 Emma J. Gibbon is a horror writer, speculative poet and librarian. She is the author of the short fiction collection, Dark Blood Comes from the Feet (Trepidatio Publishing, 2020) and her stories have appeared in various anthologies and she has a story upcoming in Would but Time Await: An Anthology of New England Folk Horror from Haverhill Publishing.. In 2020, she was nominated twice for the Rhysling Award for “Fune-RL” (Strange Horizons) and “Consumption” (Eye to the Telescope). Her poetry has also been published in Liminality, Pedestal Magazine and is upcoming in Kaleidotrope. Emma is originally from Yorkshire and now lives in Maine in a spooky little house in the woods with her husband, Steve, and three exceptional animals: Odin, Mothra, and M. Bison (also known as Grim). She is a member of the New England Horror Writers, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, the Angela Carter Society, and the Tuesday Mayhem Society. Her website is emmajgibbon.com. Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I’m a writer, poet and public librarian. I’m originally from Yorkshire but have lived in Maine in the U.S. for the past ten years so no automated phone service from either country can understand me. I end up screaming “I just want to talk to a person” repeatedly (it usually works). To get the ball rolling and get everyone relaxed, here is a hopefully lighthearted question to break the ice, which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life and have them complain at you about they way you treated them in your work. It’s hard to say without giving away spoilers of my new book but let’s just say there are a few characters in the stories in Dark Blood Comes from the Feet that get eviscerated by monsters of different shapes and sizes. I imagine they’d be pretty annoyed with me. I also imagine they wouldn’t be pleasant to look at, at that stage. Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? Just generally existing. I often draw on the emotional experiences of my life when I write. I also use a lot of the places that I lived in and visited as settings. I’m horrible spatially so when I describe buildings and such, I usually loosely base it on a real life place so I can get my bearings. I also read a lot outside of horror so that comes into play too, but inspiration can come from anywhere. I’ve had more ideas from watching Ghost Adventures than I ever want to admit. The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations. What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions? It does, and I think for some people, you will never persuade them otherwise. Being a librarian in Maine, I come across people who emphatically don’t like horror…but have read everything Stephen King has ever published or others who are really into thrillers that in the 80s would have absolutely been marketed as horror but won’t try a horror book. I think that the regular reading public has little of a sense of how broad and varied and diverse horror can be, especially in the indie presses. I think the recent resurgence in interest in horror helps that a little but I think in general, all we can do is keep producing good work, lifting each other up by talking about stuff we enjoy, recommending them to folks and doing all we can to make sure diverse voices are heard. A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years? That’s a good question. I don’t know where it will take it, but I think the impact will be big. Just the fact of the pandemic, trauma and fear on a global scale, coupled with some of the most intense collective selfless acts that many of us will see in our lifetimes will have a profound effect on our psyche. It’s be interesting to see how it all turns out. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? I think there are many reasons people enjoy it. Catharsis can certainly be part of it. Horror can be a psychological trial run. Life is often chaotic and terrifying and horror is a way of experiencing fear that can be controlled and contained. For me, I’m attracted to dark themes. I’m deeply suspicious when everything is all sunshine and light. What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre? Well, you don’t know what you don’t know, right? I’m sure something will come along and we will be like “THIS! This is what was missing!” In the past authors were able to write about almost anything with a far lesser degree of the fear of backlash, but this has all changed in recent years. These days authors must be more aware of representation an the depiction of things such as race and gender in their works, how aware are you of these things and what steps have you taken to ensure that your writing can’t be viewed as being offensive to a minority group? I would say that I am aware of it and I do take steps to ensure that I am not being offensive but that I am also fully aware that I have room for improvement. For example, I have changed certain terms and words that were fine in the U.K. but are considered much more offensive in the U.S. I also try to read and research as much as I can when writing outside my own experience, and I do interrogate my own work to see if I’m falling back on my own experience as default. For example, my work at this time is entirely too white, and that is something I have to work on in the future. I don’t think it is such a burden to make sure that our fiction reflects the world we live in in this way. I would have no problem hiring a sensitivity reader, for example, or putting trigger warnings on my books if needed. Does horror fiction perpetuate it’s own ghettoization? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but then I’m probably biased. What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of? I’m a bit behind the curve when it comes to new stuff as I have a TBR pile up to the ceiling but there are certain publishers who I always watch out for when they have new authors. One is Trepidatio (full disclosure: they’re the publisher of my new book), another is Undertow. I keep a close eye on what Nightscape Press is doing too. What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author? I know I will forget something key so I’m just going to list them as they come to me and hope for the best! Books: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (anything by Shirley Jackson, really), The Gormenghast Trilogy, Daphne du Maurier’s short stories, Salem’s Lot, The Secret History, My Sweet Audrina, House of Leaves, The Bloody Chamber, The Name of the Rose, Moby Dick Movies: Heathers, The Lost Boys, Dangerous Liaisons, Amadeus, Nightbreed, May, The Howling, Beetlejuice, The ‘Burbs, Donnie Darko, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? There is one that kind of follows me around and I don’t mind, but it’s funny how people zone in on it. My story, “St. Scholastic’s Home for Children of the Sea,” was reviewed for a podcast when it came out in the anthology, Wicked Weird, and it was a pretty good review! The reviewers were, you know, grizzly horror dudes and they were really taken by what they saw as a happy ending. I mean, I think it’s a happy ending too, but I’m kind of grisly if not grizzly—there’s a lot of rending and tearing and blood mist in that story. They compared it to a “Horror Sound of Music”. The other part of this is, being a Brit in the U.S., people tend to think I’m a bit Mary Poppins, which I’m really not and anyone who knows accents at all knows I’m not but the fact is, any kind of Brit accent can mean you can get away with murder and they just think you’re being super charming. So somehow, the phrase “Mary Poppins of Horror” starts getting bandied around, and I don’t mind. I loved Mary Poppins as a kid, because she was clearly a witch and did what she wanted. So now, I get my first blurb for Dark Blood Comes from the Feet in from Morgan Sylvia and it literally makes me cry, when I see who she’s compared me to. But at the end she says “The Mary Poppins of Horror has arrived!” and I swear, as soon it was posted on the preorder site I got loads of messages that said “THE MARY POPPINS OF HORROR!” And I’m like, you did see I got compared to Shirley Jackson, like, twice? What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? Honestly, I find writing hard. I have to get out of my own way to do it. Ray Bradbury compared it to trying to make friends with cats, and it makes sense to me. I have to pretend to not care about how it turns out to do it. I think what it boils down to is that I know that I will never be able to translate the story in my head perfectly on the page. That said, I’ve tried just not writing, quitting, and I’ve never been as miserable. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? I don’t know. The key word is never. There may be something that I wouldn’t touch right now that in the future I may change my mind about. How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning? So, I’ve always found it weird when people struggle with this, because I just kind of know. I know what they’re called. I don’t look into the meaning or anything because it’s as if they already have their name. Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? I think that I have more of a sense of what makes a story, how it is structured and I think that has come from writing but also from a hell of a lot of reading. I also think I’ve got better at poking those sore spots, emotionally, slowing it down when it hurts. That just comes from living, I think. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? I can’t say which story because it is a spoiler but my husband (who is also a writer but not a horror writer) said to me “But what if they weren’t all dead though?” and at first I told him he was being ridiculous and of course they were all dead but the more I thought about it, it lead to me writing the most satisfying end to a story of my career thus far. To many writers, the characters they write become like children, who is your favorite child, and who is your least favorite to write for and why? I really like Janine from “Janine” in Dark Blood Comes from the Feet. She’s had a really hard life and made some bad choices but she has a clear view of who she is and the only person she has ever really hurt is herself. I have a lot of sympathy for her. I’ve not met a character that I really dislike writing, even though there are some objectively awful people in my stories. I usually kill them off if they get too annoying. For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why? As I only have one book that is coming out on May 22 (and available for preorder now), I’ll go3 for that one. Dark Blood Comes from the Feet is my debut fiction collection out from Trepidatio. Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? The beginning of “Black Shuck Tavern” which is in my new collection. I don’t think I’ve ever got to the heart of a story so quickly: “I’m being followed by a huge fucking dog of potentially supernatural origin.” Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? My last book is Dark Blood Comes from the Feet as mentioned above and as to what next…I’m still mulling it over. Quarantine brain has not helped that process. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? It’s an outdated one now, but I hope it goes away for good—the “bad” girl who always gets killed early on. This idea that they have to be virginal to live, give me a break. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? The last great book I read was Gideon the Ninth. It was just a fantastic, fun book—like Gormenghast but in space with skeletons and lesbians and a locked room mystery and SO MUCH snarky humor. The last book that disappointed me…I don’t remember anything specific but I tend to not like many popular fiction books that hit the bestseller lists that are about upper middle-class families who live in the suburbs, etc. They just don’t speak to me at all. I have a hard time connecting with their concerns or sympathizing with them. What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer? I haven’t really been interviewed enough to be able to know. I guess since we’re still locked in at home, it would be “Would you like Indian food delivered to your door with a couple of beers?” And my answer would be: “More than all the world!” DARK BLOOD COMES FROM THE FEET Dark Blood Comes from the Feet is a strange and eclectic collection of seventeen stories from horror author and speculative poet, Emma J. Gibbon. Within its pages, you will meet secret societies who contract deadly diseases on purpose, dancers helping each other avoid "below," monstrous children who must be loved before they return to the sea, a taxidermy-obsessed mother, small blue devils in the Maine woods, a black cat that retrieves the dying, the last witch in Florida, and "a huge fucking dog of potentially supernatural origin." Visit haunted houses, a Hollywood nightclub, limbo, Whitechapel, and other stops on a death tour, and a childhood hangout that spells destruction for kids and dogs alike. Listen to a punk rock sermon in a post-apocalyptic matriarchal society, witness crustaceans that have trouble staying dead, a cannibalistic romance, a gothic love story to tuberculosis and a downtrodden wife's transformation.   the heart and soul of horror interviewsComments are closed.
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