 There’s something so titillating about reading a passage in which you know a character is about to enter the lair of a malevolent creature that has the potential to rip them apart and consume them piece by piece. Even though we know it’s likely going to end badly, we keep turning the page.  William J. Donahue’s novel, Burn, Beautiful Soul, was published by Cosmic Egg Books in November 2020. In addition, he has authored three short-story collections: Too Much Poison, Filthy Beast, and Brain Cradle, one of which (Filthy Beast) was a finalist for Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award. His story “Demons of Chicago,” was published in the anthology Shocking Verbs, Lawless Nouns. His writing has also appeared in publications such as Rue Morgue, Rockpile, and Reptiles. When he’s not writing fiction, entertaining his cats, or wandering quietly in the woods, Donahue works as a full-time magazine editor and features writer. His writing and on-camera reporting have earned multiple regional and national awards for excellence in business journalism. He currently oversees three monthly lifestyle publications serving the Greater Philadelphia Area, and he is also on the editorial staff of a literary journal focused on the remarkable people, places, and history of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He lives in a small but well-guarded fortress in Pennsylvania, somewhere on the map between Philadelphia and Bethlehem. There’s no moat, but it has plenty of snakes. Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I’m a former musician from Philadelphia who became a journalist and then a novelist. My day job(s): the editor of a monthly lifestyle magazine, features writer, and the managing editor of a literary journal. My debut novel, Burn, Beautiful Soul, came out in 2020, though I’ve had other short stories and novellas published dating back to 2003. Most people would describe my work as “horror,” and I suppose that’s largely true, but “dark fiction” may be more accurate. Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life? I wrote a character for a novel I’m currently shopping to publishers, and he’s just an awful jerk. He’s based on a lot of people I have met over the years who these days I do my best to steer clear of: entitled, uninteresting, full of bluster, driven by the belief that he knows everything and is unwilling to consider other people’s perspectives, misogynistic to a large degree. Unfortunately, most of us have at least one person like this in our lives. They make for bad friends and neighbors, but I suppose they are useful antagonists in fiction. Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? More so than anything else, professional wrestling in the mid- to late 1980s has affected my view of the world and of people. Wrestling taught me right from wrong, and it also taught me a lot about character. Back then, wrestling had one-dimensional good guys, or “faces,” like Hulk Hogan and Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, and one-dimensional bad guys, or “heels,” like King Kong Bundy and the Iron Sheik. I was most interested in the characters who were somewhere in the middle, whose allegiances changed—the guys you didn’t think you could trust even when they were faces. I think of someone like Jake “The Snake” Roberts, who did these amazingly dark and profound pre-match interviews. He also came to the ring toting a 15-foot Burmese python, which was simply awesome. Apart from wrestling, music made me who I am. I grew up listening to thrash metal, death metal, and horror punk. The first time I heard The Misfits’ Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood album, I actually felt physically ill, because I had never heard anything like it before, and it just sounded so wrong. These days I have a lot more singer/songwriter-y stuff in my Spotify cache, but Earth A.D. remains one of my top five albums. 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? Just about every book, every movie, every story has elements of horror. Some of my favorite books are not horror but do have horror-like elements. Watership Down is a good example. It’s about a group of rabbits looking for a new home in the English countryside. On its surface, that sounds pretty tame, but think about the life of a rabbit—full of predators, motor vehicles, hunters and trappers. When I saw the animated film as a kid, the primary antagonist, General Woundwort, terrified me. To this day I think he’s one of the best screen villains ever. Every story needs conflict in order to succeed. It just so happens that the conflict in horror books and films tends to be on the grislier, more violent side. That said, if we’re talking about undoing assumptions, not every horror book needs blood and gore. In fact, I think the subtler, more atmospheric horror stories—the ones that make you think more deeply about the things that scare us—tend to be more horrifying than the ones that rely solely on blood and guts. 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? We’re seeing so much postapocalyptic fiction now, which tells you a lot about where people’s minds are. Unless there’s a global peace movement in which countries and their citizens decide to hold hands and say “enough’s enough,” I don’t see that trend fizzling out anytime soon. It’s natural to ponder how this whole experiment is going to end. At the same time, I think people want to take their minds off the ills of the world. To me, I prefer horror about monsters and non-humans to the stories in which people are hurting and killing each other. I guess I’d like to see more stories about monsters and their motivations. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? We’re fascinated by the dark underbelly of the human animal, and by things the human mind can’t adequately explain, be it paranormal goings-on, monsters, or knife-wielding psychopaths. In some ways, I think we’re looking for an explanation to the mysteries of our world, or of other worlds for that matter, but the fact is that people like to be “safe scared,” meaning they can dip their tip in the waters of another time and place with no real danger to themselves. There’s something so titillating about reading a passage in which you know a character is about to enter the lair of a malevolent creature that has the potential to rip them apart and consume them piece by piece. Even though we know it’s likely going to end badly, we keep turning the page. What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre? There’s so much good stuff out there that I can’t think of too much that hasn’t been unearthed. I’ve been heartened to see some publishers focused almost exclusively on “creature feature” type novels. I also love stories than cross boundaries and meld genres—romance and horror, for example, or horror and poetry—so I expect we’ll continue to see more of those experimental kinds of mashups. What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of? Grant Price writes really good sci-fi that I find simply horrifying. His imagination sort of astounds me; I don’t have the skill to write what he writes. His latest book, Reality Testing, introduced me to a technology-driven future I hope I do not live to see. I also really like Tiffany McDaniel, whose two novels--Betty and The Summer That Melted Everything—simply blew me away. She doesn’t write straight horror, but her books absolutely have horror elements. I’ll also add the names Matthew Vesely and Jennifer Giesbrecht to the list. His Elegy for the Undead and her The Monster of Elendhaven were terrific. Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? Not really. You appreciate the good ones when they come, and you try to learn from any negative feedback. Sometimes the bad ones have nuggets of truth you should consider, but you also have to accept that the reader may not have “gotten” the story, because not every book is going to land with every reader. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? As with most authors, time is the biggest obstacle because it’s the only thing we have a finite amount of. I’m a magazine editor and features writer, so I write every day for a living. At the end of a long workday, sometimes the last thing I want to do is sit down at a computer and stare at another blank screen, even if it’s for a story I’m really excited to tell; my eyes and brain just need a break. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? Beyond cursory mentions, subjects such as pedophilia, incest, and animal cruelty are off limits. Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? The way I write and the time I devote to writing have changed the most for me. I used to start writing at 10 or 11 at night and go until 2 or 3 a.m. I was in my 20s then, and I’m in my 40s now, so I prize my sleep too much. I walk my dog for an hour twice a day, once in the morning and then again after work, and I use that time to think about my stories, my characters, the dialog. Then I come home and jot down notes for later. As a result, when I do sit down to flesh out the story, I already have a good idea as to where I’m going. Every writer has a method to his or her madness, and that one seems to work pretty well for me. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? Join a writers’ group. I’ve belonged to one for the past 10 years, more or less, and it has been invaluable. To me, a writers’ group offers three things: camaraderie with fellow writers; feedback on your stories so you can get a sense of what’s working and what’s not, and also find any holes or inconsistencies you might have missed; and the motivation to keep writing, because you essentially sign up for critique slots and can’t miss those deadlines. You also read some terrific work (and, sometimes, some less-than-terrific work) from your peers, and good writing tends to inspire me to want to write, because I’m competitive in that way. Which of your characters is your favourite? Probably Edna Babych. She’s an antagonist in my novel Burn, Beautiful Soul. Edna has led a painful and difficult life, and she sees her faith as a guiding light, and really the only positive influence in her life. She believes she has been chosen to stop a demon named Basil from infecting her small town of Beak, Nebraska, even though Basil has given her no reason to think he’s up to no good, other than his devilish appearance. In her heart, she believes she is doing the right thing. I find it interesting when people do things most people would consider evil, but in their own minds they believe they will be on the right side of history. Which of your books best represents you? A novel I’m shopping right now has a lot of elements of who I am as a person. It’s a love story with very dark, somber overtones—a horror romance, I suppose. It’s a story about failure and redemption and snakes. Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? In my novel Burn, Beautiful Soul, there’s a scene in which the main character, Basil, and his love interest, an attorney named Melody, have dinner at a nice restaurant. Basil is an eight-foot-tall demon with horns and hooves, and I just love the dialog between them, the interaction. At one point, Melody tells Basil to stop smiling at people because it makes him look like “a rabid dog looking for a bone to chew on.” Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? Burn, Beautiful Soul is a dark urban fantasy with very strong horror elements. The novel follows a demon king who tires of leading his subterranean kingdom, which is this ghastly and fiery place where awful things happen. He ascends to the mortal world and lives among humans, as a towering demon with ram-like horns, cloven hooves, and a serpent's tail. Most humans accept him, but he quickly learns that the human world may be no better than the one he left behind. I have written two novels since—one is a horror romance set in Virginia, and the other is postapocalyptic sci-fi about the aftermath of an alien invasion of sorts, set in the remains of New England. Both are looking for publishers. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? The vengeance stories seem a bit overdone—say, a child sees their parent, loved one, etc., taken or killed by a creature or person, and they devote their lives to avenging the loss. Still, if the story is good enough and the characters are richly drawn, I’m game. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? I’m in a bit of a lull right now, in that I did not finish the last three books I picked up—and that’s rare for me. Two were horror novels—one of which was critically acclaimed, but I was quite underwhelmed. One was a novel from a mainstream author about a broken family who moves to Alaska seeking solitude, but the story moved too slowly and became a catalog of domestic abuse. Probably the last book I really enjoyed was a graphic novel called Aleister & Adolf, about the “magic war” between Hitler’s Germany and the Allies during World War II. The Allies enlisted Aleister Crowley to summon otherworldly forces in the battle against the Nazis. While some of the story was “filling in the blanks,” much of it is supposedly based in fact. I’ve read a good deal about the apparent occult ties to the Third Reich, a subject that blows my mind. What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer? Good question. I suppose the question would be: “What scares you?” The answer: “Werewolves, sharks, lightning, and human babies.”  Basil the demon king has come to a crossroads. He has grown tired of life underground and regretful of the atrocities he has committed to maintain his hold on power. Wanderlust leads him to the surface, to live freely among humans. Considering the state of the world, most humans seem unfazed by his arrival - but not all. A religious zealot with murderous intentions and a vengeful biker gang seek his end. Meanwhile, Basil must contend with two internal forces: the disturbing dreams that suggest he once walked the earth as a human; and the pull of the underworld, drawing him back to deal with the troubles he left behind - namely, a cunning foe who craves the throne, a monstrous kraken, and an ancient evil as cold and dark as the soil. 'Burn, Beautiful Soul is The Wizard of Oz with a demon Dorothy... It is a loving but unsentimental dissection of America and its people. It is a story you will never forget.' John Schoffstall, author of Half-Witch    Comments are closed.
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