Interview - C.L. Kelley

An upcoming name in the industry, author C.L. Kelley is starting her career with her debut novel Corpus about to be released through Crytal Lake Publishing following up her earlier collection Uncanny Tales several years ago. Now, in honor of its upcoming release, I talk with her about her early interest in writing, creating the story in Corpus, and her upcoming plans.

Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. First off, when did you get into horror in general?

C.L. Kelley: It seems like I've always been into horror. As a child, I loved reading about mythological monsters and drawing them. When I was barely into double digits, I was watching horror movies, reading Stephen King, and picking up back issues of Fangoria. So it's always been a special interest of mine. I'm not sure what got me so much into it. I was a very fearful and anxious child, plagued by intense night terrors and always worried about things like my mother dying in a car crash on the way home from work. Developing an obsession with horror, drawing it, and soon after writing it, gave me a way to have some modicum of control over the things that scared me. It partially worked, but medication works better.

Me: Were you into genre films growing up? What films specifically got you into watching horror movies?

C.L.K: I was watching things I shouldn't have been watching at much too young of an age. The first horror movie I remember seeing was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2. I must have been 5 or 6. I sneaked out of my room at night and hid behind the couch as my family watched it, oblivious to my presence. For years I vividly remembered that opening scene, with the chainsaw cutting up the car using a mummified corpse as a puppet, Oingo Boingo blasting over the soundtrack. I watched all the major scary movie villain franchises, but the one that first truly freaked me out was Hellraiser. That was a movie that felt truly transgressive and forbidden. When I was a little older, I watched Profondo Rosso and then soon after Suspiria, and oh man, was I gone after watching those. I felt like the essence of a nightmare had been yanked out of dreaming and put on screen.

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?

C.L.K: When I was young, I went through my Lovecraft phase, and of course Stephen King was ubiquitous. I was always grabbing whatever lurid cover intrigued me at flea markets and second hand book shops. That was where I first discovered Ramsey Campbell, by way of his anthology Cold Print. From there I made my way to his wider fiction, and his work was a complete revelation to me. His stories are so strange and otherworldly, the menace in them bizarre and most of the time unexplained. That was the impact I strove for in my own stories, though stylistically, I'm a bit more blunt. As I got older, major writers that impacted me were Thomas Ligotti, Dennis Etchison, M.R. James, Harlan Ellison, and Manly Wade Wellman. They've all contributed bits and pieces to my writing style. I also read a lot of horror comics, especially Tales from the Crypt and Hellblazer and Swamp Thing.

Me: What was the starting point of becoming a writer? Were you always into writing growing up?

C.L.K: I was into drawing first, being a big fan of things like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and I consumed a lot of books with titles like How to Draw 100 Gooey Gross Monsters. But pretty soon, my vision outstripped my talent, and I began to develop my writing more. I started out by writing these one-page “gotcha” type stories. By the time I was in middle school, I had been gifted an electric typewriter, and I remember spending an entire summer writing an atrocious novel out on tracing paper about someone disappearing into a haunted painting. But hey we all have to start somewhere. Since that time, I was always working on some writing project or another, even if the progress, as adult responsibilities grew, was very slow.

Me: What is your writing process? How do you stay focused on writing?

C.L.K: For many years I didn't have many opportunities to sit down at a computer and have proper “writing sessions,” so I always carried a notebook with me and wrote whenever I had a quiet moment to myself. All my first drafts are written out in composition notebooks. Once I'm done with my first draft, I type it out on the computer, which allows me to edit while I transcribe. Then I do another read-through on the typed manuscripts and another round of edits. As far as what helps me focus, listening to music is a must. Sometimes a particular artist or genre of music becomes the “theme” of a specific piece of work. I listened to a lot of Scott Walker and The Stranglers while writing Corpus.

Me: So, speaking of that, how did you settle on the plot for your novel Corpus?

C.L.K: I've always found vampires interesting, particularly how they were portrayed in older folklore before the sort of seductive aristocrat archetype got solidified. When I was in college, I played a lot of Vampire the Masquerade, and that let me explore and play with a lot of different types of vampires. When creating the characters for Corpus, though, I knew I wanted to steer them away from not only the neat boxes those games sorted them into but also away from how vampires had been portrayed post Interview with the Vampire and especially post-Twilight. Since I was still in short story mode, my original intent was to create a cycle of stories exploring different perspectives on vampires. A couple of the stories worked, some didn't, some morphed into something else. Corpus was always intended to be the centerpiece of the collection, but as I wrote and revised and added to it, it became clear that it needed to stand on its own. As for the specifics of the plot, I was first inspired by the Theodore Sturgeon novel More than Human, where a group of people with extrasensory powers end up working together to form a kind of Gestalt being. I wanted to do a story told from the perspectives of the vampires, but instead of making them human and relatable, I wanted to keep them alien and explore what their minds would be like if they had largely forgotten their humanity. How could such beings work together toward a common goal? How could they move past their current mindsets and become more than vampire?

Me: Having moved from your short story collection Uncanny Tales to a full-length novel, how did that challenge your writing skills?

C.L.K: I never start a story knowing if it will turn into a short story, novella, or something more. It will be as long as it needs to be to say whatever I want to say. Back when I first started writing more seriously, I wrote novels, but eventually, as I read more horror short stories and tightened my writing, the stories got shorter and shorter. Though never especially short; my tales usually ended up around 8 to 10 thousand words. I knew that since I was going to be juggling multiple POVs that Corpus was going to be longer than my other stories. Over time, it grew in each iteration as I explored implications more fully, dug deeper into the characters. It's still a short novel, but it's definitely the longest thing I've ever written. Well, the longest thing I've written worth reading.

Me: Was there any special significance to making the characters battle numerous supernatural creatures? How much prep-work went into adding the traits of the creatures into this type of story?

C.L.K: I didn't really have to do a lot of prep work, because, through years of reading, I was already familiar with the different types of powers attributed to vampires. However, I wanted to group those powers together into ones that were compatible with each other and that complimented the mindsets of each character. Thinking of how those powers would exactly work and interact with other powers was heavily influenced by reading superhero comics, especially things like X-Men.

Me: Was there any part of your real self injected into the human characters?

C.L.K: Since the characters are so far removed from humanity, not really. But some parts inevitably creep in. That's just unavoidable when spending so much time with characters, no matter how strange they are. Traveler's sarcasm and anxiousness are chiefly the most like me, I would say. To be honest, the human vampire hunters ended up feeling more alien and inscrutable to me.

Me: What was the most surprising thing about the arc of the story that emerged as you were writing it?

C.L.K: I think the thing that most surprised me was how much more action-oriented it was than a lot of my other work. Most of my other stories involve antagonists that can't be fought against, or at least not for long. The conflict tends to be more existential. And while that's here as well, my tales usually don't have so much gunfire or body horror or explosions.

Me: Once it was finally written, what was the process for having it published?

C.L.K: A good friend of mine, fellow horror writer Elizabeth Broadbent, was familiar with my work and knew that I had a few things sitting around looking for a home. She suggested I look into Torrid Waters, as they were wanting some work that had that pulpy horror feel. Corpus always kind of felt like the odd man out in my body of work, but I thought it would be perfect for what they wanted. So I submitted it and here we are.

Me: How do you do to keep your creative energy flowing?

C.L.K: I firmly believe that the best writers are those who engage with a wide variety of creative work. So I make sure to always be reading something, not only horror but also other genres. Anything you pick up can be used, if not directly, then in a way that expands your mind and points of view. I love film and art and music, and engaging with that also inspires me creatively. Sometimes you come across a work of art so electrifyingly brilliant that it inspires you by proxy. It inspires you to do your best.

Me: Lastly, what else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers? Thank you again for your time!

C.L.K: I'm currently most of the way finished with another novel, this one much more a psychological horror about love and relationships. I'm extremely pleased with it so far and think it's some of my most honest writing. I'm also kicking around some strong ideas for a themed anthology and an urban horror novel, which is a genre I've always wanted to contribute to. Thank you again for giving me an opportunity to discuss my work with you!