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 Penny Durham!
Penny Durham is a journalist living in Sydney with a tall man and a round cat. She is an editor and writer at doctor magazine The Medical Republic and began writing horror fiction in 2022. Her stories are in two anthologies, Midnight Echo, Fraidy Cat Quarterly, Nightmare Fuel, Banksia Journal, the Tiny Terrors podcast and more. Find her @penguinity.bsky.social.
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?
Being new to writing fiction, it would be a lot easier to talk about my weaknesses, which are legion … but as a journalist with a lot of editing experience, I can claim a good grip on English, economy with words and a reasonable vocabulary. A good start. The downside of that training is that I struggle to let go of concise, factual prose and give in to more expansive, more imaginative, weirder writing. My feet don’t want to leave the ground. I don’t know how I’d go about improving that – I’m open to suggestions!
I’ve never studied creative writing formally but have taken a few little courses that set you straight on aspects of fiction writing you’d think you would know after being a daily fiction reader for decades, but didn’t (just me?), like how to nail point of view.
What are your thoughts on the book industry today, or more importantly, about the book community?
Again, new, with no firsthand experience of the book industry except for a few small publishers of short fiction (who have been lovely to deal with). I do have huge respect for everyone running and setting up independent presses right now, though. Besides the ruthless financials, the tsunami of AI slop is causing all sorts of havoc (like this 404 Media story, if I’m allowed to link, about a journalist stumbling across a $5 AI-written ripoff of a book he took years to write).
As for the community, I grew up adjacent to some capital-L literary writers and that scene, at that time, was exclusive and incredibly bitchy. So the horror/spec writers’ community was a lovely surprise. I know there are exceptions, but my exposure has been only to warm, supportive and funny people who inflict suffering only on their characters.
Do you feel it is getting harder or easier to make it as an independent author these days?
Financially? An Australian survey in 2022 found the average author’s income from writing was about AUD18,000 (USD11,000). That was substantially higher than the 2015 results, so … yay? Eked out by other work, the average income was still well below median, and our cities aren’t cheap to live in. For a job that requires brilliance, humanity and intensive labour, it would be nice if it didn’t also require a vow of poverty. But it’s also kind of fun and the fun jobs rarely pay.
Tell us about your work. What story are you most proud of?
I started doing this in 2022, and I had some early flukes and barely deserved success, which was a good and a bad thing. The second story I ever submitted came first in a flash fiction contest. I still like that one, about a woman who sees a boy in the window across her street and becomes concerned for his welfare (alas). Another is about a chess game during the slow extirpation of humanity after an alien invasion, which is quite grim and is more about trauma than monsters. There are a few others out there that I’d like to quietly take back and edit.
My favourite stories mostly aren’t published yet – I’ve had a metric tonne of rejections drop on me lately, so I think the beginner’s luck has run out. My latest, still in draft, is my third go at a haunted house story and I quite like it – there are so many ways you can go with a nice haunted house.
What are your upcoming works and plans for the future?
Would it give too much away if I said I was rereading 1984?
KANDISHA PRESS 
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