Merry meet all,
Welcome everyone. Today we chat with another popular horror author EM Otero. So sit back with your latte and enjoy!
Why horror? Do you have a favorite subgenre in horror?
-When I was a kid, I was scared of everything. Especially scary movies, video games and such. Until I was watching my brother play resident evil, I think on his dream cast, that I realized this isn’t that scary actually. Then I became obsessed as I got older what actually scared me. Zelda Ocarina of time was not a horror game, But it scared the hell out of me when the skeletons showed up at night. Or the redead zombie guys.
Then Halo where it is a typical humans vs aliens action shoot em up until the flood shows up and it’s body horror zombies in space. Scared the hell out of me.
Then Dead Space, I loved it. it creeped me out but I loved everything about it. Then with books my first horror was The Watchers by Dean Koontz and I was hooked.
So I think I am gravitated towards it because I am always surprised by what actually scares me. I have vivid moments memorized from all different things that I will still think about and get chills.
My favourite genre is tied between folk horror and sci-fi horror. But honestly I love almost any horror. My favorite kind doesn’t matter what genre it is, is when there is horror in unexpected places.
Like in Zelda, Halo, From Dusk Till Dawn. I think it is pulled off in video games more because you can have a fantasy game, that is all swords, magic and epic quests. Then you have a side quest where you are fighting demons or something. People don’t like genre shifts in books too much. It’s misleading and people want to know what they are getting into. I am the complete opposite I like to be given a book, told it’s good and go in completely blind.
Which other horror authors influenced you the most and why?
-Dean koontz because a lot of his stuff is sci-fi skewed and I loved the Creature feature aspect of the stories.
-Stephen King, for a lot of the same reason and he leans into the weird.
-Adam Neville, for the slow psychological creeping Dread.
-Laird Barron for his literary weirdness, and modern cosmic horror. The Croning is a masterpiece of dread.
-John langan, for his unique way of writing classic monsters and themes. Also for elegantly tackling grief in the fisherman.
I can’t really articulate exactly how each has influenced my writing, but it has.
Tell me about your writing/ editing process
So I’ll get the spark of an idea, whatever it is. I’ll use my story Pale Green Wings that is going to be on Creepy Podcast. So I saw a tree stump at my mother’s property. It had bullets in it from when my father used it for target practice with his 44. The tree fell over from being blown apart.
Then the next day I was explaining to my wife how lunar moths essentially are only there to mate. As a larva they eat and eat, then when they pupate and hatch as a moth, they don’t have a functioning digestive system or mouth parts. So they mate till they starve to death.
So the kernel of an idea started. I thought about the memory of my father at that stump and thought about it being a trigger of a memory for someone like it was for me and my grief. As these ideas come to me I take notes. Because I am prone to forget.
So I started thinking about how to connect them and I came up with a man who is at rock bottom because his wife died, and he sees a massive lunar moth on his wife’s picture. He gets angry, rips it’s wings off and throws the body in his bushes.
Then everyrhing else goes from there, and it ends at the stump riddled with bullets.
So I write the story, then go and write something else for a few days. Then I come back and edit it. So I have had some distance from it to the point I forget the nuances.
What inspires you to write horror?
Literally everything. I think horror is a great way to process the world. There is so much to be scared of, but when you turn it into something in a story it makes it manageable. Like an inoculation against fear.
Most monsters, spirits, and horrors are a metaphor for something else and when you make dread, loneliness, grief, anxiety, disease, into a palpable monster that can be killed, it weakens it’s impact.
I also am inspired to write things I like, or that I don’t see enough of. I write a lot of mecha stuff. Giant robots fighting other robots or monsters. There isn’t a lot of that in the western markets so I am putting it out. My novel is just that but I am writing shorts as well I am hoping to get out there and gain a foot hold. So maybe my Combines, will be as recognizable as Gundams, Zords, or even transformers.
What do you love about indie publishing?
The broadness of it. I couldn’t get my mecha cosmic horror book even looked at anywhere. I even had people say there was no market for it. But Unveiling Nightmares was like, looks neat, let’s try it.
So I guess it has less restraints, and can take chances on weirdos like me.
Which is your favorite horror movie or book? Which movie or book impressed and inspired you the most?
Movies: Head hunter, The Thing, Alien, The Ritual, The Void, and at the Mouth of Madness.
All of these impressed me in different ways and all of them inspired me. Book wise, most recently was Black River Orchard. I mean being able to illicit dread from something as simple as an apple is amazing.
Is there any music that helps you to write?
Not really, sometimes I’ll listen to ambient stuff mostly to keep me awake at night. Silence is what helps me most.
Do you have any special projects you want readers to know about?
My patreon. I am putting up stuff that I haven’t been able to get published and serial stuff. Right now I have my story Tipping the Scales coming out on a monthly or every 3 week basis.
I also have others I am putting on there, featuring mechs and cosmic horror.
Where can readers find you on social media?
My Socials:
https://www.emoteroauthor.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheHowlingBetweenWorlds/
https://www.instagram.com/e.m._otero/
https://www.patreon.com/EmOtero
E.M. Otero
Blessings, Spiderwitch
