 Horror is such a beautiful genre with a wide range of modes and feels represented, and a wide range of goals. I think the key to winning people over is education on just how wide and varied this genre is. Horror, terror, the fear of the unknown… these are all universal human experiences that deserve to be explore Elizabeth Hirst Elizabeth Hirst is a Canadian horror author, graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop Class of 2006, and an editor of books and short stories. Her writing on LGBT themes in horror fiction has appeared on Tor.com and The Scariest Part, and her novels, The Face in the Marsh and Distant Early Warning are available for order and pre-order from Renaissance Press. Find her on Twitter and Instagram as @hirst_author, and blogging at http://elizabethhirstblog.wordpress.com. LINKS https://elizabethhirstblog.wordpress.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Face-Marsh-Elizabeth-Hirst-ebook/dp/B07PYVL337/ref=sr_1_8?dchild=1&qid=1614197104&refinements=p_27%3AElizabeth+Hirst&s=books&sr=1-8 https://www.amazon.com/Distant-Early-Warning-Singing-Bones-ebook/dp/B08H8G9FKK/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&qid=1614197104&refinements=p_27%3AElizabeth+Hirst&s=books&sr=1-12 https://twitter.com/hirst_author https://www.instagram.com/hirst_author/ Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I’m as Canadian as saying sorry, and I’ve got a passion for fashion and a flamboyant sense of style. I’m happiest when I’m out in the community enjoying live entertainment and museums. I love music—all types of music. It’s essential to my writing process. In addition to writing fiction, I am a professionally-trained animator, and visualization is also something I use heavily in my writing process. Horror and fantasy are my usual genres, but I love and read every type of book. My favourite stories are darkly beautiful, full of adventure and teach us something about life or the human heart. Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life? This one is hard, because I tend to write antagonists rather than villains. I think Georgie Foster, the obnoxious and sexist heir to a large media company in Distant Early Warning, would be the worst. I mean, he holds a dog hostage. To me, that makes him instantly unlikeable. Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? I have a Master’s degree in English Language and Literature, and so I’ve spent a lot of time studying the English and British Commonwealth literary canon. I think what I have carried forward from that is an expanded vision of what fiction is capable of and what fiction is ‘for’, and a love for postcolonial writing back to dominant cultural narratives. I actually feel that a formal education has made me more rebellious in my work, not less. I also get story ideas from music, visual art and my meditation practice. Sometimes I get whole stories coming to me in a long meditation session. It’s amazing what clearing your mind will uncover sometimes. 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? Horror is such a beautiful genre with a wide range of modes and feels represented, and a wide range of goals. I think the key to winning people over is education on just how wide and varied this genre is. Horror, terror, the fear of the unknown… these are all universal human experiences that deserve to be explored. There is truly something for everyone here, and exploring the darker side of humanity is good for our society as a whole, not just individuals. People begin to accept horror when they find their preferred mode of horror, and I think it’s our job as fans to be there with suggestions when they’re curious. 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? I know many people are really traumatized right now, but the kind of horror I want to see is sharp criticism of the horrors of this moment in history, horrors that were, and are, so unnecessary. We have the technology and the resources to make sure every human being on this planet lives in dignity and has enough to get by. I want horror to start exploring what darkness within us makes us keep that from happening as a species. Also, as someone who is writing a cli-fi horror series, I want to see more authors engaging with the horror of losing our natural environment to climate change. I can’t be the only one feeling grief over that. 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 that horror is one of the few genres that allows us to engage with the full and natural scope of human emotions, both light and dark. There is so much power in that, especially for those of us who have experienced trauma, experienced marginalization or who struggle with mental illness. Horror can be a thought experiment about the worst case scenario. Horror can help us cope. Horror can help us express our dark side in a safe way. I don’t know what I would have done in this pandemic if I hadn’t read The Stand, and that’s a fact. Both my husband and I were more prepared for having read Stephen King’s artfully imagined worst-case pandemic scenario. What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre? I actually love the diversity of the horror genre as it is, but naturally I look forward to even more diverse creators adding their unique voices to the genre. I am always excited to see what new innovations other authors bring to the table. That’s half the fun of being a fan as well as a creator. Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? Paul Levinson called Distant Early Warning “A different kind of zombie apocalypse novel – heartwarming, deeply literate, musical, with a real anthropological sensitivity, even as it is a bit terrifying at times.” I believe that is the finest praise I have ever received for my work and what’s more, it expresses the aesthetic that I strive for. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? When I first started out, listening to my unique inner voice and instincts was the hardest thing for me, but now I’ve learned to follow my inner voice no matter what. I would say that revisions are probably the thing I am grappling with most right now. I write a very clean draft, and so in the past, revisions were often minimal, but as I continue to strive to be the best I can be, I find myself revising more and more and it is far more unfamiliar a process than anything in the initial writing phase. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? I’m not a big fan of direct depictions of child abuse. I think that’s a subject that must be approached carefully. I am also highly unlikely to write a sports story. The closest I would get is yoga, martial arts or dance. Writing is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? I would say that my dialogue has really improved. Once I started implementing the rule of thumb that readers should be able to tell the POV of your story and who is talking strictly by the way things are said and how they are delivered in the text, I made major strides in both dialogue and narration. I don’t always write stories about Canada, but I do think that the authenticity and appeal of my stories improved when I embraced my cultural identity and began writing with my authentic voice instead of trying to remain neutral. Stories and authors are never really neutral, no matter what we may wish to pretend. I also have a personal policy of continuing to attend workshops and critique circles for life, and I feel that has worked for me and helped me to level up several times. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? I cannot remember if it was one person or several, but I can tell you that over the course of my time in the 2006 Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop, it was driven home to me that it isn’t enough to have an emotion and a pretty picture in your head if you can’t communicate that to the average person effectively. As a result of this approach, I try to experience my fiction, both in writing and re-reading, as an average reader with no experience of the fictional world. It’s why I never write anything out of chronological order. It messes with my ‘audience instincts’. Which of your characters is your favourite? If we’re talking human characters, Denny from Distant Early Warning is my favorite. She’s tough, but she’s also got so much heart, and she’s amazing at looking deeper into big, supposedly unsolvable problems and finding solutions. If we’re talking about anyone of any species, it’s definitely Geoff the Border Collie from Distant Early Warning. Someday I will have a dog named Geoff, too, and I bet we’ll have lots of adventures. Which of your books best represents you? That’s a hard one, because most of my work is deeply personal. I’m one of those writers that doesn’t use a pen, I tap a vein. I would say that I see Distant Early Warning and sequels as my flagship series. It’s at the heart of so many things I care about—Canadian identity, the people and places I have come to know and love, the challenges facing our environment—and I think it’s a great calling card for the kinds of things I write. The Singing Bones trilogy is, at its core, a series about the nation I hope we never become, the nation I wish we could be, and a group of people working together in less-than-ideal circumstances to fight both inner and outer demons. Plus, there’s lots of action and adventure, which is something that I love. Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? They passed along a worn and ash-smelling road through Toronto, that great beast scarred with train tracks and long-neglected superhighways, and as the sun began to set, they worked their way further and further north. The trees along the road gradually became less black-spotted maples and more leaning pines. Denny had never been up this far. She had been shown pictures, of course, of Algonquin Park (who in the Humanities hadn't seen a Group of Seven painting, she wanted to know) but she had never imagined the massive granite cliffs, the winding roads through tiny hamlets, the rolling ground covered with pines on the high end, and wide marshes on the low. Some of the marshes closest to the road had been heavily sand-bagged to the point that Denny could see the reeds peering up over them, looming over the road, but somehow it didn't make her feel as uneasy. Back in Hamilton, it had felt as though nature was the attacker, flooding through human growth and development like an inexorable cancer, but here…here it felt like she and Seaburn were the intruders, and nature was just claiming its own. Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? My last book, The Face in the Marsh, is a supernatural horror with a touch of cosmic horror set in a small and eccentric northern Ontario museum. It is an exploration of the horrors of being in the closet as a bi woman, and of contemplating the voluntary loss of your identity. There are also a lot of creepy artworks and dolls, if you’re into that. Definitely a book for the creepy doll fans out there. Right now I am working on the third book in the Singing Bones trilogy, tentatively titled The Grain Sea Storm. I don’t think it will spoil anything to say that Denny and her friends are going to be traveling cross-country to address the Screamer problem head-on, but along the way they are going to discover that the danger is much bigger and more complex than they had bargained for. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? I think it’s tied between really bad decisions not well-rooted in characterization that are obviously only there to move the plot along, and killing off characters in order from most to least ‘evil’. Both clichés just kill the suspension of disbelief for me. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? I really enjoyed Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt. The emotional resonance of the story has stuck with me long after reading it, and I like stories about cults when done right. I’ve probably watched the Netflix documentary Wild, Wild Country about four times now. It’s fascinating stuff. I know some people will get mad about this, but I just wasn’t able to get into A Wizard of Earthsea and sequels. I know they’re classics, but they’re just not for me. What do people find the most surprising about you when meeting you in person vs. your author persona? A lot of people I meet in person have this image of a horror author as being sort of dark and gothic with a morbid sense of humour. They picture someone edgy, a lot of times. I have that side to me, but I like to think of myself more like an owl or a bat, something that hangs out in the dark, swims through it, navigates it, but is actually kind of cute. I think people are sometimes surprised at me because in person I’m very New Age and kind of hippie-ish in demeanour. I’m very into yoga and meditation, and I’ll even admit to having a small crystal collection. I love gardening, canning, knitting and crochet. My husband jokes that I’m turning into a pioneer woman one hobby at a time. People don’t necessarily associate folksy people with horror, but perhaps they should. It can come from anywhere, or anyone. That is part of the beauty of the genre. DISTANT EARLY WARNING Canada is in crisis. Climate change has taken hold, and amid the flooding and the super storms, the dead begin crawling out of the ground at night, screaming out strange gibberish songs that entrance anyone who hears them. The north quickly becomes a wild west, without the west. Denny's life changes forever one day when she sees her dad on TV, dead and screaming. Denny gives up her job, buys supplies, and heads out with her dad’s dog, Geoff, to discover the truth behind his death, but truth always comes with a cost. What Denny discovers in the wilds of Northern Ontario will shatter all of her assumptions about her life, and what lies beyond. TODAY ON THE GINGER NUTS OF HORROR WEBSITE BOOK REVIEW: DARK HILARITY BY JOSEPH SALEFIVE DARK TALES OF THE GOOD FOLK BY A.J. ELWOOD THE COTTINGLEY CUCKOO THE HEART AND SOUL OF HORROR WEBSITES Comments are closed.
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