I wrote “We Came Home From Hunting Mushrooms” prior to the coronavirus pandemic, but the story has become more poignant for me over the last several months. It was informed by the same sense that we’re witnessing a systematic erasure of human beings on multiple fronts. I’m a paramedic serving a largely marginalized community, and I see patients every day who are treated like garbage by the US healthcare system. The Forgotten are deemed so unworthy that all evidence of their very existence is obliterated.

I didn’t entirely realize I was writing a story about domestic abuse until I was halfway through it, although I probably should have. This one actually began life as three wildly different story ideas. One was pretty much just the title, honestly, and a vague inclination to push back on the idea that California doesn’t have seasons. One was about a witch trying to get rid of ants in her home by reluctantly learning to communicate with them—and later being able to call on said ants when someone attacks her.

Full disclosure, I was scrolling through Instagram when I came across a Bon Appétit post of a mushroom pasta recipe. It was captioned with something about “we’ll turn you into a mushroom person—no, not someone who’s half mushroom, but someone who really likes mushrooms” and I thought, “Well, why not half mushroom?” Everything sort of spiralled from there, haha.

I’ve always taken an interest in British, and especially local, folklore. One of my favourite TV shows as a teenager was Robin of Sherwood (on DVD, since it was slightly before my time), because my family comes from a village whose church is said to have been where Maid Marian married Robin Hood. The folklore of that region fascinates me, and has encouraged me to find similar myths closer to home.  One of my favourites from the south-west of England is the saying that if a hare runs down a village street, a fire will break out nearby.

“Decorating with Luke” is made all the more chilling by the direct, matter-of-fact tone of the narrative.  Tell us something of what inspired this tale of deliberate, calculated horror. I have no clear conceptual impetus, no fascinating anecdote of the moment of inspiration: just the title. The construction struck me as potentially ambiguous, and from […]

Desperation is very relatable. We’ve all been in situations where we don’t feel good enough. We may have even been shamed for being ourselves or had our trust broken by someone we thought loved us. I think humanizing the supernatural comes easily when you’re being honest. I wrote this story in a blind animalistic frenzy, with no filters and no blueprints except the map of my own experiences. It was a delight to write this and finally crystallize on the page my thoughts about power, injustice, and ultimately, self-love.

Read more. Don’t just read your friends, or who your friends say you should read, or who you’re comfortable reading, or who your model of literature is. Push yourself. Take risks. Read small things, big things, translated things, things in your native language but from different countries. Understand language is fluid, that it’s forever changing, that there are no rules. There are writers of every kind out there doing interesting and fascinating things and you want to find them.

I begin to think most of my horror ideas are the product of dreams, haha. In this case (a little like “Sweet Dreams Are Made of You”), this was inspired by a dream, in which someone was telling me about the Flashlight Man game. My dreams have always trended towards vivid, WTF, and wildly inventive, so whenever I can mine those for (let’s hope coherent!) fiction, I love it.

You’ve seen the creature crawling on the ceiling before, out of focus, just over the shoulder of a character. You’ve heard the pitchfork dragged screeching across the concrete floor. You’re acquainted with the character who hears a noise and approaches a closet and reaches a hand for the knob . . . and finds nothing but a cat inside—only to turn around to face an attack from the monster. I could keep going. There are certain tricks to horror we grow overly familiar and bored with. I’m always trying to find a new way in.