IN SOMNIO: A Chat with writer Victoria Nations

Victoria Nations writes horror and gothic stories about creatures with emotional baggage. Her work appears in Gothic Blue Book, A Krampus Carol and Burial Day Books’ short fiction. She lives in Florida, USA with her wife and son, who indulge her love of monsters. IN SOMNIO editor Alex Woodroe spoke with her briefly about her work.

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AW: Does your story touch on anything personal to you? Alternatively, does it touch on any current events, world fears, philosophy, morality, moods, trends?

VN: I love a beach in winter, the way the gray sand blends in with the dark water and faded sky. It’s both bleak and compelling. I wanted to capture that isolation. At the same time, I’m a mother, and “The Reaching Sea” came from a feeling I had with my son, when the outside world started opening up to him, promising all sorts of possibilities, and I knew there were monstrous things waiting for him, too.

AW: Does your life in Florida ever inform your writing? Does your work as a biologist?

VN: Absolutely. I say I write stories about swamp monsters with baggage because so many of them come from the wet and wild areas I love best. The creatures that live in these places are beautiful to me, even if other people think them frightening or abhorrent, and that otherness resonates with me.

AW: Do you have any specific formative memories that roped you into Gothic fiction?

VN: I loved creepy things at an early age, and my parents encouraged it. They introduced me to Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe, and we watched classic movies with Dr. Paul Bearer, our local horror host. I love dark fiction from all eras, but I have a deep affection for the Gothic trappings of haunted places and people.

AW: Did you ever embrace the Goth culture? Carry a parasol? Do you still? If not, what was your teen scene?

VN: I'm forever a Goth and one of the Spooky Kids. I still check to make sure my blacks match.

AW: Why Horror? Are you and Horror exclusive, and if not, what else do you flirt with?

VN: I love creepy places and scary stories, but what I love most about Horror is how it touches on our deepest emotional connections. Horror is strongest - sharpest, scariest, most unsettling - when it combines with love and loss. All of what I write has dark elements, but some have hopeful endings in the midst of horrific events.

AW: Where can people see more of your past/upcoming work?

VN: You can find me at my website, www.LeavesandCobwebs.com, and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

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IN HER OWN WORDS:

Victoria reads an excerpt from her story, “The Reaching Hands”; watch below, then go support the IN SOMNIO campaign on Kickstarter!

IN SOMNIO: A Chat with contributor Rachel Unger

Rachel Unger thinks that now is an excellent time for us all to be kind to each other. Yes, really. She spends her days excavating stories from the dirt, staring down a microscope, and daydreaming about her next bike ride.

Rachel paints a portrait of a dark family legacy in her story “We Named You After Her” for IN SOMNIO: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror. Editor Alex Woodroe spoke to her about that and more.

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AW: Does “We Named You After Her” touch on anything personal to you? 

RU: During 2020, I noticed a significant shift in what I was reading and writing. I spent 6 months writing lo-fi, happy spec fic because I just wanted comfort, and watched a lot of Bob Ross and Great British Bake Off for the same reason. At the same time, the only thing I wanted to read was Gothics. Ominous novels about people trapped in their houses seemed particularly relevant. (Thanks to Hicklebee’s [https://www.hicklebees.com] for supplying my reading habit!)

Fast forward to this year when I took an online course on Southern Gothics. I’d intended to write a series of stories set in coastal South Carolina, because I’ve had wonderful trips there with family. After Hurricane Matthew in 2016, the damaged houses really stayed with me as both the cause and potential expression of grief. So I had the setting and I had a stockpile of nebulous anxiety and dread my brain had been saving while mainlining Gothic fiction; “We Named You After Her” took off from there.

AW: What do you look for when you're 'staring down a microscope' and does it ever influence your writing?

RU: I’ve been lucky enough to have done microscope work on fossils in sedimentary rock, on algae and zooplankton in water samples, and on bacterial cultures. The living are seething with microbes of all sorts. Taken together, all the microorganisms on your skin and inside your body weigh 2-3 lbs—that’s as much as your brain weighs! There’s a lot happening at the microscopic level. The dead return their nutrients to the soil through the actions of critters and microbes called saprotrophs, which is fascinating and was definitely pertinent when I started writing “We Named You After Her”.

I also have a story coming out this fall in an Eerie River Publishing [https://www.eerieriverpublishing.com] anthology (It Calls From Doors) that pulled in some of my geology experience. The story is set in the Olympic Peninsula and the mineralogy there made the setting that much creepier, which was great.

 AW: Do you have any specific formative memories that roped you into Gothic fiction?

RU: Growing up, my aunt Ellen introduced me to a lot of things—she gave me my first coffee and let me have free run of the closet downstairs where she kept all her horror and romance novels. She also showed me my first black and white movies—The Haunting (from 1963) and Rebecca (the 1940 version with Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers). I remember sitting in her living room in my pajamas, absolutely fascinated by these creepy houses and the way the past wouldn’t stay under the floorboards.

I also read a lot of Barbara Michaels novels—at the time, I couldn’t articulate why I loved The Master of Blacktower and Greygallows, but I tore through everything I could find from her.

 AW: Did you ever embrace the Goth culture? Carry a parasol? Do you still? If not, what was your teen ‘scene’?

RU: All my teenage friends were the freaks and Goths, and I liked the elaborate outfits they’d come up with. By the grace of Value Village, I took their aesthetic and added as much color as possible. I’d use eyeliner to get two different lip colors from left to right, and wear jewelry to match. We listened to a lot of heavy metal and industrial, and it always made me smile that White Zombie’s “Super Charger Heaven” starts with an audio clip from The Haunting.

AW: Where can people see more of your past/upcoming work?

RU: I have links to some of my stories online at https://www.fictionbuffet.com, as well as a list of upcoming publications.

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IN HER OWN WORDS:

Below, Rachel reads a selection from “We Named You After Her”. Be sure to support the IN SOMNIO campaign, live on Kickstarter now!

IN SOMNIO: A Chat with Contributor Lauren Bolger

Lauren Bolger lives in a suburb near Chicago with her spouse and two young kids. She's a horror writer so of course, darkness makes her very happy. Chipper, even.

Nothing can quiet the ghosts within Becky’s head...except, perhaps, the gleaming axe inside the car in the junkyard. Lauren goes for the throat in JUNK SOUL, her story for IN SOMNIO: A Collection of Modern Gothic Horror. Editor Alex Woodroe talks to her about it, and more:

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AW: Does your story touch on anything personal to you? Does it touch on any current events, world fears, philosophy, morality, moods, trends?

LB: Sure. Becky's biggest mistake in Junk Soul? Shutting up her feelings after going through some serious trauma, and then that coming back to bite her, definitely came from a place of experience. It's been really a nice perk though, not being haunted by a literal monster-self like in the story!

AW: Do you have any specific formative memories that roped you into Gothic fiction?

LB: Honestly, I just grew up completely obsessed with ghosts. If I misplaced my socks, I'd wonder aloud if a ghost took them. I looked for whatever stories I could find and then, probably like many of us, would have to sleep with the lights on. I love haunted houses and that heavy foreboding atmosphere in a book or movie of the genre. And I live for that moment of revelation or utter chaos at the end, when that veil is lifted up as high as it will go.

AW: Did you ever embrace the Goth culture? Carry a parasol? Do you still? If not, what was your teen ‘scene’?

LB: To this day, my ability to apply black eyeliner is just pitiful. It is always uneven. I didn't wear any goth stuff, and I mostly hung out with the "decent-grades-but not straight-A's" kids. Back then we listened to NSYNC and wore bubblegum colored lip gloss and had really frizzy hair. Zero cred for teen me. 

AW: Why Horror? Are you and Horror exclusive, and if not, what else do you flirt with?

LB: I think one of the biggest things that draws me to Horror is that it kind of puts death on display. From a place of safety, you can poke it and look at it, and have a kind of magical relationship with it instead of fully attempting to ignore it. 

In addition to Horror, I love literary fiction and poetry. Horror is my number one favorite, though. Most longer pieces I write, there's got to be something speculative in there and likely at least a little disturbing. Dramatic prose is cool but I really just enjoy the lurking shit. The not-of-this-world or maybe-of-this-world-who-knows... shit.

AW: Does your love for poetry marry well in your writing with your love for Horror? Do you think about the lyrical aspects when writing prose?

LB: I definitely think that my poetic voice bleeds (ha ha) into the Horror I write. I think when I read Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore was when I thought, damn. I'm reading Horror, but the way he describes this world, and the setting...The language is just so beautiful and poetic while also being fully gory and unsettling. I think that was my favorite ever Horror read. If I'm shooting for the moon here, that's my moon.

AW: Is anyone else in your family a now or future horror fan? Do they read you?

LB: My husband is a Horror fan and he does read my stuff. My mom, too, though she'd normally never go anywhere near Horror. I think it would be amazing to watch a Horror movie with her, but I honestly have no confidence I could ever convert her.

AW: Where can people see more of your past/upcoming work?

LB: Well my big thing I'm querying is my debut horror novel Kill Radio. The best place to view my short fiction and poetry links is at laurenbolger.com

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IN HER OWN WORDS:

Below, Lauren reads a selection from her story, JUNK SOUL. Be sure to support the IN SOMNIO campaign, live on Kickstarter now!

IN SOMNIO: A Chat with contributor Taylor Jordan Pitts

Taylor Jordan Pitts works in children's book publishing in New York City. Her fiction has appeared in Brilliant Flash Fiction, and her critical nonfiction has appeared in Logos. She is currently pursuing an MFA in writing for children and young adults at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Interview conducted by IN SOMNIO editor Alex Woodroe.

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AW: Does your story touch on anything personal to you? Alternatively, does it touch on any current events, world fears, philosophy, morality, moods, trends? 

 TJP: What We Sow touches on a few ideas and themes that terrify me: community fueled and destroyed by collective fear; the slow inevitability of living on a dying earth; finally arriving at the solution to your problem—and being too late. Also, plants! Which appear in just about everything I write.

 AW: Do you have any specific formative memories that roped you into Gothic fiction?

 TJP: I started playing piano around age 10, and I was totally obsessed with Chopin nocturnes, which are all extremely moody and romantic. Anytime I play one, I'm transported to a haunted castle in the moors. I think I've been chasing this vibe in fiction ever since. (My favorite is Nocturne 19 in E minor, Op. 72 No. 1, by the way.)

 AW: Did you ever embrace Goth culture? Carry a parasol? Do you still? If not, what was your teen ‘scene’?

 TJP: Oh, absolutely. I think the more era-appropriate term for what I dabbled in would have been Goth's sad sister, "emo": fishnets, fingerless gloves, way too much eyeliner, Panic! at the Disco (I still love Panic and always will), sharpie-colored hair, cloudy disposition. The works!

 AW: Why Horror? Are you and Horror exclusive, and if not, what else do you flirt with?

 TJP: I think Horror is one of the most universally misunderstood genres out there. People underestimate the power it has to move us, shape us, and stay with us long after it vanishes into the night. I'm drawn to Horror because of the impact the most terrifying tales have had on me, and my own desire to reach into the deepest, darkest parts of myself and readers, and create something universal.

I flirt with anything you might call "genre": fantasy, science fiction, Horror—specifically for young readers. I also write the occasional poem and essay. 

 AW: You're an expert in writing for children and young adults. What are the benefits and challenges in introducing (age-appropriate) Horror-esque themes into writing for young people?

 TJP: There are some truly terrifying children's stories out there! Especially when I think back to what I read growing up—for example, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark ("Sam's New Pet" scarred me for life), anything Roald Dahl, and even stories that weren't meant to be outright scary, such as The Monster at the End of This Book—it's no wonder I delight in the disturbing. When I'm writing for young people, I try to think back to what I most loved about these creepy tales, root out why they've stuck with me all these years, and bring out some of those themes in my own work. For me, it's not about censoring or watering down—quite the opposite. It's about recognizing that children are uniquely perceptive and vulnerable to what's happening around them, and providing them a mirror for their very real fears.

 AW: Where can people see more of your past/upcoming work?

 TJP: You can visit my website at taylorpitts.com or follow me on the bird app @TaylorJPitts, where I can be found screaming about publishing, writing, and plants.

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IN HER OWN WORDS:

Below, Taylor reads a selection from her story, WHAT WE SOW. Then, be sure to support the IN SOMNIO campaign, live on Kickstarter now!