SLASH-HER Celebration – it’s Stephanie Rabig Day!

Tell us a little about your story.

It’s told from the POV of the slasher herself, and is my take on something that’s disturbed me for a long time about the Peter Pan story: children are so mercurial, and to be trapped at that age forever, in the grip of all those huge emotions…it wouldn’t result in anything good.

Why did you want to write a slasher story and do you feel you brought something different to the table?

I hope that I did! For all that slashers are seen by some to be formulaic, there’s a lot of variety in the genre. Supernatural/inhuman killers are frightening in that what’s pursuing you is something you can’t quite understand and certainly can’t reason with. And the human killers remind me of the Agatha Christie “whodunit” classics (albeit usually with a lot more blood). Who’s after you, and why? Is there even a why, or were you just in the wrong place at the wrong time? There’s a lot of scary stuff to delve into, and I loved writing one.

Do you have a favourite slasher story/movie?

I’ve always loved the original Black Christmas. The urban legend it’s based on is a classic, and that voice on the phone scared the hell out of me when I first watched it in high school.

Why is it important to you to have a woman led press like Kandisha?

At their worst, slashers are an excuse to brutalize women onscreen (or on page), and I really loved the idea of the traditional slasher victims being the ones to tell and select the stories.

What’s next for you?

I’ve got a horror western, On Stolen Land, coming out in May. And since that one dealt with such dark subject matter, I’m currently starting work on something more comedic: a creature-feature called Luxury Superyacht Massacre.