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 Cat Voleur!
Cat Voleur is the author of Revenge Arc, and a proud mother to all the rescue felines. You can find her co-hosting Slasher Radio, and The Nic F’n Woo Cage Cast. When she’s not creating or consuming morbid content you can find her pursuing her passion for fictional languages.
You can learn more at her website, catvoleur.com
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 feel like my answer to this has aged very poorly, but here we go. There was a very famous series of children’s fantasy books that consumed my entire childhood. The day I found out that they were written by a woman changed my life, and I knew that I wanted to learn to write. (Which I’m grateful for, even if I’ve had to spend most of my adult life distancing myself from that series, the woman, and her harmful online rhetoric.)
As for being a professional author, I fought that tooth and nail. I was the last person to know that I’d be a writer. My friends and family knew it. My teachers knew it. I wrote all the time from the actual minute I could hold a writing utensil until I was hired for my first writing job. At that point it finally occurred to me that it could be a valid career option, and since then I haven’t been able to imagine doing anything else.
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 strengths and weaknesses are all sort of tangled up together. I’m over-ambitious when starting new projects. My editors pick on me a little bit because whenever I send in something new I say it’s “unlike my other stuff”. I always like trying things that are out of my comfort zone and that I don’t know if I’ll be good at.
Whenever a reader tells me that they’ve never seen anything like one of my titles, or says they’re impressed by how creative a story was, I think it ties back to that ambition of wanting to tackle something I’ve never seen done in a certain way. In that regard, I think that it’s a great strength. Those are some of the comments I’ve been the most proud to receive in my career.
On the other side of that, it makes me sort of a wild card. It’s hard to market my books based off of my other books. I know people are sometimes wary to invite me to projects—specifically anthologies, where they don’t know what sort of story I’ll send in. And it does make every new project a challenge. I often feel like I’m starting over, because techniques I learned for the last story probably won’t be applicable in the next.
I always feel like I need to be improving in one skill or another with writing, and it’s something that keeps me excited to keep doing 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’m answering these questions in April, which has been a particularly brutal month for indie horror writers. We’ve had a lot of scandals and upsets and I think the whole community feels a little shaken.
But overall, and even in light of everything that’s happened, I feel like the indie scene is thriving. I don’t think it’s easy to make it as an independent writer at all, but it’s so rewarding. There are so many supportive people, and I honestly think we’ve reached a tipping point where there’s more talent in this space than in traditional publishing. I’m optimistic that within the next few years there will be some sort of grand takeover of the system based off the success we’re seeing right now.
Tell us about your work. What story are you most proud of?
I’m so proud of all my stories. I’ve gotten to learn about self-publishing from some of the best in the business. I’ve gotten to work on movie novelizations, which has been a dream for a long time. I’ve gotten to work with two of the most incredible presses to bring forward some weird, queer horror fiction.
If I had to chose a single story that I’m most proud of however, it has to be my debut horror novella, REVENGE ARC. Even though it feels the most like me (morally gray characters, a revenge story that’s not really about revenge, ambiguous but dark ending) it also feels the most like a team effort. It’s modern epistolary, with all true to source formatting, and a lot of the things that make it so special were only made possible by the fact that it was a collaboration with Archive of the Odd and their network of artists.
What are your upcoming works and plans for the future?
I’m working on a super secret shark book at the moment, that I’m dying to talk about, but I can’t yet. Such is the life of an author.
I do have a second book coming out through Slashic Horror Press this June, called MY APOLOGIES TO TANYA GRACE.
I’m also working on a self-published side project this year called COVERED IN DARKNESS. Each chapbook in the series was sponsored for $25 which went to saving the cover art from deletion and raising funds for the artist. It’s my current passion project, and I’m so excited for them to be out in the world.
KANDISHA PRESS 
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