Castle Walls Editing

Category: Four on the Floor

  • Four on the Floor with Gwendolyn Kiste

    Four on the Floor with Gwendolyn Kiste

    Gwendolyn Kiste is the Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Rust Maidens, from Trepidatio Publishing; And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, from JournalStone; and the dark fantasy novella Pretty Marys All in a Row, from Broken Eye Books.

    Her short fiction has appeared in Nightmare Magazine, Black Static, Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer, Interzone, and LampLight, among others. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com.

    James Gallagher: Why is horror such a powerful medium for delving into the human condition?
     
    Gwendolyn Kiste: Horror is such a visceral, unapologetic genre. It isn’t afraid to expose the things that unsettle and haunt us. This allows us as horror writers to stare down aspects of being human in an unvarnished and often wrenching way.

    Also, because horror so often features a supernatural element, the genre can explore the human condition in strange and symbolic ways. In that regard, horror can work in the same way as dreams: to give us an outlet to dive into our fears while not being in any actual danger.

    Despite its reputation for just being “blood and guts,” horror can help us feel less alone in our trauma because it can show us that there are others out there who share our same pain and experience. That can be such a tremendously comforting feeling, especially when the world is at its darkest and most hopeless. Horror can be that light to get us through.
     
    JG: Are there any persistent themes you find recurring in your work?
     
    GK: Absolutely. Outsiders trying to find their place in the world is one of the major themes that I tackle. My stories frequently feature characters who are fighting for somewhere to belong or fighting to escape the past or an oppressive world.

    I also often write stories that deal with sisters, loss, rebirth, hauntings as well as birds, though usually not all of those things in the same story. Body horror and fairy tales both serve as pretty big inspirations for me too.

    At times, it’s a strange, primordial vat of ideas and imagery that I’m pulling from, but I like to believe that it all works once I get it on the page!
     
    JG: What role does editing play in your writing process?
     
    GK: To me, editing is where the proverbial magic happens in the writing process. While early drafts of a story help to get the plot and characters down, it’s the editing phase where the prose really comes to life.

    Editing gives you a chance to take your vision and really refine it and get it right. On average, I usually do anywhere from two to four drafts of a given story. Each version gets a little closer to what I want to say, with the last draft being the smallest amount of fine-tuning.

    Again, though, that’s where the story really happens. I’ve had works I’ve nearly given up on but that I stuck with through one more draft of editing, and it was that last round of fine-tuning that finally brought the story together. Editing can be so remarkable in that way.
     
     JG: Are there any recent TV series, books, or movies that you’ve found particularly compelling?
     
    GK: I’m a huge Sharon Tate fan, so Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood was a really unusual experience for me as a viewer. I had tremendous reservations about the film prior to its release, and it still has its fair share of issues, but overall, I adored the nostalgic and loving nod to the late 1960s and the way that the film honors Sharon’s life rather than focusing on her death.

    I’m still holding out hope for the forthcoming Sharon Tate biopic that’s been rumored for a couple of years, but until then, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood was an auspicious step in the direction of reclaiming Sharon’s legacy.

    Also, while I’m talking about Sharon, I always love to recommend her film Eye of the Devil, which is a strange and dreamy folk-horror film that’s all about the occult, witches, and family secrets. A great offbeat film for horror fans as well as classic film fans.
     
    As for recent books, I was lucky enough over the summer to read advanced copies of Sarah Read’s collection, Out of Water, and Sara Tantlinger’s vulture-horror novella, To Be Devoured. Two incredible horror books and both highly recommended!
     

    Don’t forget to follow Gwendolyn on Twitter (@GwendolynKiste)!

  • Four on the Floor with Preston Fassel

    Four on the Floor with Preston Fassel

    Bio: Preston Fassel is an award-winning journalist and author whose work has appeared in Rue Morgue magazine, in Screem Magazine, and on Cinedump.com. He is the author of Remembering Vanessa, the first published biography of British horror star Vanessa Howard, printed in the spring 2014 issue of Screem Magazine. His first novel, Our Lady of the Inferno, was the recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award for Horror and was named one of Bloody Disgusting‘s 10 Best Horror Books of 2018.


    James Gallagher: Our Lady of the Inferno goes to some really dark places, and there are scenes that must have been gut-wrenching to write. Was it difficult to move on from these characters after finishing the novel? 
       
    Preston Fassel: It was, though not for the reason a reader might expect. For as dark and gritty as the story was, I really fell in love with Ginny, and I missed being in her headspace. She started out in the development process as a much more sinister, less redeemable character, and through writing her I discovered this great depth of beauty and spirituality and vivaciousness. 

    As soon as I was done working on the book I actually started writing another Ginny story just because I didn’t want to leave her behind. I’ve also always been fascinated by 42nd Street as a location, that it was this kind of Kingdom of the Damned with its own subcultures and unspoken rules and weird hierarchies, and that’s just such fertile ground for a writer. 

    I stopped working on the second Ginny story because I realized it was distracting me from getting this book out into the world, but I’m going to go back to her again one day. I have at least one more Ginny story to tell, if not a few more. 

    James: Horror fans will eat up the movie references in Our Lady. What’s the first horror film that you remember having a profound influence on you? 

    Preston: I saw them around the same time, so I can’t say which was first, but it’d either be Beetlejuice or Ghostbusters. I had to have been three or four, and it started what became a pattern in my life of being drawn to something macabre, watching it obsessively, getting traumatized by it, not watching anything scary again for a while, and then seeking out something horrifying again. 

    The Librarian Ghost and the Beetlejuice snake terrified me. I’d hide my head under the covers and have nightmares. And then I’d go back and watch the movies again. I was more fascinated by those worlds and characters and creatures than I was scared.

    James: What has been the role of editing in your development as a writer? 

    Preston: Editing was a big part of the development of Our Lady of the Inferno and is a big part of anything I write, due to my literary style. My influences in terms of style are E.L. Doctorow, Michael Cunningham, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen. 

    I sit at the keyboard and let the words flow out, and I’m a big fan of free indirect discourse, so you’re reading a third-person account focalized through a character’s mind. The results can be a sentence that runs an entire paragraph or a compound-complex sentence with a dozen semicolons in it. Which of course requires a good editor to make sure that the text is remaining true to my style and my literary vision, but is also readable by someone picking this up for enjoyment. 

    Every time I write something, it goes through multiple rounds of edits. I always do the first edit myself so that I can pick up any continuity errors and make sure that character voices are consistent at the same time I’m correcting for grammar, spelling, etc. 

    Then I’ll turn it over to my wife for a second round of edits. She has an English degree and used to work as a writing center tutor, and is currently a high school English teacher. She also knows my writing style and my literary voice, so she can help maintain that authenticity at the same time she’s telling me, “This sentence is too long, you need a comma here, you need a colon here,” etc. 

    Then I’ll go back in and do a second edit of my own. This is both reviewing her changes and also making any last-minute tweaks or additions to the story. 

    In the case of Our Lady, the original manuscript was 125,000 words long. I was afraid it was too bloated and might turn people off, being a first novel, so during the second editing process I cut it down to 100,000 words. The bulk of what I deleted was descriptions of places in and around 42nd Street and local color and history that didn’t have much to do with the actual story itself.

    The description of the Colossus theater, for example, originally included a complete history of the building, and I had an entire backstory for why Ginny frequents the diner where she takes Mary. At the same time I also added in small character touches here or there; it was during my last round of edits that I wrote the “goodbye” scene between Ginny and Trish near the end of the book. 

    After my second round of edits, I turn my work over to a third party, who goes into the book completely blind. This is so that a fresh set of eyes is seeing the text, and that person will be able to pick up on any minutiae that my wife or I missed during our edits. 

    This is usually stuff like minor misspellings or small punctuation errors. Our Lady actually had two people do additional edits at the behest of my publisher—first a woman named Majanka Verstraete, who did a hard punctuation edit, and then a woman named Francie Crawford, who also double-checked the layout and typesetting. 

    Majanke helped rein in a lot of my wilder stylistic choices. At one point there was a stream-of-consciousness sentence that ran for an entire page, which she encouraged me to break up. 
      
    James: What recent movies, books, or TV series are you particularly excited about?
      
    Preston: There’s a lot I want to be excited about, but we’ve reached a point of such saturation that it’s difficult for me to really get interested in something new, because I get fatigued with all the news stories, and think pieces, and hot takes, and overmerchandising. 

    I loved the first season of Stranger Things, but I quickly got worn out by the cultural domination of it. I want to be excited about the new It, but ditto. 

    It’s easier for me to get really excited about something old and ostensibly lost that, say, Arrow Video or Scream Factory is salvaging and rereleasing. I like to be able to consume books or movies or TV shows in and of themselves and think about them myself without getting hit from every single angle with tie-in merch or commentators condemning it for being “problematic” or treating it like it’s some sort of cultural revelation. 

    Every piece of media now is either a fantastic cultural event or the worst thing that’s ever happened—until the next event or worst thing comes out and then it’s forgotten. It’s an exhausting treatment of media, and it’s diluting the value of things that are either truly great or truly horrible.

  • Four on the Floor with CD Miller

    Four on the Floor with CD Miller

    Bio: CD Miller is a fantasy and horror author. Dark Heights is his first published novel, now available from Serial Box. He is hard at work on many projects, including an epic-fantasy-remix series of novels, literary superhero fiction, and a novel of character-driven, alternate-universe fantasy. 


    James Gallagher: Who are your main influences, and how do they work their way into your fiction?

    CD Miller: I’ll start with Alan Moore, since he’s definitely one of my top influences, though I think my writing tends to be much less political than his. 

    In terms of narrative structure there’s really no one better — that feeling, when you finish reading Watchmen, that you have to reread it right away because you missed so many allusions and connections — and there’s a real playfulness with the reader, the way Moore employs so many tricks and traps. Something I love to do. 

    The other major influence on my writing is Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For me, watching that series really changed the way I approach character, in particular how the world of Buffy, fantastical and kind of ridiculous, becomes so firmly grounded just through characterization and the stubbornness of those writers refusing to treat their characters as anything other than real people.

    James: What do you find most exciting about the serial format? What are its challenges?

    CD: Writing serial fiction can be stressful because each chapter or episode has to hook the reader in all over again. You can’t take a chapter off to do some world-building, like you’d be able to do in a big old traditional fantasy novel. 

    I don’t think it’s necessary to have each chapter end in a cliffhanger, though that’s certainly an easy way to approach it. If you read Dickens’s serial novels closely, in every single chapter he’s carefully adding one more brick to the building, and this consistency guarantees the reader’s buy-in: “Well, I need to read this serial next week to see how everything takes shape.” This kind of storytelling is in fact great discipline for any writer, and it’s a lot of fun.

    James: What role has editing played in your development as a writer?

    CD: Dark Heights went through professional editing at Serial Box, and it was an absolutely essential process. My early drafts tend to be spare and lean, and my rewrites usually involve adding weight and detail to the skeleton. 

    However, even when I was blithely happy with the finished fiction, the editing process was like a flashlight that illuminated all the dark corners where things were still underwritten. Without some objective distance from the writing, which is what an editor has, it’s simply impossible to pick up on all the elements of your story that don’t have clarity, that don’t belong, that need a little more help to achieve expression. 

    James: What recent books, movies, or TV series have you singing their praises?

    CD: Like a lot of people, I really enjoyed Stranger Things 3. That mix of ’80s nostalgia and horror/monster fantasy is something I’ll never be tired of. 

    There has been a lot of criticism of Hopper’s toxic masculinity, but I kind of loved how flawed and wrong they made him. I don’t think the writers were suggesting his behavior was acceptable — rather, the opposite. 

    The book I’ve most enjoyed recently is City of Devils by Paul French, a snapshot of Shanghai in the 1930s. I can’t really recall reading a nonfiction book where the prose style was so aggressively tuned in to the subject material. 

    French’s sentences, loaded with slang from the time and place, are wielded like the sharp edge of a weapon, cutting you out of wherever you are, replacing your reality with his. What an amazing read.

    To learn more about CD Miller, visit the Dark Heights website or follow him on Twitter. You can also jump over to Patreon to support CD’s writing projects. 

  • Four on the Floor with Dea Poirier

    Four on the Floor with Dea Poirier

    I’m pleased to present the following interview with Dea Poirier. Enjoy!

    Bio: Dea (D.H) Poirier was raised in Edmond, Oklahoma, where she got her start writing in creative writing courses. She attended the University of Central Oklahoma for Computer Science and Political Science. Later, she spent time living on both coasts, and traveling the United States, before finally putting down roots in Central Florida. She now resides somewhere between Disney and the swamp.

    She spends her days at her day job as a director of email and lifecycle marketing, and her nights writing manuscripts. Dea is represented by Jill Marsal of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency and is a member of ITW.

    James: Bringing a book into the world is a long journey filled with twists and turns and unexpected ups and downs. What has been the most surprising part of the process?

    Dea: For me, it was having my first contract fall through. Next Girl to Die was originally sold to a different publisher, but they ended up dropping a substantial portion of their list. My book was a casualty and was canceled. I was lucky enough that my book sold very quickly once it had to go on sub.

    James: Who are your major influences?

    Dea: Loreth Anne White and Gillian Flynn.

    James: What role did editing play in the shaping of your work?

    Dea: Editing really helped change the face of Next Girl to Die. The project started as more of a romantic suspense, but as it was edited, it took on far more mystery elements and ended up with far less romance than the original draft.

    James: What recent books, shows, or movies have you found particularly inspiring? 

    Dea:     Law & Order: SVU is my biggest inspiration when I’m writing mystery. Also, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn was a big inspiration for Next Girl to Die.

    To learn more about Dea, visit her website, like her on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

  • Four on the Floor with Autumn Christian

    Four on the Floor with Autumn Christian

    “It rushed through us in huge milking waves, like the predatory gasp of the ocean.”

    “I knew he was a barely contained scream wearing a human suit.”

    Even out of context, those lines, from Autumn Christian’s latest novel, Girl Like a Bomb, give you an idea of how adept the author is at peppering her narrative with set-your-synapses-afire prose. I’m thrilled to have her insights in this latest Four on the Floor interview, and I hope you enjoy it.

    Bio: Autumn Christian is a fiction writer from Texas who currently lives in California. She is the author of the books The Crooked God Machine, We Are Wormwood, Ecstatic Inferno, and Girl Like a Bomb, and she has written for several video games, including Battle Nations and State of Decay 2. When not writing, she is usually practicing her side kicks and running with dogs, or posting strange and existential Instagram selfies.

    James Gallagher: What joys and challenges have you experienced writing fiction versus writing for video games?

    Autumn Christian: Writing fiction is like working with the golden ratio. Everything expands out from a singular point — an idea — and you are in charge of the resultant universe that follows. It is powerful, exhilarating, and lonely to have all that responsibility.

    You spend a lot of time with your own thoughts, and it can drive you a little crazy. You get no real immediate feedback and can spend years wondering if you’re wasting your time. But when you finally get published and others read your work, you feel that the weight of that was all worth it. It’s still lonely throughout the entire process, though.

    Writing for video games is not about finding your own voice, but adapting your writing and finding the voice of the game. It’s about plugging into the world. You are rarely the sole writer on a project, and the writer rarely guides the direction of major events.

    Your job is important, but you are not God, and when working as a team on a game, nobody is. It is a joint effort. It is not as rewarding as writing fiction, but being part of a community is nice. It feels rewarding to write a little part of something that becomes an enormous whole. And since more people play games than read books, more people get to enjoy your work.

    James: Who are your major influences, and are there places you see these voices in your work?

    Autumn: My major writing influences are Poppy Z. Brite, Philip K. Dick, Tom Piccirilli, and Ray Bradbury. I have often tried to write in the way that music sounds — so KatieJane Garside and dubstep are also huge sources of inspiration.

    You can see the influence of Philip K. Dick in a lot of my science fiction stories, and although I have toned down stylistically over the years, the influence of Bradbury and Brite still lingers in my style. Piccirilli is where I got a lot of my southern gothic leanings, and his influence shows up a lot in some of my earlier work.

    Influence is a lot of things, from a lot of directions — memories, events, history, and science. I try to read as widely as possible, which is how I ended up reading a book about the history of bananas last year. I read a lot more nonfiction than I used to, as I feel it’s the primary source of finding fresh material and expanding my own style.

    James: What role does editing play in your creative process, particularly as set against that wild burst of bringing something fresh into the world and getting it onto the page?

    Autumn: Every story is different, but I typically go through five or six drafts of a novel. A short story is maybe two drafts, but I do a lot of recursive editing. I experiment with my drafts and editing style constantly, because I oftentimes feel like I learned how to write like learning how to punch incorrectly. The punch still packs a wallop, but it’s not the most efficient method per se, and correcting that can be hard.

    I don’t think one should settle upon the first creative process or editing style that works, because there may be something that works better with your particular personality.

    I’m learning it’s important to unfilter myself when I am writing something in completely new territory — it’s not even a first draft, but like a proto-draft. I need to learn where the story is going before I pay attention to the particulars of style and structure. Once it begins to unspool on the page, I can then go back, slot the appropriate pieces, and start constructing something readable.

    James: What books, movies, or TV series have thrilled or inspired you lately?

    Autumn: I’m a horror baby, but lately I’ve found inspiration outside of the horror genre. I’m interested lately in writing character-driven fiction with a sci-fi bent, but with literary leanings. I’ve been doing my best to expand my literary database:

    • Lindsay Lerman’s I’m From Nowhere

    • Altered Carbon

    • Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame

    • The Pisces by Melissa Broder

    • Tiffany Riesz’s Original Sinners series

    • Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia

    To learn more about Autumn Christian, visit her website, follow her on Twitter, or like her on Facebook.

  • Four on the Floor with Mary SanGiovanni

    Four on the Floor with Mary SanGiovanni

    Mary SanGiovanni is an award-winning American horror and thriller writer of over a dozen novels, including the Hollower trilogy, Thrall, Chaos, the Kathy Ryan series, and others, as well as numerous novellas, short stories, and nonfiction.

    Mary is a member of the Authors Guild, the International Thriller Writers, and Pennwriters. She is a cohost on the popular podcast The Horror Show with Brian Keene and hosts her own podcast on cosmic horror, Cosmic Shenanigans. Born and raised in New Jersey, she currently resides in Pennsylvania.

    James Gallagher: Genres such as Western and crime fiction spring to mind as blending well with horror, and it could be argued that horror is the most accommodating and adaptive genre. Outside of horror, what genres do you gravitate toward most, and are there any writers in those genres who have had a particular influence on your work? 

    Mary SanGiovanni: I tend to gravitate toward fantasy, actually. I’m a sucker for high fantasy, epic fantasy, science fantasy, and anything just a little surreal. I also used to read a lot of science fiction as a child — probably not what people would consider “hard sf” or “military sf” — I don’t think I would have understood the science very much — but the kind of stuff that dealt with aliens and alien worlds, alien cultures, that sort of thing. 

    The classic fantasy authors I read as a child had a huge influence on me, on my desire to build worlds around the monsters in my horror, and in fantasy stories I write on the side. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, L. Frank Baum, Lloyd Alexander, William Sleator, Isaac Asimov — they were all great world builders.

    JG: Fans can now experience your voice both through your fiction and through the podcasts Cosmic Shenanigans and The Horror Show with Brian Keene. What’s the experience of podcasting been like, and has it changed your view of your audience?

    MS: It was a little daunting doing podcasts at first. Sometimes you talk into a microphone and forget that anyone is even listening, and in essence you’re just having a conversation with your friends. Sometimes it’s more like being in a dark room filled with people you can’t see, watching and listening to you as a single spotlight shines down on you, and you’re aware of the responsibility of what you’re saying and how people might react to it. 

    It’s definitely had an impact on my career, though, in terms of visibility. It’s raised awareness of my presence and my books to a wider audience. What I’ve found most satisfying, though, is the feedback I get from listeners who say the show helps them get through tough times or entertains them at work, or even teaches them something they didn’t know or realize before. I’ve come to enjoy podcasting very much. 

    JG: It’s hard to put your work in someone else’s hands. In what ways has the editing process (both editing your own work and putting your work in front of an editor) helped to shape your writing? Have there been frustrations? 

    MS: I’ve been (knock on wood) incredibly lucky to have been paired primarily with editors who understand and appreciate my style and can anticipate my goals in writing and help me better reach them. I tend to edit as I write, bits at a time, paragraph by paragraph, so I like to think the manuscripts are mostly formed the way I want them by the time they’re submitted, but I’m always grateful to editors who catch my typos, my awkward phrases, my continuity issues, etc. 

    Where it may seem intimidating at first to hand over one’s manuscript to editors, it’s important to remember that they aren’t rewriting your book, but rather helping you fine-tune it and make it as perfect as possible. It’s an invaluable service, and I’d feel very vulnerable, almost naked, sending a book out into the world that hasn’t been edited by someone else. 

    JG: Readers love to know what the writers they admire are reading and viewing. What recent books, TV series, or movies are going to stick with you for years to come?

    MS: As far as movies go, I recently saw The Endless and Hereditary. I loved those. I love movies that can still surprise me, creep me out, or genuinely unnerve me. I’ve also watched The Haunting of Hill House (the series), and while I had a few issues with the last episode, I found the series had some genuinely horrifying and heartbreaking moments. 

    As far as books go, I’m reading T.E.D. Klein’s The Ceremonies now. I tend to have a TBR pile that threatens to topple over and bury the cats, as I’m not as quick a reader as I used to be, and so I’m behind in reading new stuff, but it’s there. I’m looking forward to several books that have recently come out from Paul Tremblay, Victor LaValle, Stephen Kozeniewski, and others. It’s an exciting time to be reading horror.

    For more information about Mary SanGiovanni, visit her website at marysangiovanni.com or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

  • Four on the Floor with Melissa Lason and Michelle Garza

    Four on the Floor with Melissa Lason and Michelle Garza

    This Four on the Floor interview features Melissa Lason and Michelle Garza, a writing team I came across through their involvement with Silverwood: The Door (a collaboration with Brian Keene, Stephen Kozeniewski, and Richard Chizmar).

    Read on for their bio and and insights into horror and the writing process. 

     

     

    Bio: Melissa Lason and Michelle Garza have been writing together since they were little girls. Dubbed the Sisters of Slaughter by the editors of Fireside Press, they are constantly working together on new stories in the horror and dark fantasy genres. Their work has been included in Fresh Meat, published by Sinister Grin Press; Wishful Thinking, from Fireside Press; and Widowmakers, a benefit anthology of dark fiction.

    Also the authors of Those Who Follow, Kingdom of Teeth, Mayan Blue, and Twin Lakes: Autumn Fires, Melissa and Michelle were kind enough to share insights into their profession in the following interview:

    James Gallagher: People probably imagine that, as twins, you have a psychic bond and are always in sync. But where do your strengths differ, and how does this help your writing?

    Sisters of Slaughter: As twins, we have had those moments where we have dressed the exact same for a holiday dinner and never discussed it with each other, or where we have had a bad feeling only to find out the other one had gotten hurt. But besides being identical and sharing an unbreakable bond since birth, we are also very different in some ways.

    Melissa is killer at making up story ideas and can find ways around certain parts in a story that Michelle might get stuck on, while Michelle is stronger at ending stories and finding a good place to start them so there aren’t too many needless words. This makes writing faster because we combine those strengths and the stories flow easier than if we were doing this solo. Two heads are better than one. Ha-ha-ha.

    James: You not only collaborate with each other, but you also worked with Brian Keene, Richard Chizmar, and Stephen Kozeniewski on the serial release Silverwood: The Door. What was that experience like?

    Sisters: Our collaboration with Brian Keene, Richard Chizmar, and Stephen Kozeniewski made us really nervous until we sat down at the writing table with them and realized we were just doing what we had always done.

    We worked off of a series bible, which helped the team define a clear outline of each episode, and once those specific beats were determined, we split up the workload and got down to business.

    Being with these guys, as well as Lydia from Serialbox and the creator of Silverwood, Tony, felt comfortable and natural. It worked out really well and we would definitely jump on the opportunity to write with them again.

    James: Are there ways that being edited has helped you grow as writers?

    Sisters: We can’t stress enough how important editors are. They are the superstars working behind the scenes to help a writer achieve their goal of creating a special story. Every editor we have ever worked with has helped us better our form. We would like to thank them all very much for helping us make our work shine.

    James: What recent books, movies, or TV series have caught your attention or inspired you?

    Sisters: A few books, television shows, and movies that have inspired us recently have been Mindhunter, True Detective, The Ritual, The Witch, and Goblin by Josh Malerman. Those are only a handful, but each of these had a special atmosphere we found interesting.

    * * *

    For more about Melissa and Michelle, check them out on Facebook or Twitter.

     

    ABOUT JAMES GALLAGHER

    I am a copyeditor and the owner of Castle Walls Editing. For information about how I can help you with your writing projects, contact me through this site or email me at James@castlewallsediting.com.

  • Four on the Floor with Monica J. O’Rourke

    Four on the Floor with Monica J. O’Rourke

    Monica J. O’Rourke, whom celebrated horror author Brian Keene called “probably the best copyeditor currently in the business,” is both a horror author and copyeditor. Pretty damn cool.

    Enjoy the interview below and then go check out her work. And who knows? Her editorial fingerprints may already be all over some of your favorite novels.

    Bio: Monica J. O’Rourke has published more than 100 short stories and is the author of Poisoning Eros I and II (with Wrath James White), Suffer the Flesh, In the End (collection), Only Darkness, and What Happens in the Darkness. Monica also works as a freelance editor, proofreader, and book coach. 

    Gallagher: Tone and atmosphere are especially important in horror, and dread is one of the most difficult things an author can invoke. How does a good copyeditor contribute to cultivating the spell a reader must fall under?

    O’Rourke: If I’m copyediting (as opposed to line or content editing), it usually means the author has a decent handle on his or her work. I look for the author’s voice and decide how to move from there. If I feel something is lacking throughout, that’s obviously more of a problem, and I’ll tag through comments where I feel emotion or atmosphere is lacking and try to coax it out of the author.

    Sometimes it works … sometimes the author thinks he did a good enough job. And hey, ultimately, it’s not my book. But it’s frustrating when an author thinks it’s “good enough” when it could be great. The sign of a rookie is an author looking for praise, not proper edits. I think we’ve all been there, in the beginning …

    Gallagher: How does being a writer help you as a copyeditor? Does it present any challenges?

    O’Rourke: To be honest, being an editor has made me a better writer. I see the mistakes others make, which I often missed in my own writing. I see my impartial edits of their work—how much easier it is for me to “kill their darlings” (advice often attributed to William Faulkner, Oscar Wilde, G. K. Chesterton, Anton Chekhov, and Eudora Welty).

    Even Stephen King wrote, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings”—and I know I can’t do my own work editing justice. Everyone needs an editor, including editors (which I admit I learned the hard way with the publication of my last novel). Writers are too close to their work, so they easily miss the mistakes and the opportunities to make their prose sing off the page.

    Gallagher: What are the challenges and rewards of editing an author for the first time?

    O’Rourke: Learning a new (new to me, anyway) author’s style is a challenge and a reward. Sometimes you find that crazy diamond … and sometimes you’re ripping every hair out of your head. It’s a crapshoot.

    I once had a writer thank me for my edit and say, “I agreed with 80 percent of what you suggested!” And I thought, Wait—80 percent? Is that all? It’s a bit of an ego bust if someone doesn’t think my editing is brilliant and they don’t accept 100 percent of my changes. (Yes, I’m kidding!)

    I may argue rules of grammar, but much of editing is also opinion—I might suggest a rewrite of a paragraph, for example, but the writer may have intentionally written something a certain way. Sometimes they’re stylistic choices, and as long as they’re intentional, I can respect that. Like Picasso said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Or was it the Dalai Lama? “Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.” There’s a big difference between stylistic choices and sloppy prose.

    Gallagher: What’s the last book that made you want to scream from the rooftops that everyone needs to read it? Is there a movie or series that you’re currently obsessing over?

    O’Rourke: Funny, I was just thinking how it’s a crying shame that Rick McCammon’s Swan Song hasn’t yet been made into a movie. Travesty! If you haven’t read it, run, run to your nearest bookstore and correct this egregious error!

    My latest obsession is Criminal Minds. I didn’t start watching until a few months ago, so I had 12 seasons to catch up on. And with my TV marathoning, I’m just about caught up!

  • Four on the Floor with Rio Youers

    Four on the Floor with Rio Youers

    I can’t say enough about Rio Youers or express what a thrill it is to feature him here. So read on—and order Halcyon already!

    Rio Youers is the British Fantasy Award–nominated author of Old Man Scratch and Point Hollow. His short fiction has been published in many notable anthologies, and his novel Westlake Soul was nominated for Canada’s prestigious Sunburst Award.

    He has been favorably reviewed in such venues as Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and The National Post.

    The Forgotten Girl was released by Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press in June 2017 and was nominated for Best Crime Novel in the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing.

    Rio lives in southwestern Ontario with his wife, Emily, and their children, Lily and Charlie.

    James Gallagher: Since reading your story “Old Man Scratch” a few years ago, I’ve been haunted by this line: “No, sir; he’s standing above me, ghost-like, blowing on my flickering eyes.” Is there a line you’re particularly proud of?

    Rio Youers: It’s difficult to isolate one right now, or to choose a favorite, but I can say there are moments in every book and story—sentences or whole paragraphs, even single words—that I’m very proud of.

    That said, it’s all subjective. What resonates with me may barely register with other readers. So you can’t pat yourself on the back too much. You just have to put your head down, follow the story, and do the best you can. 

    James: What has jumping to a major publisher (Macmillan/St. Martin’s Press) meant to your career? Has it in any way changed how you address your craft?

    Rio: It certainly feels like a substantial step forward. On a personal level, being with a major house was always the goal, so the sense of achievement is incredibly rewarding.

    Professionally, my novels are in more places, so my readership has expanded. They’re also being reviewed on bigger sites and in reputable trade publications. I even have a movie agent now. So yes, being with a major publisher has elevated my career.

    But it hasn’t changed the way I address my craft. Not at all.

    James: Are there ways in which editors have pushed you or helped your development as a writer?

    Rio: Absolutely. For example, Jaime Levine acquired The Forgotten Girl for St. Martin’s Press. One telephone conversation with her regarding structure had me thinking about the book, and subsequently writing it, from a different—stronger—starting point. Will Anderson took the reins after Jaime left the company, and helped with verisimilitude and streamlining. Both editors were not just valuable in their contributions, but essential.

    James: What’s something another writer does that leaves you in awe? What’s an aspect of your work that shows Rio Youers at his very best?

    Rio: My favorite writers convey everything with fewer words. I love when a simple sentence leaves me breathless. Graham Greene was a master of economy. Reading his work has been a delight and an education. 

    As for an aspect of my work that shows me at my best … well, I refer to what I said in question one: it’s all subjective, so I think I’ll leave that for the readers to decide.
     

    For more information about Rio Youers, visit him on the web, check out his Twitter feed, or like him on Facebook.

  • Four on the Floor with Stevie Kopas

    Four on the Floor with Stevie Kopas

    In the previous Four on the Floor interview, we were treated to insights from one of horror’s leading new lights, Stephen Kozeniewski. For this interview, we get the perfect follow-up: Kozeniewski’s Slashvivor! coauthor Stevie Kopas.

    Bio: Stevie Kopas was born and raised in New Jersey. She is a gamer, a writer, and an apocalypse enthusiast. Stevie will never turn down a good cup of coffee and might even be a bit of a caffeine addict. Stevie is the managing editor of the website Horror Metal Sounds, and she is also a writer/reviewer for the site.

    Stevie’s works include the Breadwinner trilogy (The Breadwinner, Haven, and All Good Things), Never Say Die (collection), Slashvivor! (with Stephen Kozeniewski), and Madness Burns (collection).

    Now here’s the interview!

    James Gallagher: Horror can be beautiful, unsettling, terrifying, universal. If a Cenobite were forcing you to choose one thing you love about the genre, what would it be?

    Stevie Kopas: Look, if a Cenobite were talking to me, I’d probably piss my pants. But I guess if I have to choose just one thing from the horror genre that I’m in love with, it would be the apocalypse. The reminder that humans aren’t invincible and we are more problematic than we think is great. I seem to always gravitate toward apocalyptic fiction of every media type, so that’s definitely my thing.

    JG: Writers are always told to pen tales that only they could write. What do you bring to your writing that’s pure Stevie Kopas?

    SK: I suppose I try to incorporate personality elements of people I know or have interacted with in my life into the characters I create. That makes them feel more real to me. Plus, I can take out my frustrations on anyone I feel like in any way that I want when I’m writing, so it’s definitely therapeutic. I also think I have a tendency to play on the sarcastic side of things. Writing is just more fun that way.

    JG: How have your feelings about editing and the editing process changed since you began writing? 

    SK: I have a huge respect for editors and the editing process. It’s a lot of work for both the writer and the editor (mostly the editor lol) and that respect increases with each thing that I write.

    JG: What’s a recent book that you think everybody should be reading? Are there any movies or series that you can’t stop talking about?

    SK: A recent book everyone needs to read? Well, I’m going to take this opportunity to shamelessly promote myself here! lol My most recent release, Never Say Die: Stories of the Zombie Apocalypse, was super fun to write and I think it’s a fresh and unique collection of zom-poc fiction for lovers of the genre.

    As far as recent movies, I’m totally obsessed with Alex Garland’s Annihilation. It’s a beautiful horror film with stunning visuals and a haunting story, so people need to watch it!
     

    For more information about Stevie Kopas, look for her on Twitter, Facebook, and her website.