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Women in Horror Fiction: J. Lincoln Fenn

Image of J. Lincoln Fenn    

 

If you haven’t discovered J.Lincoln Fenn yet, you should check out her debut novel, Poe (2013, 47North). It’s got lots of dark humor, a great, quirky narrator, and while the story is firmly grounded in the present, it’s also a fantastical tale of insanity with a chilling, gothic feel. Poe also made the preliminary ballot for this year’s Stoker Awards. If any of that intrigues you, today Poe is available as a Kindle Daily Deal, so it’s a great time to check it out.

 

1.) Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

I’m just a white girl from Massachusetts who lives in Hawaii and writes dark things. My debut novel Poe won the 2013 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror, which led to its publication by 47North. A complete and utter surprise since about 10,000 people enter that contest each year.

Poe is a genre blend of horror/urban fantasy/dark humor, more along the lines of John Dies in the End than your standard horror novel. It centers on Dimitri Petrov, a 23-yr. old, snarky obituary writer who wakes up on a slab in the morgue after a Halloween séance gone bad. Things go downhill from there.

 

2.) Why do you write horror?  What draws you to the genre?

Probably my Roman-Catholic roots and New England upbringing draws me to horror. Christianity is a religion based on one of the goriest books ever written, with a Sunday ritual involving the transfiguration of a wafer and wine into flesh and blood, which everyone consumes. And New England is just inherently spooky. Those long, dark winters with the wind howling around the eaves explain a lot about Hawthorne, Poe, and Lovecraft.

I write horror because I think it’s where we get to explore our darkest fears. Stephen King said, “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” The truth inside horror is our fear of death. Some cultures take this on more directly. In Tibet, they practiced ‘sky burial’ where a corpse was dismembered as an offering to the vultures, a more literal form of transfiguration except the deity is impermanence.

 

3.) Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?

I want to wake people up when I write. I want to them to read something and go, no, she didn’t just say that, did she? I want my words to do something. When I was writing Poe I was reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Great Expectations. Tonally there’s something gonzo-style about Dimitri’s voice, and the only better snark than Charles Dickens is George Eliot.

I also like playing disparate notes at the same time. The Prologue (to Poe) is horrific, with gory descriptions of the morgue, but the dialogue is funny, and there’s danger and threat too. Wakey wakey.

 

4. Who are some of your influences?  Are there any women authors who have particularly inspired you to write?

Even though Poe has almost nothing to do with E. A. Poe, he is a big influence. My grandfather, who worked in a factory, was somehow talked into buying Poe’s complete works. A wonderful discovery one long, dull summer.

I have an altar to Margaret Atwood. She sets an impossible standard, but I forgive her for that. Other women writers I find inspiring are Gillian Flynn, Ann Patchett, Isabel Allende, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, and Carolyn See. I had the good fortune to meet and take a course with See, who gave great advice on writing and the writing life.

 

5.) What authors do you like to read?  Any recommendations?

I started reading Neil Gaiman after my PW weekly review said his fans would like Poe, and I thought oh yes, here’s a kindred spirit. The Ocean at the End of the Lane and David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas were two of my favorite reads in 2013.

If it’s been a while since you read Frankenstein (probably high school), pick it up again. It holds up, and in these days of glow-in-the-dark bunnies and genetically engineered tomatoes, scarily prescient. Then read Oryx and Crake. And be afraid.
6.) Where can readers find your work?

For less than the cost of a latte and scone, anyone can pick up a Kindle version of Poe on Amazon. There’s also a paperback, which has a nice, waxy cover, and an audiobook. Readers can also find my most current musings on my blog at www.jlincolnfenn.com. Also I follow back.

 

Interested in learning more? Here’s a link to J. Lincoln Fenn’s Amazon page. You can access her most recent tweets and blog posts– they appear in the column to the right of the main page.

Have a great day, and check back soon to see another profile!

 

 

 

Posted on February 4, 2014 by , Reply

Women in Horror Fiction: Angeline Hawkes

Image of Angeline Hawkes

This month we asked a number of women horror writers to answer some questions for us about who they are, what they write, what it’s like to be a woman writer in the horror genre, and what they read and recommend for horror readers. The first person to respond to our questions was Angeline Hawkes, a writer of historical horror published primarily by small presses and independent publishers.

Angeline Hawkes is the author of Blood Alone (2013 ND3 Press), The Commandments (2012 ND3 Press), Shades of Blood and Shadow (2009 Dark Regions Press) and Symphony for the Forgotten (2008 Daverana Enterprises). She has collaborated with her husband Christopher Fulbright on such books as Sorrow Creek (2012 Delirium Books), Black Mercy Falls (2011 Delirium Books), and Scavengers (2011 Elder Signs Press). Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Frontier Cthulhu: Ancient Horrors in the New World (2007 Chaosium), Beneath the Surface: 13+ Shocking Tales of Terror (2008 Shroud Publishing), and Dark Light (2012 MARLvision Publishing).

1. Can you give our readers a brief introduction?

I have been writing horror and (mostly) dark fantasy professionally since 2000. Before that my earliest publication credit was in 1981 – that makes me sound ancient, but in reality, I was only 11 at the time.  My earliest publications from age 11-19 were poetry and various non-fiction/journalism related work. I went through college on scholarship (East Texas State University which is now Texas A&M University-Commerce) and many of those scholarships were based on my writing and publications. In fact, for most of them my publications were the real selling point that persuaded scholarship committees in my favor.  I taught high school and middle school, then retired to write full-time. Since 2000, I have churned out quite a few short stories, but from 2006 to the present, I have been concentrating on longer works – collections, novellas, novels. I write independently and collaboratively with my husband, Christopher Fulbright. My collection, The Commandments, was a Bram Stoker Award finalist, and I have some short stories in a couple of anthologies that were finalists for various awards.  In my personal life, I’m a mom to four skin babies and 1 fur baby. I don’t do anything “just a little”.  Kids, writing – I’m a hard worker and don’t have an off switch.

 

2. Why do you write horror?  What draws you to the genre?

I have always been drawn to the supernatural. I wrote ghost and monster stories as a young child. I think my earliest horror story was probably written around age eight. I was raised in a very religious environment where there was a heavy influence on sin, Hell, and the general end of the world apocalyptic type of lifestyle. I always say that the Bible is the ultimate horror book. Contained between those pages is just about every horror you can cook up. So, religion would definitely have a huge influence on my draw to the horror genre. The cycle of sin and redemption, good and evil – it all translates well into horror. I didn’t start out to be a horror writer, professionally. I thought I was writing historical fiction. I finally had an editor reply that although he loved everything I had submitted and previously submitted, I just WAS NOT writing historical fiction – I was writing HORROR. Imagine my surprise. I started re-reading everything I had written and came to the same conclusion. I just didn’t see it before it was pointed out.

 

3. Can you describe your writing style or the tone you prefer to set for your stories?

I write primarily historical horror and loosely earth-based heroic fantasy. Both of those require an immersion into the era I’m writing about at the time. So, I tend to find my influences in ages past, more than with modern writers. My writing style has been described by many people as “British” in tone and style. I see that a little. Probably because my biggest literary influences were British writers: Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, etc. I was an English teacher with a specialty on British Literature. Makes sense. Also, if you take into consideration my early influences of the King James Bible, that style of writing comes naturally. I think my writing is one of “building”. I like to set a firm foundation full of atmosphere. I want the reader to feel, see, hear, smell – to BE in the story. Then the story climbs to a – sometimes – sudden climax and BAM! – the conclusion is upon you. When I read reviews that mention anything the reviewer “didn’t like”, the comments are always that the story was too short or that the conclusion was too sudden or that they wanted more. I don’t necessarily see these as “bad” reviews. Life isn’t a neat and tidy thing, is it? When the story is done, it’s done. Sometimes the conclusion isn’t all wrapped up with a shiny bow – because in real life, stories aren’t always wrapped up in shiny bows. The reader gets to know what the character(s) gets to know…and sometimes the character never knows. My work has been compared to Lovecraft, Moore and Blackwood. I’m flattered, but I can only hope to stand in the shadow of such masters.

 

 4. Are there any women authors who have particularly inspired you to write?

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”, was a big influence in my adolescence. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, was terrifying to me, I think because there were so many elements that I could relate to in my restrictive upbringing. I knew people like the people in her novel. It was scary. Mary Shelley, Louisa May Alcott, George Eliot, Margaret Mitchell, Madeleine L’Engle, C.L. Moore– some of these are typical answers. I’ve never been a reader who selected my material based on the gender of the writer, but on the content of the story. Many of my female writer influences are not horror writers either, so not sure about the psychology behind the meaning of that.

 

5. What authors do you like to read?  Any recommendations?

I read a lot of nonfiction because I’m constantly researching for whatever I’m writing at the time. Some of my favorite fiction writers are Dickens, Tolkien, Moore, Howard, Shakespeare, Stoker, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Burroughs– all dead. Some of my favorite writers still kicking, that I find really fun to read, are Robert Weinberg, C. Dean Andersson, Steven Wedel, Steven Shrewsbury, Jeff Marriott, and of course, Christopher Fulbright.
6. Where can readers find your work?

My websites do not list everything. I try to keep the sites current, with not too many out of print works. A google search will bring up older works. Of course, Amazon has just about anything that is currently for sale – as does Barnes & Noble. As a short story writer, I’ve been fairly prolific in both horror and dark fantasy. I believe most of my longer works and collections are listed, with purchasing links, on my website: http://angelinehawkes.com/ and on Christopher Fulbright’s and my collaborative website: http://www.fulbrightandhawkes.com. I am currently writing for or have written for: Chaosium, DarkFuse, Dark Regions Press, Delirium Books, Elder Signs Press, and many others.

 

Interested in learning more about her, or checking out her work? Here’s a link to Angeline Hawkes’ Amazon page.

Posted on February 3, 2014 by , Reply

Women in Horror Fiction: The Mysteries of Ann Ward Radcliffe (UPDATED)

Ask anyone in the know about the history of horror, and one of the first authors you’ll hear named will be Ann Ward Radcliffe, author of The Mysteries of Udolpho. While Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto is considered the first Gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, along with Matthew Lewis’ The Monk, are often mentioned in the next breath.

Gothic fiction usually takes place in faraway times and places, in a foreboding atmosphere. There are often castles, mazes, ruined buildings, wild landscapes, and mysterious or supernatural happenings. A dark atmosphere and setting are an essential part of the Gothic novel. Curious heroines, sinister and passionate villains, and irreproachable heroes all populate Gothic tales. The forbidden and hidden add to the thrills and suspense.

At the time she was writing her thrilling novels (and she wrote more than just one) writing was not considered a suitable occupation for a woman, and many women authors wrote anonymously or under a pseudonym. Radcliffe, with the support of her husband, a journalist, wrote her novels under her own name. A bestselling author, the appearance of a new book by Ann Radcliffe was an event in the literary world.

Yet we know very little about who Ann Radcliffe really was.  Born in 1764  to William and Ann Ward, she had an uncle who was able to expose her to literature and art  at a young age, although it is likely she received no more formal education than other young women of her time. Her husband, William Radcliffe, was a journalist, and encouraged her writing. She traveled often, although not always far from home, and her journals are filled with extensive descriptions of scenery and the natural world. This is reflected in her writing– reviews on Amazon vary between praising her gorgeous descriptive writing and skill at establishing setting, and impatience at the pace of the novel, as it slows the action down considerably. What isn’t contained in her journals is anything indicating what she might have been thinking. We don’t know why she wrote what she did, or why, at the young age of thirty two, she set down her pen. Mrs. Radcliffe died on February 7, 1823.  Her works include:  The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789),  A Sicilian Romance (1791), The Romance of the Forest (1792), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, with a Return down the Rhine:  to which are added Observations during a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland (1795) and The Italian (1796). (Gaston de Blondville and some poetry was published posthumously)

Radcliffe was familiar with contemporary works and also with Shakespeare. More than one of her books reflect influences from Macbeth and Hamlet, and her essay “The Supernatural in Poetry” references them directly in establishing her definitions of the difference between terror and horror (Radcliffe considered her works to inspire terror rather than horror, at least as she describes them both) Radcliffe expresses frustration with Shakespeare’s choice to present the witches from Macbeth as ordinary “Scotch women” instead of otherworldly creatures. Terror, she implies, is created by our reaction to the unearthly, and its effect is lost when it collides with the ordinary appearance of mere elderly women. Horror is a different matter entirely, a momentary excitement, rather than the subtle, unseen thrill that builds in a foreboding atmosphere which Radcliffe identifies as terror.  She wrote:

Terror and horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them… Where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in the uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreaded evil?

I can’t imagine what Mrs. Radcliffe would think of seeing herself classed with horror writers today!

Even with her attempt to justify her writing as somehow more “highbrow” than horror,   In Ann Radcliffe In Relation To Her Time, Clara McIntyre noted that The Mysteries of Udolpho was written to appeal to the general public, and she posits that Radcliffe was one of the earliest contributors to dramatic structure in fiction– that is, the creation of suspense to drive action, and action to complicate events that later have to be resolved. While today, Radcliffe’s hefty tomes may be slow going, McIntyre writes:

“The greater complication of the plot, the wider range of experience to which we are introduced, the increased number of thrills and surprises, and the really remarkable description of the Castle of Udolpho, all were calculated to appeal to the popular taste. Even now the charm has not wholly departed, if, forgetting to read critically, we submit ourselves to its power. We feel a little shiver of apprehension when the black pall on the .bed slowly begins to rise… ” (42)

It would be interesting to learn more about Mrs. Radcliffe, but there are so few facts to be had. Even if one doubts the literary quality of her work, though, her use of suspense to create a dramatic narrative, her descriptive writing, and her ability to evoke deep emotions and create unearthly chills had a permanent effect on English literature, and especially on the romance and horror genres. It’s worth while to take a moment to consider what Ann Radcliffe’s inner thoughts must have been as she created her fantastic and terrifying stories.

 

Editor’s note: As soon as this blog post was published, The Guardian reported the discovery of a letter by Ann Radcliffe that may offer some insight into her personal life. Evidently she had mother-in-law issues.

Posted on February 2, 2014 by , Reply
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