Interview with Horror and Dark Fantasy Writer and Poet Marsheila Rockwell
Marsheila Rockwell Interview
1. Thank you so much for joining me! For those who don’t know you, could you please introduce yourself and your writing?
Thanks for having me!
Boozhoo (hello) to everyone! My name is Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell. I am an award-nominated tie-in author and poet, as well as the author of thirteen books. My work includes Marvel Untold: Sisters of Sorcery, SF/H thriller 7 SYKOS, and The Shard Axe series, set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons Online, as well as dozens of short stories, poems, and comic book scripts. I write primarily dark fantasy and horror, with the odd foray into science fiction and the Weird West.
Marsheila Rockwell
I am also a disabled pediatric cancer and mental health awareness advocate and a reconnecting Chippewa/Métis. I live in the Valley of the Sun with my husband, three of our five children, two rescue kitties (one from hell), and far too many books (yes, there is such a thing, LOL).
2. Congratulations on your recent release Sisters of Sorcery from Marvel and Aconyte Books! Can you please tell us how this project came about?
Thank you so much! The process was pretty straightforward. I sent in a writing sample to Aconyte, they liked it, and they put me on their list to receive notifications about upcoming calls for novels. When I saw a call I was interested in, I sent in a few pitches, my editor picked some and asked for expanded pitches, and then we narrowed in on one and developed a detailed synopsis. Marvel approved it and it was off to the races! The whole process from first pitch to first draft took about a year.
3. Without giving away spoilers, what is the premise of Sisters of Sorcery?
The book centers on Clea, the Sorceress Supreme of the Dark Dimension and estranged wife of Dr. Strange. Her mother, the tyrannical Umar the Unrelenting and current ruler of said dim dimension, has obtained a supercharged new energy source that she intends to use to power a campaign of multidimensional conquest. Clea is the only one who can stop her, but she can’t do it alone, so she recruits some powerful witches from Earth to help her – some of which comic book fans may be familiar with, and some of which they probably won’t. Witchy girl power for the win!
4. In addition to writing stories, you also write poetry. Do you have a favorite poem that you’ve written?
It’s hard to pick a favorite, but one I’m most proud of is “Reservation Fairy Tales 101 – Final Exam,” which was published in Augur Magazine 4.1 and has been nominated for this year’s Science Fiction Poetry Association Rhysling Award. It’s a poem about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (#MMIWG2ST) epidemic, presented in the form of a multiple-choice test that’s intended to make the reader consider not only the issue itself, but the role they play in it.
5. When did your love for writing first begin?
I learned to read when I was three and books helped me through a rough childhood. They were an escape for me, and writing was a way to not only keep that escape hatch open for myself, but to help other people who might need one. The first story I remember writing was a 20-page Conan pastiche in sixth grade, complete with a talking cat and a princess in need of rescuing, but I’m sure I was opening doors to new worlds well before then.
6. Do you have a favorite book or comic?
I am in love with pretty much everything Guy Gavriel Kay has ever written. His Fionavar Tapestry trilogy is a longtime favorite (though I usually recommend folks start with Tigana, because it has everything I love about the FT trilogy, but in one book instead of three). As for comics, you can’t go wrong with anything Gail Simone has written (especially Wonder Woman).
7. What’s next for you? Any projects you can talk about?
I do a lot of tie-in work, so I’m under various non-disclosure agreements and can’t say much about forthcoming projects. But I am working on some more pitches for my editor, so hopefully one of those will get greenlit and I’ll have another book out in a year or so. I’m also involved in an exciting new anthology based on a fan favorite property, so that should be a lot of fun. And I’m always writing poetry and short stories, and hoping to get some time to work on an original novel when my contracted (i.e., paid) work allows.
8. Where can readers find you?
I have a website, a blog, a FB page, and am on Twitter way too much, LOL. I also have some local con appearances in the fall, pandemic gods willing; folks can keep up to date with that on my social media. Here are my links:
Website: https://marsheilarockwell.com/
Blog: https://mrockwell.dreamwidth.org/ (mirrored on my website)
FB: https://www.facebook.com/MarsheilaRockwellAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarcyRockwell
Dark Fiction Author Mark Anthony Smith #Interview
Mark Anthony Smith Interview
1. Congratulations on your upcoming release Keep It Inside and other weird stories! Can you please tell us a little about this collection?
Hi Nico. Thank you. ’m really pleased to be here. Yes. ‘Keep it inside and other weird tales’ is my third book. It’s published by Red Cape publishing. Some of the stories have appeared in their ‘A – Z of Horror’ series. But there’s bags of new content too. I’ve reread them several times and they raise my eyebrows. I must have been in a very deep meditative state when I wrote them – or did I take hellish journeys? I’m not going to say much other than I can’t wait to unleash these terrors.
2. Without giving away spoilers, do you have a story from the collection?
There’s a few. In fact, they all show my dark side. Did I mention apophallation and method acting? Ouch! I’d love to see that as a film.
3. What would you say your “brand” is? In other words, do you consider yourself a specific type of writer or write for a specific niche?
Mmm! I’ve written poetry and ‘mainstream’ fictions. They’ve appeared in The Cabinet of Heed, Spelk, Nymphs, Penumbric Speculative Fiction magazine and many others (listed on my Amazon page). But a lot of them are dark. I like to start with something fairly mundane and every day then turn the world on its head – with lots of teeth.
4. When did you first know you wanted to be an author?
I loved Shaun Hutson, James Herbert and Clive Barker in the late ‘80’s. ‘The Rats' by Herbert made me sit up with pointy ears. I’d say reading ‘Black dogs' by Ian McEwan finally clinched it for me. Sparse, exact, relevant and beautiful. The sense of mounting menace…
5. Let’s talk a little about your poetry. What is the most challenging part of writing poems?
Gosh! Yes. There’s ‘Hearts of the matter’ and several reprinted poems in ‘Something Said’ (Wolven Moon). Poetry can come in a flash, of course. But that is rare. I love the meditation of writing. It’s a higher state. I think the hardest part is not losing the original vision. By this I mean allowing the piece to evolve but not becoming too distracting by flowery lyricism. Poetry is language made strange. But there has to be some sort of shape or completeness too. Not the whole world. Just the whole world through a focused lens.
6. Are any of your poems autobiographical?
I don’t think you can write without experience or feeling. So, some started with a feeling or thought but finally became universal. There’s are glints of my own life in several yet I didn’t want to blind the reader with anything too personal.
7. Do you have a favorite author or poet?
I have lots of favourites: Adam Nevill, Richard Laymon, P J Blakey-Novis, H P Lovecraft… I have to say Phillip Larkin as I come from Hull (he’s amazing) and…and I’ve definitely left someone out. I recommend ‘The A – Z of Horror’ Anthologies by Red Cape publishing and Demain’s ‘Short Sharp Shocks!’ series for sure.
8. What’s next for you? Any projects you can discuss?
I’m writing my fourth book. It’s a second book of Horror. I’m also writing short stories with a view to giving ‘Keep it inside…’ an ugly sister.
9. Where can people find you online?
My brand new website is: www.markanthonysmith.com . There’s links to YouTube etc. from there. You can find me on Twitter: @MarkAnthonySm16
10. Last chance! Anything else you’d like to say?
Yes. Thank you for having me. Check out free reads and amazing art on my website. Support Indie Authors, eat your greens and definitely “Keep it inside.”
Horror Author Justin Fulkerson #Interview
Horror Authro Justin Fulkerson #Interview
1. Congratulations on your most recent release Crossroads! Can you please tell us a little about this collection?
The first three stories (Unfinished Business, One More Cup and Knackelflerg) were some of the first I published to Amazon back in 2011-12. I was playing around with the platform back then and wanted to get my name out into the publishing world. The last three are novellas I wrote shortly afterward (Paranormal Alien Crap, Koyaanisqatsi, and Gate of She’ol). These are all the first stories that I shared with the world and I thought it would be fun to collect them into one volume. The introduction explains the origins of the stories and a few tidbits about each one.
2. Without giving away spoilers, what was your favorite story in this collection and why?
I would have to say Koyaanisqatsi. What could be better than Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Manson and Jim Morrison teaming up to defeat time-traveling demons and aliens in order to save the world?? The story takes place in an alternate timeline when the Cuban Missile Crisis leads to nuclear Armageddon and the survivors are drawn to a figure named Phoenix that promises them safety. Hope that doesn’t qualify as spoilers, lol.
3. I’ve had the pleasure of reading your terrifying book Freckles the Clown. It was a delicious blend of disturbing gore and horror. Can readers expect this level of horror in your other works? In other words, how would you describe your horror brand?
Justin Fulkerson
I think Freckles the Clown pushed the envelope more than most of my past writing. My horror brand deals more with the human side of horror and the fact that there are no real ‘good guys’ on the world. Everyone has a dark side or secrets they do not want brought to light. The majority of my works are character-driven. The characters are the heart and soul of the horror I produce. Sure, in my novel Hallowed Ground there are a few zombies, in An Hour for Magic there is a power-hungry demon set to take over the world but the majority of my antagonists are human. Psychology plays a major part in my story-telling. Unfinished Business follows an elderly serial killer in search of his fiftieth victim on a Texas highway, One More Cup takes on the subject of an innocent person being accused of following someone else and how these situations can spiral out of control.
4. You’ve published eight horror books. What’s one tip you wish someone had told you before you began your journey as a writer?
Don’t give up!!!! Several times I stopped writing because I could not find a market. I even had one retired agent tell me that horror was dead and had been for more than ten years. He said there was no market for horror and that I should try something else. I won’t say his name, but he was a big name agent. It hurt momentum for a while, but then I became determined to prove him wrong. Write what you love and what you feel is a good story. Let the chips fall where they may and go for it. There will be a lot of people in the way, but you have to ask them to step aside and give let you take the path.
5. There’s a theory floating around the artist community that creative people need to experience suffering in order to write about suffering. True art comes from suffering. What do you think of this idea?
Wow. Well, suffering does give you fuel. But feeling sorry for yourself will get you nowhere. I am going to tell a story that I don’t share with a lot of people. To make a long story short and leave out the sordid details, I have been supporting myself since I was seventeen years old. I have worked full time since then. I am now 44 years old and I can truly say that I owe no one anything. I have gotten through this life without being indebted to anyone, including family or friends. Sure I owe my mortgage and bills, but have never had to ask anyone to help me financially.
6. Who is your favorite author and why?
Of course, you know the answer to this one. Stephen King. One of the most significant reasons I ever read him was because my mother was whole-heartedly against it. She said when I was 12 that I could read whatever I wanted, as long as it wasn’t Stephen King. So, I went behind her back and my father (they were divorced) bought me Cujo one month. I was hooked. My mother was livid but eventually came around. She said, ‘okay, as long as you don’t read The Shining.’ Well, what do you think I did next? Now I have an entire wall of my office papered with pages from IT, ‘Salem’s Lot and The Gunslinger. I have covers from Carrie, The Shining, Pet Semetary, The Stand and Misery polyurethane coated to the counter. I have 6 books signed by his son Joe Hill. So, yeah, I am a big fan of Stephen King. It humbles me when sometimes I am compared to him in a review.
7. What’s next for you? Any projects you can discuss?
I am working on four at once, but two of them are quite promising. Space Hobos is coming along nicely (you got a sneak peek of this one). Here is a blurb for those interested:
A galactic adventure rife with cultural relevance in today’s political and social media driven climate, Space Hobos launches the reader into a plausible sci-fi drama and never drops out of orbit.
For quite a while the future has been bleak for Holistic Henry and Cancer Carl and it isn’t getting any better. As the government begins to round-up the homeless population for an involuntary mission to space, Henry and Carl attempt to evade capture, fleeing with acquaintances Junkie Julie, Castaway Carl and Bike Mike. But their luck quickly runs out.
Trillions of dollars behind schedule, the government and sponsoring corporations scramble to find enough manpower to finish preparing Mars for imminent colonization. Current social economic challenges give them the perfect opportunity to capitalize upon. They make themselves champions of the homeless, forcing upon them a permanent solution to their predicament. A potential workforce of 554,000 homeless is at their fingertips.
Exiled to Mars, the hobos must stick together in their isolation. What the rest of the world sees as opportunity for them, they see as a death sentence. The people in charge have a deadline and don’t care what they have to do to meet it.
When an uprising begins, orchestrated by Carl and Henry, the powers that be see the imminent threat and decide to quash it before it can gain momentum.
Will Henry and Carl survive not only the harsh living conditions of Mars but live long enough to see their revolution become a reality?
Sounds good, right? This is my first stab at a full sci-fi novel.
I am also working on a post-pandemic novel from two different perspectives with my friend Dan Hubbard. It is called Cabin Fever.
Two families, one apocalypse.
When society breaks down after a worldwide pandemic, two families set out from opposite sides of the country in search of a safe haven. Two separate stories running parallel on an inevitable collision course until the two families finally cross paths. Forever changed, they each realize what sacrifices have to be made in order to survive the horror around them.
Both of these stories will be completed in the near future.
8. Where can people find you online?
9. Last chance! Anything else you’d like to say?
Thank you for taking the time, that is all I ever ask. Let me tell you a good story and make you think about how good your life is in comparison to my characters. Enjoy the ride and please leave a review when you read a story. A few words is all it takes to help an author like me gain attention.
Horror Author Clint Smith #Interview
Horror Author Clint Smith
1. Thank you for joining me! Let’s talk a little about what makes you different as an author. If you had to define your “brand” in a couple of sentences, what would you say?
I’m really grateful for this opportunity of this conversation, Nico. While I’ve been practicing (self-aware of it or not) to be a writer most of my life, I only entered the publishing dimension ten years ago, so I’m still relatively new to the industry’s scaffolding and its more notable residents. Where proximity is concerned, I’m not from the coasts—my writing is informed by the Midwest, a place poised in the middle. There is, of course, a pro-con duality in this.
I don’t possess a pedigree of the elite, literary aesthete, and my work is typically void of an attractive, commercial shock factor. I’m neither a “slick” or a “pulp.” In short, I am still somewhat of an outsider, and that provides a certain redeeming dye to my writing.
2. You’ve published a ton of short stories over the years. What tips would you give a newbie writer trying to get their short story published?
You have to do your homework a bit here. You also have to maintain the armor of your literary ambitions.
In his book, Best Words, Best Order, Stephen Dobyns asserts that young writers must preserve a certain amount of gall. Established writers, Dobyns suggests, “[A]re more concerned with what they can’t do than with what they can. They are afraid of appearing inadequate so they constantly censor themselves.” Quite simply, “Nobody told John Keats he couldn’t be a poet and so his gall remained in tact.”
It was Saul Bellow who said that a writer is a reader moved to emulation. I would compile the short-story collections of four or five (relatively contemporary) writers whose aesthetic and work ethic you’d like to emulate; I’d do some research on where these stories were originally published and begin to create a “hit list,” of sorts. Start submitting at the top, where the “pros” reside. Then if you get shot down, no big deal—move on the next tier. Be practical, but also demonstrate some gall.
3. Congratulations on your novella When It’s Time for Dead Things to Die! What inspired this plot?
Very kind of you—thanks! In my twenties, I spent a lot of time in the “Region,” in and on the outskirts of Chicago. This period was critical, as I was not only completing my culinary arts degree in the city, but I was working in the foodservice industry. This period was a rather liminal one—a part of my life where I was encountering some questionable characters while simultaneously questioning my own character.
4. How autobiographical is your work?
Though I do make strides in my writing to slip into the “skin” of characters and situations outside my own experiences, I often feel like those exercise ring with a wince-inducing flimsiness. There are other, more talented, writers who are better imposters than me. I try to find the truth in the misguided chapters my own life with the intent of not only reconciling some of those missteps, but making better connections with friends and other writers.
So how autobiographical is my work?: Quite, I’d say.
5. Where did you love of horror come from?
Reading, most likely, as a little kid. I’ve tried to do some backtrack evaluation of this same question with no accurate success. With exception of the more banal citations (Universal Monster movies, the Halloween season in the Midwest, my love of late-night, "creature feature" horror hosts), my memories continually return to the Biblical image of Samson being tortured by the Philistines—his hair hacked, his eyes gauged from their sockets. And in a last-gasp plea, he entreaties the supernatural to imbue him with a final display of power, cracking the pillars, demolishing the temple of Dagon, wiping out his enemies.
That was some heavy shit as a kid (not to mention the thematic ambiguity of requesting a supernatural entity for the power to kill ones adversaries, and having that power granted—those images and ideas were particular affecting).
Now, my love of horror is braided with a bit of tension: a sort corner-of-the-eye vigilance with not losing the things I love. Wondering how people, characters, cope with darkness—sometimes of their own making, sometimes not—preoccupies me.
6. When you’re not writing horror, what are you up to?
Owing to my background, my current vocation is culinary arts and teaching. In addition to being a chef-instructor at a nearby high school, I teach cooking classes to the public at a downtown bed-and-breakfast called The Nestle Inn.
7. What is next for you? Anything in the works?
My next short story collection, The Skeleton Melodies, is due out by Hippocampus Press some time in 2020 (the publisher is holding on cover artwork from the brilliant Dan Sauer Design). As I’m composing these responses, I’m finalizing a short story titled “Pregnant Women and People With Heart Conditions” which, as the title suggests, involves grim events around a roller coaster during the after-hours of an amusement park. Three or four more short and long stories are chambered for completion before summer. It’s pleasantly hectic here in front of the computer.
8. Where can people find you online?
9. This is your chance to say anything that wasn’t asked. Closing thoughts?
Nothing I can think of—it’s been a pleasure corresponding with you, Nico!
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