Interviews

Disappearing and Reappearing—An interview with Tara Lynn Masih

September 12th, 2022

If there’s anything I’ve learned from reading Tara Lynn Masih’s new novella and short story collection, How We Disappear, and from speaking with Masih herself, it’s that a book, like the person writing it, is so much more than the sum of its parts. In pairing the memory-exploring novella "An Aura Surrounds That Night" with stories of aching, lonely characters ranging through the natural world, and worlds they create for themselves, Masih creates a reading experience that goes beyond the potential of each work.

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Interview: Author/Poet/Criminal Defense Lawyer Adam Johnson

September 6th, 2022

Author photo courtesy of Adam Johnson It's one thing for a criminal defense lawyer to write some cheeky courtroom thriller as the vain calling card of a life well-litigated, but it's another thing entirely to beckon absolute risk the way Adam Johnson has done with his debut novel Cialis, Verdi, Gin, Jag (Prism Thread Books/Anxiety Press).

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Vincenzo Natali: Child of the New Flesh

August 29th, 2022

As the world continues to mindlessly writhe around like a splat of hysterical maggots on a coin-operated mattress, the arrival of David Cronenberg’s newest transgressive impact event, Crimes of the Future, feels like a vital instrument in the quest for psychic clarity. His new film is a parabolic mirror reflecting our corporeal future across its curve - a body-vision long overdue.

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An Interview with Crime Fiction Author/Editor Paul J. Garth

August 24th, 2022

Author photo courtesy of Paul J. Garth Crime fiction immediately brings night to mind; urban underworlds obscured in shadow, veiling the desperate things desperate people do, where the darkness acts as curtain—often even as a blanket—to preserve the existential dread fermenting beneath. But in Paul J. Garth's debut novella, The Low White Plain, noir's typical moody backdrop is subverted to the blindness of snow.

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Gwendolyn Kiste: Vampires, Decay, and Hollywood

August 19th, 2022

What consequences does one have to pay for immortal life, especially an immortal life that was never their choice? Three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author Gwendolyn Kiste takes on the task of answering that question in Reluctant Immortals. The novel takes readers through a Gothic tale where the California sun can only do so much to hide the rot and darkness following Lucy Westenra and Bertha Mason. Neither woman asked to be immortal, and they certainly never asked to deal with the return of Dracula and Rochester in their lives.

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Joma West: Writing Through the Dark

August 9th, 2022

Photo courtesy of the author For better or worse, social media has become an integrated part of our lives. We check our feeds in the morning, update them throughout the day, and many people spend their evening scrolling endlessly. It’s become so normal, author Joma West wondered, what happens when your image, your aesthetic, is the only important aspect of your life?

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Garth Miro: Burning Down The Idol of Vacations

July 21st, 2022

Author photo courtesy of Garth Miro Garth Miro's debut novel, The Vacation, is the batshit, seasick summer read of 2022—if your beach is made of quicksand. Miro's character Hugo is slowly swallowed by his own well-meaning horizon, trapped on a cruise ship to appease his pregnant wife while he's only a precarious two weeks off heroin; as they say, hilarity ensues.

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Jason Fisk on Putting Art Out into the World

July 18th, 2022

Photo courtesy of the author Let me put my cards on the table. Full-disclosure. Transparency. All of it. I’m a fan of the poet, essayist and now debut novelist Jason Fisk. His take on human nature and all its frailties, frustrations and sadness never doesn’t feel spot-on to me. Jason Fisk is also a long-time friend, and drinking buddy. And now a client as well. Which I would suggest gives me at least some insight into what I might ask him in an interview. That said, did I know he’s creeped out by things that are larger than they should be? I did not.

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Blake Crouch on Creating Emotional Speculative Fiction

July 14th, 2022

Photo: © Matthew Staver, via Penguin Random House Blake Crouch knows that reality is horror. He’s built his career writing realistic storylines about ordinary people thrown into terrifying situations. But these situations aren’t far-flung visions of a distant future. They’re grounded in actual science that’s happening right now.

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Kim Vodicka: "I’m Only A Horror Writer Because My Life Is A Nightmare"

July 12th, 2022

Author photo courtesy of Kim Vodicka Memphis author Kim Vodicka is not just a writer—she's an energy, a feral vitality that challenges form and disfunction. Her new hybrid fiction/memoir prose-poem collection Dear Ted (Really Serious Literature) is a searing deconstruction of what she calls "the Ted Bundy of Love," a spirit that possesses men, feeds off women, and confirms the mutual death-drive.

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