GREETINGS, BOOKWORMS! I’m Aisha Kandisha, Head Librarian at Kandisha Press. Join me in the dusty stacks of the library I will never leave again as I chat with some of my favorite Women in Horror. Today we feature author Lauren Elise (L.E.) Daniels
L. E. Daniels is an American editor, poet, and author living in Australia. Her novel, Serpent’s Wake: A Tale for the Bitten, shortlisted for Singapore’s Half the World Global Literati Award and the 2022 Queensland Writers Centre’s Adaptable competition. An editor of over 130 titles, Lauren co-edited Aiki Flinthart’s legacy anthology, Relics, Wrecks and Ruins with Geneve Flynn, winning the Australian Aurealis Award in 2021. With Christa Carmen, she co-edited the Aurealis 2022 anthology finalist, We are Providence. Her recent personal essays, fiction, and poetry appear in 34 Orchard, Out of Time: True Paranormal Encounters, Hush Don’t Wake the Monster, Generation X-ed, Under Her Eye, Cozy Cosmic, and Of Horror and Hope, the latter a finalist for the 2022 Australian Shadows Award.
Social media:
Website: https://www.brisbanewriters.com
Good Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17886924.L_E_Daniels
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laurenelisedaniels/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauren_elise_daniels/
What made you want to become an author? Did you have an “Aha!” moment when you knew you were born to write? Or perhaps a beloved book inspired you?
Thank you so much for having me! Maybe it was reading Watership Down too young or wearing out my copy of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths. Maybe it was the stutter that caused social distress when I was a child and drew me to the safety of the library, but that buzz in the bones from a good story has been with me for a long time. Stories make sense. They transform chaos into meaning and I’ve wanted to do that since I was in the single digits.
What do you believe are your strengths in writing? And when you feel you need to improve on a particular writing skill, how do you go about it?
My work’s been called poetic, and I think my father’s responsible for that. At 84, he still recites Blake and Poe at the dinner table. He certainly influenced my writing—the time I spend polishing the sentences and the belief that I need to earn my reader’s imagination—and he’d be pleased to know that.
When I need to develop a writing skill, I enrol in online courses with Horror University, listen to multiple viewpoints presented on panels, or check in with a resource like Louise Harnby’s blog. I also have solid friendships with fellow women writers like Pamela Jeffs, Geneve Flynn, Christa Carmen, Kristi Petersen Schoonover, and Elizabeth DeVecchi, and we support each another tremendously.
What are your thoughts on the book industry today, or more importantly, about the book community? Do you feel it is getting harder or easier to make it as an independent author these days?
I believe if we want real and edgy work, we’ll find it among the independent voices. When the model works, it grows rewarding partnerships between authors, artists, and indie publishers and booksellers. To maintain the level of creative control that we get in indie, we need integrity and mutual trust where everyone delivers on promises, expert resources like access to professional editors and distribution, and community support that runs both ways. I see these qualities so often in the horror community that I think it sets us apart from a lot of other circles.
Tell us about your work. What story are you most proud of?
Serpent’s Wake: A Tale for the Bitten is my first novel and an allegory for people who intimately know trauma, as it traces the familiar milestones of reconnecting what has been fractured. The work is listed as a Notable Work with the Horror Writers Association’s Mental Health Initiative, a truly humbling experience.
My short fiction, “Silk,” published in Hush, Don’t Wake the Monster published by Twisted Wing Productions and edited by Azzurra Nox is currently listed on the Bram Stoker Awards® Preliminary Ballot for 2023. Seeing my name alongside these incredibly talented authors has absolutely blown my mind.
What are your upcoming works and plans for the future?
In 2024, I have a poem appearing in Black Spot Books’ Mother Knows Best edited by Lindy Ryan and a story called “Hangman’s Coming” in the William Hope Hodgson tribute anthology, Where the Silent Ones Watch edited by James Chambers and published by Hippocampus Press. I’m also currently working with Christa Carmen as we edit a second anthology to We Are Providence called Monsters in the Mill with our Rhode Island writers group.
KANDISHA PRESS 