Hailey Piper is the author of The Worm and His Kings, An Invitation to Darkness, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, and other books. She is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and her short fiction appears in Year's Best Hardcore Horror, Dark Matter Magazine and elsewhere. She lives with her wife in Maryland.
This interview was conducted by IN SOMNIO editor Alex Woodroe.
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AW: Does your story touch on anything personal to you?
HP: "Pretend It Doesn't Get Worse" touches on the sense of being trapped in a strange morphing skin, whether that's literal or a house that's slowly no longer feeling like home. It's a mess of adolescence, the odd feeling of parents no longer a unit, and the discovery of changes within a young me that weren't finding a way out.
AW: Do you have any specific formative memories that roped you into Gothic fiction?
HP: It's probably a usual go-to, but Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I picked it up in the library when I was seven; not an Illustrated Classics edition meant for kids, but the real one. It was too dense for me, but I still got chills from what little I could understand.
AW: Did you ever embrace the Goth culture? Carry a parasol? Do you still?
HP: Oh yes! That was a time of dark colors, pants with chains, and many nights staining the bathtub with many colors of Manic Panic. Once I got out into the grown-up world, I had to leave it behind, but I've eyed the hair dye now and then.
AW: Why Horror? Are you and Horror exclusive, and if not, what else do you flirt with?
HP: Isn't that always the question, especially to women? Why horror, why monsters and brooding and pain and blood? On one level, I think we're suited best for it. On another, horror is the genre of honesty, horror is healing, and it will always mean most even as I sometimes cross-pollinate it with fantasy, sci-fi, western, and romance.
AW: Seeing as you're an author who has a firm footing in publishing right now, and your upcoming Queen of Teeth is already killing it, what do you love about being in publishing?
HP: I've been fortunate to work with attentive people who care intensely about the art as well as bringing that art to readers. There's nothing like a good edit either. The right suggestion brings out a world of quality in a sentence, paragraph, chapter, entire narrative structure. You never know, and I enjoy working with others.
AW: Where can people see more of your past/upcoming work?
HP: My books Queen of Teeth, The Worm and His Kings, Unfortunate Elements of My Anatomy, Benny Rose the Cannibal King, and The Possession of Natalie Glasgow are available wherever books are sold, and links to all my short stories appear here as they're published: https://haileypiper.com/short-fiction/
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IN HER OWN WORDS:
Below, Hailey reads a selection from her story PRETEND IT DOESN’T GET WORSE. Then, be sure to support the IN SOMNIO campaign, live on Kickstarter now!