Some of you already know that I came runner up in a short story competition to be included in the anthology of Among the Headstones (Editor Rayne Hall). Well today’s blog contains an interview with another author in this book: Kayla Lee Ward together with some more information about the anthology which will be published on Kindle at the end of January.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard edited by Rayne Hall, presents twenty-seven of the finest – and creepiest – graveyard tales with stories by established writers, classic authors and fresh voices.
Here you’ll find Gothic ghost stories by Robert Ellis, Lee Murray, Greg Chapman, Morgan Pryce, Rayne Hall, Guy de Maupassant, Myk Pilgrim, Zachary Ashford, Amelia Edwards, Nina Wibowo, Krystal Garrett, Tylluan Penry, Ambrose Bierce, Cinderella Lo, Nikki Tait, Arthur Conan Doyle, Priscilla Bettis, Kyla Ward, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul D Dail, Cameron Trost, Pamela Turner, William Meikle and Lord Dunsany who thrill with their eerie, macabre and sometimes quirky visions.
You’ll visit graveyards in Britain, Indonesia, Russia, China, Italy, Bulgaria, Thailand, USA, Australia, South Africa and Japan, and you can marvel at the burial customs of other cultures.
Now let’s open the gate – can you hear it creak on its hinges? – and enter the realm of the dead. Listen to the wind rustling the yew, the grating of footsteps on gravel, the hoo-hoo-hoo of the collared dove. Run your fingers across the tombstones to feel their lichen-rough sandstone or smooth cool marble. Inhale the scents of decaying lilies and freshly dug earth.
But be careful. Someone may be watching your every movement… They may be right behind you.
Purchase Link: mybook.to/Headstones
(Or go to your local Amazon Kindle page and you can search for it from there.)
The ebook is available for pre-order from Amazon at the special offer price of 99 cents until 31 January 2022. (After that date, the price will go up.) A paperback will follow.
And now for the interview! It’s always fascinating to hear from other authors, and the following interview is with another author in this anthology, Kayla Lee Ward.
Firstly, a little about the author:
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kyla Lee Ward is a Sydney-based creative who works in many modes, that have garnered her Australian Shadows and Aurealis awards. She has placed in the Rhyslings and received Stoker and Ditmar nominations.Reviewers have accused her of being “gothic and esoteric”, “weird and exhilarating” and of “giving me a nightmare.” Her latest release is The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities, her second collection of dark and fantastic poetry after 2011’s The Land of Bad Dreams. Her novel Prismatic (co-authored with her partner as “Edwina Grey”) won an Aurealis Award for Best Horror.
Her short fiction has appeared in the likes of Weirdbook, Shadowed Realms, Gothic.net and in the anthologies Oz Is Burning and Gods, Memes and Monsters: a 21st century Bestiary. Her work on RPGs including Demon: the Fallen saw her appear as a guest at the inaugural Gencon Australia. An artist and actor as well as an author, her short film, ‘Bad Reception’, screened at the Third International Vampire Film Festival and she is a member of both the Deadhouse immersive theatre company and the Theatre of Blood, which have also produced her work. In addition, she programmed the horror stream for the 2010 Worldcon. A practicing occultist, she likes raptors, swordplay and the Hellfire Club. To see some very strange things, try http://www.kylaward.com
What’s the creepiest place you’ve ever been to?
I am presently working as a guide with the world-famous Rocks Ghost Tours. The Rocks district in Sydney is the old dockside that contains its oldest surviving buildings, nestled against and in some cases carved out of a great sandstone cliff. Some of the alleys and stairways are lit by gas lamps (a conscious gesture on the part of NSW Heritage). It’s all incredibly atmospheric but let me tell you – some of those places are very strange. There is one that we can’t even take the tours into anymore, because people kept freaking out. Now, I’m not supposed to share the stories I tell on the tour, but I can tell you that stepping into that place was like suddenly walking on sand in a shallow river. The ground beneath me felt like it was slipping away as the current tried to pull me off my feet. And it was hot.
I’m prone to such impressions. As a teenager on holiday with my parents, I joined a tour of the fortress which looms above Salzburg in Austria. Stepping into a completely empty room, I jumped back out again and didn’t stop running till I was back in the courtyard – this was before the guide said anything. I just couldn’t stand being in that room. When Mum found me, she said that the room was the old dungeon and I had stepped onto one of the oubliettes.
For your story in Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard, where did you get the inspiration?
In the 1990s I had moved out of home and was living in Newtown, at that time an inner-city suburb full of students, elderly immigrants, and crumbling terrace houses. There were all kinds of weird shops and cafes, and the live music scene was fantastic. I, however, was in a pretty bad way. I had health problems with no diagnosis, was unemployed and going to job interviews where people actually mocked my degree. I took solace in the cemetery of Saint Stephens. Now, as this was the nineties, and the inner city, I guarantee you that what really haunted this place by night were Goths. I made friends and emerged from my slump wearing high boots and taking the Sisters of Mercy really, really seriously. But in my imagination, it all went differently or perhaps just more symbolically. The tomb that forms the centre of my story? That was real and it is still there.
Who are your favourite short story authors, and why?
From Anne Rice, I recommend The Witching Hour and Lasher (they are really one book) and the Vampire Trilogy. From Tanith Lee, the Blood Opera sequence and The Secret Books of Paradys, from which I will single out The Book of the Dead. It is the third of the tetralogy, a series of tales linked by the city cemetery. The novellas “The Glass Knife” and “The Moon is a Mask” are among my all-time favourites. Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black is spectacular and the recent movie resembles it little if at all. A new author who impresses me is Sarah Read, with The Bone Weaver’s Orchard.
But horror is also very much about short fiction, to be found in splendid anthologies such as this as well as single author story collections. I enjoy spooky short stories that follow Poe’s dictum – “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.” As you might deduce from this, I am fond of ghost stories such as those by M. R. James and Vernon Lee – try “An Incident in Cathedral History” and “Amor Dure”. I am also a devotee of R. W. Chamber’s The King in Yellow tale cycle – the original, that is. Accept no substitute!
For readers who are new to your fiction, which of your books would be a good start?
I have released two poetry collections through the specialist publisher Prea Press as paperback and hardbacks. By the time you are reading this, both should also be available as ebooks through mine and the publisher’s websites, including all the illustrations (yes, I draw and paint as well as writing and hosting ghost tours). The Land of Bad Dreams is very much a tour of my subconscious, including dark faerie tales and a set of outrageously Gothic fables. The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities is the result of my lengthy obsession with the Danse Macabre of medieval Europe and includes a contemporary version and well as a historical essay.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this really interesting insight into Kayla Lee Ward and her work. Don’t forget to buy a copy of Among the Headstones which is on special offer until the end of January 2022!
You’re a ghost tour guide? Wow, I’m intrigued. If I lived nearer you, I’d want to join one of your tours. Alas, I live in Eastern Europe which is too distant. 🙂
What a great interview, especially the comments about the ghost tours. I think I remember the Rocks Ghost Tour, and laughing when the cold air touched my skin and tickled my legs. Looking forward to reading the stories.
What a remarkable interview and an amazing person! I guess it is true that people who live on the fringes of what is considered “normal” and experience life differently do have some of the best stories to tell.
I am now exited (and slightly frightened) to get into this anthology book.
Thank you for the intriguing interview and the great recommendations! I am always delighted to discover new titles and new authors of my favourite genre. Looking forward to more interviews and more creepy stories.
How interesting about Ward’s experience at the historic dungeon. I do believe there are spirit energies, intelligent or not, that stick around in places. Great interview, and I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s story in Among the Headstones!
I imagine that the energies in dungeons are fairly similar to those in cellars etc. The energy becomes damp (usually) and sluggish, and forms chthonic entities. Horrible things. *shivers*
I agree about the energy in cellars, and rooms that are shut away. What I find interesting is that I have never experienced anything similar in caves.
Great interview. For those of you who aren’t Australian, you may not have heard of Kyla before, but she is a respected reference within the Gothic fiction community over here. 🙂 I’m looking forward to reading her (and everyone’s) tale.
I’ve been an oubliette before too thanks to a school trip. It was as if the walls were
crying and there were also torture instruments hung up. A terrifying experience for
me but encourages the empathy with those broken souls…
I am enamored at how in response to every question, Kayla tells a story.
I am curious Kayla, how did you become so fluent in storytelling?
To be honest, I can’t recall a time when I didn’t tell stories. Fluency is another matter – that takes practice. I do believe that stories and story-telling are hardwired into our brains, in some sense, as a way of organising and preserving information – just a step away from rhyme!
I have always been intrigued by ghost tours. We have one in a haunted hospital in the town I live in and have always been interested in how the people in those hospitals felt before they passed away. The graveyard is right next to the hospital.
I love how you describe the sounds and atmosphere surrounding the graveyard!
Wow, I have never experienced a ghost tour, but reading your experiences made me want to go into one! Great interview! I love that you write and draw and direct most of your works. I admire your versatility, and you also look good in your outfit! There’s a lot of exciting titles you’ve mentioned. I will check them out and the stories in the Among the Headstones anthology!
Oh, thank you!
As soon as you mentioned the Rocks Ghost Tours, I was hooked. I’ve been on similar tours a few times (although they were smaller and mostly involved dungeons), and it feels thrilling every single time! You must be getting plenty of inspiration for your stories at work – and it sounds like you have a talent for turning daily life into a journey for your readers. Even your responses sound like tales I would gladly listen to again and again, so let me join the ones waiting for the anthology and your story in it.
Thank you for the recommendations. I look forward to reading…
You obviously have collected a lot of exciting stories, and the ghost tours seem to supply a big resource for those. Now I want to take part in one of them too.
Amazing interview. I definitely want to go on a vacation and take a tour! It sounds creepy and exciting!
“But horror is also very much about short fiction”, can you explain the phrase, I mean, wouldn’t it be better for readers to have a chance to know the characters better, so they would emphasize more?
An interesting question! In my opinion, short stories and novels are two very different beasts. Novels take you on a journey (generally of three parts) through a complex of ideas and settings, with characters you come to know over the course of that journey. Short stories convey a single idea or atmosphere, concentrating on a single character. Now, while horrific ideas and atmospheres can be built very effectively over the course of a novel, the one-two punch of the short can be brilliantly effective. In addition to those I mentioned above, consider Joe Lansdale’s “In The Cold, Dark Time” or Angela Slatter’s “The Coffin Maker’s Daughter”.
Reading your response, I can’t stop thinking about my favorite novels in the horror genre (mostly, those by Stephen King). They, indeed, scare me in an entirely different way compared to short stories. I see that you’ve written a novel before, was the process different? Did you enjoy it?
Also, I really wonder if you’re still in touch with the people you’ve met in Newtown, are they still following the cult, I wonder how many people hold on to that lifestyle?
Oh, there are still Goths in Sydney and yes, I am still in contact with some of them. We’ve all been hunkered down, utilising our appreciation of life’s grim ironies and love of the arts to weather the pandemic. Though I have attended at least one virtual dance club.