Meet the Maniac II
Enter the crafty mind of Patricia
Quick, gather round! We all convene on this Macabre Monday to meet another maniac!
We’ll jump right into the interview, but quickly a few things while I have your attention!
I have a little zombie-bite sized piece of news regarding the Wicked Writing Contest. The deadline has been extended from November 20th to November 23rd. I know it may not seem like much, but 3 extra days for writers to polish their work can go a long way! Especially after so much distraction from…The Suff.
Speaking of our favorite new urban legend, we figured that it needed a place to stay so that it wasn’t lost to the void and forgotten. Good idea? probably not, but good ideas are lame. The bad ones are much more exciting!
A dedicated Suff page has been created so that the entirety of the lore and its multiple timelines can be preserved. Each story has been featured in chronological order (to the best of our ability) with a link back to the author’s original content. Go check it out here, or find it on the navigation bar for Macabre Monday! An anthology is in talks with the MM team, but more on that in the future.
A new conversation has been opened about community focused projects after all the craziness that ensued with The Suff. Many people saw engagement on their publications like they had never seen before, so there is definitely a unique opportunity here. One that will not only be fun, but one that encourages participation for the benefit that it brings to your newsletter and your work.
Remember, next week The Cemetery returns to capture all the lost souls wandering around Substack. There is no better time to promote your work and your publication, so make sure you have prepared what you want to share!
Now that all the news is taken care of, we can move on to what you are all here for! This week we feature
, the author of Twisting the Myths, interviewed by . Enjoy!
Last week, I sat down with the lovely @Patricia, J.L., Michigan native, crafter, and author of “Twisting the Myths” and “On Guard Duty” on Substack.
We talked about where she got started on her writing journey, horror, and the why behind her work.
How did you begin your writing journey?
Writing honestly wasn’t on my radar for the majority of my life. I was an art and band nerd in high school. In college, I majored in art. The English class I took, I got D’s in so I thought I couldn’t write.
One day, I was sitting around and thought, “I’m bored!”. So, I thought I always daydreamed and figured, I’m going to write down whatever I’m daydreaming about and it kind of took off from that.
You’ve always been a creative person?
Oh, yeah. My grandmas on both sides were crafters, my grandpa was a painter. I had no choice but to be creative!
What’s your main genre? Is it horror?
It’s more fantasy. I’m actually a giant wuss. I can read horror books, but I can’t watch movies! It gives me nightmares. I dabble in whatever my inspiration brings my way. If it’s speculative fiction, I’ll write it. If it’s sci-fi, I’ll write it. [...] I’ll dabble in horror with shorter stuff, like 100 or 200 word stories. They’re really fun to write because you can take a totally mundane thing and then at the very end, you do a complete 180 and it turns the mundane into something utterly horrifying. I like writing really short horror fiction where you gut-punch someone in the end. It’s so much fun.
Where do your ideas come from? What book influenced you?
With my vampire book, Being Human, it came from another book: Thirsty by M.T. Anderson. It was during the Twilight craze, although this one [Thirsty] wasn’t about an emo, moody vampire. This one was more about a nerdy kid ends up being the vampire, but not quite the hero. The ending wasn’t a happily-ever-after. When I got to the end, I just kept thinking, “well, what happens next?”, “what if this happens?”. Then it kind of evolved into my own story.
A link to Patricia’s book! → Being Human
What genre do you read more than write?
Probably serial-killer true crime.
A lot of material to work with for Macabre Monday, then! Have you written a short story about one yet?
Kind of! I wrote three connecting 200-word stories. [...] But I guess one could argue that vampires are the ultimate serial killer.
What books did you read as a child?
Ooh, when I was a teenager, I was big into the Fear Street books and Goosebumps. I read any of those and anything with vampires, of course!
How did you end up on Substack?
I think someone on Twitter probably introduced it to me. I was using Mailchimp originally, [...] but it wasn’t fun and I knew I wanted to do something different. Then, Substack came on my radar. I really like ghosts and cryptids and got the idea to start talking about that. I’m in Michigan, so I thought I should talk about cryptids from Michigan.
Where did the idea of ‘Twisting Myths’ come from?
I was trying to come up with an author tagline. [...] The advice was to go through your reviews and see what people say. So I did and I kept seeing ‘original’, ‘unique’, ‘not like other vampires’, and stuff like that. So I was like okay, so I kind of turn things on their heads. That’s something I like to do with my writing with the what if: if the monster is traditionally this way, what if I do it that way? I took the myths and flipped them on their heads!
What’s your why?
Yeah, my why is definitely asking ‘what if’. What if this happens or what if that happens? Most of my story ideas begin from ‘what if’.
Instead of checking boxes for your work, do you follow your ‘what if’?
Yeah, definitely. It’s definitely just about having a good time and basically escaping the stress of the real world. Like, hey, you need a break from your daily life, here’s a book. [...] I’ve had people telling me that they see messages in my writing. In being human, a reviewer found a message of “love not hate” but I didn’t realize I was even writing it. Any message you take from my work is completely unintentional.
Who are you reading on Substack?
@RadicalEdward. He does 100 word stories every day. I always try to give it a like and read when I see it. I’m always happy when I see his stuff and it always pops up on my feed thankfully. He’s given some really great prompts.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Next year I hope to release a collection of little 200-word stories. I have a sweet romance fantasy novella collection that I would like to get out there and publish. Then, I have a cursed mermaid series that I need to get to. Those are my book plans. Of course, I’ll keep plugging away on Substack!
What a great interview. Thank you to
for taking the time to have a conversation and share a little bit about yourself with everyone! Go check out her work at Twisting the Myths.
Meet the Maniac will back next month to feature another maniacal author from our community. Look out for a note from
towards the end of November to enter into the lottery where she chooses her next victim!Make sure to subscribe to Macabre Monday if you haven’t already so you receive all the greatest updates on the best horror community Substack has to offer!
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decided that he wanted to talk about horror movies that are around 100 years old! Have you seen any of them?That’s all I have for you this week! Check back in next Monday to participate in The Cemetery!
Join the discussion on notes here on the Substack platform every Monday!
Stay Spooky.
If you are looking for people to follow on notes for Macabre Monday other than the ones above, check out all the people participating: haunting the staircase Jenovia Honeygloom John Coon Shaina Read reinancruz Koshmarov Michael S. Atkinson PC3 Author Michele Bardsley L.C. Marino L.L. Ford Lloyd Miner A. B. Frank Cyndi Gacosta Laura Johnston Patricia J.L. 👻🧶🖊️ Jessica Maison Jennifer Morrow Stirling S Newberry Brian Schell Ross Jeffery Nicolina Torres Lauren Salas Stephen A. Davis Chaotic Trash Susan Earlam Jon T Daniel W. Davison Daniel O’Donnell Michael P. Marpaung Robert Walrod John Parce Buck Weiss Leigh Parrish Macey Cole Noble Olivia St. Lewis Newton Webb EJ Trask Joshua T Calkins-Treworgy Skyla Andrei Atanasov Anna C. Webster Lucas Mangum Carla Pettigrew Slow Burn Horror’s SubstackReddOscarWritesAlec WorleyJay Rothermel