Horror Author Kit Power #Interview

Kit Power Interview

1.      Okay, I’m curious. When I put out the call for interviews, you mentioned a crowdfunding campaign for a non-fiction horror book. What is the book about and how can people get involved?

Oh hey, thanks for asking! The project is a non-fiction book called My Life In Horror Volume 1. Essentially it’s an essay collection representing the best of the first three years of my writing for Gingernuts of Horror as part of that series, every month I write about a childhood experience that I consider horror and that had a lasting impact on my imagination and/or personality. I had always intended to pull the content together into a book at some point, and with the series projected to finish this year with 60 essays total, I realised that I would need to produce it in two volumes.

*Then* I was talking about this last July at EdgeLit in Derby with good friend Neil Snowden, who is also the editor of my first non-fiction book, Tommy , and he said ‘you know, that’d be a perfect book for a Stokercon 2020 launch.”

Fast forward to January 2020. I’ve crunch-written a novella, which was… an experience I have now had, and I’ve assembled MLiH Vol. 1, revising and expanding every single essay, adding in some cracking bonus material, and rearranging the essays in the order I first experienced the subjects; turning a series of blog posts into a half-arsed autobiography via the medium of pop culture. The book’s in good shape, but the couple of publishers I have approached can’t take it on - both love the book but, it turns out, have big plans for Stokercon :/  .

Fair enough.

So I realize I have a choice - shelve it for now with a view to doing more shopping out of the manuscript post Stokercon, or try and crowdfund the editing and cover art and get the sucker out.

I opted for trying to get the sucker out.

So the IndyGoGo campaign launched on 25th January. It’s an all-or-nothing campaign, meaning it’ll only fund, and people will only be charged, if I hit the funding goal. Basically, it’ll be a way to pre-order the book, and if enough people want to do that, the book will happen. I will also be offering two limited edition hardbacks as part of the campaign. Both editions will be signed and numbered, with cover designs exclusive to this campaign, and the deluxe edition will feature an essay that will only ever be published as part of this print run. Ebooks and paperbacks will also be available, and other perks will allow you to get me to record an audio reading of an essay or short story for your exclusive use.

I have the editor, formatter, and cover designer on standby, and they’ve all assured me they can move on the project fast if it funds.

2.      Is this your first nonfiction project and will you be doing more of this in the future?

It’s my second nonfiction book. The first was a (very, very) extended essay on the Ken Russell/The Who rock opera Tommy, which came out last year with PS Publishing . Whilst I’ve always considered myself a fiction writer first and foremost, I’ve found the non-fiction work has become more important to me as the years have gone by. I think what I’ve come to realise is that in both cases, I am writing to try and make sense of the world, and wrestle with the things I struggle to understand. Writing is a cathartic experience for me, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction.

I’ll certainly be doing more - My Life In Horror has 7 essays left to run (at which point I’ll be assembling Volume 2 for publication), and I have a separate long term non-fiction project with Gingernuts, reading the works of Brian Keene in order of publication, the vast majority of them for the first time. I’m ten books in to that project, and so far it’s an absolute blast - Keene is a top rate pulp horror writer, and it’s fascinating watching him develop and grow as a talent book to book.

Beyond that, I have a couple of Midnight Monograph books at proposal stage, and I’d really like to pull together a series of essays about the recent Joker movie; I saw it three times at the cinema, and I still find myself haunted by it, it’s an exceptional piece of art and I’d really like to spend more  time digging into why it affected me as deeply as it did.

3.      Congratulations on the release of your novella The Finite! Can you please tell us a little about the plot?

Thank you! The Finite is set in modern day Milton Keynes, and concerns a father and daughter in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion. The story follows their efforts at survival in a drastically changed landscape, and is at its core about how parental responsibilities play out in a situation with few if any good choices to make.

4.      What is your horror “brand”? What type of horror do you love to write? (Supernatural? Slashers? Psychological? Ect)

Great question! I think I lean more towards non-supernatural horror, so a lot of my work has crossover with dark crime or psychological thriller genres. Picking up from my last answer, a lot of what interests me as a writer are exploring scenarios where the protagonist has no good choices, and seeing what happens. Other thematic preoccupations are the end of the world, and liminality; the moments when a situation or event forces a character to confront their world view and figure out what they really believe. That preoccupation means my work often ends up in some extreme places.

5.      Are there any horror tropes you refuse to write about?

No. The test for me is if the narrative feels compelling, if the characters feel real, if the idea disturbs me. I am aware some subject areas require sensitivity, and I certainly support the idea of using trigger warnings or content notes, where needed, to allow people to make informed decisions about what they read. But if something keeps me awake for long enough, I’ll probably end up writing about it.

6.      What book(s) are you reading right now?

Right now I am reading King’s Firestarter for the first time, since I got The Institute for Christmas, and Clickers II by Brian Keene and JF Gonzalez, as part of my Keene project for Gingernuts, and Scenes of Mild Peril by David J Court , which I am really enjoying -  Court has a fresh voice and a really surefooted comedic touch that’s pretty unusual in the genres he writes.

7.      If you could co-author a book with any author, living or dead, who would it be and why?

Stephen King, I think. I’d love to try and match his prose style and I feel like I would learn so much from the experience. Though I am super happy with the piece I’ve been working on with James Murphy, which we’ve almost gotten to a finished first draft. That one I am very excited about,  I think the core conceit is the best idea I’ve ever had, and James has absolutely made it into a narrative I’d never have thought to tell.

8.      What is next for you? Anything in the works?

Always! :)  Right now my priorities are finish the crunch novella edits and the D1 of the project with James, then get this campaign off and running. One of the Midnight Monograph proposals is a co-authored affair, and I should be breaking ground on that very shortly. Then it’s knocking the novel with James into shape with critical readers and editors, getting My Life In Horror finished, getting a couple of short stories finished, polished, and out to market, and working on my next solo novel, which is currently about eight thousand words in and going well so far. I find I work best when I have *way* too much to do.

9.      Where can people find you online?

For a firehose of politics and various pop culture warm takes, you can find me on Twitter. I have Facebook, Amazon, and Goodreads Author pages - Kit Power in all cases, easy to find. And if you want early access and behind the scenes insight, for as little as $1 a month on Patreon you can get weekly updates containing new material - anything from  essays to short stories to novel extracts to podcasts, often weeks or months ahead of official publication, with even more perks available at higher tiers . 

10.   Thank you so much! This is you chance to say anything that wasn’t asked. Closing thoughts?

Thanks so much for the invitation to talk :)

BUY THE FINITE HERE!