AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Matthew R. Davis

In this interview, Australian author Matthew R. Davis talks about his latest collection, Bites Eyes: 13 Macabre Morsels, out February 28, 2023, from Brain Jar Press.

Why horror fiction?

As Stephen King once said, “Why do you assume I have a choice?” I just always seemed to slant that way, right from early childhood. My first-ever story was about decapitating giant chickens with a sword and by the age of ten the fictional version of me was time-travelling back to the 17th century to confront Elizabeth Bathory. My writing features elements of fantasy, comedy, SF, romance, lit-fic, slipstream and what have you, but the widest seam has always been horror.

What inspired you to put this collection together?

Well, I saw that Brain Jar Press was looking for chapbook collections, so it really was as simple as that! However, I had been keeping a running list of flash fiction, micro fiction, drabbles, poetry etc with an eye to compiling a bumper volume at some point, so I was already primed for this concept. There was a 10k cap, so I assembled twenty stories to suit and submitted the collection to BJP, who accepted it on the condition that they reduce it to thirteen stories in order to best fit their chapbook format.

What can people expect from this collection? What themes do you touch upon?

Oh, there’s all sorts. Unfortunate children, grieving ghosts, undefined entities – surprising pathos, sick jokes, existential horror – groanworthy punchlines, explicit sex and violence, excursions into the surreal… all in about eight thousand words! It’s interesting that children often pop up as leads in my very short fiction, since I don’t usually include them in my other work, and that their stories often include gleefully dark humour. I don’t have much interest in YA or middle-grade fiction apart from sentimental memories from my past, but based on this evidence, I could make a good fist of it.

A lot of your fiction is rooted in the traumas/vices people struggle with – where does this come from?

It’s interesting that you would note this, so it’s probably more obvious than I realised – but yes, my characters are often struggling through life in one way or another, dealing with past traumas and leaning on emotional crutches to cope. I think this strand is becoming more apparent in my recent fiction, though perhaps not so much in Bites Eyes. There is a personal angle to this, of course, although I think I’ve come through life relatively unscathed; the same cannot be said of many people dear to me, and I suspect I use my writing partly as a way to try and understand why horrible things happen, partly as a way to shine a light on the silent heroism of the survivors, and partly because we’re all bearing our own heavy crosses and pretending we don’t (sometimes out of some misguided attempt to avoid politics in fiction, as if that were remotely possible) is contemptibly ignorant. As awareness of people’s struggles grows, so does our artistic response to it, and if that doesn’t include empathy then that creator is probably just a fucking hack. As for the vices, well… many of my characters drink and smoke and toke, but that’s probably down to the same old saw: write what you know.

Naturally, you’d be proud of all the stories in the collection, but is there one that you feel defines the work, or your “voice” as a horror writer?

Not really, no, for the simple reason that flash fiction requires a different discipline to the more involved pieces I prefer to write. In short fiction, I like to stretch out into the novelette range so I can include lots of detail and colour and tell a well-rounded story; the pieces in Bites Eyes don’t have that luxury – they have to get in, make their point, and take a bow. It’s an important skill to harness as a writer and I would recommend all scribes take the time to master it, whether it’s in your usual wheelhouse or not. This discipline can help with longer works – my story “Visitation Rites”, which you accepted for Midnight Echo 17, would normally have grown out to be at least seven thousand words if I’d given myself free reign and would’ve featured a lot more lyrical content, but keeping it at five thousand meant having to be very selective. There was no room for digressions or detailed descriptions, and since I had to cut the comfortable first draft down by eight hundred words, the discipline acquired through writing drabbles helped me to ensure that every single word could justify its presence. Which is not to say that longer works use unjustified words and simply waffle on because they can, more that a novel needs less of its content to be, shall we say, load-bearing sentences, and can install entire chapters as feature walls if the urge takes one. Let me cap off that tortured metaphor by saying that my authorial voice is clearer in my longer works, whether they be novelettes like “Flights of Fractured Angels”, novellas like The Dark Matter of Natasha, or novels like Midnight in the Chapel of Love.

Photo by Red Wallflower Photography

Which authors, living or dead, inspire you?

So, so many! Seriously, there are hundreds and many of them are friends of mine, but let’s list a few and break them into those two categories, shall we? The living authors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Laird Barron, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Tamsyn Muir, Alan Moore, Kaaron Warren, Catriona Ward, Dennis Lehane, Neil Gaiman, Philip Fracassi, Kirstyn McDermott, and J. Ashley-Smith. As for dead authors: Richard Laymon, Dennis Etchison, H.P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, Tanith Lee, Shirley Jackson, Karl Edward Wagner, Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Terrance Dicks, Melanie Tem, Robert E. Howard, and William Burroughs.

What’s a recent work you read and enjoyed?

I can’t focus on just one, so please indulge me as I regale you with a list from the last couple of months: in anthologies, Alan Baxter’s Damnation Games and Ellen Datlow’s Screams from the Dark; in collections, The Ghost Sequences by A.C. Wise and Cut to Care by Aaron Dries; in non-fiction, A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts by Leanna Renee Hieber & Andrea Janes and Gothic: An Illustrated History by Roger Luckhurst; and in novels, 36 Streets by T.R. Napper and White Horse by Erika T. Wurth, not forgetting Zachary Ashford’s forthcoming Faustian death metal opus Polyphemus.

What’s in the pipeline for you?

I have a non-fiction book about The Cure coming out this year, or whenever they finally release that bloody new record! I also have stories in the forthcoming anthologies Where the Weird Things Are Vol. 2 (Deadset Press) and Unknown Superheroes vs. the Forces of Darkness (Ghastly Door Press), plus an essay on Mary Shelley in Claire Fitzpatrick’s A Vindication of Monsters (IFWG Publications) – as you’re no doubt aware, Greg! And as usual, I have a ream of short stories, novellas, collections, and such out on submission that will hopefully soon bear rich fruit. I also have approximately eighty ideas clamouring to be written all at once, including a new novel, and other potential projects to sort out.

On a slightly different note, I’ve set myself the goal of writing a new piece of flash fiction every day in February, which is going quite well – the tales are unrelated but stitched together into a kind of mosaic, in the vein of Harlan Ellison’s “From A to Z, in the Chocolate Alphabet” but with days instead of letters. I don’t know what I’ll do with an unwieldy beast like this, but I’m open to suggestions.

Where can people buy a copy of Bites Eyes?

You can buy it direct from the Brain Jar Press shop (www.brainjarpress.com/product/bites-eyes/), which also contains a number of links to other sites where you can order the book.

Links to your website and socials?

I don’t get into this as much as some people do, or as I perhaps should, because I don’t have the time or inclination to fawn for attention and so will probably languish forever in obscurity as a result – but I have a blog at www.matthewrdavisfiction.wordpress.com and you can find me on Facebook.

REVIEW: Flight or Fright, Edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent

***Review first published at New York Journal of Books***

If you’ve ever flown, then you’ll know the fear that can sometimes come with the experience; the unexpected turbulence, unforeseen weather events, the vertigo, the constant possibility that something might go wrong and send the plane plummeting to the ground.

This “fear” is exactly what editors Stephen King and Bev Vincent explore in their anthology, Flight or Fright, and the authors push every conceivable notion of aeronautical terror to their limit. In his introduction to the anthology King himself admits to not being a fan of flying, and presents one of his own experiences to set up the tone for the fiction that follows.

Flight or Fright offers up an interesting mix of classic and new stories with the majority consisting of reprints and two new stories, one by King and the other by his son, Joe Hill.

As a whole, the anthology presents a wide array of scares, ramping up the latent fears air travel can present; the claustrophobia, the sounds the plane’s mechanics makes, the sheer powerlessness that passengers feel when something does go wrong. There are tales of paranoia (Richard Matheson’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”), cosmic terror (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Horror of the Heights”), time travel (E.C. Tubb’s “Lucifer!”), and even a locked room murder in an airplane lavatory (Peter Tremayne’s “Murder in the Air”).

There are several real standouts, including the opening story, E. Michael Lewis’ “Cargo.” The tale offers a nightmarish insight into the aftermath of the Jonestown Massacre from inside the cargo hold of a C-141 troop carrier. The blend of history with the supernatural makes it one of the most memorable stories.

Other memorable entries include “Diablitos” by Cody Goodfellow; the author mixes native Columbian mythology with airborne disease and spins a nasty little apocalyptic tale that will definitely leave a bad taste in the mouth. The

one story that manages to not only be entertaining, but poignant, is Joe Hill’s “You Are Released.” This passenger-hopping tale about an airliner hurtling through the outbreak of World War III is pure nightmare fuel. It’s a vivid exploration of real people, flaws and all, as they contemplate catastrophe.

King’s story, “The Turbulence Expert” proposes that there are special people tasked to help planes survive the phenomenon of “clear air turbulence” using their fear alone. Like many of King’s short stories, it leaves you guessing—and wanting more. The volume ends with a long poem by James Dickey, called “Falling.” Supposedly inspired by the real-life account of a stewardess falling out of a plane, Dickey paints a beautifully haunting picture of what would no doubt be a horrifying demise.

One observation that some readers may find curious is that there are no stories by female authors in the anthology. This certainly isn’t a deal-breaker, but it would have been interesting to have had some tales from a female perspective to add some additional diversity. Having said that, it’s possible that there may have been few stories of this nature written by women for the editors to select from?

According to Bev Vincent’s Afterword, the idea for Fright or Flight was apparently conceived by King on a whim, but it’s clear that each story has been carefully selected. The pair have scoured the globe and found some of the most intriguing tales of high-flying horror, mystery and adventure. Here’s hoping King and Vincent decide to compile a second volume with some fresh content. With such a terrifying theme, the sky’s the limit.

https://www.cemeterydance.com/flight-or-fright.html

REVIEW: Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

***Review first published at the New York Journal of Books***

“Baby Teeth is a very satisfying read. More psychological thriller than horror, it’s a finely crafted exploration of the breakdown of the family unit . . .”

Zoje Stage’s debut novel Baby Teeth is a deliciously creepy tale that pushes the boundaries of the dysfunctional family into very dark territory.

Set in Pittsburg, PA, the plot revolves around young mother Suzette Jensen, her husband Alex and their mute seven-year-old daughter, Hanna. Hanna’s mutism is a cause of great concern to her mother, who sees it as a sign of her bad parenting, but in reality, it’s a sign of something much darker.

As the very tightly woven tale moves along, jumping between the heads of Suzette and Hanna, Stage’s skill comes to the fore. The author forces you to feel sympathy for Suzette one moment and then judge her the next. With Hanna, you wonder at first if she is just an attention-seeking brat—until the bad things start happening.

There’s a definite creep-factor to Hanna; the girl’s malevolent mind-games becoming increasingly more sophisticated. As a reader, you are constantly second-guessing yourself. Is she acting out, or is she truly evil? There are many parallels in the tale to other novels like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, and occasionally it feels like familiar territory, but what sets Baby Teeth apart is that it goes much deeper into the trials of being a parent and childhood mental illness.

The author’s portrayal of Suzette, this fragile, Crohn’s Disease-afflicted, helpless mother, is very precise. Hanna meanwhile, with her Machiavellian schemes, is almost too clever for her own good, but you can’t help but keep turning the pages to see what she does to her mother next.

Stage pits all three in the Jensen family against each other, and it’s intricately detailed with emotion. Although it does seem to take a long time for the father, Alex to come to his senses and see that something is seriously wrong with his daughter, he acts as an anchor point for the reader, the center-point in the see-saw of doubt.

The supernatural elements are minor, with Stage introducing witches and hints of Walpurgis Night into the mix, but still these are intended to keep the reader wondering what is truly going on with Hanna.

The psychological aspects of the story are well-crafted with Stage confirming the reader’s pre-conceptions, lulling us into a false sense of security. Seeds of doubt are the strongest aspects of the author’s plotting. Her prose is also succinct, and delightfully flecked with some truly creepy aspects of Hanna’s persona:

“While it was very easy to think of ways to harm her, it was very hard—even with Marie-Anne’s help—to think of things that wouldn’t immediately give her away. Mommy would see if she pushed her down the stairs, but Hanna didn’t think the fall would do much more than annoy her. She could stab her in the heart while she slept and then carefully wipe her fingerprints off the knife . . .”

As the novel reaches its crescendo, Stage offers a glimmer of hope, with some tender moments between mother, daughter, and father. The reader can’t help but feel pity and sorrow for Hanna when a tough decision looks to split the family up for good. But this is Stage getting to the heart of the story, ramming home just how tragic family dysfunction can be and the costs it can bring to bear. Is the hope real? The ending, although true to Hanna’s devious character, leaves the prospect of up to the reader.

All in all, Baby Teeth is a very satisfying read. More psychological thriller than horror, it’s a finely crafted exploration of the breakdown of the family unit which not only pulls at the heart-strings but threatens to sever them. I look forward to seeing what dark delights Stage conjures up next.

Buy Baby Teeth here - https://www.amazon.com/Baby-Teeth-Novel-Zoje-Stage/dp/1250170753/

Review: Entertaining Demons by Daniel I. Russell

Daniel I Russell’s latest novel, Entertaining Demons is a perfect blend of brutal horror and delicious satire.

At first glance, it appears to be a novel aimed at teens, with the central character, a girl named Molly, the star of a paranormal television show, but in actual fact, it’s far from it.

Instead, we’re given a glimpse into demonology, but also the evil that is society’s addiction to entertainment. Molly is a reality TV sensation, with her very own film crew filming her every move, just hoping for some sort of paranormal experience.

Without giving too much of the plot away very dangerous paranormal activity starts happening and it soon becomes apparent that something demonic wants Molly’s soul (nothing new here in other books similar to the genre), but things take a very “entertaining” turn when Russell introduces us to just a few of the demons whose sole job, is to damn mankind.

Damnation is, in a word, big business and two particular demons don’t like the idea of a television show exposing their secrets to the world. When this pair step in things get very, very nasty and there is bloodshed and torture aplenty, which is one of the things I love about Russell’s style. There are quite a few flashes of brilliant writing, particularly whenever the demons unmask. You can’t help but feel a chill.

Having said that, the mystery Russell weaves around Molly, her mother and her grandfather are also treated with the same attention to detail. You’re constantly left wondering who she really is and why a demon would want her so badly. There’s clearly something wrong with her mother beyond mental illness and her grandfather seems to be constantly on edge.

Russell also takes the concept of television having a hold over society and being “the root of all evil” literally with great results, but in the end, it is Molly’s story of survival in the midst of diabolical odds that really won me over and the ending is definitely one I never saw coming.

All in all, Entertaining Demons is a very enjoyable escape into darkness. You can pre-order it now through Amazon or via the publisher, Apex Publications.

Four stars.

REVIEW: The Halloween Children by Brian Freeman and Norman Prentiss

Who doesn't love a good Halloween story?

Although Halloween is still some months away, there's no excuse not to get yourself in the mood with a good Halloween tale.

Which is exactly what authors Brian James Freeman and Norman Prentiss have delivered with The Halloween Children - a solid, creepy, tale of horror and paranoia, in the vein of Stephen King's The Shining.

Without giving too much of the plot away, the story focuses on Harris and Lynn and their two children, who live in a community housing estate. The strained relationship between Harris, the estate's caretaker, his wife provides the mechanics for the story, with each chapter bouncing between the two, revealing small details about an apparent tragedy in the estate - and their mistrust of each other.

This is where the comparisons to The Shining can be made, but to the authors' credit, they keep the mystery at the forefront, skillfully pulling the reader along as we are left wondering which character is telling the truth.

As Halloween draws closer in the story, Freeman and Prentiss ramp up the tension and paranoia, building to a dark and open-ended, but still very satisfying climax. The mystery of the story is its greatest asset, as well as its atmosphere of dread.

Overall, this is a really good Halloween story, perfect not just for the evening of October 31, but any night of the year.

I give it 4/5 stars.

The Halloween Children is available for pre-order from Penguin/Random House via this LINK