The special Queers Destroy Horror! issue of Nightmare Magazine just came out a couple of days ago. It includes my poem “Worm and Memory” and my essay “A Good Story”; that essay will be available for free reading on October 14th. I’m very pleased to be sharing pages with authors such as Chuck Palahniuk, Kelley Eskridge, Caitlín R. Kiernan and Poppy Z. Brite.
Back in April, guest editor Megan Arkenberg approached me about writing nonfiction for the special issue. When I asked her if there were any topics she particularly wanted me to write about, she replied, “An area that hasn’t been addressed very fully is writing and publishing horror as a queer writer. Is there a topic or concern in that area that you’d be interested in writing about?”
At first, I thought to myself, “Nah, I don’t have any concerns! It’s been fine. I should interview other writers for this! It’s been fine ….”
And then I remembered the time that an editor told me to straighten a queer protagonist. “A Good Story” emerged from my musings on that incident. I won’t write more about it here, but I hope some of you visit the Nightmare site later and check it out.
A lot of my writing, particularly my
nonfiction, emerges from me being angry or upset or disturbed about something,
but I’ve known that for a while. Writing is better than getting an ulcer or
ranting at my friends. Or ranting more than I do. We’ll go with that.