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 Jane Nightshade!
Jane Nightshade is a former corporate communications manager turned horror writer. Her fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and has been dramatized by NoSleep Podcast and Octoberpod. She is the author or editor of four published story collections: The Drowning Game, independently published in digital form on Amazon; A Scream Full of Ghosts, from Dark Ink Publishing; Jane Nightshade’s Serial Encounters from HellBound Books; and the upcoming Ghosts Never Leave from Unveiling Nightmares Publishing. She is also the co-editor of the upcoming Hellbound Highway from HellBound Books. Her non-fiction writing has been published by several major horror sites. Online, Jane mostly hangs out on X/Twitter at @JaneNightshade. Check out her Goodreads page for a somewhat complete listing of her work at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18550996.Jane_Nightshade
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 think my biggest strength is that I have a good sense of how information needs to be arranged so that it keeps the reader reading and doesn’t confuse them. A lot of fans tell me how readable my stories are. That goes back to my career in journalism and corporate communications, where you have little space to get “the story” out and you have to have a good sense of how it must logically flow. A lot of my stories have Twilight-Zone-like “twists” at the end so I always play fair with my readers and do foreshadowing. I think that’s important.
For improving my writing skills, I belong to an online writing club called “Write Club” on Discord. I’ve been a member for almost six years and the process there has been very helpful. We have a monthly prompt and then we post our stories for everyone in the club to read and comment on. We’re always looking for new members who can commit to writing one story per month and giving feedback on the others.
What are your thoughts on the book industry today, or more importantly, about the book community?
The indie space is very crowded and my experience is that sales are very hard to make because of that. Indie publishers also don’t have the budget for a lot of promotional support so you are on your own. I’m still trying to crack that egg, to be honest.
Do you feel it is getting harder or easier to make it as an independent author these days?
Well, I don’t consider myself to have “made it” even though I’ve been lucky enough to have had several book contracts and numerous stories published. I mostly regard my career now as a way to make friends and do something I love. I remember how, as a kid, I was a huge fan of classic ghost stories/horror by people like M. R. James and E. F. Benson and Lovecraft. And I don’t think those guys were really popular until after they were gone, so I tell myself that my real career may have to wait until I’m gone also. But I’d be really happy to know that there were kids being inspired by my work fifty or a hundred years from now, as I was by those guys.
Ideally, I’d like to make a living at it, but I’m not there yet. I don’t personally know anybody who doesn’t have a “real” job in addition to their fiction writing, and that includes people who are much higher on the food chain than I am.
Tell us about your work. What story are you most proud of?
I would say that would be a story called “The Sorting” which has been sold several times. It’s in my upcoming collection, “Ghosts Never Leave.” It’s not really that scary, just a sentimental ghost story that harkens back to the Halloweens of my childhood, which were wonderful. Sadly, I never realized how great they were at the time, and I think my story gets to a little bit of that wistful nostalgic realization.
My other favorite is a novella called “The Drowning Game,” which I published myself as an ebook on Amazon. It is also based on childhood memories and experiences, although it’s a much creepier tale than The Sorting. It’s in a horror genre I like to call “kids on bikes”, similar to King’s “IT” or “Stranger Things.” You know, a gang of kids run around a small town and have a creepy, scary adventure.
What are your upcoming works and plans for the future?
Upcoming, as I mentioned before, is my collection called “Ghosts Never Leave” from Unveiling Nightmares. It’s my second collection following “A Scream Full of Ghosts” from Dark Ink, which was published in 2023. There are about 18 or 19 stories in the second collection, all of them ghost stories. Ghost stories are by far my favorite horror sub-genre, and after that, serial killer stories. But I really like all of it except for extreme horror or splatterpunk.
Also upcoming is an anthology called “Hellbound Highway,” of which I am co-editor and contributor, coming later this year from HellBound Books. I’m working on that with a great new author called Ann O’ Mara Heyward, whom I met when she sent in a story for my 2024 anthology “Jane Nightshade’s Serial Encounters.” It’s a collection of horror stories about literal “bad trips”, in other words, a road or train or airplane trip that turns into a freaking disaster.
Beyond that, I would really like to try writing a novel. They seem to be more popular than short story collections or anthologies. My main problem is that I always lose interest in longer form work. I’m a natural short story writer!
Thanks for the interview and having me on your blog!
KANDISHA PRESS 
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