FIVE MINUTES WITH BENJAMIN APPLEBY-DEAN

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m a lifelong daydreamer - I used to get into trouble in primary school for drifting off into worlds of my own imagining rather than paying attention in class. I would write stories about enormous insects or living statues for school projects, and scribbled pictures of skeleton ships and patchwork mutants in my exercise books. I’ve always been fascinated by things that are monstrous or frightening.

I specialise in writing what I call ‘incidentally queer’ fiction - stories with characters who happen to be LGBTQIA and where the plots don’t necessarily revolve around their sexualities.

Why horror?  What is appeal of the genre to you as both a fan and as a writer?

Horror is one of the oldest and most visceral kinds of fiction – we were telling stories around the fire to warn of the dark long before written literature or constructed novels. I find it very cathartic as a reader, and a writer, to tap into that.

Horror's also one of the broadest genres in literature, with some of the fewest restrictions – it can be supernatural or realistic, set against historical or fantastical or futuristic backgrounds, and doesn't require any specific plots or characters in order to work. There's so much depth and variety in published horror fiction at present, and I never get bored of exploring it.

As LBGTQ+ fan and writer of horror, how did you when you first became immersed in the genre and found that representation that you could identify was few and far between?

This one's a little difficult for me, because I was already immersed in horror long before I started coming to terms with my own identity or sexuality, and so I used to take a lot of what I was reading for granted.  By the  time I started to look for more diverse authors and characters, the genre was already becoming much broader – authors like Clive Barker, Caitlin Kiernan and Poppy Z Brite broke a significant number of barriers while I was still growing up.

How did you discover authors that wrote about characters that you could relate to?

I still find this quite difficult – although gay and lesbian characters are now much more common in horror fiction, finding bisexual protagonists is much harder, and non-binary or gender-queer fiction is almost nonexistent. I've had more luck with fantasy and science fiction than horror – Laura Lam, Kameron Hurley, Catherynne Valente, Rivers Solomon and Anna-Marie McLemore are all favourites of mine.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?

Fantasy was my first and fondest home in books - I grew up on The Hobbit and A Wizard of Earthsea, and became familiar with all kinds of supernatural and bizarre creatures before I ever turned to finding them in darker fiction. I think the line between fantasy and horror isn’t always easily defined - both depend on an element of the unexplainable or hint at events beyond our comprehension or control.

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?
 
I think people often tend to associate horror with a set of genre trappings  - serial killers, zombies and so on – when I'd focus on the underlying philosophy of any given story. For me, a work of horror sets out to disturb the audience on a fundamental level - not simply to make them afraid of the individual monster but to make the world as a whole feel less safe and well-defined. If you give the audience what they expect, such as in a formula slasher plot, I’d actually argue it stops being horror because you’re comforting your readers and viewers instead of challenging them.
There’s a lot of great, diverse horror being written that doesn’t fit the genre formulas or stereotypes - I think we could work harder to highlight it.

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?

Environmental horror is the obvious one - I think we’ll see more modern equivalents of the nuclear threat and giant insect craze of 1950s B-Movies, as well as the social breakdown narratives that first sprung up after the Vietnam war.

To counterbalance that, we’re already seeing a revival of traditional gothic stories in both books and film - I think these have a more escapist appeal for people, and will continue to be successful given the state of the world outside.

What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author?

I used to be far too scared of horror books and films as a child to read or watch them, but in my teens I stumbled into ghost stories in a big way - Shirley Jackson and M R James in literature, and the original Japanese versions of Ring, Dark Water and The Grudge in film led me into looking into their own influences and getting properly into the genre as a whole. I also started watching David Lynch around the same time, and his work made a particularly powerful impression on me - I don’t think I ever saw the world the same way again after Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive.

In recent years there has been a slow but gradual diversification within the genre, which new LBGTQ+ writers do you think we should be paying attention to? 

Amber Dawn is a long-running writer who recently moved into horror with her extraordinary novel Sodom Road Exit, which I can't recommend enough.
Daisy Johnson has had more attention in mainstream literary circles after her Booker prize nomination, but her short stories in Fen tapped into some very dark places, and I’m hoping she isn’t done with the genre yet.

Helen Oyeyemi's White is for Witching is one of the best gothic novels of this century – a relentlessly effective book part-narrated by the haunted house itself.

How would you describe your writing style?

Experimental - I’m always trying to find new ways of telling a story or trying to communicate a particular state of mind. My first novel, Lamplight, had a fragmentary back-and-forth style inspired by the way people hold conversations over social media, and my second, The Stickman’s Legacy, uses stylistic interludes and self-aware narrative to explore the heroine’s journey across different overlapping worlds.

What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?

Bringing everything together. Starting a new story is all very fresh and exciting - my ideas can practically fly off the page - but wrapping it up and editing it into a complete, coherent book can turn into a grind sometimes. I’ve got far too many half-started books compared to finished ones - as have many writers!

Are there any subjects that you would never write about?

Animal cruelty. I don’t like to think of myself as squeamish - and I certainly don’t judge other people for writing it - but something in me finds it much harder to contemplate than horrible things happening to people.

Sexual violence is also a difficult one - I wouldn’t say never, but I’d need to have a story that justified it first.

Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

I had a tendency to overwrite everything when I started out, using a dozen words where one would do just as well. I wouldn’t say I’ve completely got rid of the habit, but I like to think I do it a great deal less.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?

Accept that your first book will be terrible, and that writing a bad book is a necessary step to producing a good one. It’s very easy to get hung up on trying to make your first book some kind of literary masterpiece, and realising that I instead needed to see it as a learning experience really helped me move on and improve my craft.

Getting your worked noticed is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve, how have you attempted to break through the barriers that are so often in place against LBGTQ+ writers?

I've tried to get my work noticed any number of different ways - social media across various channels, giveaways, review copies, open mic events and poetry readings, even contacting traditional media. It can be tremendously frustrating - I’ve had as many rejections when looking for reviews as I had trying to get my work published in the first place – but it's also impossible to know how many of those rejections have been because the book is LGBTQ+ and whether any of the reviewers or outlets would have looked at it otherwise. I think any barriers are all the more difficult for writers to deal with because their effect is often impossible to measure.

Many CIS white male authors use LGBTQ+ characters in their works, what’s the mistake that they make when trying to portray these characters?

Although I wouldn't say it's universal – some CIS writers can portray queer characters extremely well – the most common mistake is using the historically taboo aspects of being LGBTQ+ to write books that only give it negative connotations – having it be the cause of mental illness, a source of moral temptation, or exclusively associated with the villains of the book. Horror fiction thrives on social taboo, so there's obviously been a lot of older work written along these lines, but there's no excuse for doing it in the present day.

Moving on to getting your work read by unwashed masses, what do you think is the biggest misconception about LGBTQ+ fiction?
 
I think too many people expect a book with LGBTQ+ characters to be an 'issue book' - one that's about the queer experience itself, where coming out or self-discovery or learning to live with prejudice are central to the plot – when that's only a very narrow band of LGBTQ+ books. Most genre fiction with queer characters isn't and doesn't have to be about their sexuality.

There are as number of presses dedicated to LGBTQ+ fiction, do you view these as a good thing, or do you think they help to perpetuate the ongoing exclusion from mainstream presses?

I think it's a good thing – although it would obviously be better if all mainstream presses embraced queer fiction, having those specialist outlets available for LGBTQ+ writers and readers at least means the books are discoverable and gaining more visibility. I think that without them we'd simply have less LGBTQ+ fiction available altogether.

And here is the million dollar question do you agree with movements like this and things such as Women in Horror Month?  If so how would you like to see sites such as Ginger Nuts of Horror tackle diversity? 

I think spotlight months like this one are really helpful, especially coming from a site like Ginger Nuts of Horror that normally focuses on the genre as a whole. I'd like to see other promotional months for groups like writers of colour.

The most common phrase you hear when people object to active movements to encourage all forms of diversity is “I don’t care about the sexuality, gender, color etc etc of the writer I only care about good stories” what would you like to say to these people?

I'd say they're being disingenuous – if they genuinely only care about good stories then they should welcome movements that encourage a wider range of authors to write them.

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?

My favourite and least favourite both are always whoever I’m writing at the time - they become fulfilling and frustrating all at once, and I’m sorely in need of a break from them by the time the book is finished!
Out of my published books, Mary in The Stickman’s Legacy was my favourite to write for, and Terry in Lamplight, who’s an antagonist of sorts, was easily my least favourite.

What piece of your own work are you most proud of?

 It seems a little obvious, but it’s my most recent book, The Stickman’s Legacy. I spent years planning and creating the world and characters, then two years working on the first draft and another year re-writing it from scratch. It sometimes feels like half my life went into it.

For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why?

The Stickman’s Legacy - out of my two books I think it best captures the kind of world and atmosphere I’m trying to create.
 
 
Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

The Stickman’s Legacy is my newest book, and it’s a dark fairytale about a young woman investigating the death of her missing father, and discovering that his enemies are still very much alive. It features the old-fashioned type of fairies - child-stealers and blood-drinkers rather than granting wishes - and I based a lot of it on 19th-century folklore gathered from around the world.

I’m working on several different projects at present, but the next one I finish will probably be a dissociative supernatural murder mystery from the point of view of a girl with a chronic illness.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?

I’ve read several great books this year, but the most recent would be Seth Dickinson’s The Monster Baru Cormorant - a sophisticated, surreal and deeply disturbing novel from the point of view of an economic savant and budding tyrant as she jockeys for power in a brutal imperial society.

I was a little disappointed by Night Film -  not necessarily a bad book, but I was lead to expect a sinister and unsettling thriller and didn’t find it the least bit frightening; and it built mysteries a great deal more effectively than it answered them.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?
​
I actually wish someone would ask me the much-hated question of ‘Where do your ideas come from?’
I dream many of mine. The trick is editing out the parts of the dream that are just everyday anxieties and leaving the peculiar core intact. Those I don’t dream come from asking myself questions - what could this thing do or be if it were allowed to happen? And what would follow after?
Social Media:

Benjamin Appleby-Dean​

Benjamin Appleby-Dean is a complex event sometimes mistaken for a writer. When recognisably human, they live in the North-East of England with their wife and a collection of dysfunctional animals.

​https://twitter.com/FragmentsOfFear
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17191417.Benjamin_Appleby_Dean
https://www.instagram.com/badbadwriter/

---

The Stickman's Legacy

Mary never knew her father until he died and brought his enemies to her doorstep. Searching his house for answers, she unearths an ancient nightmare and is drawn into a world of corporate magicians, subterranean kingdoms and living architecture, all of whom have history with the Stickman - and their own sinister agendas for his daughter.

---