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Earlier this year, I asked Facebook friends to leave comments if they (or those they love to read) are queer horror authors. It was a popular post. While remarks like “Me! I’m gay!” or “Heck yes! Clive Barker is my favorite!” dominated the thread, there were also several comments like this: “I don’t care about the author’s sexuality; I just want a good story.” A good story. Doesn’t every reader of popular fiction want that?
For this story, I wanted to write about a variety of queer Asian American ladies. Luckily, I know many queer Asian American ladies, and our myriad experiences—both the commonalities and the differences—helped me put together a number of characters whose lives I felt were plausible in this setting. They’re not meant to be representative of Every Queer Asian American Woman, because I believe that the idea of an extant One True Narrative is total bullshit.
The editors of Queers Destroy Horror! — Wendy N. Wagner, Megan Arkenberg, and Robyn Lupo — talk about their vision for this special double-issue, and share thoughts about working in the genre as queer creators.
I have a disturbing weakness for the Victorian gothic, and if you’re playing in that wheelhouse, Dorian Gray is as queer as they come. Oscar Wilde was a genius, Dorian is his finest creation, and if you’re going to steal, steal from the best.
Tucked away behind an unassuming warehouse façade at the far eastern end of the San Fernando Valley is one of the most gleefully horrific places in Southern California: Dapper Cadaver. Founded in 2006 by husband and wife team BJ and Eileen Winslow, Dapper Cadaver is a horror prop shop that services the film and television industries, haunted attractions, amusement parks, carnival sideshows, private parties, and even disaster preparedness training courses.
A “skins” role is one in which the performer acts, either singly, or, as in the case of Syd and Peggy, doubly in an animal skin. I myself performed a skins role when I played King Rat in the pantomime DICK WHITTINGTON. There is something peculiar and distinctive about performing a “skins” role. It is when such recollections and preoccupations merge in the imagination that a story begins to form itself.
Lauren K. Cannon is a fantasy and horror artist. She was born in 1986 and lives in southern New Jersey, on the edge of the Pine Barrens of Jersey Devil lore. She has a BFA but considers herself self-taught, as her college proved to be an expensive waste of time. Working as a freelance illustrator primarily in the publishing industry, she is best known for her work with authors Peter V. Brett and Mira Grant, and for a long tenure contributing to ImagineFX magazine. Lauren’s influences include strange beauty, the brutal elegance of the universe, and creepy dead things.
I spent five years in university research labs, coding and analyzing surveys. That probably sounds boring to a lot of people, but the analytical part of my mind really loved it, and I thought it would be fun to write a piece with a psychology questionnaire as a framing device. It took a while and a couple false starts to find the right story to tell this way.
Every house is haunted. The question is, by what? Walk into a new house; some are happy, some are not. Like a fine wine, old houses are much more complex. In the summer of 2013, I was sent to Ireland to serve as the resident faculty member for the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program. I was grateful for the chance to travel and eager for the experience, but I have to confess that prior to arrival, Ireland had never been on my bucket list.
I’m a runner and its endorphin trance gives rise to ideas. During a very long run, I began to think about the nightmarish film version of THE RED SHOES, based on Hans Christian Anderson’s bizarre fairy tale. I was also thinking about obsessive types who run 100-mile marathons and about the toxic ambitions that fuel much of L.A. The story began to fall together.
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