ALONE WITH… LYNDA E. RUCKER

Alone with… Lynda E. Rucker

14/9/2022

Isolation: The Horror Anthology, edited by Dan Coxon, gathers 20 modern masters of horror to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss. Featuring stories by Paul Tremblay, Joe R. Lansdale, Tim Lebbon, M. R. Carey, Ken Liu, Nina Allan, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Maberry, Angela Slatter and many many more, it explores something that the horror fan has always known: when it comes to the crunch, we all die alone.

This week we’ll be featuring interviews with five of the writers featured in Isolation. Laird Barron, Gwendolyn Kiste, Michael Marshall Smith, Lynda E. Rucker and Owl Goingback will give us a sneak preview of their story in the anthology, as well as their other work in progress, and answer that vital question: why are we so afraid of being alone?

https://titanbooks.com/70997-isolation-the-horror-anthology/

Alone with… Lynda E. Rucker

Without giving too much away, what can you tell us about your story in Isolation?

I spent the spring and summer of the first lockdown in England walking miles and miles on the same stretch of shore as Claire does in the story. I grew very attached to it in that time and increasingly intrigued with the sense of its age, how much history was there, how long humans had been there and what had been there before humans, and I started thinking about how I could put all of that into a story. The first paragraph and last sentence of the story both came to me in full and entirely spontaneously while I was walking there — I first wrote them on my phone.

What in particular appealed to you about isolation as a theme? Is it something you've experienced yourself?

I was fortunate enough not to experience the extreme isolation that many others did during the pandemic, but yes, absolutely — I have experienced intentional and unintentional isolation, both psychological and physical. I've travelled to and lived in some remote and far-flung places alone, but for this story, I really wanted to get at the sense of isolation you feel after trauma, when you are in so much pain that no one can get through to you and you feel entirely apart from the world — and how that would play out against the backdrop of an event as singular as the pandemic lockdown.

Apart from your own, whose stories are you most looking forward to reading in Isolation?

Oh my gosh! This is a trick question, isn't it? The only proper response is “all of them!” I'm really, really excited to be in this anthology alongside loads of authors who are, frankly, much better known and more successful than I am. I'm a big fan of Paul Tremblay's fiction. I'm in there with friends like A.G. Slatter and Alison Littlewood, whose work I like as much as I do them! Nina Allan has long been a writer (and person) I admire a great deal. I recommend her blog, where she writes incisively about literature, almost as strongly as I do her fiction. Two huge, huge influences on my own work, writers I've been reading for decades and alongside whom I'm always delighted to appear, are Lisa Tuttle and Ramsey Campbell. I’m also a longtime Joe Lansdale fan. And Chikodili Emelumadu was one of my fellow Shirley Jackson jurors a few years back who I was lucky enough to meet briefly but I've never read her work and I'm really looking forward to her story. But also — argh, this is truly impossible to answer: Mark Morris, Michael Marshall Smith, M.R. Carey, Tim Lebbon and everyone in the anthology are all wonderfully accomplished writers. There are only a few whose work I haven't read although I know them by reputation, and I'm looking forward to diving in.

What are you working on at the moment?

2022 is shaping up to be the year that I finally pushed through a multi-year writer's block/ambivalence about writing fiction and found inspiration again. I've just finished several stories promised to various editors, I'm working on one more and I'm also finally turning back to a novel idea I've had for a couple of years. I know this last bit is going to make everyone who knows me well go “yeah, right” as I am perpetually announcing that I'm working on a novel that then peters out, but this time, honest, I think I've found the book I want to finish.

Apart from the story in Isolation, do you have anything else coming out in the next few months that we should be keeping an eye out for?

I'm the international guest author in the next Great British Horror anthology coming out at the end of September, published by Black Shuck Books (this features a story by Isolation editor Dan Coxon). I also have a story, “The Spirit and the Dust,” forthcoming in the next issue of Supernatural Tales, which will be out before Halloween. There's other stuff in the pipeline, but I can't talk about any of it yet!

What are you reading at the moment (or what are you most looking forward to reading)?

Right at the moment I'm reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, which is really good. I confess that until now, I knew next to nothing about Nigeria's Biafra War (or the Nigerian Civil War) other than that it happened, and Half of a Yellow Sun brings it all to stark life. I'm also reading Salman Rushdie's The Languages of Truth, his collection of essays that was published in 2021. It's a wonderful collection about reading and writing and the power of telling stories and imagination and it's just so, so inspiring; I recommend it to anyone who loves books. Some books I'm looking forward to are Chikodili Emelumadu's debut novel Dazzling, Elizabeth Hand's authorized sequel to The Haunting of Hill House and whatever Unsung Stories has in the pipeline.

GNoH's review of Chalk. Sea. Sand. Sky. Stone

Horror has the power to haunt, this might be an obvious and cliched thing to say, but when you read a story, that is a beautifully written as this one, and it still haunts your waking hours, thanks to the hauntingly sombre tone, them it needs to be said again.

Chalk. Sea. Sand. Sky. Stone is a powerful and melancholy look at grief and loss and regret. Rucker's evocative prose captures the bleakness of the coastline and the protagonists predicament perfectly. And huge props to the author for name checking my favourite dinosaur.

Lynda E. Rucker

Lynda E. Rucker has sold dozens of short stories to various magazines and anthologies including Best New Horror, The Best Horror of the Year, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, Black Static, Nightmare, F&SF, Postscripts, Supernatural Tales and Shadows and Tall Trees. She has had a short play produced as part of an anthology of horror plays on London's West End, has collaborated on a short horror comic, writes a regular column on horror for Black Static, and won the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Short Story in 2015. Two collections of her short fiction have been published, The Moon Will Look Strange and You'll Know When You Get There, and she edited the anthology Uncertainties III for Swan River Press.

ISOLATION: THE HORROR ANTHOLOGY EDITED BY DAN COXON

Lost in the wilderness, or alone in the dark, isolation remains one of our deepest held fears. This horror anthology from Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award finalist Dan Coxon calls on leading horror writers to confront the dark moments, the challenges that we must face alone: survivors in a world gone silent; the outcast shunned by society; the quiet voice trapped in the crowd; the lonely and forgotten, screaming into the abyss.

Experience the chilling terrors of Isolation.

Featuring stories by:
Nina Allan
Laird Barron
Ramsey Campbell
M.R. Carey
Chịkọdịlị Emelumadu
Brian Evenson
Owl Goingback
Gwendolyn Kiste
Joe R. Lansdale
Tim Lebbon
Alison Littlewood
Ken Liu
Jonathan Maberry
Michael Marshall Smith
Mark Morris
Lynda E. Rucker
A.G. Slatter
Paul Tremblay
Lisa Tuttle
Marian Womack