Tag Archives: scary women

Worrell and Ward – Vampire Women Go Fishing

February 27, 2017 greydogtales 2 Comments

Leonard Nimoy’s directorial debut, Robert E Howard trivia and Weird Tales magazine, but most importantly, women in horror. For our last post during Women in Horror Month, we visit two female authors from very different times. Welcome to Everil Worrell, a major contributor to Weird Tales magazine from 1926 onwards, and Cynthia Ward, a writer in the Here and Now. Today we’ll be mostly musing on Worrell’s ‘Canal’, and on Cynthia’s new novella Adventure of the Incognita Countess, with some of our usual odds and sod thrown in. And yes, there are female vampires (and water) involved in both…

We love many contemporary authors of weird literature and dark fantasy, However, you may have noticed that we have a mild obsession with early strange, supernatural and detective fiction. The interesting thing about hunting out women writers in the early part of the Twentieth Century is that they are there, but many are overshadowed now. Key novels and novellas by men have entered the hallowed lists as markers in the development of the weird. A number of the women in question wrote short stories which are spread out across time and different publications. Many never made single author collections, or had novels published.

EVERIL WORRELL

We’ve picked Everil Worrell (1893-1969) to mention, as she was well-regarded at the time, and a key player in Weird Tales. She was born on November 3, 1893 in Nebraska, though her family moved a number of times. A biography of Worrell, by her daughter Jeanne Eileen Murphy, was included in the first edition of Robert Weinberg’s Weird Tales Collector in 1977.

You can find more biographical details at the informative Tellers of Weird Tales site here:

http://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/everil-worrell-1893-1969.html

She married in 1926, and in the same year began regular appearances in Weird Tales. It’s hard to verify how many stories she wrote in total – at least twenty four titles can be found. Nineteen of them certainly appeared in Weird Tales between 1926 and 1954, one under the pen-name Lireve Monet. As Everil W Murphy she also contributed two stories to Ghost Stories, a US pulp magazine which came out between 1926 and 1932.

Trivia: Ghost Stories, if you don’t know it, ran a number of original tales and reprints, including reprints of stories by Mrs Oliphant, Agatha Christie and Charles Dickens. They even ran a Robert E Howard story, ‘The Apparition in the Prize Ring’, under the name John Taverel. This story is also known as ‘The Spirit of Tom Molyneaux’, and is one of two Howard stories about black boxer Ace Jessel, the ‘ebony giant’.

It’s a shame that you can’t get a collection of her stories. You have to search for them one by one, mostly as magazine scans or old archives, or through her infrequent presence in anthologies. Eric Davin, in his book Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965, points out:

“Some of the highest reader-voted stories in the entire existence of Weird Tales were by female authors Greye La Spinya… and Everil Worrell (The Bird of Space 1926)”

Davin, 2005

She made the cover of Weird Tales three times, starting with that September 1926 story ‘The Bird of Space’, which isn’t bad considering this was in the first year she was with Weird Tales.

Her last appearance was in the March 1954 issue, only a few months before Weird Tales gave up the ghost, thus giving her one of the longest involvement with the magazine of all their regular writers.

Rather neatly, her appearance in September 1926 was twinned with ‘The Projection of Armand Dubois’ by Henry S Whitehead, one of our favourite of the ‘period weird’ writers. And a month later, her story ‘Cattle of Furos’ was in print along with ‘Jumbee’, another well-known tale by Whitehead.

Her work was spread across various speculative genres or sub-genres – supernatural and ghostly, science fiction, fantasy and horror. Our particular interest here is in her story ‘The Canal’, which is an unashamed vampire horror story, and quite a neat one.

“Past the sleeping city the river sweeps; along its left bank the old canal creeps. I did not intend that to be poetry, although the scene is poetic—somberly, gruesomely poetic, like the poems of Poe. I know it too well—I have walked too often over the grass-grown path beside the reflections of black trees and tumble-down shacks and distant factory chimneys in the sluggish waters that moved so slowly, and ceased to move at all. I have always had a taste for nocturnal prowling.”

This night-time wanderer encounters a half-sunken barge, and its strange occupants, only to find that a passing fancy becomes more complicated and horrifying than expected. If he follows his initial instincts, he may unleash something on the world beyond the canal.

First published in December 1927, ‘The Canal’ was adapted for television in an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. Rewritten a tad, the episode was called ‘Death on a Barge’, and released in March 1973. The strapline they used is a touch peculiar:

“A fishmonger ignores his friends’ warnings when he falls for a wraith-like young woman.”

More Trivia: It’s fun to note that ‘Death on a Barge was Leonard Nimoy’s directorial debut. Nimoy didn’t direct again until Vincent (1981) a one-man filmed play of his adaptation of “Van Gogh” (1979) by Phillip Stephens. The young woman was played by Lesley Ann Warren, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1982 film Victor/Victoria. No vampires in that, though.

lesley ann warren in night gallery — lesley ann downs in night gallery

‘The Canal’ story seems to be in the public domain, and you can read the whole story here:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Canal

You can also find it in Weird Vampire Tales: 30 Blood-Chilling Stories from the Weird Fiction Pulps (1992), which is available second-hand from various sources. This great thick collection happens to include “The Antimacassar” by Greye La Spina, another female author we mentioned briefly above.

81X4MQ13FmL http://amzn.eu/cWV6WGZ

THE ADVENTURE OF THE INCOGNITA COUNTESS

Right, let’s salute Everil Worrell, skip a lot of decades and come to our other work for the day. Cynthia Ward actually first came to our attention via a book she and fellow-writer Nisi Shawl wrote, Writing the Other. This is an interesting set of meditations on approaching writing and diversity:

‘Nisi and Cynthia collaborated to develop a workshop… with the aim of both increasing writers’ skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about “getting it wrong.” Writing the Other: A Practical Approach is the manual that grew out of their workshop. It discusses basic aspects of characterization and offers elementary techniques, practical exercises, and examples for helping writers create richer and more accurate characters with “differences.”‘

Cynthia herself has published a number of fantastical tales in various anthologies such as Athena’s Daughters, Wax and Wane and Sword and Sorceress.

This February, Aqueduct Press released her new novella, The Adventure of the Incognita Countess. As the novella has vampires and is set on the waters (albeit the Atlantic rather than canals and rivers), we thought we should pair her with Everil Worrell. How’s that for tenuous?

We admit to being fans of period espionage, occult and the whole caboodle, so we may not be unbiased over this one. Just read the blurb:

“It’s the easiest assignment a British intelligence agent could hope for. Lucy Harker needs only see the secret plans of the Nautilus safely across the Atlantic. As German spies are largely a fantasy of newspapers, she anticipates no activities more strenuous than hiding her heritage as Dracula’s dhampir daughter. Then among her fellow Titanic passengers she discovers the incognita Countess Karnstein—and it seems the seductive vampire is in Germany’s service. Can Agent Harker stake Carmilla before her own heart—and her loyalty to the British Empire—are subverted by questions as treacherous as a night-cloaked iceberg?”

(A dhampir or dhampyre, incidentally, is a half-breed cross between a vampire and a human, who can bear the light of the sun, and so forth, but has certain extraordinary abilities. The term comes originally from Balkan folk-stories.)

We are indeed in classic Carmilla territory – treachery, hidden secrets and lesbian vampires, but with a difference, and with some nice nods to other period sources. This is not quite Sheridan Le Fanu’s take on things. We particularly enjoyed the connections with H G Wells’s War of the Worlds, and the use of recovered Martian technology by the British Empire. Heat-rays up, girls, and at ’em.

Lucy Harker here is a rather likeable character, though ready to do what British Intelligence demands of her despite her own feelings. We were also amused by the addition of one Lord Greyborough, who may have an affection for apes in his background. We leave you to work out the links there.

“From the sudden flaring of the viscount’s nostrils and tensing of his body, it’s clear Lord Greyborough has also caught her scent. Has he recognised she’s a type of vampire? Perhaps more importantly, how did he detect her scent at all? He’s human; his scent makes that clear. And humans, compared to monsters and animals, essentially have no sense of smell.”

Add in mention of the Nautilus, international political intrigue and the fateful voyage of the Titanic, and you have plenty with which to play.

The Adventure of the Incognita Countess is available now, in paperback and Kindle formats – link below:

the incognita countess on amazon uk

the incognita countess on amazon us

Women in Horror Month may be closing down for this year, but we at greydogtales don’t worry about that sort of thing too much. We will continue to salute other female writers of horror and the weird as we bumble our way along. As you do. Join us in a few days for more of our dubious scholarship, trivia and features…

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The History of Women in Horror 1: A Man Explains

February 1, 2017 greydogtales 2 Comments

As everyone knows, women are gentle, fragile creatures. Awash with the emotional flux of existence, they tremble and flutter on the edge of harsh reality… no, that’s moths, isn’t it? Women are something else, and have surprisingly hard fists. So why not join us today as we consider the history of women in horror writing, including the remarkable Mary Woollencraft Shellfish, noted author of Extreme Surgery for Girls: How to Construct A Real Husband (aka Frankenstein).

women in horror - 'being too ambitious for a girl' treatment — one of the early women in horror escapes from her ‘being too ambitious for a girl’ treatment

This, dear listener, is the sort of thing you do in Women in Horror Month. As we said the same time last year, extremely talented women are writing the weird the whole year round, and shouldn’t need singling out in this day and age – in theory. In practice, men do shout a lot, send more promotional emails and fill up a lot of lists, so maybe WiH Month is still needed.

We’re back, therefore, with everything you need to know about the subject. If, by that, you mean a collection of literary trivia, sweeping generalities, ill-founded suppositions and the like, of course…

The History of Women in Horror

Ever since Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt married her brother, wore a false beard, and claimed her father had named her as heir on his deathbed, women have been familiar with horror. It may have been the Fifteenth Century BCE, but we’ll bet she had some tales to tell. Unfortunately we don’t know what they were. After her reign, a male pharaoh came along, declared that the covers to his clay tablets were more striking and got his mates to push his reviews in What Hieroglpyh Monthly.

Perhaps our in-depth history might work better if we start a little more recently.

The Birth of a Monster

women in horror frankenstein 1831 — von holst, frankenstein 1831

Many people believe that the history of Women in Horror truly began in 1816, when Mary Codling and her poet-lover Percy Bivalve Shellfish were caught in the rain during the Geneva Convention. Finding Switzerland wetter than expected, they paid a visit to a certain Lord Biro, who had the sense for once to be indoors.

Over coffee and rapier-like wit, the young Mary was impressed by the fact that Biro had been beaten up by yet another angry husband. Before her was a bandaged, discoloured parody of a man. She left the young rake’s company in a tumult of imaginative excitement, inspired at last.

That night she wrote the novel Dracula.

However, the next morning Mary recognised that she wasn’t Irish enough, or called Bram, and so she scrapped the idea and started work on something different. Not long after, Frankenstein was born (Percy Shellfish later married Mary to avoid gossip as to why their child had a bolt through its neck).

But the story of Frankenstein did not spring from a wet dress and an injured hunk of nobility alone. And if you want to be picky, yes, the author’s proper name was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, nee Mary Godwin (1797-1851).

Apart from the fact that Mary hung out with artistic types in general, what female literary figures might she have had at the back of her mind when writing Frankenstein? One influence may have been the work of Clara Reeve, an English writer who lived in Colchester, but who died in Ipswich for marketing purposes. Reeve’s novel The Old English Baron (1777) is a piece of work which gets you trembling right from the beginning of the preface:

“As this Story is of a species which, though not new, is out of the common track, it has been thought necessary to point out some circumstances to the reader, which will elucidate the design, and, it is hoped, will induce him to form a favourable, as well as a right judgement of the work before him.”

OK, The Old English Baron is not brilliant, but worth a flick through. It’s a bit Castle of Otranto (by Horace Walpole, 1764) without some of the more over-the-top Gothic fancies that make the genre enjoyable, i.e. not enough mock-supernatural shenanigans. It does have the usual isolated castle, hidden rooms and stolen inheritance, though. More of a Gothic door-stopper than a Gothic horror, depending on your tastes.

the old english baron, free on gutenberg

Mary also had the example of The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe. Udolpho was a four volume work, written when her publisher asked her to produce another archetypal Gothic novel before the Napoleonic Wars started and distracted the reading public. Udolpho was a piece of old-school creaking and groaning in the Otranto style, but it became a cornerstone of Gothic (some prefer it to Otranto), and it provided a background for Mary’s bold attempt to bring something new to the genre.

the mysteries of udolpho, gutenberg

(Four years after Udolpho, Jane Austen began her archetypal parody, Coathanger Abbey, in which an obsession with Gothic novels was explored at much shorter length than Ann Radcliffe ever managed. Sadly, Jane decided to die before publication, so this did not emerge until only a few months before Frankenstein hit the shelves in 1818. There is no record of Austen and Shelley ever meeting, nor does Mary mention reading Austen, though four of Austen’s books were out by 1816.)

ohix07tmmrpciopv32ex7mwi9ra — a typical scene from ‘coathanger abbey’

Other women writers who would have been known to Mary include Joanna Baillie, a playwright who was incidentally appalled by Mary’s frolicsome Swiss holiday package, and Sophia Lee. Lee’s popular The Recess (1783-5) was considered proto-Gothic, although it was more a historical romance, set in Elizabethan times and free of supernatural elements.

the recess downloadable archive

Girlish Trivia Section: 111 years before The Old English Baron, another woman, Margaret Cavendish, wrote what some consider to be the first science fiction novel. In 1666, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, published The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World.

It’s a sort of utopian satire. “A young woman enters this other world, becomes the empress of a society composed of various species of talking animals, and organizes an invasion back into her world complete with submarines towed by the “fish men” and the dropping of “fire stones” by the “bird men” to confound the enemies of her homeland, the Kingdom of Esfi.” (Wiki)

This is vaguely relevant because SF writer Brian Aldiss considered Frankenstein to be the first science fiction novel, and he was cleverer than we are, so he might be right.

(We might have shoehorned the female writer Aphra Behn in here, but quite honestly her novels, such as the 1688 Oroonoko, aren’t SF or supernatural. Oroonoko does have some gross violence in it, though, if you like that sort of thing.)

Frankenstein was commercially successful, but received mixed reviews from the critics; some positive, some dismissive. The extended scene where Bella mopes yet again and Edward stares into the distance for five hours was singled out as lacking pace (or is that another book?). More importantly, the fact that Frankenstein had been written by a woman was not to everyone’s liking:

“The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment”

The British Critic (April 1818)

But with Frankenstein’s monster on the loose, and Napoleon Bonaparte safely exiled on St Helena, women were at last free to write what they wanted. Or were they?

Despite the Mary Woollencraft Shellfishes of this world, men were still quite touchy. Some thought that the ‘gentle sex’ shouldn’t meddle in these dark passions for their own good; others were convinced that women couldn’t write anything of substance.

As this was already obviously Untrue, we must assume that they were worried about all the anthology and magazine slots being taken. The other possibility is that they feared their wives and sweethearts would suddenly become independent-minded and realise that marrying a ledger clerk from Hounslow was not the height of Life’s Great Adventure.

Scholar E J Clery, in her book Women’s Gothic: From Clara Reeve to Mary Shelley (2000) asks: “What gave women the confidence to experiment, attempt large effects, fly in the face of critical opinion, openly rival and emulate the achievements of their male peers?” She cites the actress Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) as one inspiration.

Siddons starred as Lady Macbeth in John Philip Kemble’s 1794 production at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and took the stage by storm in many of her performances. She played female characters with strength and passion, and at the same time she did it for money, marrying literary and pecuniary spheres. We were, unfortunately, slightly too young to be allowed into the theatre at the time.

Some female writers still thought it wise to chose paths which stopped men from feeling so terrified. Common approaches included:

Changing your name to George, making you a chap and therefore ‘all right’.
Changing your name to ‘Anonymous’ (as happened with the first edition of Frankenstein).
Making sure that you were called Mrs. Something, making you married, a part of the established order, and not a wanton, over-ambitious hussy in need of a man.

A Womb with a View

Apart from the name problem, Nineteenth Century women had many burdens to bear in comparison to the chaps. This was particularly true of women in horror. The following were all difficult issues if you were a chapess writing during the Victorian period:

a) Brain fever – Women were informed that their mental apparatus was prone to overheat following too much information or too much excitement. Writing about the supernatural was a clear threat. Inventions such as Henrietta Keogh’s 1853 Cerebral Radiator, a stylish copper-lined bonnet with vanes, proved of little use. Coupled with the demands of ordering decent lamb chops from the butcher, and raising children, it was considered that women had limited mental capacity left for serious literary pursuits, compared to men.

b) Reproductive breakdown – With the extraordinary demands on the Victorian woman’s reproductive system, excessive mental activity could easily lead to ‘ovarian neuralgia’ and sterility. If the brain absorbed all the goodness in the blood, they (mostly men) reasoned, then there would be nothing left for the ‘lower’ parts. In the process, the wandering nature of the womb could easily lead to a hysterical reaction. An 1859 physician claimed that a quarter of all women suffered from hysteria, although some of this occurred after they were presented with his bill.

charcot demonstrating hysteria (c. wellcome library) — charcot demonstrating hysteria (c. wellcome library, london)

c) Innocence – As women of the period had little contact with anything unpleasant, their inspiration for supernatural and horror stories was suspect. Male authors had to sit at writing desks for long, cramp-inducing hours, and then go to their club and endure quite tedious conversations. They understood horror.

Women only went through agonising childbirths, dealt with infant mortality, got abandoned by callous lovers, beaten by hypocritical husbands and then found themselves penniless, or withering away in lonely rooms bereft of purpose. They were too innocent and protected, therefore, to think up good plot ideas.

Abandoning the Ruins

Despite the above drawbacks, by the middle of the Nineteenth Century, sisters were doing it for themselves, especially if they were called Bronte. Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branston Bronte all wrote (Branston being an honorary sister when not drunk and in a pickle). The longer, 18th century-style Gothic was less popular, but broader ghost stories and the penny dreadful were in vogue. And spiritualism was on the rise, which brought more interest in supernatural fiction.

Emily’s Wuthering Heights (1847) had many touches of the Gothic, done more subtly than in the past, as did Charlotte’s Jane Eyre (also 1847). H P Lovecraft singled out the former:

“Quite alone both as a novel and as a piece of terror-literature stands the famous Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë, with its mad vista of bleak, windswept Yorkshire moors and the violent, distorted lives they foster. Though primarily a tale of life, and of human passions in agony and conflict, its epically cosmic setting affords room for horror of the most spiritual sort…

“Miss Brontë’s eerie terror is no mere Gothic echo, but a tense expression of man’s shuddering reaction to the unknown. In this respect, Wuthering Heights becomes the symbol of a literary transition, and marks the growth of a new and sounder school.”

Supernatural Literature in History (1927, revised 1933/34)

The Brontes also chose to put out their early works under male names, being published initially as Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. It was a calculated move, undertaken after their first choice of George, George and George Bell was vetoed by the publisher. As Charlotte wrote, this move was:

“…dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because… we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice”

The Life of Charlotte Bronte, by Elizabeth Gaskell (1857)

Elizabeth Gaskell herself (known to her close friends as Mrs Gaskell) certainly deserves a mention. She took time off from supplying Charles Dickens with names like Chumblypegg and Quizzlifob to write her own ghost stories, which began to marry the Gothic with more contemporary approaches. Gaskell was a keen observer of social injustice and harsh living conditions among the poor. Along with the Brontes, she had begun to ease serious questions into her fiction, sober reflections on women’s lives and their status in the society around them.

elizabeth gaskell – curious, if true collection – gutenberg

Also by mid-century, Gothic was truly dying, coughing a last few spots of blood into its handkerchief. In its place, along with Gaskell and the Brontes, there came a flowering of Women in Horror as had never been seen before. The second half of the Nineteenth Century also produced a reasonable flowering of Men in Horror, but that’s not the point here, is it?

In the process, women began to use supernatural and horror fiction more directly as a vehicle for questioning social mores, marital double-standards and gender relationships as a whole. Which was a Good Thing.

Later in the month, in the History of Women in Horror 2, we’ll introduce some of the striking pieces of horror fiction produced by women in the latter part of the century. And we’ll try to mention some of the authors that we haven’t covered in any detail previously.

In the meantime, feel free to check out some related posts from during the last year, such as:

Author Amanda DeWees on classic female supernatural writers

forever new – women in supernatural fiction

The story of Carnacki illustrator Florence Briscoe

the woman who drew carnacki

The extraordinary life of writer Amelia B Edwards

all saints’ eve

An interview with writers Laura Mauro and V H Leslie

hurrah, it’s scary women again

Back in a couple of days with more weird somethings…

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Hurrah, It’s Scary Women Again

February 26, 2016 greydogtales 5 Comments

It’s Women in Horror Month, and as usual, we’re mildly conflicted. After all, extremely talented women are writing, painting and sculpting the weird the whole year round. And at greydogtales, we believe in showcasing the work of creative people you may not know irrespective of their gender. Or even species, come to that. Chilli, our alpha female longdog, would have it no other way.

But we also sort of agree with the idea, so this is our compromise. Our Scary Women features have the virtue of being repeatable whatever the month, signposting cool writers, and leaving a bit more room for discussion about gender and writing at the same time. One day we’ll get round to asking men some gender-related questions, in a new series. Confused Men, perhaps. We wonder if anyone will volunteer for that one? Hmmm.

We’re delighted to be joined today by two great UK authors, Victoria Leslie and Laura Mauro. You may have seen their short stories already – you’ll certainly see more of them in the future. Laura and Victoria were first suggested to us by author Nina Allan, who wrote an excellent and detailed piece about women in horror – and about embracing new talent in general – not long ago. If we can find the link, we’ll add it at the end.

Here we go…

laura mauro

greydog: Welcome to both of you. Let’s start with the overall view as we did in the last Scary Women. The markets, and to some extent the fans, often like to label their favourite authors. Gothic, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, paranormal and so on. What do you call the genre(s) in which you write, regardless of other people’s labels?

laura: It’s simplest to say that I write horror, although I notice that when I speak to people who don’t really read within the genre that the ‘horror’ label comes with a lot of assumptions. I suppose what I write errs on the side of ‘dark fantasy’ rather than true horror, but if it creeps people out – and I hope it does – then I think I get to sit at the horror table, even if only at the very corner.

victoria: I think of the genre I work within as dark fiction or horror. I like how broad the term speculative fiction is as it encapsulates so many facets within the genres and personally I quite like it when these overlap. I particularly like the kind of dark fiction that is showcased by publications like Shadows and Tall Trees, which categorises itself as a purveyor of weird fiction. Also journals like the limited edition Curious Tales I think demonstrate that there is a need for subtle horror, or literary dark fiction.

greydog: Why this genre? For example, if you seek to explore people’s psychology, why use dark or scary fiction to go there? If you write to thrill, why horror rather than, say, adventure stories?

victoria: I’ve always been interested in stories about the unexplained, about things on the edge of our perception. I especially liked hearing ghost stories when I was growing up and my mum sometimes used to let me watch the X Files or The Outer Limits – if she deemed it tame enough – which I think really fuelled this interest. I think the draw of writing dark fiction is that you can tap into this inherent fear we all share of what really exists out there, of what monsters and ghouls haunt us literally or figuratively. I think, compared to any other genre, dark fiction allows you to process and respond to the complexities of the human experience.

laura: I once joked that I always dreamed of writing cyberpunk but I know sod-all about technology. It’s really hard to explain why I write horror. I think it’s just more interesting to explore the human condition via the dark and the weird because those things are inherent in all of us – we just prefer to gloss over it and pretend we’re all perfectly normal. And also, with horror, there’s the freedom to colour outside the lines and bring in bizarre elements you could never get away with in, say, an adventure story. You really get to explore the strangest limits of the imagination.

greydog: Last time we featured writers from North America. Coming from the UK, do you see a difference between British and North American horror?

laura: There was a really interesting panel on this subject at last year’s Fantasycon and I remember someone mentioning that British horror seems to have a very defined sense of place. We’re fascinated by environments. We love a good ancient, crumbling house on the moors, or any place that carries with it a sense of history. The British psyche as a collective has a tendency to obsess over the past. And I think our folklore and legend is inextricable from our history – so many of the more famous ‘true’ ghost stories involve historical figures, whether it’s Henry VIII haunting Hampton Court or long-dead stage actors lurking on Underground platforms.

victoria: I don’t really see much of a difference between British and North American Horror. I enjoy the work of writers from both sides of the Atlantic. I confess that I read more work by English writers, though I don’t do this intentionally.

greydog: Were you affected by the market presence of other women already writing in the genre?

victoria: When I began writing, I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t read a lot of what you would call current genre fiction. My background is in nineteenth century literature and I was, and still am, a big reader of writers from that period, both male and female. So the women writers I was reading included, Ann Radcliffe, Edith Wharton, Mary Shelley and Vernon Lee. Since then, I’m glad to say I’ve enjoyed catching up with the work of women writers working in the genre now (and male writers too) though, as there’s a female agenda here I’ll stick to the girls: Helen Marshall, Cate Gardner, Alison Moore, Priya Sharma, Carole Johnstone…to name but a few.

laura: Personally, no. When I first started submitting stories to magazines I really had no idea of who was writing what outside of a small, selected bunch of writers I was familiar with through Black Static and Shadows and Tall Trees. So for me it was more of a ‘I like what I’m reading and want to get on that train too’ sort of situation.

greydog: We’ve heard it said that there is an area of paranormal and horror fiction which is dominated by male writers and readers, perhaps a bleaker, nastier section of the field. Do you think that’s the case?

laura: It depends on how you define bleak and nasty. I feel like there’s a tendency to consider fiction which deals with physical brutality and violence as the bleakest, nastiest stuff out there but I think that greatly underestimates the impact a well-crafted psychological story can have. You can read a story which has little to no physicality, not a single drop of blood, and emerge feeling completely emotionally drained. But if we’re talking about traditionally nasty horror…I probably have read more of these types of stories written by men – although you could question whether it really is because men write ‘nastier’ horror, or whether it’s because they have a certain confidence in submitting more extreme content whereas female writers are more inclined to hold back and reign ourselves in. Having said that, one of the nastiest (and most brutally effective) stories I’ve ever read is ‘The Guinea-Pig Girl’ by Thana Niveau, which tempered its brutality with a searing insight into what that brutality actually meant.

victoria: I completely concur. ‘The Guinea Pig Girl‘ is a really potent story. I don’t think women are less drawn to write about the more brutal side of horror but perhaps these kinds of stories appear in different kinds of publications. In terms of being a women writer, I’ve never felt a pressure to write a certain type of horror, I’ve just tried to consolidate my own voice. Also, I’ve never encountered anything but inclusivity and welcome in my writing career, the British horror scene especially is very warm and encouraging. Though as Nina Allan’s recent blog post very cogently points out, there is still a massive gender disparity in some of the leading publications, whose job it is to showcase current talent. This is a shame as there are some amazing women writers out there, which is not the impression some of these anthologies give and readers new to the genre face the task of seeking them out independently.

greydog: Nina’s piece was good – we’ve found the link and have it below. Let’s sneak down to character level. Do you feel more involved writing a female character, or does it make no difference what gender the character is?

victoria: I’ve written male and female characters. Perhaps there are some facets I can relate to more readily when writing a female character but the job of being a writer is to get inside your character’s head regardless of gender. Many of my characters are actually a bit obsessive about something, so I try to pivot character traits on these motivations, rather than to think about gender alone.

laura: I have a tendency to write female main characters, and this is partly because I want to tell stories about women – and when I say that, I mean stories in which women exist and behave and ‘do’ in exactly the same way men do, without their female-ness necessarily impacting on the plot. I don’t know how much sense that makes? I feel like there’s sometimes an onus on female writers to tell stories about the female experience, and I want to emphasise that I don’t have a problem with doing that, but I also want to normalise female protagonists in horror fiction to the point where their gender is just another feature of their character – not necessarily the driving force of their character.

greydog: The cheap way of writing so-called ‘strong’ female characters is to make them as axe-happy as the men and swear more. That may be fun, but it’s not exactly the answer. What makes a female character ‘strong’ for you?

laura: This is a great question. I have issues with the way we instinctively conflate ‘strength’ with ‘physicality’, and by extension, with ‘violence’. One thing I have a huge problem with is the way we create these ‘strong female characters’ who can fight and snark and power through life but are never, ever allowed to be flawed. They don’t get to be real people. I feel like it’s incredibly lazy – you’re not investing any time into making that person a person, with all the complexities that entails, and that means glaring imperfections, just like every other character. ‘Strong’ does not also mean ‘beyond critique’!

That’s not to say that a physically strong woman can’t also be a good character. There just has to be more to her than her ability in battle, or how unflinchingly she faces down danger. I guess what needs to be asked is, what makes a character strong? My all-time favourite example of this is Dana Scully from The X-Files. She’s determined, intelligent, physically capable, holds her own in a male-dominated environment, stands up for herself and for those she cares about. She probably saves Mulder as often as he saves her. But she’s also frustrating, bullheaded, sometimes easily led, makes bad relationship choices. She’s allowed to be vulnerable, which is important because it’s only through her vulnerability that you’re able to see how strong she can be. We don’t love her any less because she’s flawed – that’s what makes her relatable and realistic.

victoria: I think strength for both female and male characters comes from an inner strength, strength of integrity or through overcoming adversity in its many forms. I do enjoy depictions of female physical strength in popular culture, but I’m finicky about accuracy and realism. I’m turned off by women in tight outfits and silhouettes fighting bad guys but am drawn to forceful characters in literature, like Ruby in Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain for instance, who possess resilience and fortitude and the practical skills to protect herself and others. The figure of the virago interests me very much but I think we have a long way to go to define and celebrate female physical strength that isn’t solely through a comparison to masculinity.

greydog: Cool – we’d have to agree with both of you there. Do you feel that you write primarily for a particular audience – female, male, young, old – or do you not see it that way when you’re actually getting on with it?

victoria: I’ve never felt overly concerned with the need to write for a particular audience, except in the cases I’ve been asked to contribute to a certain anthology. But even then, I’ve been driven by the need to write my story more than anything else. I just hope the readers, whoever they may be, like it.

laura: I don’t think so, no. I just write whatever comes into my head and hope that someone will enjoy it.

greydog: Which other female writer(s) in the field, early or contemporary, do you admire?

laura: Horror readers are extremely fortunate at the moment as there’s an absolute goldmine of fantastic female writers out there. My favourite horror novel is ‘Dark Matter’ by Michelle Paver, which is one of the only stories I’ve read that genuinely scared the life out of me. I recently read ‘White Rabbit’ by Georgina Bruce in the latest Black Static, which blew me away. There’s a list of brilliant female horror writers as long as my arm and I will inevitably accidentally leave some of them out, for which I apologise – Cate Gardner, Alison Littlewood, Thana Niveau, Helen Oyeyemi, Priya Sharma, Carole Johnstone, Lynda Rucker, VH Leslie, Sara Saab, Sarah Pinborough, Helen Marshall, Alyssa Wong, Nina Allan, Kathe Koja, SP Miskowski, Rosanne Rabinowitz. This isn’t just a laundry list of female writers – all of them have written stories which have left me thinking ‘wow, we’ve got a good thing going here’. I’d love for things to reach a point where it’s just taken as read that women write horror fiction, and good horror fiction.

victoria: Besides the writers listed above I enjoy the fiction of Daphne Du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Doris Lessing, Sarah Waters, Nina Allan, Thana Niveau, Laura Mauro, Alison Littlewood, Lynda Rucker, Karen Russell, Lucy Wood and many, many more!

greydog: And finally, as we’ve got you here, where next for your writing? Tell us what we might be seeing from you in 2016.

victoria: My debut novel Bodies of Water is due out from Salt Publishing in May. And while we’re talking about women in horror, I should add that it has a very feminist flavour. I’ve just had stories published in Black Static and The Hyde Hotel and have a few others intended for anthologies later in the year.

laura: I’ve got a couple of short stories coming out in anthologies in the coming months, which is nice, including the title story in NewCon Press’ 10-year anniversary collection ‘Obsidian’, which features a whole load of great horror stories by female writers. I’m also planning to write a novel, although I’ve been saying that for at least two years now…

greydog: Many thanks to both of you for taking part. We hope listeners will seek out some of the names you mentioned – as well as your own work, naturally.

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Some of the art today is by the fabulous Reiko Murakami, and you really should visit her site to see more – raqmo. The previous Scary Women, with Anita Stewart and Clarissa Johal, can be found here – scary women.

Victoria, writing as V H Leslie, has a blog you can check out, v h leslie. Laura can be found here, the crunchiest blanket .And as mentioned, Nina Allan‘s essay, which is a great read, is here – where are we going?

Next week on greydogtales, we have lurchers, lighthouses and more weird things than you can possibly imagine (please note: this is not a legally binding statement).

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Scary Women: Clarissa Johal and Anita Stewart

January 8, 2016 greydogtales 6 Comments

Welcome, dear listeners. We’re back to horror, and going for something different today. Inevitably, we find ourselves covering quite a lot of fiction by dead white males, including the weird works of Hope Hodgson and Lovecraft. We can’t kick the period/pulp habit. But today we have two living, contemporary female authors with us – Anita Stewart and Clarissa Johal for our first Scary Women feature. Not only are they cool people to know, but they’ve notched up a lot of books between them, and they write horror that’s a bit different from our usual fare. Have a look…

greydogtales is about the weird, and about the creative urge. We celebrate what others create, be they women, longdogs or even men, and encourage our listeners to get involved. Last autumn, during the October Frights blog-hop, we met a number of neat female authors who do not obsess about Cthulhu stealing their minds (generally) but who produce the sort of fiction they want to produce. From paranormal worries to full-blown horror, their stories are what they do.

Women are not defined by men (it’s true, you know), and writers in this field are certainly not defined by the opinions of a decrepit Yorkshireman who happens to produce weird fiction. We wanted to have some women speak about the genre in which they chose to write, and why. And, in the process, see if they thought that gender affected their writing. Simple as that.

So we’re very pleased to have Anita and Clarissa with us, so we can get the low-down. Both of our guests have novels and anthologised stories available.

Writing as A F Stewart, Anita writes horror, SF and fantasy, and is from Nova Scotia, Canada. She also versifies.

Clarissa is from the United States, and writes tales of the paranormal (when she’s not on her trapeze).

greydog: Welcome, both of you. Let’s start with the overall view. The markets, and to some extent the fans, often like to label their favourite authors. Gothic, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, paranormal romance and so on. What do you call the genre(s) in which you write, regardless of other people’s labels?

clarissa: Paranormal without the romance, gothic horror without the gore. Simple as that. There may be some romantic tension, but if you’re looking for full-blown romance, look elsewhere. My characters keep their clothes on, and the bedroom door shut.

anita: As I write in a few genres, the labels tend to change depending on the story or book, but overall I generally use the labels dark fantasy or horror. I’ve also been known to sneak into the genres of paranormal, gothic, sci-fi, steampunk, poetry, and even non-fiction. I’m a bit fickle that way. And similar to Clarissa, I rarely write romance, or romantic scenes. My characters kill each other more often than kiss one another (although sometimes they do both).

greydog: So why these areas? By that we mean if fantasy and adventure, why weird fantasy and adventure? And if exploration of character, why use dark or scary fiction to go there?

anita: I never set out to write dark and scary fiction. I wanted to write epic fantasy, but I kept killing off my characters (often quite gruesomely), and exploring darker subjects in my writing. To me, the darker aspects of human nature were more compelling, delving into a character’s choices and questionable actions, and their consequences. Eventually I accepted it as inevitable, and declared myself a writer of all things dark and macabre.

clarissa: The genre chose me—flat out. I started out writing fantasy. Mid-way through a book I was working on, I was hit by two characters (Cronan and Lucas; my death spirit and guardian from Between) who didn’t fit. I kept setting them aside, but they’d come back, stronger than ever. I gave in, and began writing my first paranormal novel. It took me a year to complete, and it was accepted by a publisher three months later. I joke that I was pulled into the Otherworld with Between. I’m on my sixth book, and the ideas come to me faster than I can write them down.

greydog: We started out with the same intentions, but also went dark and weird somewhere along the path. When you entered the field, were you affected by the market presence of other women already writing in the genre?

anita: Not really. As I said, I never made a conscious decision to write the scary stuff, I stumbled into it. Any market influence would have been by example of good writing, no matter what gender. For example, one of my one of my biggest writing influences is Ray Bradbury. Another is Agatha Christie. The only consideration I gave to gender was with my pen name, and using my initials instead of my full moniker. That decision was in part to be gender neutral, and not to be pre-judged—I’m a woman writing fantasy, so I must write romantic stuff (which is about as far from the truth as you can get).

clarissa: I have to say, I rage against being pigeon-holed as a paranormal romance author. Again, it’s very difficult to write paranormal without people assuming you write romance. I love men in all their forms, but shirtless men will never grace my book covers.

anita: Possibly. I have found many female writers in the horror genre tend to lean more on the side of psychological horror as opposed to the gorier realm. (Though not all. I myself like to dabble with the blood and guts from time to time. In fact, I sometimes run a character body count on Twitter when I write a book.) That leaves the sub-genres of gore, slasher horror, and the so-called ‘torture porn’ open for the men to dominate. Though any discrepancy may simply be a matter of numbers, with horror in general still being dominated by the male writers.

As for the paranormal genre, that might be a matter of skewed perception. If you’re a woman and you say you write paranormal, I believe there’s still a tendency for people to automatically think ‘paranormal romance’, whether or not it’s true.

clarissa: There’s a definite sector of horror that’s hard core, and I do see the glut of that being written by men. However, there are women in that market too—and they can be just as twisted and evil, if not more so.

greydog: Let’s sneak down to character level. Do you feel more involved writing a female character, or does it make no difference what gender the character is?

clarissa: My characters tell me what to write, not vice versa. They come to me perfectly formed, and I usually dream their back stories. Because of that, I feel a connection to each and every one of them—male and female.

anita: I’m involved with every character, regardless of whether they are male or female. They all invade my head and talk to me, and tell me their stories. Although I do tend to find writing female characters easier (no doubt due to first-hand experience and all). I did deliberately put female characters front and centre with the Killers and Demons sequel, though. I figured why should the male villains have all the fun.

greydog: They shouldn’t! But on that point, there’s been a lot of talk about how well males can write female characters. The cheap way of writing so-called ‘strong’ female characters is to make them as axe-happy as the men and swear more. That may be fun, but it’s not exactly the answer. What makes a female character ‘strong’ for you?

anita: Generally I write my characters from a human perspective, as opposed to specific gender roles. I don’t approach characters as strong or weak, but well-rounded, with virtues and flaws both, be they male or female. I did, however, have to tackle this gender issue with Althea, the main character from my book Gothic Cavalcade. Her character has a background that could be viewed as stereotypical (a woman with a troubled and traumatic past) and it’s one of the few stories I wrote with a romance. So I needed to tread carefully, as not to turn her into a wishy-washy girl looking for a man to save her, or a hardened cliché. I needed a strong character, someone who survived evil, but still maintained a fragility of spirit. So I opted to make her cautious, even shy, in nature, but hopeful and sensible. A character whose choices lead her back to confront her past and eventually realise she can destroy it. And as the story plays out, her new love interest becomes her emotional guidepost, but not her saviour.

Also, I don’t think “axe-happy” women should necessarily be dismissed as a short-cut to a strong character. There’s no reason why female characters can’t be as action oriented as male ones. A character I’m currently writing, Doyle, is seriously lethal. But she has much more to her personality including slightly misguided loyalty, a sense of obligation, doubts, misgivings, and a maternal side that precipitates a change of heart and a change of allegiance. I think if you want strong female characters, then write them as fully realized human beings. And if they want to swing axes, let them.

clarissa: I find those particular characters annoying. If brandishing a weapon and dropping the f-bomb makes you strong, anybody can do that, it’s not a skill—sorry. Strength comes from within. A strong character (in my opinion) approaches a tough situation with their smarts. That said, I’m a pretty damn good fencer.

greydog: We’ll be careful what we say, then. Our fencing épées are rusting in mother’s loft (yes, we really did have some, but we were rubbish!).

And we suspect that we know the answer to the next question, from what you’ve both already said, but we’ll go there anyway. Do you feel that you write primarily for a female audience?

clarissa: I write stories for readers—I really don’t focus whether they’re male or female.

anita: In a word, no. I write for whoever likes dark fantasy and horror, with guaranteed dead bodies and little to no romance. I’m not picky, I’ll take any readers, female, male, alien, zombie…

greydog: Are there other female writer(s) in the field, early or contemporary, whom you admire?

anita: I admire fantasy writer, Jennifer Roberson very much (and if you’re looking for strong female characters, Del from her Tiger and Del series is a perfect example), and Morgan Llywelyn, who writes terrific historical fantasy and fiction. A recent favourite of mine is writer J. A. Clement, author of the On Dark Shores series; she’s a brilliant writer. And I have to give a shout-out to some fellow horror authors, Clarissa Johal, Ash Krafton, Angela Yuriko Smith, and Nina D’Arcangela, to name just a few.

clarissa: My favourite authors are male—Brom, Neil Gaiman and Robert Holdstock. There are a handful of classical authors I enjoy too, but again, all male.

greydog: Rob Holdstock was a great loss – Mythago Wood, just to name one book, was a seminal work in the eighties. Despite that, I remember talking to him about writing TV scripts to pay the mortgage, which always seemed unfair. Nice guy and a fellow zoologist, curiously enough.

Finally, as we’ve got you here, where next for both of you? Tell us what we might be seeing in 2016.

clarissa: I’m working on a paranormal novel, Poppy. My readers really liked a side-character from Struck, and kept asking for her story. Usually, I don’t do sequels or spin-offs, but decided to give it a go. Unbeknownst to me, Poppy had a story to be told! Here’s a peek at the blurb:

A red-headed, pink-loving mortician who speaks to the dead.
A socially awkward funeral director.
Poppy and Dante from Struck are back.

Something is lingering around Skyview Funeral Home–and it’s stealing souls of the departed. With Dante in tow, Poppy is determined to put a stop to it. Will she be able to protect those who are trying to cross over? Or will her soul be next?

anita: I’m working on three novels, in various stages of completion, at the moment. I have two steampunk books, one horror tinged book titled The Duke’s Assassin, one more of an adventure novel, called Racing the Hellfire Club. I’m also working on the first book in a dark fantasy series, called The Prophecy of Seven. Hopefully at least one will be finished sometime next year.

greydog: Many thanks for your time, Anita and Clarissa, and lots of luck with these projects.

We’ve put a couple of additional links to books up on the right-hand sidebar, but if you want to explore, Clarissa and Anita have author’s websites and Amazon pages as well, which can be found here:

clarissa johal

clarissa on amazon

anita stewart

a f stewart on amazon

Next week on greydogtales – probably more lurchers, and weird stuff by someone who isn’t around to complain… uh, what we mean is ‘a classic author’. That sounds better, doesn’t it?

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