20Q7A: An interview with Autumn Christian

20 Questions, 7 Answers is an interview series for writers of genre fiction. Each author receives the same batch of 20 questions, but they may only answer 7.

This week's guest is Autumn Christian.

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What's your latest book, and how does it differ from your previous work?

AC: My latest book is Girl Like a Bomb, out from CLASH books. All of my other books had a dark color scheme, Girl Like a Bomb is a pink cotton-candy colored book floating in a flossy heaven. It's my first non-horror book. There is about 30x more sex scenes in Girl Like a Bomb than my previous books. It has a protagonist devoid of most of my natural anxieties. Good things happen. I wrote it at a time when I was sick of being an angry baby, content with destroying virtual worlds, when I wanted to expand the mythology of my own writing.

Do you have any creative endeavors other than writing fiction (art, music, knitting)?

AC: I like to cook. It's like creative math, and everything exists in reality, where actions makes sense. Then when you're finished, you have an actual product to consume.

I used to design and write for video games. I used to do a little bit of fire poi (Swinging balls of fire around basically), and I'm getting back into martial arts, although I don't know if that's considered creative. I've usually avoided doing any other creative things, because I feel like it saps my energy away from my writing. I like to channel everything into one singular purpose.

What was your greatest Halloween costume?

AC: I was Marla Singer from Fight Club. Everyone said I already dressed like that.

If you could survive on one food for the rest of your life with no health repercussions, what would it be?

AC: Pizza. It is the perfect combination of fat, carbs, and protein and flavors designed to taste delicious. It is the food that soaks up the flavors of the world around it. It is infinite in its ingredient combinations, although in general I go for the pepperoni.

If you could be reincarnated as a sentient but inanimate object, what would you like to be?

AC: A supercomputer. For obvious reasons.

What is your writing environment like? (Are you out in public or in seclusion? Is there noise? Is there coffee? Do you type on a laptop or write longhand on lined notebook paper?)

AC: I actually have my own office, after many years of writing on the corner of an inflatable mattress, or in various coffee shops knocking elbows with people, or on the floor hunched over a laptop, trying not to tip over the tea balanced against my knees. I enjoy the noise of music, or the sound of rain. Sometimes I'll have a movie running on one of the monitors because there's something calming about movement in the periphery.

I write on my laptop hooked up to a secondary monitor with a mechanical keyboard. I'll occasionally go outside and write on a notebook but it is furiously slow, although often less distracting. I can feel the pulse of my brain as the words rattle around but I can't get them down fast enough, but also I don't get distracted by Twitter.

What's the most disgusting thing about the human body?

AC: That if you listen closely you can hear the salty blood inside you sloshing around, and you realize that you're about 70% water and you're basically a bunch of fluid protected by a thin layer of skin like a balloon.

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Autumn Christian is a fiction writer from Texas who currently lives in California. She is the author of the books, Girl Like a Bomb, The Crooked God Machine, We are Wormwood, and Ecstatic Inferno, and 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.

20Q7A: An interview with Patrick Lacey

After a three year hiatus, it's back!

20 Questions, 7 Answers is an interview series for writers of genre fiction. Each author receives the same batch of 20 questions, but they may only answer 7.

This week's guest is Patrick Lacey.

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What's your latest book, and how does it differ from your previous work?

PL: My newest book is a novel entitled WHERE STARS WON'T SHINE. Scott Cole created that gorgeous cover. Do you know him? You should work with him. WSWS is a bit more serious than my previous stuff. It deals with the idolization of serial killers, which isn't necessarily a joyous subject, but there's also some harmless spooky stuff. Some people say that I'm obsessed with haunted locales just because I've written books about haunted amusement parks and haunted schools and now a haunted town but they're clearly wrong. I'm actually quite proud of WSWS. It took the most research out of all my books, which involved a butt load of true crime (again with the happy-go-lucky stuff) and it's the leanest/meanest thing I've published. People seem to be digging it too, which adds to the charm.

Who or what is your favorite movie monster, and why?

PL: The obvious answer is Fred Krueger. Anyone who's followed me on social media for more than thirty seconds knows I'm obsessed. NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is one of the first movies I remember watching. My parents let me see it at age five. Controversial perhaps but it set off a life-long obsession and a few (dozen) night terrors that lasted just over a month (decade). But that's sort of cheating since Freddy is technically a human or at least is human adjacent.

So let's go with the monsters from HOUSE, another childhood favorite, specifically the evil twin versions of some of the main characters. Upon first viewing (now a mature and wiser seven-year-old), I became convinced there existed deformed doppelgangers of everyone I knew, and they dwelled within an alternate dimension accessible only by an old well (I've still never seen a well in my life, so I'm open to interpretations). To this day, even though the film is played mostly for laughs, I get a shiver when I see those things. Although, now that I'm thinking about it they, too, are human adjacent, so this is a very long way of saying I really like Gremlins.

Do you listen to music when you write, and if so, what? Is it different than what you listen to when you're not writing?

PL: I don't listen to music while I write. Should I just end the answer there? Once upon a time I went to school for audio engineering and the instructors trained our ears to listen to songs so closely, it bordered on maddening. Whenever most genres music are playing, my attention span goes out the window. On the flipside, I do listen to music while I edit. Not sure how it works but it does. Helps me focus and I know that goes against everything I just said but the world is filled with mystery. There are a few caveats. Nothing with vocals or lyrics, though it's tough have the latter without the former anyway. It can't be anything too technical, so my go-to's are various horror soundtracks. Off the top of my head: THE VVITCH, SPOOKIES, HALLOWEEN III, and literally every other score with John Carpenter's name on it.

What was your greatest Halloween costume?

PL: That's a tough one. I'm a big Halloween guy. I get excited the moment it drops below 103 degrees in August and I have pumpkin spice coffee on deck all year round. I've worn many costumes, even some during Halloween, but the one that sticks out in my mind, the one that is by far the most preposterous, is that time I dressed as Zombie Fred Durst. Take a moment. Breathe. Now let's dive in. In eighth grade, I was as into nu metal as I was RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, which answers so many questions in hindsight. Most people wouldn't consider combining the two. But you've got to think outside the box with Halloween. Don't just be a vampire. Be a vampire who's also a used car salesman. Don't be a werewolf unless that werewolf is also half Terminator. The concept alone takes the cake but if I'm being honest, the execution was questionable. I wore a backwards Yankees hate and applied store-bought latex to my face. Made myself look like raw hamburger. Not even like gore but actually ground beef. Basically I was a young Tom Savini, only better.

What's the best movie, new or old, that you've seen for the first time in the past 3 months?

PL: UNINVITED. It's got a mutated cat that boards a yacht and another smaller, slightly more mutated cat comes out of the first mutated cat's mouth and bites people's ankles. It's the best piece of art I've ever known.

Are you most afraid of ghosts, aliens, or clowns, and why?

PL: Ghosts. I've talked at length about this on podcasts, and I'm one step away from having a James Wan film based on my life, but I grew up in a haunted house. Laugh if you want but the place was no good. Scratching in the walls. Handprints on windows. Voices in the night. You name it, it happened. The land line called my cell twice when no one was home, and each time I heard heavy breathing. Haven't lived there for almost ten years but I still have nightmares. I'm back in the house and I forgot to move all my stuff and it's a race to get out before the ghosts get wise. I'm also fascinated with anything paranormal. I watch reruns of GHOST HUNTERS with little to no shame, and I've attended more ghost tours than I have college classes. The math's iffy but allow me the hyperbole.

What is your writing environment like? (Are you out in public or in seclusion? Is there noise? Is there coffee? Do you type on a laptop or write longhand on lined notebook paper?)

PL: Most of the time, I write at home, though I do occasionally travel to my local coffee shop for a cold brew and an ego boost when neighboring tables assume I'm a real writer. My home office is also a toy room. It's got hundreds of action figures and vintage horror paperbacks and a six-foot-tall Freddy Krueger cardboard cutout (#onbrand). My desk is cluttered with only a tiny space carved out for my decade-old MacBook. I've always been a fan of controlled chaos. It just jives with me. Someone might take a look at the setup and call the producers of HOARDERS, but to me everything has a distinct place, from the foot-long Bat Gremlin figure to the oversized yeti bust my fiancee bought me. I like to sip a nice IPA if it's past five (or noon). Oddly enough, there can't be any snacks of any kind. I don't know what it is, but I can't read or write while I eat. Some people have talent but I just work with what I've got.

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Patrick Lacey spends his nights and weekends writing about things that make the general public uncomfortable. He lives in Massachusetts with his fiancee, his Pomeranian, his over-sized cat, and his muse, who is likely trying to kill him.

Quick update

In addition to streamlining some things around here, I've added a couple new book cover designs I had the pleasure of working on recently: Where Stars Won't Shine by Patrick Lacey and Rites of Extinction by Matt Serafini. Both are out through Grindhouse Press, and I highly recommend both.

I've created a new page for Premade Book Covers. If you happen to be an author or publisher looking for some professional cover art, maybe one of these designs will fit your needs. If not, I'll be adding more options from time to time. And of course I'm always available for custom work.

Those of you with keen eyes may have also noticed there's now a tab at the top of the site for 20Q7A. That refers to an author interview series I used to run here, called 20 Questions, 7 Answers. Well, there may be a reason for that tab. Stay tuned.

I've got a newsletter now too, if you'd like to keep up with various fiction- and design-related hijinks, and perhaps some exclusive content, in a slightly more passive way. Sign up over there on the right, and you'll be among the first to know about...certain things.

More stories are on the way soon too—which I suppose is incentive to sign up for that newsletter, or to follow me on social media.

Okay, that's all for now. Happy Monday.

Slices ON SALE For a Limited Time!

Good news! The Kindle edition of my book SLICES is now on sale for 99¢ for a limited time!

"Mindblowing...A nice introduction to a very imaginative, if weird, mind." – Hellnotes

"Wildly weird and brutally bizarre...Over thirty tales of twisted terror and odd behaviors...I loved them all." – Ginger Nuts of Horror

"These pages are filled with unique and creepy stories...It's an all you can eat buffet of horror! I very rarely revisit books, but I will make an exception for this collection." – Cedar Hollow Horror Reviews

A man opens his door to a most unusual salesman, whose wares are not quite what they seem... A writer on a retreat discovers a talking insect, and a tree bearing fruit that looks just like cats... A demented clown acts as one poor soul's daily alarm clock... A man in a homemade spaceship encounters a terror he never could have expected - something that wasn't in his guidebook... A professional eater starts to crave the most forbidden food... A man on the verge of suicide begins cutting, and in doing so, finds a reason to exist...

These and many more Tales of Bizarro and Absurdist Horror.

Get yours here!

New look, new book

Oh, big surprise - It's been forever since I last updated things here. Shocking, I know. Hoping to be a bit better about that moving forward. Time will tell.

Anyway, you may notice it looks a little different around here. I decided to make some adjustments, with a new overall look, a new logo, and more streamlined pages.

Aside from that, I suppose the biggest news I have to share is that I have a new book out. It's called Triple Axe. I had a blast writing it, and I couldn't be happier to have the book published through the amazing Grindhouse Press.

If you like 80s slasher movies, giallo films, and a good dose of dirty, campy comedy in your horror, this one may be for you. The Horror Fiction Review said it's "arguably the wildest tale of 2018" and Sci-Fi & Scary dubbed it "a gritty, gore-filled, wet dream of a novel". So if that sounds like your kind of thing, it's available in both ebook and paperback.

In related news, my friend and fellow writer Matt Serafini interviewed me a little while back about Triple Axe. We talked about exploitation films, and what connection the book may have to the movie 9 to 5, of all things. So you can check that out here. And while you're at it, it's worth mentioning that Matt recently reissued his own slasher novel, Under the Blade, which I highly recommend.

I also recently did a reading as part of the Moonwriters event at the Philly Fringe, where a bunch of local horror and sci-fi writers read their words. There was a bit of everything - short stories, novel excerpts, a dramatic script reading, and some non-fiction too. I read my story "Slices of Me" (the sort-of title story from my collection, Slices) for the first time in public, and was delighted by the sounds of squirming in the audience.

Anyway, I guess that's all for now. Just figured I'd get the ball rolling again over here. I'll be back before too long, hopefully with even more news.