Advertisement
When the first Hellboy series came out, in the same batch of fan mail I got a letter from somebody from the Church of Satan and I got a letter from a minister, and they both liked it. And I thought, “What am I doing that I’m making both these guys happy?”
It’s terrifying to contemplate violent weather wrecking your plane. But I think the real horror of “Foul Weather” goes deeper than that. We all know that Mother Nature is trying to kill us, usually via the weather, but the understanding is that it’s not personal. Mother Nature is Mother Nature—she’s not good or evil. This story wonders whether that’s true. Is there a deeper evil that permeates the hidden dimensions? Could it reach us from beyond the veil in the form of wind and rain and thunder?
I’d like to hope that my work represents a sort of honesty. I feel as if we are all different types of witches, and for artists their spell-craft is obviously their artwork. So that’s what I’m trying to bring about; an inborn, quasi-dormant thaumaturgy. Thematically I’m drawn to topics that are seemingly unsettling; topics that have a lot of dimension and are not perceptibly moral or amoral. I think when I think about my interests in those terms, I want to explore more of the unspoken side to the human experience: psychological trauma, sexual perversion, the occult, and deep spiritual conditioning.
This story is most definitely about the challenges of parenting, especially parenting alone. I’m lucky enough not to be a single mother or have long separations from my husband, but I think all mothers have a moment when they think, “Wow, this is way more challenging than I expected.” And all of my supernatural stories are metaphors for true life challenges and observations.
Remember when telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve was an integral part of the holiday? No?—Me neither, but that’s what they tell me. It’s a practice from before our time, a Victorian-era vestige that gave us the stories of M.R. James and A Christmas Carol and has since been all but eclipsed by Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown’s pitiful little twig of a tree.
I didn’t have trouble going where I thought [the story] needed to go. The doubts came after.
Welcome to issue number three of Nightmare! We’ve got another great issue for you this month; read the editorial to see what we’ve got on tap.
The setting wasn’t drawn from my experience, but an ex-boyfriend of mine used to live in a rural town in Tasmania and he told me a story about how he once saw a stranger walking across their school sports field carrying a large knife. It was the germ for this story so I kept the setting. Plus, death is almost a character in this story so I wanted to have a barren, hard setting as the backdrop.
What I would say to the young me is, “Don’t be a snob. Acknowledge that work done in the genre can be just as beautiful and literary as any book by your favorite mainstream writer, Updike, Roth, Bellow. If there has not yet been a Scott Fitzgerald of horror fiction, there ought to be one day. Do what you can and don’t worry so much. As long as you bring forth what is in you, everything is going to be all right. You’re going to be surprised.”
[Setting is] pretty crucial ever since Ann Radcliffe used it as a source of atmosphere in her novels. The method was refined and focused by Poe—look at “The Fall of the House of Usher,” where the setting can even be said to share its spirit with those who dwell there. Several of Lovecraft’s greatest tales are inspired by real American locations, while others have their roots in his imaginative notions of places he hadn’t visited—Australia, the Antarctic.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
