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 Lillie Franks! Lillie’s story “Vegetable Love” is featured in PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE HER: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (Kandisha Press 2025 Women of Horror Anthology.)
LILLIE E. FRANKS is an author and future eccentric (once she’s successful enough) who lives in Chicago, Illinois, but is normal about it. You can read her work at places like Always Crashing, Alice and Atlas, and McSweeneys or follow her on Twitter at @onyxaminedlife. She loves anything that is not the way it should be.
Vegetable Love is a truly disturbing story, rich with frightening imagery and meaning. Tell us how you came up with the idea for this story. What was the creative process like?
Vegetable Love is the third iteration of this story, though it’s the first to be published. The previous versions were very different; they focused on a woman who inexplicably feel the presence of her mother who has just passed away. The central similarity was the image of human bodies growing like plants, and that the main character was trying to control and prevent that growth. That’s the seed it all started from: human bodies grow, but they (hopefully!) grow in a very controlled, regular way, and the idea of a body instead growing riotously and without limits felt really evocative to me. From there it’s just a matter of making it something that fits together.
Mrs. Allen is an “invisible woman, so to speak. What would you say are her dreams and desires? And how can the ordinary, every day woman relate to her?
I think this is a really key question to the story, but it’s difficult to answer because I see Mrs. Allen as a deeply stifled character. Her obsession with order masks and suppresses: a lot of who she really wants to be, and in fact masks it so well that she might not know in herself. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Mrs. Allen is drawn to the nurturing work of gardening or that she’s fascinated by the chaotic figure of the dead boy. As for relating to her, 1 think a lot of people can relate to that fear of anything which is chaotic, and the urge to push other people or more often, yourself, into neat boxes. I think that combination of terror but also allure we all feel for anything which grows beyond its bounds is core to horror.
What does your creative process look like when you’re writing? Do you have any special rituals or routines?
I take walks to plan out the general gist of my stories, and then I also plan out the first sentence that I’m going to write before sitting down. Sometimes that first sentence carries me into doing it, and sometimes I end up staring at the screen for a while, but at least I’m staring at a screen with one new sentence on it.
What else are you working on? Any projects you’re especially excited about?
One of my favorite things about short fiction is that you get to try a lot of fun new ideas My latest story is about a world where every copy of the movie Deep Impact with Morgan Freeman is haunted by a ghost. It’s very weird and silly, but I think it also has something to say!
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