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 Rebecca Rowland!
Rebecca Rowland grew up in Western Massachusetts (USA) but spent most of her early adult life in the Boston area. She travels often and every [real] location she includes in her stories is a place she’s lived or visited.
Rebecca is a best-selling editor of seven horror anthologies, including 2023’s American Cannibal, a winner of a Godless 666 Horror Fiction Award, and an Active member of the Horror Writers Association. Her speculative fiction, critical essays, and book reviews regularly appear in a variety of online and print venues.
The former acquisitions and anthology editor at AM Ink Publishing, Rebecca manages the small, independent publishing house Maenad Press. She accrued graduate degrees in English, Education, and Information Science and miraculously managed to pay off her student loans before retirement and/or death. In her spare time, she pets her cats, eats cheese, and drinks vodka, though not necessarily in that order.
A firm believer in what goes around, comes around, Rebecca strives to treat the authors in her anthologies with the respect and honor they deserve. Her narrative models are Chuck Palahniuk, Joyce Carol Oates, Tom Perrotta, and A.M. Homes
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?
I was always an introverted kid, lost in my own head. I desperately wanted to be an actor or some kind of performer, but I was terribly clumsy and painfully shy—oafish, really—and writing gave me the outlet to experience other people’s lives, take on a persona through my characters I couldn’t otherwise inhabit as myself. I think we as writers use the same skills that actors do when we create and shape our characters: we have to be able to walk around in them to make them believable…but fortunately for people like me, authors can do that with a thousand eyes on the page rather than on them.
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?
When I was a teenager, one of my English teachers told me I had “an ear for dialogue.” It was, and still is, one of the nicest compliments I’ve ever received. Being introverted means listening more often than talking, and that definitely helps me as a writer: I think my ability to gauge the cadence of a conversation and make it flow naturally in a story stems directly from that. I’ve climbed out of my shell over the years, but it used to be that I was unnervingly quiet in groups. People who didn’t know me well misconstrued my reticence. I’m going on the record now: I’m quieter because I am listening to you, and yeah, the pattern of your speech will probably end up in a story somewhere.
My chief weakness is my inability to stay faithful to a project. As far as long fiction goes, I have only one novel and a handful of novellas under my belt; the rest of my work is short fiction because, quite frankly, I tire of my characters quickly. It’s something my closest friends have told me I need to get over. Short fiction is nice, but it doesn’t sell. Most readers want a longer tale to invest in; I prefer to read short stories, but I am in the minority. I’m pushing myself to write longer, strive for full-length projects instead of quick and dirty ones. The only way to do that is AIC: ass in chair, forcing myself to keep at it.
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 was fortunate to have experienced authors show me the ropes when I was first starting out. I’m not sure where new writers go today: maybe social media, online groups? I don’t self-publish, but from what friends of mine who do tell me, it’s getting easier every year. I have an agent, and that lifts a huge weight off my shoulders: I don’t have a head for business. I give a lot of credit to those authors who are marketing themselves and putting out books all on their own.
The book industry, at least the horror industry, is no longer the insular boys’ (cisgender, straight, white) club it was a few decades ago. Today’s horror fiction is as diverse as the world it reflects, and that is the best part of the industry, I think. Community-wise, I’ve had a few bad experiences with people who aren’t who they present themselves to be, writers who are duplicitous and step on others to try to climb higher in their careers, but that’s true with any profession, and truth be told, my experiences with people like that have been isolated and rare. I’m indebted to many fellow women in horror for the selfless support and real friendship they’ve offered.
Tell us about your work. What story are you most proud of?
As an editor, I’m most proud of American Cannibal. I spent a year building it, the writing is incredible, and I don’t have any regrets about having climbed onto the helm of it. As an author, I am most proud of Shagging the Boss, I think. People either love it or they hate it. One review site owner actually refused to read it or share it with her staff of reviewers, insisting it HAD to be erotica because of the title. She wrote a scathing response to the book’s promotion coordinator stating as much, even though he had sent a detailed summary of the plot (and it doesn’t have a lick of sex anywhere in it). It was something very different for me to write at the time: a bogeyman-vampire creature feature that doesn’t fit into any one category: it’s queer, it’s transgressive, it’s creepy, and I will always be grateful to Filthy Loot Press for taking a chance on it.
What are your upcoming works and plans for the future?
My second short fiction collection, White Trash & Recycled Nightmares, just released from Dead Sky Publishing, and my third collection is out for consideration now. In the meantime, I have some short stories releasing in anthologies over the next year, and I’m finally back at the keyboard, working on a new novella. It’s unlike anything I’ve written thus far, and it’s scary and exhilarating to push myself to do something new. Ass in chair, I keep telling myself. Ass in chair!
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