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 Emily Weisenberger!
Emily J. Weisenberger is a literary and speculative fiction writer for children and adults. Her short stories are published in Tales to Terrify, L’Esprit Literary Review, and The Vanishing Point, among others. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing and the assistant fiction editor of the intersectional feminist magazine So To Speak. Her prior education is in anthropology. She can be found at emilyjweisenberger.com.
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 one of my strengths is that I just really have so much I want to say! All these feelings and ideas and the need to share them really motivate me to keep trying when something isn’t working or when I get rejections.
When there’s something I need to improve on, the first thing I do is go to my critique group. Where would I be without them? We have been meeting regularly for about 4 years now, and we each have different strengths and interests, so I have learned so much about writing and the publishing industry from them.
I started trying to write fiction seriously during the pandemic, and I really had no idea how. As a lifelong/obsessive reader, I thought it would be easier, but writing was—and is—so hard. My biggest issue in the beginning was plot (uh-oh). I had no idea how to come up with things for characters to do and to have them mean anything, so I read a lot of writing books and watched free lectures on YouTube. In particular: Save the Cat! by Jessica Brody, Story Genius by Lisa Cron, and Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin, and Brandon Sanderson’s lectures on writing science fiction and fantasy. I’m also such a student, so I also took some great online classes at Clarion West, the Highlights Foundation, the Writer’s Center, and now I’m doing an MFA part time. There is always a writing skill for me to improve.
What are your thoughts on the book industry today, or more importantly, about the book community?
I don’t think I know enough about the industry yet to add something worthwhile to the discussion. I would say that small presses and magazines and indie authors are an important part of our culture, but don’t receive as much attention as they deserve. Support small presses and indie authors! Buy a subscription, join a Patreon, review an indie book, submit to a small magazine! I just started working as the assistant fiction editor of a small magazine, so I’m sure I’ll have lots more to say soon.
Do you feel it is getting harder or easier to make it as an independent author these days?
It sure feels hard from where I’m writing. What helps is being part of a community of authors. When we share information and support across all types of authors—indie, unpublished, traditional, hybrid—we make the community stronger. It is no secret that writing, while it might take as long to do as a full-time job, doesn’t normally pay like a full-time job.
Tell us about your work. What story are you most proud of?
Normally the story I’m most proud of is the most recent one I’ve finished writing and editing, so I’ll have to say it is a literary short story called “Things Daddy Won.” (Yes, you’re supposed to be squicked out that he’s called ‘Daddy.’) It is essentially a list of all the things that Daddy (ew)—a politician in the Virginia state legislature—won from the perspective of his preteen daughter as she learns how to stand against her own parent and finds joy in knowing her asexuality. It was my first time writing a short story explicitly about my own (a)sexuality.
What are your upcoming works and plans for the future?
I just finished a novel manuscript. Yay! This novel, Hazel in the Wind World (title subject to change, of course) is a middle-grade fantasy novel about friendship and environmental activism. I really poured all those soft feelings I have for who I remember being as a kid-reader onto the page and wrote the book I hope I would have loved, which of course includes flying monsters, sword-fighting, a doggie sidekick, and sticking it to The Man. Now that I’m done, I am about to start querying agents for the first time.
I’m also trying to get more of my weird short stories out there. There’s an ecofiction travelogue with some fun cannibalism, a YA story with a talking field hockey stick, one about a ghost who just can’t quit her office job, one that I would describe as Wipeout in the underworld… They just need to find a home!
And if that isn’t enough to do, I’m also playing with two new novel ideas: another middle-grade fantasy about death (oooo), and a satire-thriller novel for adults.
KANDISHA PRESS 
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