Interview with Angeline Trevena

Okay, so I've been a very bad blogger, but I have a good excuse! (Kind of.) My computer is broken. Seriously broken. There are pictures at the end of the post. (I put them at the end instead of here because I didn't want that to be the pic to show up in Blogger instead of this awesome cover!)

I'm back today because Fear: Volume Two is released today! Yay! And it has a short story in it by Angeline Trevena.

Angeline Trevena is one awesome writer, artist, and blogger and I am thrilled to have her on my blog today. She has an amazing short story coming out in an anthology from Crooked Cat Publishing called Fear. Her story is called Charmpeak House. It's about a couple that inherits an old house, and gets more than they expected. (Ps. It's really totally awesome.)



What do you enjoy about reading/writing horror?
I've always been a big horror movie fan for as long as I can remember, but I only really got into reading and writing horror in the last few years - in fact, I only read my first Stephen King novel two years ago! The whole idea of human fear fascinates me; how some people are terrified by certain things that don't bother other people at all. I love seeing how other writers play with people's fears, and I've really enjoyed playing with them myself. Horror is a genre that pulls on so many emotions, plus it's great fun to write!

Do you ever scare yourself?
Yes - I guess that's the inevitable byproduct of having such a vivid imagination! When I was writing Charmpeak House I found myself turning all the lights on in my house!

Do you have to get into the mood to write scary things like this? (I'm picturing you in front of a glowing computer in the dark of night, rubbing your hands together and laughing an evil laugh.) ;)
Actually some of Charmpeak house was written during a thunderstorm! Like with whatever I'm writing, I only need to read back a little to get back into it. But I think it's more about getting into the characters again rather than getting in the mood for any particular genre. Plus, I think I'm sort of always in the mood for something scary!

I know you are a cat lover and cats definitely make an appearance in this story. Do cats often have candids in your writing?
Cats are always turning up in my writing. I find cats fascinating creatures and they have such great personalities. Plus, they can be pretty creepy animals so they lend themselves to horror well. I often find my cat, Neko, staring at me and I can't help but wonder what she's plotting!

Because I think writers are always curious about this, where did you hear about the call for submissions for this anthology?
Actually I think someone else in my writing group stumbled across this one. But I do hear about a lot of calls for submissions on Twitter, and also on other writers' blogs that I follow. I've always got one ear to the ground!

You have quite a few short stories published, how is writing short stories different from writing novels? What do you enjoy about writing short stories?
Again, short stories are quite a new thing for me. Through writing them I've learned about all the differences between short stories and novels - they have to be very plot driven, very focused and rely heavily on your reader filling in the gaps. They need to be clear and concise because you simply don't have the spare words to describe or explain things in detail. Telling a story in a few thousand words is a challenge, and it's a challenge I've really grown to love.

Where did the inspiration for this story come from?
I'd actually spent the best part of a month writing a totally different story for this submission, but it totally stalled and it wasn't going anywhere. So in the last week before the deadline I decided to start over. I'm currently reading Bram Stoker's Dracula and decided to move away from the fantasy horror I had been working on and go with a classic Gothic horror instead. You can't beat a big scary mansion full of creepy cats!

The link to buy the book is here.

I know I'm excited to read the rest of the stories in it.

(Oh, and here is my computer. Because of those loose & unattached wires the Internet only works about 35% of the time.)