One of the more accomplished up-and-coming authors in the scene, Crystal Connor has emerged as one of the top names in the industry on the basis of several impressive collections as well as a series of her own works. Now, in honor of both Women in Horror Month and Black History Month, I talk with her about her inspiration to get into the industry, her writing process and her own collection of writings.
Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. First off, when did you get into horror in general?
Crystal Connor: Oh my Gosh, thank you so much for having me, I was so super excited when you reached out. You know that’s such a good question and one I get asked often. The thing is, horror has been my preferred method of entertainment for as long as I can remember that I cannot pick a TV show, book, or movie that was my aha I love horror moment.
When Halloween came around I always wanted to be the wicked witch or the evil queen, I was telling creepy, campy, scary stories in the dark way before Alvin Schwartz gave us those books. My love of horror, it seems, started before a time that I can remember.
Me: Were you into genre films growing up? What films specifically got you into watching horror movies?
CC: Again, kinda like what we were just talking about, there isn’t one movie that I can point to that flipped my horror switch, lol. I can remember watching Alfred Hitchcock movies along with Dark Shadows, The Outer Limits, and The Twilight Zone with my mom before my brother was born. We were the first family in my neighborhood to have HBO, and all of our friends were allowed to come over and watch horror movies with us. My mom charged $0.50 for popcorn and $.25 for a soda, and another quarter for candy. We had about 100,000 kids at our house every Friday until we got old enough to catch the bus to the mall to go to the movies.
Me: Who were some of your favorite writers growing up? Do you try to take influences from their style with your own voice in your work?
CC: Even though I was consuming horror through shows, movies, and Halloween and making up scary stories of my own I was a pretty late bloomer as far as reading was concerned. My mom was really worried about it because I come from a family of avid readers. It was my best friend, while in the 7th grade, who sparked my love for reading when she gave me her copy of Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.
Reading horror, allowing my imagination to run rampant provided a whole new way to experience horror. The next author I became addicted to was Dean R. Koontz and after him, it was Robin Cook. For years, those were the authors that occupied my literary time. I didn’t even start reading Poe, Bradbury or the Gothic horror classics like The Turn of the Screw, The Castle of Otranto until I was way out of high school.
Even though this is the scenic route in answering your question, because I was so heavily exposed to King, Koontz, and Cook and not having any type of training when it comes to writing, the answer is yes, except I didn’t try to take my cues from them because they are the ones who taught me how to write.
If I got stuck writing a scene that was full of dread or sustained stress I would go read a book from Stephen King to see how he did it, then I did the same thing. When I needed the suggestion of the paranormal I went back and studied Koontz, when I was trying to figure out how to explain the science without creating academic material for those attending M.I.T. I copied Cook and that’s probably why when the reviews for my debut novel The Darkness, the 1st book in The Spectrum Trilogy, compared my writing style with those of Koontz and King. The reason I read the tale of Dorian Grey was because a critic said, “The Darkness is a modern-day sci-fi, fantasy, and horror version of Frankenstein where the villain Artemisia, brings to life the female characteristics of Dorian Grey.”
Me: What was the starting point to become a writer? Were you always into writing growing up?
CC: No, I didn’t think I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Not at all, lol. I always told and wrote stories as a hobby, a way to entertain my family and friends. They always told me I was a good writer but that’s what they are supposed to say, lol.
What changed things was when I was working in a shipyard in Seattle, some of the guys knew I wrote and suggested that I go talk to the welding instructor because he was a writer too. A few days later he came up to me and asked if he could see some of my writing, so the next day I brought him one of my short stories. He took it home and let his wife read it when he was done.
The next day when he came in he was quite furious with me, demanding to know what I was doing there. I was so confused. He went on to tell me that I should quick my job and take my writing more seriously. He also said that I was a lazy writer because the story I had given him wasn’t a short.
I was pissed at being talked to that way and I was in a bad mood until I really thought about what had just happened. He didn’t know me from Adam and wasn’t invested in me in any kind of way. He was the 1st person outside of my circle of family and friends who told me I was a good writer. And he didn’t tell me to keep my day job, he told me to quit it. I later found out that he was an award-winning author and had won a substantial amount of prize money over the years and that his wife was an editor.
About a month later I hired an editor, and a year after that my 1st book was published. And he was right, I was being lazy because the story he told me wasn’t a short was The Darkness, which expanded to be the 1st book in a 258,840-word trilogy.
Me: What is your writing process? How do you stay focused on writing?
CC: My writing process resembles the ramblings of a stark raving mad lunatic, lol. It isn’t linear, I write everything out by hand 1st and oftentimes a single chapter will be spread throughout several spiral notebooks.
I don’t mean to do this but when I start on a new project I usually start in the middle then feather my way back to the beginning. Another thing I do is when I am about 5 or 6 chapters in I write the ending so that I can know where I’m going. I don’t use an outline, I just start writing and if the story goes in a direction that I didn’t plan on I just follow it. There comes a point in the writing process where the characters start to tell their own stories and I’m just hanging on for the ride. It’s my favorite part because I never know where the story will end up.
Me: Having contributed to various anthologies early in your career, what tools and skills do you acquire working on those that transferred to future projects?
CC: When I was writing for a hobby, all of the stories I wrote were short so writing for anthologies was a breeze. The tools and skills that I needed to acquire were for expanding The Darkness into a full-length novel. Writing a short story has its own unique challenges and they are a bit different from writing a novel, and one of the biggest ones for both is pacing.
Luckily for me, I have the natural ability to tell a really good short story so there wasn’t anything I had to do differently to prepare to submit to an anthology so I was just submitting stories and receiving rejection letters like everybody else, but then, as things moved along I was invited to write for publications and that’s been hella cool.
Me: What is the general process for getting involved in these projects?
CC: If I am submitting to an open call I make sure to read the submission guidelines at least twice and then I’ll read a few stories that they have published to make sure what I am submitting fits what the editors and readership is looking for.
If I’ve been invited to write for a publication or podcast I make sure to stay within the guidelines and word count as well.
Either way, it’s always super fun and stressful to write for an anthology!
Me: How did you settle on the plot for your series The Spectrum Trilogy?
CC: I didn’t, lol. Like I was explaining before I don’t use an outline, I just start writing and follow the story wherever it goes. I didn’t set out to write a trilogy, when I was almost done with writing The Darkness another concept emerged so I wrote it down, and while doing so I realized that it was the Artificial Light was a continuation of The Darkness.
I started working on Artificial Light the story got so big that it bled into a 3rd book, In The Valley of Shadows.
Me: Was there any special significance to making Artemisia versed in alchemy?
CC: That she was an alchemist came later in her development. When I write I just open myself up to the creativity, when I was working on Artemisia her obsession with jewelry, gold jewelry in particular, and because she prefers to wear big, showy, expensive pieces it made sense to me that she would be a jeweler. But she is also a scientist, that with coupled with her obsession with gold alchemy is a study that would have undoubtedly attracted her attention and the mysticism associated with alchemy is the perfect counterbalance to the occultism mastered by her arch-enemy Inanna.
Me: Once it was finally written, what was the process to having it published?
CC: The first book, The Darkness was traditionally published because I wanted more creative control over how I wanted my stories and cover art to be presented I transitioned from traditionally published to self-published. It was a really good decision for me, and because I already had a growing fan base and a budding social media platform the process of becoming a self-published author was almost seamless.
Me: Also being responsible for the children’s horror book My First Nightmare, where did the inspiration to move into that genre come from?
CC: Well, I didn’t change genres it still horror but for a younger audience. I wasn’t thinking about writing for children at all. The inspiration actually came from my fans who around 2016 started asking me to write a children’s book. I was absolutely opposed to this idea because my writing is pretty dark. But as time went on the request became more frequent until I had no other choice but to really think about it.
This was different than the usual way in which I write because it was for children and the idea I settled on was to introduce children to the horror genre using folklore, mythology, and monsters from all around the world and I did this using the alphabet.
It took two years of research because I wanted to showcase folklore, mythology, and monsters that we, here in the West, are unfamiliar with.
With each letter of the alphabet, I created a story of old-world monsters crossing paths with children and teens in new world settings. Each story takes place in the country where the creatures are from and the entire story is narrated by Rodney and his little brother Tashaun who hail from a prestigious family of monster hunters.
Me: How did moving from adult-oriented storytelling to kid-friendly work challenge your writing skills?
CC: It pushed me beyond anything I had ever done before. The first reason was that I was using actual folklore, mythology, and monsters from other people’s cultures and reimaging them so I was terrified of writing something wrong or being culturally insensitive, or worse irresponsible about the stories that inspired me.
To be as careful as I could I reached out to people living in the countries I was writing about and asked if they would read them over to see if I had gotten anything wrong, luckily I didn’t have anything to worry about. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive so I knew that I was on the right track.
The 2nd thing that was super challenging was toning these stories down for a younger readership. I wanted to keep these stories as close to the original telling as possible and the problem with that was because these are monsters they, are the stories about them, tend to dwell in the dark. Even though I tried to stay in the relative safety of grey some of these stories demanded to be dark and there was nothing that the young narrators and whimsical, colorful drawings could do to soften the blow, and because I was making it harder on myself by fighting it, eventual I just wrote the story that wanted to be told.
I was almost giddy when the feedback from my young beta readers and their parents started rolling in. It was such a fun project to work on.
Me: What are some of the more unique or memorable experiences you’re writing career has afforded you?
CC: My favorite thing to do is traveling across the country to attend the cons. I love meeting fans and critics in person. I love meeting the writers and actors who entertained me while I was growing up. I love speaking on panels, the after-parties and all the selfies and pictures with fans and writer friends. Attending cons makes me feel like a literary rock star! But the coolest thing I’ve done so far is being invited to teach workshops for Clarion West.
Me: When you’re not writing, what do you do to flex your creative outlet?
CC: I review horror movies for Horroraddicts.net and for my Youtube channel. It’s called Live-Action Reviews! by Crystal Connor where the 1st part of the review are cut scenes of me screaming at the people to not go into the basement, lol
Me: What else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers?
CC: I have two projects that I am working on right now. One is a ya novel that tells a story about a dog who had to join forces with an enemy monster to save his 12-year-old human, a girl he promised to protect. I don’t have a working title for that one yet, but it’s a blast to work on.
The other is called The Family, a science fiction/horror/conspiracy novel for adult readers.
Me: Lastly, being that this is Women in Horror Month, what special message do you have for any women out there looking to join in the industry in any capacity as you are one yourself?
CC: Yes! My message would be to be unapologetically confident in the art that you are creating. Move forward knowing that not everyone is going to fawn over your paintings, or understand the message of your story … and that’s perfectly ok. Nothing is wrong with what you’re doing and this is why it’s so very important to find your target audience.
Last but not least, be kind to yourself and give yourself the time it takes for you to become established. It’s a lot of work, really hard work and sometimes you’ll be discouraged, so take a break if you need to and think long and hard before you quit.
Me: Thank you again for your time!
CC: Thank you so much for having me, this was a lot of fun.
To follow her work online:
This interview ran as part of our Women in Horror Month celebrations. Click the banner below to check out all of our reviews and interviews about the occasion:
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