The Black Beacon Book of Horror will be released on Friday the 13th of October; the Kindle version is available for pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your Goodreads list today. To get you in the mood for a particularly spooky Halloween this year, we’re interviewing the contributing authors. The first Black Beacon Book of Horror is bound to give you the creeps!
Hi Elizabeth,
I write horror because it's a space for experimental, strange, and liminal fiction. Southern Gothic without it is boring. My favorite novelists all play with experimental structure: Faulkner,
Marquez, Melville. While I love writing gorgeous prose, playing with structure is my favorite.
Is there a story behind your story in this anthology?
It's part of my favorite sandbox, a town called Lower Congaree. Like Faulkner, I made up a county (his is in Mississippi; mine is in South Carolina), complete with maps, genealogies, and consistent characters. The Merle family of witches plays a starring role in most of my works—while Ella Lee's story was my first, her mother Jane appears in For Thine is the Kingdom, published in Ghostlight: The Magazine of Terror. Ella Lee's story continues in A Burning Thing, published by Tree and Stone. I have her birth story yet unpublished. Her daughter, Talitha, stars in my novels The Swamp-Child (currently in final edits) and Mother of Ghosts (my work-in-progress).
Do you have an all-time favourite horror tale?
Stephen King's The Long Walk and Firestarter have always stuck with me. Of course, I love A Rose for Emily and To Kill a Mockingbird. I'll argue til I'm blue in the face that Moby Dick and Absalom, Absalom! are horror novels, and they're my all-time favorites.
What books did you grow up reading?
I read all the typical kids books, like the Narnia series, but my parents never cared what I read, so I spent most of my formative years digging through Stephen King, Christopher Pike, and Anne Rice. My very favorite book was Pat Conroy's The Prince of Tides, which I read when I was eleven. It's the only book my mother ever took from me, so I never forgot it. I was floored by his language. I wanted to be a writer from the time I was five, and I thought, "I want to write like that."
Do you have any writing rituals?
Daily, early, and often, in my dining room converted a writing room.
Would you share something about yourself that your readers don’t know yet?
People think I made up the demonic Congaree Swamp. I didn't. It's real, and it's haunted as all hell. You can feel the malevolent energy at night, and it's probably the scariest place I've ever been. I also had a long career in journalism before I started writing spec fic in June 2022. I've been published in The Washington Post, Insider, and Time Magazine; I've also appeared on every major news network in America, including National Public Radio (other than Fox; I said no to them) and BBC World News. Most recently, one of my essays was commissioned by The Daily Mail.
Where can we find you online?
I live at www.writerelizabethbroadbent.com, but I'm also on Twitter, Instagram, and Threads as @eabroadbent; Bluesky is @elizabethbroadbent.bsky.social.
Thanks for answering our questions.
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