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 Emma Rose Darcy! Emma’s story “You Got Me, Babe” is featured in PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE HER: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (Kandisha Press 2025 Women of Horror Anthology.)
EMMA ROSE DARCY is Australian and works in a museum. She is happiest digitising old negatives and snooping through forgotten diaries and records. She writes dark fantasy and horror and blames it all on a lifelong love of folklore and mythology. She stumbled upon horror in her childhood, discovering authors like Joe Donnelly and G M Hague among the Kings and Rices in charity shop books cases. It may be why she has a hunger for reading and writing body horror and transformation horror stories, hauntings and huntings. She can be found on instagram and threads via the handle @ofcoursethehorrors
Your character, Beatrice, has to be one of the most monstrous creatures I’ve ever come across in modern literature. What was it like creating her? Did you start out with a concrete idea or did she just evolve into such a being over time?
I went into this story with Beatrice at the forefront of my mind. As soon as I saw the call for the anthology, my first thought was a parasitic muse that drove artists mad. I called her Beatrice as a perversion of the young woman that Dante was obsessed with in the Divine Comedy. Going mad with love for your craft is something I think resonates with most artists and writers, and I wanted to take that idea a step further to it becoming this predatory thing.
How did you come up with the idea for this story? Will we see more of Beatrice in the future?
The story was originally going to be about Po and the rest of the friend group trying to save Johnno from Beatrice as he succumbed to her influences, but it was one of those pieces where the characters had minds of their own. The moment Po saw Beatrice I knew this monster was going to follow her home and she was going to suffer the worst.
I would love to sneak Beatrice into another story. Some characters just stick with you, and like Stephen King I do enjoy setting up Easter Eggs and the idea of some of my stories being set in the same universe (except maybe my Sherlock Holmes/HP lovecraft stuff, haha)
What does your creative process look like when you’re writing? Do you have any special rituals or routines?
I usually get set off by a line that I think “That would be a great title” or “that would be a great line of dialogue.” And then I sit down and vomit out a story and it’s like passing a kidney stone.
And then I go through it once it’s done to see if there is an idea that needs to be fleshed out more or a character that didn’t get enough time to shine. I’m a huge believer in the idea that the first draft is just to get it down, you can’t edit an empty page.
My process, if I have one, is to take my MC and set them up nice and comfortable and think “what is the worst thing that could happen to this person?”
What else are you working on? Any projects you’re especially excited about?
I’m started writing short stories to build up a portfolio while I tried to get my novellas published but I got addicted to open calls. I’m working on a sub for a twisted Grimm Antho at the moment about a vlogger that is spending three nights in a haunted house to learn fear.
My novella started out a straight forward story about a serial killer who hides his confession in a high school time-capsule, but ended up a criticism of murder podcasts and voyeurism.
Wish me luck!
KANDISHA PRESS 
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