A Spooky Interview with Em Starr

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Em,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

Growing up as an Aussie kid in the 80's, the closest I got to Halloween was watching Michael Myers on Betamax. I had no real understanding of the season, other than the superficial elements like pumpkinheads and trick or treating... and the idea of trick or treating conjured images of angry adults who thought it was appropriate to scream at kids in costumes to stop the neighbourhood from becoming too "Americanized". It was many years later that I learned the true roots of Halloween (Samhain). The cycle of life and death, the thinning of the veil; things us horror lovers tend to think about all year-round. Suffice to say, I'm not so much into the costumes and candy as I am the deeper, quieter meaning. That's why this Halloween, you'll find me celebrating quietly at home, writing horror, reading horror, and watching Halloween films with my dogs.   

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

Public transport terrifies me. I am crazy hyper-vigilant, and something as simple as riding a train leaves me exhausted from endless "what-if" scenarios. What if this person beside me is a bad person? What horrible secrets might they be keeping? What awful things could they have done? Originally, I wrote this story based on that premise—the vulnerability of sharing confined spaces with strangers—but it felt incomplete. So I rewrote it and set the story on Halloween night, when the physical and spiritual worlds are permeable, and it all fell into place.    

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

I am obsessed with the 1987 film The Lost Boys. I can recount the entire script, word-for-word, as well as the killer soundtrack. It's less about fangirling and more about the profound connection I had with it as a kid. Because of that film, I had an epiphany at twelve years of age that changed me forever. My real name is Em, but the "Starr" part of my name is a homage to TLB.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I am taking the rest of this year to finish my debut novel, Cactus. It's a pearler and I can't wait to share it! After that, I'll be penning more short stories, with a view to putting together a collection of Coastal Chills.

Thanks for playing along! 

A Spooky Interview with Kevin M. Folliard

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Kevin,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?
 
October is a big month for my partner and I. We have costume parties with friends and do our best to cram in as many scary movies as possible. My favorite tradition is attending Chicago’s 24-hour Music Box of Horrors movie marathon with my friends.
 
Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?
 
Every October, I aim to draft at least one new Halloween story. Vengeance of Halloween (VoH) is my good-natured jab at the glut of delightful Halloween pop-ups that spring up like clockwork every August. It's also an homage to some of my favorite horror films such as Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the Universal Monsters.
 
Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?
 
I love to travel, and I’ve been to all 50 U.S. states!
 
What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?
 
I’m a big dinosaur fan, and I have a number of dinosaur sci-fi adventure stories set in a shared world called New Pangea. You can find some of these stories as singles, included in various sci-fi anthologies, but I’m currently in the process of collecting them all together in an anthology titled Tales from New Pangea, which should be available in 2026.
 
Where can we find you online?
 
www.KevinFolliard.com

Thanks for playing along! 

A Spooky Interview with Epiphany Ferrell

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Epiphany,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

My favorite holiday of course! I live pretty far out in the country so we don’t get trick-or-treaters. To prepare for Halloween in recent years, my husband and I have taken the door-to-door concept to the back roads where we live in southern Illinois. We’ll blast Halloween sound-effects and scary music as we drive around, occasionally letting go of a really good scream at an appropriate moment. Just sharing the Halloween spirit.

Will you be donning a scary costume this Halloween?

I can usually cobble something together from my closet, adding a mask or some other detail from the pop-up Halloween store. My favorite costume from years-gone-by was Werewolf Tamer.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I’m working on a folk horror novel, in the rewriting/editing stage. I’m outlining a sequel to that novel, and also a dystopian novel. Always short stories, too.

Where can we find you online?

epiphanyferrell.com and several social media platforms.

Thanks for playing along!

A Spooky Interview with Tom Coombe

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Tom,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

In the last six years, my significant other and I have established a Halloween tradition: Starting October 1, we watch a horror movie every evening leading up to Halloween.

Without giving too much away, is there a story behind your contribution to this anthology?

There's not really a story, more of an urban legend (a "black van" roaming my neighborhood when I was a kid) combined with an anecdote (a grade school friend trick or treating at a house with a woman in a hospital bed in the living room).

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

At the moment, I'm working on a folk horror story based around a (completely made up) splinter sect of the Catholic church.

Where can we find you online?

The best place to interact with me is on BlueSky, where I'm @CalmTomb.

Thanks for playing along!

A Spooky Interview with Daniel Fox

Samhain Screams will be released on the 17th of October—but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99. You can also add the anthology to your Goodreads list. Our aim is quite simply to make Halloween 2025 the spookiest ever with this anthology featuring twenty scary tales handpicked by Greg Chapman and Cameron Trost. Do you dare peek into the troubled minds of our contributing authors?

Hi Daniel,

What does Halloween mean to you and how do you celebrate it?

One of the things that makes Halloween great is that it is a celebration of creativity. And it doesn’t matter how big or small your celebration is. Want to throw on a black vest and call yourself Han Solo ? Cool. Want to build an elaborate costume that takes months of effort and planning ? Also cool. How much or how little you do is up to you, and it’s all fun.

As for me, I like to take a wander around my neighbourhood and see how people have transformed their homes, and how excited little kids are as they run from one home to the next. It’s a good feeling.

Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?

I think cats are beautiful but I won’t pick one up. They’re living bags of knives.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you writing?

I haven’t really written many short stories in the past. So this year I thought I’d give them a whirl and it has turned out to be a lot of fun. So far this year, six of my stories have been nabbed by various publications, and I’m pretty excited to meet new readers via these happy little bursts of creativity.

A Steamy Interview with David Turnbull

Steampunk Sleuths will be released on the 30th of August (but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99). You can also add it today to your Goodreads bookshelf. To celebrate this anthology that perfectly aligns the gears that drive the genres of steampunk and mystery, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. Don your aviator goggles, but keep your magnifying glass close at hand, because these steamy puzzles won’t solve themselves!

Hi David,

There’s nothing quite as captivating as a great detective story, but what specifically is it about mystery in a steampunk world that gets your gears turning?

The early pioneers of science fiction, Jules Verne, George Griffiths, HG Wells and others were imagining a future based on the latest technical advances of the Victorian era. In contrast present day writers in the steampunk genre get to go back in time and reimagine the past based on how they see the technology might have developed in alternate versions of history. It's interesting for me to step back into that historical era and adopt the what if? premise originally adopted by those pioneers and see where that might take a story, particularly one with a mystery waiting to be solved.

Tell us about your protagonist. Is this the first puzzle your main character has solved? 

My protagonist is an infantryman horribly wounded by a heat ray during a Victorian-era Martian invasion of Earth (based on HG Wells' The War of the Worlds). In the aftermath, as London is rebuilding out of the ruins, he finds himself working as an assistant to Yil, a Martian detective who is a refugee from the civil war raging back on Mars. They are hired by an elderly criminal, Jack Dawkins (aka the Artful Dodger) who wants them to investigate the kidnapping of several members of his gang of street urchins.

One of my favourite steampunkish novel is Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, which is based on the premise that Dracula was not defeated in the manner he was in Bram Stoker's original novel, but instead becomes prince consort to Queen Victoria and sets about converting the British Empire to vampirism. Newman weaves both historical and fictional characters from the era into his narrative. I tried a similar approach with Private Ornshaw and the Martian Detective, dipping into Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter Martian novels and Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles as well as The War of the Worlds for inspiration. For example, the wasp gun which is detective Yil's favoured weapon is based on the weapon used by the Martians in the Martian Chronicles. One of the original characters I've introduced into the plot is Madam Macaque a former circus performer who harbours a huge grudge against her fellow humans and is in league with the amphibious tentacled race of Martians who were responsible for the invasion. But what has all of this to do with missing street kids? You'll need to read the story when it's published to uncover that mystery.

It’s time for Show and Tell! What’s the most steampunk antique, item of clothing, book, game, or household item you have?

I'm not entirely sure if this qualifies as steampunk, but I feel it could provide an excellent backdrop and setting for a steampunk story. I have a book from 1887 called China's Millions. It's a collection of editions of China's Millions, the regular journal of the China Inland Mission. It contains letters, accounts and articles from the British protestant missionaries who set up a vast network of Christian missions in China between the Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. They give fascinating insights into what China was like in the 1880s. I'd love to take all the detail in the accounts laid out in the book and work them into a steampunk plot, probably with some clockwork automata robots thrown in for good measure. But the big challenge would be how to achieve this without inadvertently reverting to some stereotypical Fu Manchu villain as the main antagonist, or engaging in cultural appropriation if I made a Chinese character the protagonist.

Where can we find you online?

Look for Lambeth Fantastical on Facebook, SubStack and Blogger.com and you’ll find stuff about my writing and scifi, horror, and fantasy themed guided walks.

Thanks for playing along!

Image credit: https://archive.org/details/chinasmillions1883chin

A Steamy Interview with Diana Parrilla

Steampunk Sleuths will be released on the 30th of August (but the Kindle version is available for pre-order today at just $1.99 instead of $3.99). You can also add it today to your Goodreads bookshelf. To celebrate this anthology that perfectly aligns the gears that drive the genres of steampunk and mystery, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. Don your aviator goggles, but keep your magnifying glass close at hand, because these steamy puzzles won’t solve themselves!

Hi Diana,

There’s nothing quite as captivating as a great detective story, but what specifically is it about mystery in a steampunk world that gets your gears turning?

Steampunk, as a genre, blends Victorian-era aesthetics and technology with speculative, often anachronistic inventions powered by steam and clockwork. It’s not just a reimagining of the past or a vision of the future, it feels like stepping into another dimension altogether. This fusion of a bygone era with futuristic possibilities creates a world that’s both familiar and fantastical, which really fires up my imagination. For me, writing begins when something resonates—whether it’s a setting, an object, or a tune—anything that strikes a chord. That spark is all I need. I’m too easy.

Tell us about your protagonist. Is this the first puzzle your main character has solved?

My protagonist isn’t solving her first case, but that doesn’t automatically make her sharper or more confident. Every case is its own kind of challenge. She’s developed her own methods through experience, but she still makes mistakes. She’s human, after all. Human interaction is just as crucial to solving the mystery as it is distracting, sometimes causing her to overlook details or feel things when only a cool-headed approach should prevail. She’s not so different from the reader, because I, the writer who created her, am also a reader who enjoys mysteries.

It’s time for Show and Tell! What’s the most steampunk antique, item of clothing, book, game, or household item you have?

For my most steampunk item, I combined a few favorites that set the mood: a vintage-style notebook perfect for sketching secret plans, classic leather gloves, an ornate lamp that looks like it belongs in a foggy Victorian study, and a plastic revolver that adds a touch of airship adventure. I also included two books—The Moonstone and Persuasion—to bring a bit of mystery and period atmosphere to the scene. It’s not one single artifact, but together they capture the spirit of steampunk for me.

And since I’m also a gamer, I’ll add that I own Dishonored and Thief on Epic Games, not exactly traditional steampunk, but close enough in tone: moody cities, shadowy tech, and lots of morally ambiguous detectives. That counts, right?

Where can we find you online?

You can find me online pretty much everywhere I dare to show up. I’m on YouTube as a proud gamer, on Amazon Author Central under my real name, Diana Parrilla, and on X (Twitter). I’m a bit quieter on Instagram and Facebook, but I’m there too, everywhere under the alias buffyta17. Feel free to track me down wherever you like.

Thanks for playing along!

A moment from my playthrough of Thief (2014)