Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: Anemone Moss

Anemone Moss (she/her) is a transgender lesbian speculative fiction and horror writer who grew up in the forests of the Sierra Nevada foothills in northern California and now lives in the outskirts of the SF Bay Area. She spends her time studying history and ecology, making art, watching too many horror movies, and exploring local marshes and forests.

Her story, “Everything You Dump Here Ends Up in the Ocean” originally appeared in Fish Gather to Listen (Horns and Rattle Press) and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume Two, available to preorder now.

***

Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

A former radical's evening at sea with a mysterious wealthy woman takes a frightening turn when she learns what's really lurking below the waterline and in her date's past.

What does your writing routine look like? Do you have an office? A preferred coffee shop? The back of the bus? Standing under your neighbor’s eaves, avoiding the rain? Are you one of those true modern Weirdos who write your entire novel on your phone?

I usually write little bits and pieces on my phone as it comes to me while I'm out and about. Once I have an idea strongly developed I sit down in bed with my laptop and a few mugs of tea and write continuously for several hours, sometimes most of the day. It's not ideal for my posture but I don't really have a working space right now and it's nice and cozy.

Phone Writers = Three! I don’t know why this fascinates me, I think it’s because my meathooks can barely tap the screen without smashing six buttons simultaneously; though Alex did recently beat the gospel of slide-texting into me.

What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences/influences helped sculpt this definition for you in your creative journey?

Weird fiction is surrealism that feels a little too real when you know it shouldn't. It moves in ways that break our rigid understanding of how things work while implying that maybe we need to question that rigidity. This frequently means horror and speculative fiction elements but I don't think those are necessary.

I've been inspired by many others--some standout influences are Jeff Vandermeer, Jorge Luis Borges, William Hope Hodgson, Hailey Piper, and William S Burroughs. I'm also a huge fan of horror film and pick up a lot from directors like David Cronenberg, Lucio Fulci, and John Carpenter.

Right on. I preach at anyone who’ll listen that Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy are as Weird Horror as anything ever filmed.

On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist (Citizen Kane x Metallica, f’rinstance). It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.

Alien: Resurrection x Black Dresses

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

On my birthday in my mid-20s I was having a really awful time dealing with some trauma so I took a walk to cool off. There are these bicycle trails that run between the suburb houses, mostly mud and the backs of fences. As I crested the nearest hill I encountered a perfect stranger who asked me for a cigarette. When I sat down to roll one for him, he began telling me about how he had visions of demons and evil spirits he had to travel around fighting and people he had to help. Apparently that morning he'd had a vision of me and had been waiting there for me to walk by. He gave me a personal message about my family including details like my family members' names (they lived several counties away) and a conflict I'd had that he encouraged me to resolve. I never saw him again.

I don’t know how to tell you this, Anemone, but I think you’re the main character now.

***

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: M.M. Olivas

M.M. Olivas’ work has appeared in Uncanny, Weird Horror Magazine, Apex, Bourbon Penn and more. As a trans, first-generation Chicana, Olivas’ fiction explores intersection of queer and diasporic experiences. She currently resides in the Bay Area, earning her MFA at San Jose State University and collecting transforming robots. Her debut novel, Sundown in San Ojuela, will release in the fall of 2024 through Lanternfish Press.

M.M.’s story, “The Prince of Oakland,” first appeared in Weird Horror Magazine, and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume Two, available to preorder now.

***

Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

The way I described my story when working on it was the “ghost harvesting story,” and I’d generally describe it as, “With gentrification rapidly spreading across the San Francisco Bay Area, Yaren and Griff start a business harvesting ghosts from the Bay’s historic homes.”

What does your writing routine look like? Do you have an office? A preferred coffee shop? The back of the bus? Standing under your neighbor’s eaves, avoiding the rain? Are you one of those true modern Weirdos who write your entire novel on your phone?

Embarrassing to say, but I’m incredibly rigid with how I write fiction. Whereas I find poetry comes easiest to me when I’m in a state of flux—on public transit, or on hikes, waiting for friends in cafés—fiction requires me to settle into a quiet place for long stretches of time to really sink into the narrative. Like, I can’t do places with noise. Even when my roommates would quietly play on their phones, the tapping was there, those dull and awful little tap tap taps. I have a desk in my room where I write on my laptop most of the time (and eventually get distracted by my own Transformers toys) and my job as a substitute teacher gives me the privilege of having a new, perfectly impersonal desk each day to do my work between assignments with my students. Some cafés are quiet enough to get by though. Sometimes.

In regards to craft, all my raw ideas begin in my notebook as sketches—specific frames or stills where the composition of them are vivid and clear in my head, or character sketches. A sketch of Griff with his crown was the birth of this particular story, and the rest of it was, as it usually is, me trying to pull a story out of that one evocative image.

What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences/influences helped sculpt this definition for you in your creative journey?

“Weird” is strange word for me. “Other” or “Otherness” is usually where “Weird” takes me, and stories of social ostracization, being seen as Other, are ones that resonate deeply with me. “Weirdness” or “Otherness” really just implies deviation from what is normal, commonplace. It’s an abnormality, and for many people in communities like mine, the trans community, queer community, Chicana or any other ethnic group that’s not the dominant norm, experience a type of Double Consciousness. W. E. B Du Bois was the person who coined the term, but I tend to think about Franz Fanon’s literature on the topic of Double Consciousness, of existing within and (continuously or unconsciously) adopting the sensibilities of the dominant, colonial culture that seeks to place itself above the culture of a colonized people. This creates conflict with the self, where the two sides of your consciousness are at odds, with one teaching you to feel shame or alienation from the other. An easy example of this is non-white ethnic groups perpetuating white, western beauty standards. “Mejor la Raza” is a phrase thrown around a lot in Latine communities, that reinforces the idea that lighter skin is more desirable and less “dirty” than dark skin, and progressively marrying into white, more European families, means you’re purifying your bloodline. It’s an incredibly racist concept, but one that is pushed within our own spaces by those of us convinced that those features are something we should be insecure about, that they’re not desirable, that they’re strange, odd, disgusting off putting, ugly.

And then there are those of us who are marginalized within our spaces more so, for being gay or gender nonconforming. What is the answer to this taught and internalized sham? Well, it’s pride. It’s unapologetic joy and love and embrace of all the aspects of Who You Are. This level of pride, of self-confidence is off putting, is weird, even cringe. Now that is an incredibly longwinded and messy way to get to what I actually want to say, which is: as someone who existed as Other, within margins, as a closeted Chicana in what was a predominantly white community at the time, I experienced that sense of Otherness. That Double Consciousness, and internal shame. It’s why I gravitated towards “Weird” monster movies like Creature From the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, King Kong, Frankenstein—creatures demonized solely for the sin of being who they are. I also gravitated toward villains, characters who reveled in their otherness and found power in it, and let their rage be known. That’s probably why I’m not interested in writing clean, morally upright people. The messy, broken, bitter ones are far more compelling to me. And because I’m not at all wholly unique, I know that if I found resonance with those narratives, then others will too. That’s why I write the stories I do, with the full embrace of the strange and off-putting of my identity that took so long for me to learn wasn’t shameful, but beautiful.

On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist (Citizen Kane x Metallica, f’rinstance). It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.

Easy, Dario Argento’s Suspiria meets Joy Division. As basic as that may be.

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

Oh, which to pick? Weird shit follows my family all the time. My short story, “if there May be Ghosts” in Bourbon Penn is actually about 90% nonfiction, minus the ending and names/pronouns, if you want an example.

But at the risk of reviving what should stay dead, what always comes back to me: I was at at a writing retreat in [REDACTED], and one day, as I was on my morning run about two or three miles from our AirBnB; in the woods; and totally remote, save for the railroad tracks I was jogging along; I noticed something shiny within some overgrown vines down in a ditch. I jogged up close and realized that I was looking at a car. Charred and tossed upside down so the boxes of documents were spilled out across the dirt. The weather had chewed them up, and the car looked like it had been there for a while. A half mile deeper in, when I found another car, in a deeper ditch, I decided maybe it was best to run back. But those miles back to civilization, where the only sounds were the woods, my breathing, and my sneakers on railroad gravel, were probably the tensest moments of my life.

***

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: Elena Sichrovsky

Elena Sichrovsky (she/they) is a queer disabled writer who uses the lens of body horror to explore themes of identity, grief, and trauma. Her work is inspired by a rich legacy of mothers and fathers who should have but did not go to therapy. In their next life they’d like to be a two-headed calf.

Elena’s story, “Embryo,” originally appeared in Mythaxis Magazine, and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume Two, available to preorder now.

***

Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

It’s set in a futuristic world and the main character is this nurse who isn’t human. She’s obsessed with what it would feel like to be born, to have a birthday, to have any kind of life cycle; this fascination escalates when she meets a patient’s pregnant daughter.

What does your writing routine look like? Do you have an office? A preferred coffee shop? The back of the bus? Standing under your neighbor’s eaves, avoiding the rain? Are you one of those true modern Weirdos who write your entire novel on your phone?

My writing routine always takes place in two parts: 1) I script/visualize 70-80% of the scene/story in my head when I’m on the way to work, in the shower, disassociating during a meeting, or supposed to be sleeping; then 2) I type it out (and it changes a good deal) while listening to a playlist that’s mostly horror movie soundtracks, Mitski, and Ethel Cain.

What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences/influences helped sculpt this definition for you in your creative journey?

Weird stories are the ones you feel physically; maybe it’s unconsciously curling your toes, or tightening your jaw, or having to glance away from the page to take a breath. It’s like taking a bite from a dish and immediately knowing something is off, but unable to figure out what ingredient is causing it - so you take another bite, and another, and the wrongness pervades your tongue, your gums, your mouth, and maybe there’s not one specific thing that’s wrong in the dish - it’s everything. In terms of inspiration, my introduction to Weird horror was the comic series Hellblazer (Vertigo/DC) that I read in my mid-twenties. The stories in Hellblazer were super dark and fucked up and the art was insane - artists like Lee Bermejo and Marcelo Frusin, and writers like Garth Ennis and Brian Azzarello. I’m such a visual thinker, so getting into this genre via graphic novels was the perfect gateway for me.

That original Hellblazer series is an all-time favorite of mine! Azzarello and Frusin did a four-part story during their run called “Freezes Over”, one of my faves.

Anyway, I can go down a Hellblazer wormhole, so moving on. On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist (Citizen Kane x Metallica, f’rinstance). It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.

The Human Centipede meets Hans Zimmer.

Gross. No follow-up:)

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

Oh well I was born and raised in a cult so the first two decades of my life were full of Weird - for example they (the cult leaders) thought the world would end in 2000 (big Y2K believers), and then they kept changing the apocalypse due date. We had to keep an emergency backpack with flashlights and canned food and clothes under our bed, and then refresh the contents every few years. At one point the leader told us we could count the number of years left on our fingers and yes that did make me spiral! I thought I’d never live to be an adult, but this year I’m turning 30 so it’s nice to see I’ve defied the prophecies.

***

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.

Meet the BRAVE NEW WEIRD-o's: Simone le Roux

Simone le Roux is a speculative fiction writer based in Cape Town, South Africa with her partner, two cats, and an ancient dog. She has a cum laude Neuroscience degree that she does not use, and an enduring interest in anything spooky or dangerous. When she's not writing, Simone is a semi-professional aerialist.

Simone’s story, “The Man Outside,” originally appeared in No Trouble at All from Cursed Morsels Press, and will appear in BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror Volume Two, available to preorder now.

---

Give us the elevator pitch of your BNW-nommed story, please.

There's a man who gets closer to your front door the older you grow, and no one seems to be worried about it except you. In fact, hey, why are you worried at all? It's not like he's doing anything yet. 

What does your writing routine look like? Do you have an office? A preferred coffee shop? The back of the bus? Standing under your neighbor’s eaves, avoiding the rain? Are you one of those true modern Weirdos who write your entire novel on your phone?

I usually write in the evenings. The essential component to my writing sessions is a cat curled up nearby or preferably on my lap. Yes, the latter makes writing difficult when my laptop is also on my lap, but adversity is important for my process. 

What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences/influences helped sculpt this definition for you in your creative journey?

In my mind, "Weird" means just a bit out of step with everything. Something feels off or not right, but it's hard to explain what, or why it bothers us. As someone who was often the new kid in school, I thought a lot what helps people fit in, what makes them stand out despite their best efforts, and the nuances in-between. What makes something or someone weird? And is it the fault of that person or thing, or the context that they're in? This is hardly a new question, but it influences a lot of my thinking when I write. 

On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist (Citizen Kane x Metallica, f’rinstance). It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.

Let's go with Jennifer's Body x Hozier

What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you (that you’re comfortable sharing)?

I don't know how much I believe in ghosts, but I've definitely experienced spaces that feel wrong. I had terrible nightmares for a whole year until I swapped rooms with my housemate, and they suddenly stopped, only for her to begin having nightmares. This is something that's happened to me since I was a child – places that I just can't exist comfortably in. My mom, who's a bit more spiritual than me, trusts my taste in houses implicitly because of this. Is it most likely anxiety manifesting? Of course, but it still feels weird to me. 

---

BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror, Volume Two, is out June 26th.

You can preorder it here.