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 Jolie Toomajan!
Jolie Toomajan is a PhD candidate, writer, editor, and all-around ghoul. Her dissertation in progress is focused on the women who wrote for Weird Tales and her work has appeared in Upon a Thrice Time, Death in the Mouth, and Black Static (among other places). She is editor of Aseptic and Faintly Sadistic: An Anthology of Hysteria Fiction. Despite all of this, she would investigate a clown hanging out in a sewer grate. You can find her anywhere @JolieToomajan
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 a reader, and always into horror. What tipped me over into wanting to write was reading Anne Rice. She and I are very different writers, but I was a teenager when I got her books, and I was enthralled with the stories she told, especially the Mayfair Witches series.
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?
I have a pretty good ear for language. When a word is out of place, sonically or tonally, I can hear it like a bad note. If I want to improve a certain skill, I find an author who is amazing at that skill specifically, and then I read everything of theirs that I can get my hands on with a critical eye. I like to write experimental horror fiction, so there’s no end of authors for me to learn from.
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?
On one hand, there are more publishing houses and more avenues to get your voice out there (especially if your voice has been historically silenced), which is phenomenal. But the amount of labor expected from authors is unsustainable for anyone who isn’t exceptionally privileged, so you run into the same problems again…the deck is stacked in favor of people with access to certain resources. I have to be a marketing genius and a graphic designer, a social media guru and lip sync artist, be perpetually Online™ so I’m all caught up on The Discourse™, have the time and money to fund my own book tour, and somehow still manage to write the book.
Tell us about your work. What story are you most proud of?
I am generally a short-story author who writes about how sick the world around us is, often from a feminist lens. The story I am most proud of is probably “Water Goes, Sand Remains” which was published in the first Death in the Mouth. The story is set during the Armenian Genocide, in a period of legendary resistance. I wanted to talk about the ways that necessary resistance is both awe-inspiring and damaging, something you would do in a blink but never want your children to have to do, so filtering the story through a mother-daughter relationship was the obvious choice. It’s close to my heart, it won a Brave New Weird award (<3 Tenebrous Press), that story means a lot to me.
What are your upcoming works and plans for the future?
Well! I’m still writing short fiction and trying my hand at a novel, a bizarre Gothic with a cast of older women as protagonists. I’m also the new Editor in Chief of Cosmic Horror Monthly! I’m currently assisting and learning the ropes, but I’ll be taking over for our July call. I’m really excited. One of the missions of CHM is to uplift classic authors who are not Lovecraft, and I’ve gotten to take over Crypt selection. I’ve packed it full of women who should not have been ignored for as long as they have, and it’s up from here.
KANDISHA PRESS 
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