GINGER SNAPS: TABATHA WOOD

Who are you? I’m Tabatha Wood. I’m a reasonably decent writer, an okay poet, and a pretty crappy artist. I enjoy doing all in equal measure.
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Your signature style: “Soft” horror with a gothic edge, and sometimes dark speculative fiction. I write a lot of weird body horror, existential angst, metaphors and symbolism, and bugs. I like bugs.
 
Toot your own horn: My debut collection Dark Winds Over Wellington was nominated for an award this year, which was pretty cool. Getting to know and work with a whole raft of awesome authors while editing a charity anthology has been fucking awesome too.
 
Books read: Thanks to plague anxiety, I’ve found it really hard to concentrate on many books this month. I’ve been dipping into Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman, On The Come Up by Angie Thomas (author of The Hate U Give) and In Real Life, a graphic novel by Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang, which has been wonderfully distracting. Not much horror in that selection, I’m afraid.
 
Movies watched: I rewatched The Princess Bride for my birthday which is an old favourite, as well as Empire Records. Spenser Confidential was a ridiculous take-your-brain-out romp, and I succumbed to Tiger King fever. The kids have been watching Muppet movies, and I’ll never pass up a Muppet rewatch.
 
Games and/or music played: I like playing games on my iPad, so I’ve been enjoying The Room 3, Bomb Chicken and Flower, which isn’t really a game, more a meditative experience. There’s never a day goes by that I don’t listen to music. My recent playlist has included old favourites that make me happy: Billy Idol, Sum 41, Guns N’ Roses, Therapy?, The Cure, Joy Division and Pearl Jam. When I’m writing I prefer to listen to soundtracks. The OST from Godless always helps me be productive.
 
Words written: I spent the first week of lockdown in a funk. I didn’t write much at all. In contrast, these past two weeks have been a blur of activity. I’ve been editing a charity anthology with fellow author Cassie Hart called Black Dogs, Black Tales, to raise money for The Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand. I’ve finished three new short stories, two of which will hopefully be published as part of Pride In Horror month. And I’ve been adding more things to my Curious Fictions page.
https://curiousfictions.com/authors/678-tabatha-wood
 
Future stuff:  Black Dogs, Black Tales will hopefully come out in mid-May, so I’ll be busy promoting that online. I’m working on a YA fantasy for my kids, which I may or may not publish. I’ve got a hundred-thousand-squillion ideas written in my notebook, so I might just pick one and see where it goes. I’d also like to write a story for Sci-fi and Scary’s Twisted Anatomy body horror charity anthology. https://www.scifiandscary.com/twisted-anatomy-a-sfs-body-horror-anthology/
 
Brain worms: Read in the New Scientist last week: Strange particles obversed by an experiment in Antarctica could be evidence of an alternative reality where everything is upside down. This suggests the potential of a topsy-turvy mirror universe, just like in Stranger Things...

Tabatha Wood lives in New Zealand and writes weird, dark fiction and uplifting poetry. Despite her obsession with the strange and unusual, she considers herself mostly harmless.
 
A former English teacher and library manager, Tabatha now teaches from home while writing in her spare time. She released her debut collection, “Dark Winds Over Wellington: Chilling Tales of the Weird & the Strange” in March 2019. Since then she has had short stories published in a number of antipodean horror magazines.
 
Tabatha is the lead editor in a team of twelve for the “Black Dogs, Black Tales” anthology. The collection aims to raise money and awareness for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand and will be published by ’Things In The Well Press’ in May 2020. 
 
You can read more of her writing on her website https://tabathawood.com and her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/tlwood.wordweaver/ ​

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Another story I relished was Night Wolves by Tabatha Wood. It carried a dark undercurrent from the start, and as the story unfolded there was something hidden, another layer of dark, which followed the character and the dog to the tale’s conclusion.

The Gaze Dogs of Nine Waterfall by Kaaron Warren also deserves a mention. It’s quirky, with something of a folk tale about it. It carries its narrative in an amusing off-beat way, achieving the aim of the collection without following some of the more common dog story tropes.

Park Life by Ian J Middleton and Grey Dog by John Linwood Grant are both easy reads which seem to be heading down  well trodden paths, but each has a subtle twist which turns things around. For  dark tales, both made me smile, which is a rare thing.

One issue with themed anthologies can be an element of repetition, but Black Dogs largely avoids this. There are a few formulaic tales, but as an overall collection it has enough variety to hold your interest.

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