Sèphera Girón is the author of many books, including Borrowed Flesh (2004 Leisure Books), Weird Tales of Terror (2013 CreateSpace), and her latest, Captured Souls (2014 Samhain Publishing). Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies as Slices of Flesh (2012 Dark Moon Books), The Haunted Mansion Project: Year One (2012 Damnation Books), Campus Chills (2012 Stark Publishing), and Unnatural Tales of the Jackalope (2012 Western Legends Press).
1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?
I write horror, erotica, non-fiction, and almost everything else. My first love is horror. I’ve had over twenty books published since 2000, and numerous short stories.
My birthplace is New Orleans and I currently live in Toronto. My two boys have grown into amazing adults.
2. Why do you write horror? What draws you to the genre?
As a kid, I wasn’t exposed to a lot of horrific images or situations. My family life was stable, summer vacations spent in Maine at grandma’s house, nothing terribly dramatic. So if I’d see or read something “horror,” it struck a chord. And as we all know, horror can be found in the most benign genres and art.
My reading interests leaned towards dark, weird, unusual, mysteries, and science fiction. I was a voracious reader and read books, comics, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias. If there were words on paper, I was reading them.
Stephen King came on the scene when I was a teenager and of course, it was love-at-first sight. There was some point I said to myself after reading one of his books that I wanted to scare people with words like he scared me. By then, horror was a genre so it was easier to find as I grew older.
I loved all the small press, the magazines, even the photocopied ones. I witnessed the dawn of splatterpunk and two rounds of the zombie movement. The genre ever evolves and it’s fun to be part of it.
3. Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?
I’ve experimented with several tones and styles since I’ve worked in many genres. Likely a recurring element in my fiction is that I’m not afraid to look under the rock. Other than that, I’m not sure how to describe my stories.
4. Who are some of your influences? Are there any women authors who have particularly inspired you to write?
Certainly the themes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein seem to keep appearing in my work. Captured Souls, which came out in February 2014 from Samhain, is about a mad scientist experimenting with love and lust. In July 2014, Flesh Failure will be released from Samhain, and it too explores a Frankenstein-inspired theme, although it takes place in the year of the Ripper.
I often relay Beautiful Joe as one of the first horrific novels I read as a young child. There was an old copy at my grandmother’s house, and one rainy day in Maine, I read it. I cried all the way through. I’ve never revisited it as an adult because I’m certain it won’t hold up even though I have that copy. It was written by Margret Marshall Saunders who was born in Milton, Nova Scotia and died in Toronto. I never realized until today that book was written by a Canadian woman. I had always associated it with Maine though likely an American author.
As many girls of my generation, I was in love with Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and desired to be a writer too.
Some of my work is written in journal form (such as Captured Souls and Mistress of the Dark) and it is likely an influence of all these works.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle absolutely fascinated me. I invented landmarks around the neighbourhood where I played make-believe from the book in my head when I was young.
5. What authors do you like to read? Any recommendations?
Up until I had children, I was a voracious reader, and averaged a book every couple of days. These days, I’m often working on several projects, marketing, working at my day job (which is editing other people’s books), and by the end of it all, there’s very rarely time to read for fun. I’m badly behind. However, I will say that having been around so long, I know dozens of authors in the genre, both male and female. Every time I pick up work by a peer, I’m entertained. It’s very rarely I’ll see a clunker. My recommendation is read whatever sounds enticing to you. There are always wonderful new authors to discover, as well as the classics and those of us who have been writing for years. You can’t go wrong if you’re reading. I also would like to add that the face of publishing is rapidly changing, as we all know. These days, an author needs readers to support him or her. If you read a book and like it, and even if you don’t, please take a minute to review it on Amazon, Goodreads, or the author’s publisher’s site. It will help your favourite author to build sales and be able to keep writing more books for you.
6. Where can readers find your work?
The usual suspects: Samhain Publishing, Necon E-books, and Ravenous Romance, as well as Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble.
Interested in learning more? Check out Sephera Giron’s Amazon page, and her pages at Samhain Publishing, Necon E-Books, and Ravenous Romance. You can also visit her website, Sephera’s World, or her blogs, Sephera’s World (focused on writing and editing) and TarotPaths (focused on fortunetelling and the paranormal). And here’s a slightly more detailed interview she did last August.
Enjoy!
The horror genre actually has the capability of being a welcoming place for women, because it offers opportunities for participation in a variety of approaches to the genre. Barbie Wilde is an example of a woman who has successfully transitioned from acting to writing, with her role as the Female Cenobite in Hellbound: Hellraiser II leading to the publication of her short story “Sister Cilice” in Hellbound Hearts, an anthology themed around the Hellraiser mythology created by Clive Barker, on which the movie franchise is based. Barbie has since published short stories in a variety of anthologies and recently came out with a book, The Venus Complex, which we reviewed 
Michele Lee, one of our own book reviewers and the mind behind our teen-focused blog Reading Bites, is the author of such books as Wolf Heart (2012 Violet Ivy Press), the heartbreaking zombie novella Rot (2013 Skullvines Press), the self-published ebooks The List (2013) and On Halloween (a choose-your-own-path book co-written with Mini Lee). Her latest work, Last Brother, Last Sister (2014 Skullvines Press), was published earlier this month. Michele’s short stories can be found in anthologies including Dark Futures: Tales of Dystopian SF (2011 Dark Quest) and Horror Library, Volume 4 (2012 Cutting Block Press). Michele also writes erotic fiction under the name M. Lush.
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