Nguyen: Comic books and graphic novels influence my stuff a fair bit. I have a soft spot for Jim Lee because when I was a kid, I used to go nuts over how well he drew people—people in action—people’s emotions. My people were pretty static and stationary and bland at that time. I spent a lot of time looking at his stuff trying to figure out how to draw emotion. I also like pop art. I like the abstract. I usually find inspiration mostly in graphic design works, photographs, film stills, stuff like that.
Nichols: My biggest overall inspiration is the children’s book illustrator Stephen Gammell. The illustrations in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark are what made the series a terrifying icon with a long standing seat on the Banned Books List. I also get inspiration from the fantasy settings of Brian Froud, the dark mysterious characters of Maya Kulenovic, and the delicate beauty that Alphonse Mucha renders in his paintings of women.
What does your process look like—how do you take an art piece from start to finish?
Guay: There’s a lot of planning that happens in the early stages of the piece: thumbnails, sketches, and reference gathering. When it comes time to paint it’s a matter of structured risk taking. Watercolor can produce some beautiful effects, but you have to be willing to let the watercolor do some of its own work.
Mazur: The way I work is very much in my own head. I rarely sketch out concepts, but when I do they are horrid! Little nonsensical scribblings that are vague and seem only to make sense to me. Once I’m sold on an idea for a painting, I will then gather references and compile them in Photoshop to get a good idea of how the figure is going to look in conjunction with the other elements I will add in. Oftentimes the composition will change dramatically if I see a reference shot in a completely new pose I never considered, making the painting more dynamic. I then sketch on the computer from my reference and will make subtle tweaks before transferring my sketch onto board. I begin painting in acrylics, an underpainting for the figure, and complete as much of the background design elements as I can before I finish rendering in oil.
Murakami: I sketch ideas in my sketchbook first. After that I do a digital draft using Photoshop, then a value pass. Once I have all the references I go on and put color. Almost all my process is digital.
Nguyen: I don’t do much sketching. Most of the conceptualization happens in my head and stays there. It’s important to me to convey realism in my work, so after I have a concept, I spend a fair bit of time creating maybe reference photos, or just Googling reference pictures. Like, for “. . . Warmer,” it turned out I really don’t know what glasses look like because I don’t wear glasses. So I took a while looking at pictures and compiling a bunch of photos of glasses so I wouldn’t mess that up too badly.
Nichols: I really love taking my time on a piece. I pour so much time in, building in layers, and take the opportunity to really enjoy my work. I strive to always learn new things, so I’m always pushing myself to use more detail or play with the light. It is not unheard of for a piece to change almost completely as I’m sketching it out. The most important part of my process is that I really enjoy my work and am happy with the time I put in.
What gives you nightmares?
Guay: Lately I’ve been having nightmares about people bringing me back from the dead. Don’t do that.
Mazur: I have no phobias, and only a great displeasure of finding hair in my food. I’m more afraid of abstract concepts, existential thought. There’s no worse night than being kept awake at night wondering why and how you’re even lying in bed in the first place!
Murakami: I don’t have nightmares that often, but I think when I have a stressful day I tend to have weird dreams about the issue.
Nguyen: It’s dumb, but I mostly have work-related nightmares. So my nightmares tend to happen when I’m having a hard time with work, like I’m stressed out over a project. So I dream that I’m at a computer, working on the project for hours and hours—and things start to move and gel in the dream. The nightmare is really when I wake up and realize I accomplished none of the work I thought I did. And then I have to go to work knowing I am a hurricane of suck. And sometimes I dream about loved ones getting killed or dying of old age, stuff like that. Mortality gives me nightmares, I guess.
Nichols: Honestly, my scariest nightmares are about quitting my art career and going back to data entry. My daydreams are waaaaaaay scarier than my nightmares.
© 2014 by Galen Dara.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Galen Dara sits in a dark corner listening to the voices in her head. She has a love affair with the absurd and twisted, and an affinity for monsters, mystics, and dead things. She has illustrated for 47North, Edge Publishing, Lightspeed, Fireside Magazine, Apex Publications, Lackington’s, and Goblin Fruit. Recent book covers include War Stories, Glitter & Mayhem, and Oz Reimagined. She won the 2013 Hugo for Best Fan Artist and was nominated for the 2014 Hugo for Best Professional Artist. Her website is galendara.com, and you can follow her on Twitter @galendara.
Artist Gallery
Carly Janine Mazur, Reiko Murakami, Sam Guay, Shelby Nichols, and Stacy Nguyen
Carly Janine Mazur is a Connecticut based illustrator. Working in oil and acrylic, her focus is on figurative work and exploring surreal worlds and concepts by immersing her figures into abstract situations often moody and emotionally disruptive. Her work can be seen at galleries across the country and online at carlyjanine.com.
[To view the gallery, turn the page.]
Reiko Murakami is an illustrator and concept artist specializing in creature design and surreal horror illustrations. Also known as raqmo, she has worked for companies such as Hobby Japan, Square Enix, Capcom, INEI, and Harmonix. Her work has been published in Exposé 11 and 2DArtist Magazine. She has been featured in the Japanese Digital Art Masters Gallery on the 3DTotal Japan website. More of her work can be seen at reikomurakami.com and facebook.com/raqmoful. [Publisher’s Note: Reiko Murakami was our featured cover artist on our August 2014 issue.]
[To view the gallery, turn the page.]
Sam Guay is a freelance illustrator working and wandering in New England. Dreams, folktales, and bits of her woodland haunts weave themselves into the visuals and narratives of her watercolors. Between paintings she can be found fortune-telling, voraciously reading, and having tea parties with her corvid kin, the local flora, and her beloved feline companion. You can find her work at samguay.com. [Publisher’s Note: Sam Guay was our featured cover artist on our September 2014 issue.]
[To view the gallery, turn the page.]
Shelby Nichols has always been chasing doorways to other worlds. Her art seeks to tell a story and she finds inspiration in art that makes the viewer wonder what would happen next or where the subjects had come from. Most of her work is in graphite pencil, and she’s most known for her detailed black and white pieces. She believes there can be beauty in all dark things, even nightmares. Her website is shelbynichols.com.
[To view the gallery, turn the page.]
Stacy Nguyen is a graphic/web designer, illustrator, and writer working in Seattle. She is a former news editor and the current editorial consultant for Northwest Asian Weekly, the oldest Pan-Asian weekly still in print on the West Coast. Her illustrations have won awards from the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association and the Society of Professional Journalists. Stacy earned her Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Her website is stacynguyen.com.
[To view the gallery, turn the page.]
Interview: Joyce Carol Oates
Lisa Morton
Joyce Carol Oates is not only one of the most acclaimed authors of our time—her more-than-forty novels, novellas, plays, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction works have earned her a National Book Award, two O. Henry Awards, the National Humanities Medal, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination—but she’s also an acclaimed horror and suspense author who is a multiple winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a recipient of the World Fantasy Award, and the first female author to receive the Hor
ror Writers Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Her genre works include the novel Zombie (1995), the short story collections The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (2011) and Black Dahlia & White Rose (2012), and, under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith, Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon (1999). She also edited American Gothic Tales (1996) and Tales of H. P. Lovecraft (2007). This year she retires from Princeton University, where she’s been teaching since 1978.
While growing up, you wanted to be a teacher. At what point did you realize you also wanted to write?
Like most children, I was always “telling stories”—in Crayola initially, eventually in prose form when I was a young adolescent.
You once said, “We all have numerous identities that shift with circumstances. The writing self is likely to be a highly private, conjured sort of being—you would not find it in a grocery store.” Is it really possible for you to separate out “your writing self”?
Not only possible but essential. The “social self” is not the writing self.
You’ve cited Kafka as an influence on your fiction. What is it about Kafka’s work that made such a profound impression on you? Have you ever consciously imitated Kafka?
Kafka has influenced countless writers. This is a question that could involve a very long answer but, since I have written an essay on Kafka, that may (or may not) be available, I will let that stand as my most thoughtful commentary on his work.
You’ve also edited a volume of Lovecraft’s work (Tales of H. P. Lovecraft). How did you go about choosing what stories would go into that book?
Like any editor, I chose stories that I liked, and that are considered important. It is hardly a difficult task! There are classics of Lovecraft’s which I have reprinted elsewhere—“The Rats in the Walls,” for instance, in The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Another favorite is “The Dunwich Horror” for its very excess.
Some reviewers suggest that you began to explore horror and mystery in the 1980s—do you believe that’s accurate?
Possibly. But I have always been drawn to “gothic” elements in my prose fiction from the earliest stories of In the North Gate (1963), which suggest an austere Kafkan influence.
How conscious are you of genre when you write?
My writing is usually very “conscious”—I am concerned with formal properties. I am always seeking the ideal voice and the ideal form with which to tell a story. The essential horror springs from life—fiction is a mirror of life, sometimes distorted in the interests of meaning, sometimes raw and unmediated. There is no fiction so horrifying as the horror of actual life—not just life in wartime, or life amid violence, but the incursions of our ordinary lives upon us: aging, illness, gradual loss of family and friends. Sometimes to tell a realistic story, you must choose a non-realistic form to emphasize a point—this is the power of genre. Orwell’s Animal Farm works brilliantly as a parable—to translate the author’s vision into a realistic novel would perhaps result in something far more ordinary and forgettable.
You’ve written, “Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction.” So, I have to ask: are you frequently very anxious when you write?
I am probably “excited”—which can seem like anxiety when the writing is not going well. (This is frequent!) But for me, as for many writers, most of the activity of writing is revising, which can be slow, but deeply thrilling.
Do you think the mainstream literary establishment is somewhat dismissive of genre fiction? If so, why?
Yes, because it is perceived that much genre writing has been formulaic. But then, so has most “mainstream” literature—and that is not reviewed, either.
Starr Bright Will Be With You Soon was written under the pseudonym “Rosamond Smith” (as were seven other novels) and contains descriptions like this: “A bullet piercing the man’s flesh, his bone, plowing into his brain in an instant.” Do you use pseudonyms to explore grittier genre fiction?
Writing under a pseudonym is a kind of literary experiment which I have not repeated recently, but it is appealing. Again, it’s a way of finding an adequate “voice.” My pseudonym novels have a distinct feminist cast, at times rather wickedly so, as in the novel you have mentioned in which a murderous feminist rage is unleashed.
You often find horror in relationships—a short story like “Deceit” from Black Dahlia & White Rose hinges on a strained and disturbing mother-daughter pair, for instance. How often do you start a story with the relationship and build from there?
I have no idea . . . “how often”? I just don’t think in those terms. Perhaps all stories are generated by relationships . . .
Does the best horror contain an element of tragedy?
Very likely, yes. I can’t relate at all to lighter treatments of horror—unless the treatment is clear-cut comedy like Monty Python.
Conversely, this line from “The Good Samaritan” (from Black Dahlia & White Rose)—“There is joy for the taking if you are not afraid”—suggests a relationship between fear and joy. Can you talk about that?
I think it is the joy of utter recklessness—the flinging-aside of restraint and concern for one’s own well-being that sometimes accompanies radical break-throughs for an individual—but sometimes also disaster. Like tossing dice—and your life depends upon the consequences.
Your 1995 novel Zombie came out just after novels like The Silence of the Lambs had turned serial killers into the new superstars of the thriller genre, but Zombie is really more an exploration of a killer’s thought processes. How does a middle-aged female teacher and writer go about transforming herself into a young male murderer?
Well—writers write . . . Playwrights imagine dialogue for characters unlike themselves. Shakespeare doesn’t “transform” himself into Iago or Macbeth . . . We all have empathic instincts that are not limited by our personal experience.
In the introduction to American Gothic Tales you reference both nature and Puritanism. Are there other elements that separate American Gothic from British/European?
Interesting question! “American gothic” is a hybrid, and if anything is just a way of speaking of Poe and his descendants. Essentially this is an ahistoric, totally apolitical way of writing, focusing upon individuals and their (darker) emotions.
In reviewing The Accursed, Stephen King said it “may be the world’s first postmodern Gothic novel.” Was The Accursed a deliberate riff on the traditional Gothic novel?
It is a novel in a sequence that contains also Bellefleur, A Bloodsmoor Romance, Mysteries of Winterturn, and My Heart Laid Bare. These are substantial novels one would not call “riffs.” These are enormously ambitious quasi-historical novels exploring the “new” sciences, feminism, Marxism, and much more.
You once said that research is your favorite part of being a writer. Have your research methods changed in the era of the internet?
Research isn’t my favorite part of being a writer—I think you must be quoting my playful self-interview for the Washington Post. I have no “methods” at all—I simply read where my interest takes me. In researching Blonde, I read one or two biographies of Marilyn Monroe and watched all the movies of hers which I could locate—in chronological order. It was an utterly captivating sort of research, which I wish I could repeat with another subject.
You’ve embraced Twitter, which you call “an outlet for my sense of disturbance and outrage.” Is 140 characters really enough for that?
140 characters is more than enough.
© 2014 by Lisa Morton.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of nonfiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening”. Her short fiction has appeared in dozens of anthologies and magazines, including The Mammoth Book of Dracula, Dark Delicacies, The Museum of Horrors, and Cem
etery Dance, and in 2010 her first novel, The Castle of Los Angeles, received the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. Recent books include the graphic novel Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times (co-written with Rocky Wood, illustrated by Greg Chapman), and Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. Also recent are the novellas Summer’s End and Smog, and the novel Malediction. A lifelong Californian, she lives in North Hollywood, and can be found online at lisamorton.com.
Interview: Jessica Sharzer
Lisa Morton
Televised horror has experienced a renaissance over the last half-decade, with quality series like The Walking Dead, Hannibal, Penny Dreadful, and True Detective all proving that the best horror screenwriting in the world is now found on the smaller screen. However, the most unusual—and arguably the best—of the new television horror crop is American Horror Story, which completed its third season this year on FX. AHS employs a unique format, offering up a completely new storyline each season, but with most of the cast (which includes Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, Lily Rabe, and Evan Peters) returning as new characters. AHS has now cycled through Murder House (a haunted house in L.A.), Asylum (set mostly in a 1963 lunatic asylum run by nuns), and Coven (New Orleans witches) and has used horror to explore a variety of social issues. One of the writers on the show is Jessica Sharzer, whose credits prior to AHS included award-winning shorts (“The Wormhole”) and independent features (Speak). Sharzer works on AHS as both a writer and producer and is credited with a number of the show’s finest episodes.
Nightmare Magazine Issue 25, Women Destroy Horror! Special Issue Page 18
