realism and fairy tales, the same literary diet I have heavily consumed. Machado’s writing is political, and it’s important to note that because in her nonfiction, and her fiction, she challenges tropes that are harmful and hurtful to all of us.

Machado has criticized the destruction of women in media, from how women are portrayed in novels to how they are cut up and sliced on television and in movies. We love to see the destruction of the female form, sliced, stitched back up together and annihilated once again. And what Machado does is not only deconstruct the ideas around the ownership of a woman’s body but challenges us to think of what our bodies are capable of, like in her short story “Mothers,” about two women who have a baby together naturally.

For me, I fell into “The Husband Stitch” and could just not climb out. It’s a story about a traditional courtship between a woman and a man. While she is happy, or we believe she is, and the husband gives her everything she wants there is still one recurring question he asks – why does she wear a green ribbon around her neck? It’s that constant questioning in a story, thick in folklore, myth, fairy tales, and urban legends of things that somehow may be true, that highlight how a woman’s body is never truly hers. Because even though she has satisfied her husband’s desires, served the home, given him a child, and a traditional life - he is still compelled to have ownership of her entire being, and not just her body but her secrets. There is no boundary or space that she can occupy as her own. He consumes her in her entirety even if that means she will fall apart. Her protestations fall flat on him, and so she relinquishes, because that is what she has always done, even to her own detriment.

Machado spins the wheel of dread beautifully, and when the horrific happens, I am struck with a magical wonder and a sadness that I don’t quite feel many other writers can accomplish effectively. Her writing comes from a place of immense skill, beauty and pain.

Much of her writing also plays with the structure and form of the fairy tale, particularly this element of flatness in fairy tales. Many of her characters are not given emotions, and they are not in a psychological conflict. However, by creating a story with this structure of flatness and eliminating psychological conflict, that allows the reader to somehow add their own depth into the tale that Machado is weaving. Maybe that’s why so many of us can see ourselves in a Machado story.

Or maybe, the violence that she writes of is so widespread that many of us can connect with the tragedies she speaks of.

Finding Your Door: The Importance of Queer Representation in the Wayward Children Series

Good Afternoon, Friends--

Today in the Madhouse, I'm thrilled to welcome one of my favorite ladies, Cassie Daley, to help continue our Pride Showcase and celebrate the works of LGBTQ+ writers in the Speculative Fiction genre. Cassie is a wonderfully talented artist, writer, and photographer, and honestly, I'm not sure if there's anything that she can't do, but what I will say is that she consistently brings color and laughter and happiness into my life, and I feel honored to have her here today talking about one of our favorite book series: The Wayward Children by Seanan McGuire.

Like Cassie, I've always been a fan of portal world stories, and I spent a lot of my childhood running around the woods, digging holes in my backyard, and looking under my bed in an attempt to find a door to somewhere magical and haunting where I could go be my delightfully weird and morbid self without judgement. Stories like Neil Gaiman's Coraline were fast favorites for me, and I even have a tiny door in the corner of my office now to remind me that there's always that possibility of something more waiting behind the veil.

So grab your afternoon tea and pick some dandelions because it's time to sit back, relax, and enter a world of color, whimsy, and magic.

Yours between worlds,

Stephanie M. Wytovich

Finding Your Door: The Importance of Queer Representation in the Wayward Children Series
By Cassie Daley

Portal worlds have been a large staple of storytelling, especially in the fantasy genre, for longer than I’ve been alive - and for good reason! The adventure and possibilities that portal worlds bring to literature are unparalleled, often offering an escape for those of us who found more solace in our made-up story worlds than in real life. You’d think with the inclusion of aliens and mystical creatures and sometimes talking animals as characters, a cast diverse in more realistic ways wouldn’t be too much to ask for, right? Unfortunately, despite the seemingly endless available options for representation that these worlds and fantasy in general provides, our list of heroes in these stories is woefully monochromatic. More often than not, the protagonists--who we as readers are meant to look up to--are straight, white characters from privileged backgrounds who a majority of us have never been able to truly relate to.

But then Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series hit the shelves, and instead of giving us cardboard characters throughout a truly wide cast, we’re introduced to so much representation in so few pages that it’s hard to question why this isn’t the norm.

For those unfamiliar with the books, McGuire’s Wayward Children series focuses on not just one of those portal worlds mentioned above, but rather unlimited numbers of them. These worlds are accessible only to children via special doorways that can take the form of anything from a specific mirror under direct moonlight, to a twisty old tree in the forest. The doors give only one instruction to those passing within them: Be sure.

In the series, some children are just born into the wrong worlds. Whether they are better suited to the quiet Halls of the Dead, or the mermaid-infested depths of The Trenches, or to hundreds of other possible worldscapes, occasionally, some children are able to find doorways that help get them to where they’re truly meant to be.

Unfortunately, sometimes certain things happened that cause these “lost” children to be found again and brought back to the place of their origin - or, as we know it, the real world. Understandably, this doesn’t bode very well for the children. The ones who struggle with coming back the most are sent to Miss Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, where they’re given the one thing they haven’t been given by their families: the hope that someday they will be able to return to their true homes.

Some of the main themes in the series are individuality and the understanding that sometimes the roles we’re born into or that are expected from us, aren’t the roles we're going to thrive in. The children in Eleanor’s home all found other worlds where they grew as people, and sometimes even lived full lives – even if just a matter of months had passed here. Where these kids struggled under societal pressures and obligations in the real world, they were able to find freedom and truth in their portal lands, which allowed them to be their truest, most authentic selves.

Honestly, Seanan McGuire had a bestseller right off the bat with this premise. The ability to write about these different worlds and characters and make each of them so distinct and individual is a feat all its own, but then you get down to the nitty gritty of the actual themes and the representation, and that adds another layer of depth that just isn’t found in many books today, therefore putting it leagues above most other stories in the genre.

In the first book alone, our main protagonist is an asexual girl who struggles with her return from the dark, still Halls of the Dead, and her roommate is a tree climbing, colorful, energetic bisexual Japanese girl from a magical sugar land that exists in a state of constant, whimsical, nonsensical flux. Other characters include a trans boy who discovers himself during his time in his portal world, a fat girl who isn’t ostracized for her weight, and the list of great characters just keeps growing. Right away, we have characters who represent the people we know and interact with - and maybe even the people we ARE! - on a regular basis, but who we just don’t get to read much of in our literature. And how incredible is the normalization that, sometimes, we’re just born into the wrong place, situation, or even body? Especially as a series suitable for children, which is the age range when a lot of us first started to discover things about ourselves in respect to gender and sexuality - this is revolutionary!

McGuire herself writes: “Part of my goal with the Wayward Children series is providing representation for people who rarely get to see themselves in this sort of story. And yes, you can have queer rep in a series where characters start out between ages nine and thirteen. I knew I liked girls when I was eight. If this somehow made me “adult content” at eight, no one told me so. If Disney fairy tales are age-appropriate despite the forced heterosexuality, then a story about an eleven-year-old girl who has crushes on other girls isn’t overly or overtly sexual. It’s just a fact of life for many of us.” --via Twitter (Link for post: https://twitter.com/seananmcguire/status/1181641049053319170)

Now while we don’t have doorways to portal worlds in the real world (that I know of! Prove me wrong, Goblin Market, curfew be damned!), we do have books, which in my opinion are probably the closest things. We have the ability to be transported from the situations and lives we were born into, and sometimes we’re able to live out grand adventures, and even deep heartaches, between the pages the same way that these Wayward Children can and do.

Furthermore as a woman who has been waiting her whole life for the pan rep in horror, sci-fi, and fantasy books that doesn’t quite exist yet - I am so appreciative of Seanan McGuire’s writing in this series, and of the stories being told. I urge more people to read this series, and to consider the importance of having an accurate reflection of our colorful society in the stories you choose.

And if you’re a writer, I implore you to normalize a wider variety of characterization in your own stories. Perhaps one day, one of your readers can find a Door of their very own within the pages of your books.

BIO:

Cassie is an avid bookworm & overcaffeinated rainbow enthusiast. She creates artwork sold in her Etsy shop focused on color, horror, and pop culture. She writes about and reviews horror fiction on her blog, Let's Get Galactic, as well as for the Night Worms Blog.

Blog: https://letsgetgalactic.com
Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LetsGetGalacticArt
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holo.reader
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ctrlaltcassie

Urban Legends and Cannibal Kings: A Guest Interview with Hailey Piper

Hello and Good Afternoon, Friends and Fiends!

This week in the Madhouse kicks off Pride! To celebrate all the wonderful work by queer writers in the Speculative Fiction genre, I'm going to be showcasing books, interviews, and guest posts by some of my favorite writers, and hopefully at the end of the month, we'll all have some more material to add to our TBR lists. 

Today, however, is all about Hailey Piper, and I'm so excited to be showcasing her work here. For those of you who might not be familiar with Piper and her work, Hailey is the author of Benny Rose, the Cannibal King, An Invitation to Darkness, and The Possession of Natalie Glasgow. She’s a member of the HWA, and her short fiction appears in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, and Year’s Best Hardcore Horror. When she isn’t writing queer characters into her horror stories, you might find her haunting the apartment she shares with her wife and making spooky noises.

And speaking of spooky noises, do you folks hear happy cannibal noises? 

Is it just me?

Well, just to be safe: close your door and read this with your back against the wall. We're about to enter the Blackwood Mythos, and trust me, this story has some serious TEETH.

With hunger, 

Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: Hi Hailey! I’m so excited to have you (and Benny Rose!) here in the Madhouse today. Can you tell us a little bit about your book and what it means to you (literally or metaphorically)?

HP: Hi Stephanie! I’m excited to be here. Well, Benny Rose, the Cannibal King is my most recent novella, published as part of Unnerving’s Rewind or Die series which calls back to a VHS video store horror section experience. It’s a coming of age horror story (my favorite horror subgenre) about a group of teenage girls trying to survive Halloween night when their local folkloric boogeyman, Benny Rose, turns out to be a real supernatural cannibal. Though it takes place in the ’80s, it’s also very much about right now and the time we live in, where adulation to the past threatens to eat the future, where there are those all too happy to sacrifice their children to live a little more comfortably.

SMW: Now I’m a sucker for a good, spooky urban legend, and your book plays to the tune of a great one. As such, I’m curious: what’s your favorite urban legend, and how did it inspire your writing?

HP: This is going to sound silly, and maybe it’s because I’m from New York, but alligators in the sewers. I knew from a young age that there was no such thing, but the idea still thrilled me, as if there could be a whole world waiting under our feet full of terrifying creatures. I always envisioned them as pale, although now I’m not sure reptiles depend on sunlight for color, and enormous despite the poor nutrition available in the sewers. But those details that make it nonsense in real life fit me in fiction. You can always stretch credulity. And then stretch it a little more, and a little more, until the reader is immersed in something completely fantastical.

SMW: What was your favorite section to write in the book, and then to play devil’s advocate, which part did you struggle with or have the hardest time finishing?

HP: Without giving too much away, my favorite scene was probably the “Desi’s Girl” chapter, where Desiree takes a stand. This Halloween night began with bad intentions, and facing the prospect of death, all the little resentments lobbed at her are boiling under the skin. People suspect she’s gay or assume it. A teacher chastises, her mother berates, Adrian mocks, and even her friend Jesse makes a comment with a wink without Desiree having said who she is. Before we have the word, we know we’re different, and once we learn the word, we often bury it. And now something’s coming to kill her, not because she’s gay, but because she’s young, and yet it’s still because of who she is.

Singing her altered “Jessie’s Girl,” fighting back—that’s all Desiree making a violent statement, and I loved writing it.

I think the biggest struggle was conceptual, but that’s kind of cheating my way out of this question. The toughest part to write is when Desiree learns the truth behind the legend. She is highly imaginative and there is a lot of backstory to communicate without much dialogue at that point. I had to paint the picture just right.

SMW: Benny Rose is such a great villain and I love that he’s HUNGRY! How did you go about creating this monstrous boogeyman?

HP: This was part of the conceptual struggle. I knew about the Glade Street neighborhood and the characters of Desiree, Gabrielle, Sierra, and Jesse, but the monster had many forms and it took a while to pin him down. Eventually that evolved into the Blackwood mythos as well, with Benny becoming an ever-changing story told between the town kids. He became ALL of their stories.

In the end though, Blackwood Mercy Hospital was always the backstory, and Benny grew into the character same as the character sprang from that tragedy. There’s a special resentment that blooms in some small towns. Benny wears that on his face, not a mindless zombie, never speaking, yet always sneering or smirking, even at one point toying with one of the girls just to upset the others, pretending they can get away.

SMW: There is a strong theme of community in this story both on the macro and micro level. Where do you think the horror lives and breathes in large groups of people, because let’s face it—some of the most horrifying stories deal with this concept of mob mentality and crowds (and what they can do) i.e. Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” David Pinner’s The Wicker Man, Jordan Peele’s Get Out…

HP: I think the horror begins on a cellular level. Cells together form an organism, and then organisms might form a herd, pack, or community. We lose cells constantly while the organism persists, same as members of a community. When horror stays cellular, we get body horror. When it becomes societal, we get folk horror. The actions of an individual cell aren’t generally scrutinized when grouped with other cells, and so when mob mentality strikes, we stop being cells and become wholly an organism. That some cells feel safe to do harm inside that anonymity is terrifying. Scarier still is that they can go on pretending to be neighbors afterward. We see people every day, but how many are anonymous cells just waiting for their next chance to lose themselves in a larger organism?

SMW: So I have this not-so-quiet obsession with good cannibal stories, and Hannibal Lecter has long since been one of my favorite villains. What are some of your favorite books and movies that deal with cannibalism, and why did you feel drawn to work with that topic specifically?

HP: I definitely gravitate toward the TV show Hannibal, though Mads Mikkelsen’s sophisticated, charming Lector is about as far removed from Benny Rose as any character could get. The draw for me is the eating. My wife has made fun of me for making hunger a primary motivation in some characters, but it’s so inherent and primal. Everything must eat, but not everything is eaten. To be eaten is to be unmade, broken apart, and become the cells of something else. Part of the sickness of Benny Rose is, being a supernatural creature, there is no purpose to his consumption. He’s a story on repeat, and his eating is wasteful, same as his hunger.

SMW: Something that I really loved about this book were the nods to Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and Lois Duncan’s I Know What You Did Last Summer—two of my favorites! Without giving too much away, what about these books (or movies) spoke to you and how did you incorporate their influence into your story?

HP: Oh dear, without giving too much away? Well, certainly the movie adaptation of I Know What You Did Last Summer was striking for me. I was in middle school, I think, and for me and the kids around me, this was our first encounter with the hook-handed urban legend. That certainly shaped how I thought of the kids coming up with their Benny stories in the book. As for Rosemary’s Baby, there’s a playful side eye from Benny Rose, the Cannibal King toward satanic panic and witchcraft, but no one really knows the forces they’re playing with as much as they think.

SMW: June is Pride month (woo!), so I want to know who your favorite LGBTQIA+ horror writers and books are. Give us all the recommendations, lady!

HP: Caitlin R. Kiernan has written such incredible fiction. I know they argue against being categorized as a horror writer, and that’s fair—they write a broad spectrum of speculative fiction—but their work often grows from grim earth. Joanna Koch does incredible literary work with their horror, as does the incredible Laura Mauro. Jessica McHugh’s weird horror is one of a kind. I’m going to mix together books by queer authors and not, because some of these are of significance regardless of who wrote them: The Very Best of Caitlin Kiernan and The Dinosaur Tourist by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Rabbits in the Garden by Jessica McHugh, Sing Your Sadness Deep by Laura Mauro, The Couvade, by Joanna Koch, the Monstress series by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda, To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger, F4 by Larissa Glasser, and The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling.

This list should be longer; I’m under-read in this, and many LGBTQIA+ writers I know of seem to gravitate hard toward strict sci-fi, fantasy, and romance. I don’t blame them, we need that kind of escapism.

But for me and many people I know, horror is healing, and that’s where we find solace.

SMW: What is next in store for your readers?

HP: Short fiction seems to be the way of the near future. I have a story “Toad Man, Toad Man” coming in Monsters, Movies & Mayhem! cinematic horror anthology, “Unkindly Girls” in Worst Laid Plans: An Anthology of Vacation Horror, the first anthology from Grindhouse Press, “Autotomy” will be produced on the all-LGBTQIA+ horror podcast Monsters Out of the Closet, and then there are like ten more.

I have a larger project coming in 2021, but I don’t know if that will have been announced by the time this interview goes up, so I don’t think I can elaborate here, just in case!

SMW: What advice do you have for writers working in fiction?

HP: Read. If you don’t make time to read, it’s going to hurt your writing. The more you read, the stronger you’ll write. Grab prose, poetry (like Stephanie Wytovich’s), comics. Read recent stuff, not just classics, and definitely stretch outside your genre now and then; technique and atmosphere tend to cross-pollination. That’s how new things grow.

Author Bio:

Hailey Piper is the author of Benny Rose, the Cannibal King, An Invitation to Darkness, and The Possession of Natalie Glasgow. She’s a member of the HWA, and her short fiction appears in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, and Year’s Best Hardcore Horror. When she isn’t writing queer characters into her horror stories, you might find her haunting the apartment she shares with her wife and making spooky noises.

Praise for Benny Rose, the Cannibal King:

"Hailey Piper is a major new voice in the horror genre, and Benny Rose, the Cannibal King is the perfect place to start with her work. A short and magnificent shock to the system, this one has got everything: great characters, fantastic vintage horror vibes, and a terrifying urban legend at the center of it all. Keep an eye on Hailey's work; she is seriously going places."

--Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens

"A good urban legend has a way of seeping into your bones and refusing to crawl out; Hailey Piper's Cannibal King is certainly one of those that will be creeping into my mind, late at night and unbidden, for a long time to come. Benny Rose is an unforgettable terror, rivaled only by the gutsy teens who dare to go up against him."
--Claire Holland, author of I Am Not Your Final Girl

"I see your slumber party massacre and raise you a taste of human tragedy, a funhouse ride of plot twists, and a heaping side of gore. Hailey Piper has the audacity to write teenage mean girls as thinking, feeling, bad-ass human beings."
--Joanna Koch, author of The Couvade

"Sometimes when we tell ourselves stories, we unwittingly awaken and summon the very monster we thought only lived in our minds.... Witness a brilliant cast of characters take a chomping bite out of a local folk story that proves itself all too real. With haunted hearts and burning teeth, Piper's sharp prose delivers a whirlwind tale; here, we peel back the layers of our strong, female leads and root for them to conquer the night."
--Sara Tantlinger, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil's Dreamland

INTO THE DREAMSCAPE: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTINA SNG

Good morning friends and fiends, 

Today in the Madhouse, I'm excited to sit down and chat with poet, Christina Sng, who I've had the absolute pleasure of working with over the past few years through Raw Dog Screaming Press. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with Sng and her work, she is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of A COLLECTION OF NIGHTMARES (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2017), Elgin Award runner-up of ASTROPOETRY (Alban Lake Publishing, 2017), and most recently, the author of A COLLECTION OF DREAMSCAPES (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2020). Her poetry, fiction, and art have appeared in numerous venues worldwide, and her poems have garnered multiple nominations in the Rhysling Awards, the Dwarf Stars, the Elgin Awards, as well as honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Best Horror of the Year.

On deck today, we'll be chatting about poetry, the intersection between feminism and myth, the power of dreams, and how her poetry style has changed over the years.  I hope you all enjoy the conversation and will consider picking up a copy of her latest book and maybe dive into some more speculative poetry this summer.

Fresh hauntings,

Stephanie M. Wytovich

SMW: Tell us about your collection. What gave you the idea to create in this bizarre, horrific world, and in your opinion, what does it represent at its most literal and figurative heights?

CS: It actually came together on its own when poems I wrote filled up in each folder. They were the stories of my life, stories of people I know or had encountered, the stories of this time and era. I became its curator and it transformed into this grand myth, our story.

The collection represents our dark and complex history reflecting the good and bad of humanity. Whenever we give up on us, someone comes along and brings us hope as quickly as an evil person comes along to dash it again.

SMW: What was your favorite part of the collection to create and explore, and then to play devil’s advocate, what was the hardest for you?

CS: I loved creating new fairy tales to complete a section, fleshing out new versions of a well-loved story.

The hardest part was Myths and Dreamscapes and perhaps, The Love Song of Allegra which formed the crucial beginning and end of the overarching story.

SMW: Per the title of your collection, you’re dealing with dreamscapes, these nods to fantastical, sometimes nightmarish worlds. Because your collection is split up into parts, which was your favorite world to create in? And do you have a favorite poem in that section?

CS: I love them all, to be honest, each one a part of me. Here are my favourite worlds and why I love them, accompanied by my favourite stanzas.

Allegra, because her story represents everything we hope for that is good in this world.

“An innocence,
Once treasured,
Now regained,
Even if it was for
But a moment.”
~”The War of the Fall”

Fairy Tales, when we realize sometimes there is more evil than good and how we endure it is through resilience and acceptance.

“From that day forth, my dreams are sweet,
Covered in blood and sleet.
And oh, do I welcome it.”
~”Never Happy After”

All the Monsters in the World because as we grow older, we realize the world is not what it seems and sometimes we live life through blinkers.

“Do not take
A moment to rest,
For all you have done
Will flood you with emotion.”
~”Reflections”

“When you let your guard down
And forget just for a moment—
They always move faster than you.
So I have joined the darkness.
I have joined the shadows.
No one can touch me in the dark.”
~”When there are Monsters”

The Capacity of Violence because there is so much strength in us to fight back yet society has conditioned us to back down and be docile.

“You’ve always told me
That I warm up your heart.
I throw it in the fire,
Now, that’s a start.”
~”Mortal Life”

“They will arrive
With their guns and scythes,
Here we will wait
And eat them alive.”
~”Forest Mother”

“Wrongs made right for once
In this unjust world.
I close my eyes,
And enjoy the bloodbath.”
~”Upgrade”

“And with my bare hands,
I tore you apart.
Yes, adrenaline works like that.
You must have forgotten.”
~”A Capacity for Violence”

And Myths and Dreamscapes, because everything comes full circle: lies and exposure, hurt and healing, birth and death, and interspersed in between all that is love.

“In the sky, she could be
Whatever she wanted to be,
Mold the clouds into birds
And birds into clouds
Till soon, she would’ve made
A whole world of her own.”
~”Like Birds in the Shimmering Sky”

“And everything dies
But I, standing on the wasteland
Listening to the rocks cry.”
~”The Wasteland”

“Slowly we fade to star dust,
Drifting back into the skies,
Into the mysterious universe
Where we belong.”
~”Moonlight in the Playground”

SMW: There are tons of references to mythology, fairy tales, and enchantments throughout your collection. Do you have a favorite fairy tale or myth that you find yourself coming back to time and time again? If so, what about it appeals to you?

CS: Little Red. She’s young. She’s got her whole life ahead of her. And if she’s so tough as a child, imagine how powerful she will be when she grows up. Her potential is incredible.

Cinderella’s story intrigues me. Here is a girl who grew up abused and used. How does she keep on a happy face? How does she endure? The variations on her story explore this.

I love Medusa too and she has been a part of my last 2 books. I will be writing more about her in my following collections.

SMW: As someone who has personally had a rough time with sleep, insomnia, and night terrors throughout her life, I’m fascinated by the themes of unconscious exploration in your work. As such, I’m curious: how would you describe your connection or relationship to the night and/or the dream world?
CS: I feel safe and myself at night. I’ve been a night owl for as long as I can remember. Recent events have made me realize my mind can lock up so tightly that it was only after an EMDR session did I start dreaming again after years of dreamless sleep. This disconnect. It was for survival.

Yet even now, I have trouble sleeping and staying asleep. My mind is always ticking like a clock. I try to tire it out and make it go into sleep mode but sometimes that doesn’t last long. I wish I could sleep as well as I did in my 20s but those days are gone. I’ll be happy if I wake up feeling fresh and not woolly-headed.

SMW: This collection is made up of poems that you’ve written throughout various parts of your life. What challenges did you encounter—if any—during the revision process, especially with poems that you might have written years ago?

CS: As we grow as writers, our preferences and styles change. I’ve had to modify the structure of some of my older poems just to edit them because my brain can’t focus on long lines that flow from one to another anymore.

So if you look at almost all of my poems, they’re in short stanzas with short lines, easy to read for my current brain. It’s given me the chance to update them and revise them, and thanks to your wonderful advice on them, I’ve been able to make them better.

SMW: When it comes to poetry, you’ve been wildly published, and a lot of attention—and rightfully so—has been put on your skill set for writing haiku. Can you talk a little bit about how you got started writing haiku and maybe give some tips to fellow readers and writers of the form?

CS: I was at this point in my life where my poetry swung from long 2-3 page poems to being unable to write anything at all due to things that were happening in my life.

Somehow I came across Scifaikuest, which is edited by Teri Santitoro and I began to write 3-line scifaiku and horrorku. She guided me over a year through my submissions and finally, I got it.

From there, I moved to traditional haiku which focuses on mindfulness and healing. That got me through the next few years, writing almost daily. It was incredibly therapeutic.

The principles remain: A haiku emphasizes brevity. It requires a juxtaposition between the lines and a seasonal element. So when editing, we remove the extraneous words. The shorter, the better.

For me, haiku is like a butterfly you hold in your hand. You never own it or know it completely, and anytime it can just flutter away and you wonder how stayed on you for the time that it did.

SMW: What is next in store for your readers?
CS: I’ve almost finished my science fiction collection, which I’ve been compiling for the past 2 decades. However, I plan to take my time editing it so it may be another 3 years before it is done.

There is also a comprehensive collection of my haiku that has been sitting here waiting for a final review.

As for horror, I’ve begun collating a new themed poetry collection that will likely take a couple of years to complete.

I’d like to also finish a short story collection and a novel in my lifetime. They’re in the works but will take some time to finish. Perhaps when the children are grown. :D

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Praise for  A COLLECTION OF DREAMSCAPES, which is a book that takes us on a journey through dark mythologies and fairy tales, into the world of monsters, and a leap into the boundless depths of the human heart.

"A Collection of Dreamscapes is exactly what I have come to expect from Christina: full of heart, personal, and powerful while opening up her view of the world to include a variety of different lenses and angles of approach."—Anton Cancre, Author and Reviewer

"Three words that describe this book: immersive, creepy, accessible. If you like the short stories of Carmen Maria Machado, you also need to try Sng."—Becky Spratford, Readers' Advisor

"This book reads like a dream, dark and fantastic. Danger in a sort of soft packaging. Multiple subtle brushes of the knife, no less deadly than the full on stab."—@WellReadBeard, Reviewer

"The words on these pages are beautiful beyond measure, but they will also haunt you long after your close the cover."—Amanda Turner @readlingoctopus714, Reviewer

"Christina Sng has done it again with beautifully haunting poetry that will immerse you in a waking dream."—Jackie Cowgill, Reviewer