Welcome back! As a nice change of pace here on my blog, today’s featured interview is between editor Sarah E. Glenn and author Paul Wartenberg. Way back in early 2015, I first launched this author interview series with several of Sarah’s interviews with her authors from Mystery and Horror, LLC. So this is truly a return to form, and a particularly welcome one: Sarah and Paul recently worked together on Strangely Funny III, the sequel to Strangely Funny II which was the first book to feature my fiction. In a way, this blog is very much like coming home!

Now enough about me, and on to the main event! Author Paul Wartenberg has been published in various anthologies, including Strangely Funny, Mardi Gras Murder, and History and Mystery, Oh My! He published his own anthology, Last of the Grapefruit Wars, and has self-published shorts and novellas such as The Hero Cleanup Protocol and Body Armor Blues as ebooks. He’s also a devoted cat owner, which always wins you points on my blog.

Below Sarah and Paul discuss the inspiration for his Strangely Funny III story, “Minette Dances with the Golem of Albany,” as well his upcoming plans as an author.

Sarah Glenn: How did you get the idea for your story in Strangely Funny III?

Paul Wartenberg: I’ve been fascinated with the legend of the Golem of Prague, and had been wondering how I would write a story about it wandering about a modern-age urban city. Would it still be something of a protector of its community? Has its long age given it any insight into the human condition that it otherwise did not know before? Could it have gained a soul?

I then considered what it could be like for Golems to be made elsewhere… and then I remembered my birth-state of Georgia is well-known for its red clay. The idea of a red-skinned (“redneck”) Golem from my hometown became too tempting to ignore. I wanted to have a Golem, and I wanted to use the background from my earlier vampire story to try and expand my “playground” so to speak with other vampire characters.

SG: Who are your current favorite authors? What do you enjoy about them?

PW: I’ve been reading Lee Child for some reason. The Jack Reacher stuff. I’m usually not much of a thriller reader, but there’d been a lot of checkouts of his work at my library so I took a look. It’s sort of like reading Die Hard as written by Hemingway. Otherwise I’ve been keeping up with my regular readership of Tim Dorsey for the bizarre Florida-esque humor and various graphic novels.

SG: What is your favorite writing snack food/drink?

PW: I drink iced tea, lots of. Have to cut back on the sodas. As for food, I snack between writings, I loathe getting crumbs and grease on the keyboards.

SG: What are you working on next?

PW: Struggling with the NaNo novel project from last November, and getting short stories finished for the Florida Writers Association’s annual anthology projects.

Big thanks to Sarah E. Glenn and Paul Wartenberg for stopping by my blog today! Read Paul’s latest ebook, A Serious Tank on a Clockwork World, and be sure to pick up a copy of Strangely Funny III, from Mystery and Horror, LLC!

Happy reading!

Welcome back to another author interview! This week I’m pleased to spotlight Andrea Janes! I first discovered Andrea when I was writing at Wanderlust and Lipstick and I spotlighted her New York-based tour company, Boroughs of the Dead. Since then, she and I have crossed paths again as horror writers, and I figured it was about time to highlight all the great work she’s doing!

Recently, Andrea and I discussed her role in macabre tourism as well as her burgeoning fiction writing career.

A couple icebreakers to start: when did you first decide to become a writer, and who are some of your favorite authors?

I don’t think it was my decision to make! I learned to read when I was three — my big sister taught me — and wanted to be a writer by the time I was six. We grew up total bibliophiles, and I think we just always knew that literature would be a huge part of our lives. My sister’s now a professor of Canadian literature at the University of Toronto. That being said, I haven’t been writing steadily for the past thirty years. I took a few breaks here and there like my half-decade studying and working in film, and the two years I took to start and build my tour company, Boroughs of the Dead. I’ve spent as much time trying to figure out how to make a viable living as I have working on the actual craft of writing.

As a reader, I’m not really a completist so I tend not to think of my favorites in terms of authors but usually more in terms of individual books or stories — except for Poe, M.R. James and Shirley Jackson, whose fiction I think I may have read in their entirety. But some other authors and books I’ve loved, latched onto, and become obsessive about include: W.G. Sebald, Dorothy B. Hughes, Elena Ferrante (the Neapolitan Trilogy), Lawrence Block, and Donald Westlake/Richard Stark (the Parker books); Stoner, The Woman in White, Moby Dick… oh man, this could be a really long list. What all these have in common was that my first encounter with them was revelatory, either for the way these authors wield language — whether stripped down hardboiled genius or overflowing lyrical gorgeousness —  or for their works’ sheer hugeness of theme, story, emotion. (In the case of The Woman in White, the character of Marian Halcombe had a lot to do with it!) And humor, I really appreciate a sense of humor, which is actually what I think I love best about Edgar Allan Poe.

As mentioned in the intro, I first discovered you when I was writing at Wanderlust and Lipstick and spotlighted your macabre tour group, Boroughs of the Dead. How, if at all, has your work in tourism affected your writing, or vice versa?

You know what’s funny? We don’t really get as many tourists as we do locals on our tours! So I never really think of what I do as tourism, which is weird, I guess, because it is, really. Anyway, to answer your question: editing! Pacing! Winnowing down a story to its essence, cutting extraneous details. Nothing like a live audience’s eyes glazing over to tell you when you’ve gone into too much backstory! The instantaneous feedback is invaluable.

You are one of the many amazing authors slated to appear in the forthcoming Shadows at the Door anthology. What can you reveal about your story?

I can reveal that it’s based on one of my more memorable trips to the post office! Actually, there’s a lot of very personal stuff in that story, like observations about my own neighborhood, and the fact that the main character is a film archivist (I do love silent film, and I was watching Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room, which is an homage to lost silent films, while I was writing it). There’s a lot of stuff in there where I try to connect the dissolution of a psyche under the strain of living in New York City and the fragments of silent film the protagonist tries to put together. There’s a lot of stuff about the many layers of life and death in this city, the way we all pile on top of each other, inhabiting each other’s old, used spaces — as well as some commentary on how a lot of these layers can go completely unnoticed if you’re not looking for it. Finally, I tried to show how miniature cities exist within New York, subcultures within subcultures, worlds within worlds, and how you can live within them and still be an outsider. The supernatural element to the story is deliberately vague. I wanted the ghost in this story to be both literal and an amorphous entity that isn’t quite nameable — just one of many strange encounters that a person can have in this city where the dead and the living live side by side.

Do you have any rituals as a writer, or any specific tips for how you work through writer’s block and/or creative slumps?

Not really; I try various things. Right now I’m trying to get as much writing done as I can before I give birth to my first baby, who is due on May 18th. So I’m doing this thing where I set my cell phone timer for twenty minutes and write in these small increments, which helps me get started. Once I get on a roll, hours can pass and I won’t notice — but it takes a lot of warm-up to achieve that semi-liminal state of consciousness where the words start to flow. The 20-minute timer thing helps me relax into it without putting crippling pressure on myself.

But normally I don’t really force myself to work through major bouts of writer’s block. When I have a creative dry spell, I just go and do something else for a while. I’m sure if I was on deadline it’d be different and I’d have to think up a solution right quick, but I don’t have that pressure so I don’t overthink it. As long as I get a certain amount of stuff done within a reasonable amount of time, like one short story a year, I don’t worry too much.

Where would you like to see your writing career in five years?

I’d like to really buckle down and hone my craft a little more than I have so far. A lot of the time I feel like I’m not where I should be yet, technically, as a writer. I’m still in the middle of writing my first novel-length ghost story and it’s been a huge challenge for me. Just the sheer unbroken momentum it takes to finish a novel is such a luxury of time and energy, and it’s so hard not to get sidetracked in this life of many and varied pressures and distractions. I’d like to finish the novel and be proud of it. I’d like to just keep getting stronger and more assured, and read my own work and not cringe. At this point in my life I’m a lot more interested in the work itself than anything else. If the career stuff comes, it comes, and that’s great. If it never comes, but I find at the end of my life that I’ve done right by my inner six-year-old and written something worth reading, I’ll be happy.

Out of your published work, do you have a personal favorite?

I really like “Morbus,” which is in the collection Boroughs of the Dead. It’s a humorous story in which a thief agonizingly dies of cholera in a mansion loosely based on J.P. Morgan’s, and features a sassy demon. And “Newtown Creek” in the same anthology, because it grew out of a childhood nightmare of mine and is kind of close to my heart. I probably worked the hardest on my one and only Weird Western, “The Last Wagon in the Train,” which was published in the Tenth Black Book of Horror and got an honorable mention in one of the Year’s Best Horror anthologies.

Big thanks to Andrea Janes for being part of this week’s author interview series! Find her at her author website as well as at Boroughs of the Dead, the place to go for New York City’s best ghost tours!

Happy reading!

Welcome back for this week’s author interview! Today I am thrilled to spotlight the awesome Tabitha Thompson. Tabitha’s horror fiction has been featured in multiple issues of The Sirens Call, and she is currently hard at work on new stories that are sure to be as amazing as her previous work!

Recently, she and I discussed her inspiration as an author as well as her current projects and where she sees the trajectory of her career headed in the coming years.

A couple icebreakers to start: when did you first decide to become a writer, and who are some of your favorite authors?

Although I’ve been writing stories since I was 5 and started horror fiction when I was 16, I never thought of myself becoming a writer honestly until I was published at 23. Even to this day however, I still continue to gain knowledge and find my voice when writing and I have found it to become more than a hobby but a passion. I can honestly say however that I didn’t find writing, it found me, and as of late it hasn’t let me go. Some of my favorite authors are Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Jack Ketchum, Anne Rice, Ray Bradbury, Toni Morrison, Pheare Alexander and Shane McKenzie.

Do you have any rituals as a writer (e.g. writing at the same time of day or at the same place)? Also, do you have any tips for how you work through writer’s block and/or creative slumps?

I have to admit, it’s rare that I have a set ritual, given that I’m pretty flexible when it comes to my writing, but I always start off with coffee, in my book coffee is life. But aside from that, before I start writing, I listen to motivational videos and do yoga, meditation and prayer to get a healthy mind, body and spirit. Now although factors like work take up some time, I try to write at least anywhere from 1,000-1,500 words in the evening. My tips for dealing with writer’s block and creative slumps is I would take a break from writing and listen to music, preferably rock or classical, and read various books to keep the creative juices flowing.

If forced to choose, which is your favorite part of the writing process: crafting dialogue, plotting the story arc, or developing characters?

My favorite part of the writing process is celebrating that I haven’t gone gray or completely insane afterwards. Jokes aside, I love plotting the story and developing characters simply because I become easily inspired by a simple conversation, actions or emotions from other people as well as my own personal experiences.

Even though it has been a while since I’ve released any new stories, for this year, I’m currently working on a few stories titled “Black Sheep”, “Evil, I”, and “Haunted”. I like the direction each of the stories is going and it makes me even more excited to finish them and put them out.

Out of your published stories, do you have a personal favorite?

My favorite published story has to be “West Nile”. It’s my first apocalyptic story where the protagonist is written in the first person and can resonate with readers. Given that I live in Florida, a tropical state that is notorious for mosquitoes in the summer time, the story shows the worst case scenario of a simple mosquito bite. Once I’m done with my other projects, I’m planning to write an extended version of that story.

Where would you like to see your writing career in five years?

In five years, my goal is to be able to write full time, have a #1 bestseller, and to make an impact in horror fiction. As ambitious as it may seem as a black female writing horror fiction, which is considered a rarity, I would love nothing more than to not only change the game but to inspire and motivate other girls to take a risk and follow their own creative path with no regrets whatsoever. Plus I would love to prove that not all of us black females write literature that involves the hardcore streets, but we can also write some hardcore horror.

Huge thanks to Tabitha Thompson for being part of this week’s author interview series! Find her online at her author site as well as on Facebook and Twitter!

Happy reading!

Another week, another great author to spotlight! Today, I’m proud to bring you K.B. Goddard. K.B. is a writer of fantastical fiction. Her focus is primarily on subtle supernatural tales in the vein of M.R. James and other Victorian scribes of ghost stories.

Earlier this month, K.B. and I discussed her evolution and inspiration as a writer, as well as the forthcoming Shadows at the Door anthology, which will feature one of her incredible short tales of the macabre.

A couple icebreakers to start: when did you first decide to become a writer, and who are some of your favorite authors?

I’m not sure when I finally decided. I know it was one of those ideas that floated around in my mind since I was a child. For years I thought I’d like to write something one day. Then I started studying creative writing at the Open University in the UK, so I suppose I must have been thinking about it on some level. It was during the second of the two writing modules I took that I started to seriously consider it. It still took me a couple more years and the rise of self publishing to give it a go.

I enjoy Sir Arthur Conan Doyle especially the Sherlock Holmes stories, M.R. James and J. S. Le Fanu in terms of supernatural fiction. I went through a stage of reading a lot of Agatha Christie once. I do read modern authors too but I’m very bad at remembering the authors names! I do like Susan Hill and I’ve also enjoyed George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.

You’ve described yourself as a big fan of the ghost story. What draws you to this subgenre of horror, and do you remember the first ghost story you ever read?

It’s an interesting question, one I’m not sure I know the answer to. It might surprise people to know that I don’t particularly like to be terrified by horror and ghost stories. I also don’t like to be grossed out. For me the most appealing aspect of ghost fiction is the idea of the unknown, that we can’t explain everything, that there is still more to life than what we see. It’s the mystery of it that appeals to me.

I’m not sure which was the very first story I read. I remember listening to a story on the Storyteller cassettes (yes I’m old enough to remember cassettes) that we had as kids called Captain Bones. That scared me. Of course it turned out not to be a real ghost. After that I’m not sure. I think it was when our school library was moving to a new purpose-built building that they sold off some old books. My sister came home with a copy of  A Little Night Reading, which was a collection of ghost stories compiled by the Irish comedian Dave Allen of his favourite ghost stories. They were probably the first I actually read. That collection included “The Rose Garden” and “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” by M. R. James. I also remember reading “The Masque of The Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe at lunchtime in the school library, although it’s not strictly speaking a ghost story.

What can you reveal about your story that will appear in the upcoming Shadows at the Door anthology?

Well, it’s set in Victorian era Derbyshire during the summer tradition of wakes week and well dressing, and it involves a guilty conscience being disturbed by the sound of a penny whistle.

Every writer sometimes comes to a point where it’s difficult to create. What rituals or tips do you utilize to work around those creative blocks?

I’ll let you know when I figure it out!

Out of your published stories, do you have a personal favorite?

Probably “Reflections on a Malady.” It was my first Victorian ghost story and the one that started it all.

What projects are you currently working on, and what else do you have slated for the next year?

At the moment I’m between projects. I’m also still studying with the OU so that is taking up a lot of my time at the moment. But I’m hoping to start getting some planning done towards my next ghost story collection soon. There are a couple of other things hopefully on the horizon but I don’t want to jinx anything!

Big thanks to K.B. Goddard for being part of this week’s author interview. Find her at her author site as well as Twitter and Facebook!  Any links you’d like to share?

Happy reading!