Alex and I both have mad crushes on Jolie Toomajan (her writing, you heathens; get yer minds outta the gutter), but she’s too busy pursuing her la-di-da higher education than rolling around in the grime with us on a regular basis.
That’s OK, we take what we can get from her. In this case, it’s one of the Bravest, Newest, Weirdest stories of the year in “Water Goes, Sand Remains,” which first appeared in the anthology, Death in the Mouth: Original Horror from People of Color. But bonus: we managed to snag Jolie and Carson Winter’s composite novel Posthaste Manor for publication next Halloween!
Carson told us his version of events last week, but today we’ll talk to the highly educated end of the horse; the one that holds up her pinkies while sipping some kind of fancy tea out of…whatever the elite drink tea out of. A flagon, maybe? Whatever. Take it away, Professor…
These responses have been edited for clarity.
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What does your writing routine/setup 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?
My secret is out now: I mostly write on my phone. I have a really intense schedule and tend to get inspiration at any time like I'm possessed, so I just blurt thoughts into my phone while cooking dinner or out running with the dog. 90% of my first drafts are completed this way. Though it helps to have a scene list to help me organize it later, I don't pay any attention to whether I've already said or written something, whether I'm writing things in the right order, even whether these two sentences actually go together. I have a very, "We'll fix it in post" attitude about my writing.
Taking all that and turning it into a story is a little more traditional. I have an office, I make coffee, I put on the playlist I want. Then I spend 80% of my writing time picking my cat up off the keyboard. The remaining 20% of the time is spent organizing what I have.
Once I have something more organized, I tend to go back to working on it on my phone, changing things on the sentence level, making notes to move things around. I also always print and read things after major revisions, too.
Yeah so over here it's just pure fucking chaos.
You’re the second person that I really, really like who’s told me this year that they write on their phone. It’s a practice I’d never fathomed before, which probably just says something about my fine motor skills more than anything. Maybe there are scads of you?!
Anyway. A couple more canned questions before we move on to the custom jobs. What does “Weird” mean to you, in the context of storytelling? And what creators/experiences helped sculpt this definition?
This is a hard question for me to answer, because there are a ton of academic answers as to what "Weird" is, but I still feel like I just know it when I see it. I think at its core, Weird fiction knows that something isn't quite right with the world to begin with, and it settles itself in those places of wrongness and explores them, exaggerates them, and pushes them into view.
On the Tenebrous Discord, we ask everyone to introduce themselves as a Film-meets-Music Artist. It doesn’t have to be your favorite, and don’t spend too much time overthinking it; now GO.
Bikini Kill x Pink Flamingos
I sense a theme there.
So, we’re waiting for you to start cranking out books for Tenebrous; but noooo, you’re much more concerned with your education *eyeroll*. So tell us, what the hell is this doctorate all about that you’re pursuing, and why do you think you’re so much better than me?!
I love this question because I don't usually get to nerd out about what I study outside of this very strict, how-does-this-interact-with-this-theory academic context, and I want to all the time.
I'm writing a dissertation about the women who wrote for Weird Tales. Like, I have this theoretical lens that I developed, but that's only interesting to other academics, and honestly these women were powerhouses who have not gotten nearly enough recognition. Margaret St. Clair, Dorothy Quick, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, just to name a few, were just absolute beasts of writers, way ahead of their time. And so many of them were using their work to speak truth to power. They really deserve the kind of attention that some other authors from Weird Tales have already gotten. I will talk about this all day. Seriously, my DMs are open.
Trust me: Alex and I have already been plotting ways to exploit you.
The good news is that I have no interest in going into the academy as a profession (I'm basically getting a PhD for fun at this point; that says a lot of things about me, none of them good), so I can get right into cranking out the collections for Tenebrous as soon as I graduate in a year!
Damn straight. Get crackin’.
You are working on one big upcoming project for us, though. We managed to trick you into that…or maybe you tricked us. One or the other. Trickery was involved, I’m sure of it. Anyway, tell us more about Posthaste Manor!
I don't even know how it happened. One day Carson and I were like, "We should work on something together. What if we took on the haunted house?" and I looked up and we had…a composite novel? A collection of interconnected short stories? A book. It's for sure a book!
And working with Carson, who is a massive talent with such an incredible eye for all the little perversions we deal with day to day and are forced to accept as normal, was so easy. Plus he's phenomenal at coming up with fantastically original concepts; he really made sure this wasn't going to be just another haunted house story. We worked well together and basically spent 6 months going "Yes, and…" at each other. I have never had so much fun writing before. We have different styles, but he approached what I was doing with a tremendous level of respect, and we play well off each other; we have very similar underlying interests.
Posthaste Manor is a little different in terms of my own writing, too. It's more explicitly Horror than a lot of the other stuff I write, which tends to be quieter; the emotion I explore more often is grief, not fear. I went into Posthaste instead aiming to have some really gruesome fun; I think I did that while keeping the main parts of what makes my writing my writing.
And you’ve also spearheaded a project that will be releasing in the next couple months.
Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic is a charity anthology of speculative fiction on the theme of Hysteria. AaFS was birthed from fury and frustration and terror in the immediate aftermath of Roe v. Wade falling. It is tentatively scheduled for release in March 2023, and proceeds will be going to the Chicago Abortion Fund.
Because abortion access is a human right.
The stories in it are phenomenal—and the quality of the slush pile was humbling. These authors have all been joys to work with. I can't wait for [it] to see the light of day.
I'm editing; Cosmic Horror Monthly is publishing; but like all art, this is really a community project with a lot of hands in it.
The day after Roe v. Wade was overturned, Carson [Winter, again] said that he and Charles [Tyra, publisher of CHM] couldn't just sit on their hands. CHM handled all of the boring work of contracts and formatting; Jenny Kiefer suggested "hysteria" as a theme; and several of our friends volunteered to slush read. The cover artist is Mary Esther Munoz, who killed it. We also emailed you for some help, since Your Body Is Not Your Body was both an amazing anthology and made bank for your charity (ed. Note; it’s true: they did, it is, and we did), and Alex [Woodroe, duh, you know this] was so willing to advise me when I had questions as a first time anthology editor.
AaFS is amazing, the work in it is incredible and I can't wait for everyone to read it; but it's also a testament to the fact that the horror community is filled with good people who want to help.
What’s the Weirdest thing—capital W—that’s ever happened to you?
I am reasonably certain I accidentally slipped into another timeline on a train when I was ten (it's like a whole big story). I have no proof of this, I just have no other explanation for what happened.
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Posthaste Manor will be out in time for Halloween 2023.
Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic is out in March, 2023. Check in at Cosmic Horror Monthly for details.
Brave New Weird is out February 6, 2023; preorder info coming soon.