Author Interview: Cristina Mîrzoi

I recently reviewed the short-story collection The Headsman by author Cristina Mîrzoi, and it impressed me a hell of a lot. If you've not read it, do yourself a favour and pick it up here: The Headsman (UK | US)

After reading it, I reached out to her to ask her a bit more about The Headsman, writing in a second-language, her future writing plans, and the fun-filled topic of death as a theme in fiction...  After some delays on my part, you can read the interview below.

Take it away, Cristina:

So firstly, congratulations on The Headsman - it’s a fantastic piece of work. Could you explain something about what the book means to you and where your inspiration for it came from?

Thank you so much! It means a lot to receive peer feedback and I’m over the moon about the positive ones, as you can imagine.

During the pandemic, I made a habit of going to the nearby park to find a quiet spot for reading or writing flash fiction ideas. During one of those outings, I took Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch book with me. It was late April, almost May. The lilac trees smelled nice, the weather was lovely, and it brought up a vivid memory of a funeral that I attended years ago, during a warm April day in a cemetery filled with blooming lilac trees. That same day, as I was reading, I came upon a chapter where Vimes was visiting the Cemetery of Small Gods, where lilac trees were growing. I don’t believe much in fate or strange occurrences, but I took it as a good omen and brainstormed a few ideas. I wrote the 1st chapter as a standalone piece, then continued with the rest. For one chapter I even adapted a rejected flash story.

I have a lot of affection for The Headsman, since it’s my first lengthier piece in English and I am thrilled with how it turned out.


I understand you’ve written in Romanian prior to The Headsman, so I wondered what made you decide to write this book in English? Is it something you plan to do again in your writing? (I personally hope so, as I can’t read Romanian…)

Yes, indeed. I have written a children’s fantasy novel in Romanian, which is my native language. It was recently published by a local press. Working on this novel was very enjoyable and it’s very dear to me, however, I enjoy writing in English more. I believe writing in English gives me more flexibility as it has a richer vocabulary than Romanian. It’s also easier to find my crowd, since the international reading community is so diverse and more open-minded. Obviously, I was self-conscious at first, English not being my 1st language, but I got lucky in finding Dion (The FineToothed Comb) who helped with the editing part, and everything came together really well.

I have just finished the first draft for a novella, so hopefully it will come out soon.

One thing I loved about the book was its structure: an interconnected narrative not quite a novel, not quite a short story collection. Did you have this structure in mind for the book from the start, or was it something that came as you were writing?

The 1st chapter was meant to be a standalone flash piece; it was as published in The Siren’s Call Publications e-zine’s Halloween edition of 2021. What drew me back to the story was the need to explore the backstory of the characters. Having the witch/duchess as the main character felt a bit overused, so the headsman’s POV seemed more intriguing. In the beginning, I thought of writing a bunch of separate stories where the headsman would be the only common thread. But this format of tales that focused on the people he was supposed to execute felt too impersonal; I wanted to get to know him better and explore the emotional side of the story.


Another thing I loved about The Headsman was how each story made me reconsider the ones I’d already read. It’s definitely a book that benefits from being read more than once - was this an effect you were deliberately going for? How did you go about weaving in all the cross-references and allusions to other tales in the book?

I am surprised at how many people have mentioned this. It wasn’t really my intention. At first, I thought it would be interesting to have all these different characters connected in some way; one’s actions to influence another’s, a bit like a domino effect. Soon after, I started adding hints and clues because it felt more challenging and fun for the reader (at least that’s what I hoped). As I child I was a Sherlock fan, so I like mysteries and puzzles. Some people have appreciated this, saying it was an engaging storytelling choice, while for others it felt a bit confusing.


Maybe I’ve got a dark and maudlin mind, but to me the main theme of the book seemed to be death, and how no one escapes from it, not even the Headsman. But enough about me—what do you think the themes of the book are?

You got it right. Death is one of the themes since the idea of the story came from the memory of a funeral. I also thought a lot about moral loss. Each character has this sort of tragic background that makes them act in a certain way, and I wanted for the story to work as a character study. There are many layers to one’s personality, and I didn’t want the characters to come across as one dimensional. All of them have a breaking point. It was important for me to explore how they got to that certain point.


How has the book been received? Marketing an indie book is pretty tough, and I imagine it’s even tougher when you’re written a book in a different language.

Well, to be honest, it hasn’t been easy, but I enjoyed it very much. In the beginning, I thought about using a pen name, something catchier and more marketable. Although I am Romanian; I haven’t been using local/Eastern European elements in my stories, so I didn’t feel the need to emphasize on my background. In the end, I decided against it, since I’m not interested in building a persona. Writing is a very liberating activity for me, so I wanted to keep it this way in all aspects.

The great part about this entire process has been the networking; being able to connect with a lot of readers, especially on Instagram, which were very supportive and provided me with great feedback and some indie authors that made me aware of how many outstanding books I had overlooked. The amount of interest surprised me; I didn’t think people would give a lot of chances to an unknown newbie with a weird surname. 😊

And finally, what next for you on the writing front? Can we expect another Cristina Mîrzoi book soon?

I mentioned earlier about finishing the 1st draft of a novella I had been working on. Deciding on a genre is tricky, but it’s somewhere between dark fantasy and magic realism. Characters from the classical fairy tale Hansel and Gretel have served as archetypes for creating my own characters, but this is not a retelling. It’s a story about a woman that is forced to face her past as she tries to gain closure on her childhood traumas. She’s an unreliable narrator, so the events occur at the crossroad between reality, delusion, and magic, at times turning into nightmarish situations.

The Headsman (UK | US)

Guest Post: ‘Writing the Body: I Spit Myself Out’ by Tracy Fahey

Today I'm delighted to welcome Tracy Fahey to the blog, to talk about her brand new story collection I Spit Myself Out, which is published tomorrow by The Sinister Horror Company. I'm a big fan of Tracy's previous two collections, so I preordered this one as soon as I saw it announced.  

Tracy is always very articulate about her writing, both in person (I hope to chat to her again soon in some convention bar once all this strangeness is over) and, as you can see below, via the written word.

Take it away, Tracy:

 

‘Writing the Body: I Spit Myself Out’

Tracy Fahey

In my third collection, I Spit Myself Out, I delve deep beneath the surface of the skin. The idea of this collection has haunted me for years; a collection of tales that would explore the terrors that arise precisely from being a woman. I’ve never been drawn to extreme horror, or to body horror (yes, I do see the irony here) as for me true horror doesn’t reside in the rending of flesh, the brutal exposition of the body. For me, true horror lies in the psychological implications of such a disruption. Horror happens when all that is sure and certain in our lives begins to collapse; our homes, our culture, our bodies, and most important of all, our very identity.

A recurring theme in my writing is that of identity that is called into question. Towards the end of my favourite movie, Alan Parker’s marvellous Angel Heart (1987), Harry Angel calls out desperately ‘I know who I am!’ But of course he doesn’t, and the impact of that tragic situation and the emotional dissonance behind it has never really left me. I’ve previously explored identity in different ways. In The Unheimlich Manoeuvre I explored the implications of feeling insecure in that securest of settings, the home; in New Music For Old Rituals I explored the Gothic horrors of buried secrets contained in our folk histories. In I Spit Myself Out, I attempt perhaps the most ambitious of all questions to do with identity – what happens when we feel unsafe in our own selves? 

I’m a huge admirer of writing by Charlotte Gilman Perkins, Georgina Bruce, Sylvia Plath, Carmen Maria Machado, Margaret Atwood – work that presents us bluntly with the fears and vulnerabilities that arise from possessing a female body. The female body in their writing is one that is permeable to patriarchal repression, dominated and dictated to by religions, and marked by its own private blood rituals. 

In writing this collection, I tried to tap into that sense of body horror; that emotional rawness, that overwhelming sense of vulnerability. The protagonists of I Spit Myself Out struggle with the outside world, but most significantly with themselves. Their pain becomes imprinted on exterior objects, like the Anatomical Venus of the opening story, ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror,’ it is literally too big to hold inside. As the story ‘Becoming’ opens: ‘It barely contains me, this body I’m in.’ 

Writing this collection, I was also conscious of the vulnerability of the female body under different gazes; the male gaze, the medical gaze, the female gaze. The stories, which attempt to chart a passage from birth to death, from puberty to menopause, are riddled with themes from Catholicism to love to the supernatural to illness. They’re also populated with transgressive bodies; ones that refuse to conform, bodies that cry out in protest. While writing these stories, time and time again I returned to Julia Kristeva’s essay, ‘The Powers of Horror,’ which deals memorably with the question of abjection and identity – she asks how identity is problematized when the body expels its own core substances; tears, blood, skin? 

What happens when you spit yourself out?

I Spit Myself Out leads the reader through the dark labyrinths of the body to explore potential answers to this question…

I Spit Myself Out

Eighteen unsettling narratives map the female experience from puberty to menopause.

I Spit Myself Out is a collection of female-voiced stories exploring the terror that lurks beneath the surface of the skin. In this collection, an Anatomical Venus opens to display her organs, clients of a mysterious clinic disappear one by one, a police investigation reveals family secrets, revenge is inked in the skin, and bodies pulsate in the throes of illness, childbirth and religious ritual.

Disturbing and provoking in equal turns, I Spit Myself Out reinvents the body as a breeding ground of terrors that resurface inexorably in the present.

You can pre-order it here, or you can directly from the Sinister Horror Company.

Tracy Fahey is an Irish writer of Gothic fiction.  In 2017, her debut collection The Unheimlich Manoeuvre was shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. Her short fiction is published in over thirty American, British, Australian and Irish anthologies. She holds a PhD on the Gothic in visual arts, and her non-fiction writing is published in edited collections and journals. She has been awarded residencies in Ireland and Greece. She has written two collections, New Music For Old Rituals and The Unheimlich Manoeuvre, the mini-collection, Unheimlich Manoeuvres In The Dark, and the novel, The Girl In The Fort. 

Music For Writers #9: Neil Williamson

Music For Writers this week features none other than Neil Williamson, a writer whose work I always both admire and enjoy. I recently read his BSFA-nominated novel The Moon King and (all to be predictably) loved it; you'd do well to check out his short story collection Secret Language too.

Based on the below his taste in music—and films, and creepy French TV shows—is spot on too.

Take it away, Neil:

As a writer who works mostly in public spaces, I started using writing music initially as a means of boxing my attention off from my environment. With the right music and noise cancelling earbuds, I find I can dial into the right mindset for thinking about my story and getting the words down on the page even when people are talking and doing things around me. It has to be the right kind of music though: something that in itself won’t be distracting (my best writing sessions are the ones where I’ve barely been aware of the music). This usually means no words and no huge dynamic or stylistic shifts. I used classical music for years, but these days I’m turning more and more to modern TV and film composers.

Here are some of the perennials on my Spotify playlist:

Olafur Arnalds - Only The Winds

Arnalds’ composing style is the perfect example of what I look for in writing music. It’s evenly tempered and paced with enough body to block out most background noise. It’s also heartbreakingly evocative. See also: his soundtrack to the TV show, Broadchurch.

This Will Destroy You - Dustism
For louder environments, I tend to turn to post rock. I first saw This Will Destroy You at Glasgow’s Art School at around midnight after a long day of watching various bands. They utterly melted my head. This track is typical of their ocean-like blend of layers of noise and musicality. Blast this up to 11 and nothing gets through.

Max Richter - The Departure Suite

Richter has rightly found favour in the genre community for his wonderful soundtracks for the likes of Arrival (along with Johann Johannson) and Black Mirror, but I really adore this soundtrack for the TV show The Leftovers. 'The Departure' is a recurring theme that turns up now and again in different arrangements and I find it really transportational. Maybe one day I’ll find time to watch the actual show.

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - Song For Bob

Several years ago I went to see a cowboy movie starring Brad Pitt. Several people left the cinema within the first half hour on realising that it wasn’t “a cowboy movie starring Brad Pitt”, it was The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, a nuanced indie movie about hero-worship featuring terrific performances from Pitt as well as Casey Affleck and Sam Rockwell (who is never less than terrific in anything). One of the best things about the movie is the lonesomely plaintive soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. (Cave actually turns up as a barroom troubadour late on in the film too.) I recommend both the film and the music wholeheartedly. 

Mogwai - The Messiah Needs Watching

Kind of coming back to post rock here, but not really. It’s been interesting watching Mogwai explore their composing chops in a succession of soundtracks in recent years. This is from the first one I heard them do, the spooky French TV show, Les Revenants. It was a toss up between this and Atomic. Both full of great music, absolutely band on the brief for their projects but still unmistakably Mogwai.

Music For Writers #2: Iain Rowan

This week's Music For Writers should be good, because selecting the tunes is Iain Rowan, a man who I already know has fine taste in music. Below he talks about some of his favourite music to write to, and his choices certainly work for him, because his work includes such gems as the brilliant collection of literary horror Ice Age, the also-brilliant crime novel One Of Us, and many other also-also-brilliant things.

Take it away, Iain:

I tend to avoid listening to music with vocals when I’m writing, in case the rhythms and images of the vocals creep in and colour what I’m doing. I also tend to listen to playlists rather than individual artists, so some of these choices have been picked as representative, rather than the one true song, and that makes it harder to tie a piece to a particular story. There’s a fair amount on here which gets played much more when writing than any other time, and a lot of what I listen to most day to day doesn’t feature here at all.

Patashnik - Biosphere

This gets listened to as an album, but this particular track most of all. Also here as a representative of a big electronica playlist called Headspace that my wife put together -  lots of things like this, Four Tet, Boards of Canada, Amon Tobin etc. 

Mariette - Mark Kozelek and Desertshore

An exception to my no vocals thing - and it’s ironic because he has such a distinctive vocal style you’d think it would be the worst thing - is most of Mark Kozelek’s output, because the reflective world-weary tone seems to unlock something in my head. For some reason though, this is very much short story soundtrack, not novel writing.

Avril 14th - Apex Twin

I do remember once putting this on repeat and just writing, writing, writing while it played over and over.  This one I can tie to a particular piece too - this was when I was writing ‘Waiting for Mr Opera’ which is a 45 min radio drama that’s doubtless just about to be rejected from the BBC’s Writers’ Room drama call. And funnily enough - I’m writing this on 14th April…

Ashes In The Snow - Mono

My post-rock playlist gets used a lot when I’m writing: big emotional, atmospheric music but rarely a lyric to be heard. Listening to this a lot while working on novel revisions at the mo.

Blue Ship - Justin Sullivan

Another exception to the no vocals thing - the album this is from gets listened to as an album. It has a really consistent feel to it, all the way through. This is currently soundtracking an effort to turn a short stage play called Reading The Stones into a full length thing.

Music For Writers #1: Andrew Hook

Some writers need silence to work, but I've always written to music. Indeed as far as I can remember I started writing about the same time I started taking a serious interest in music: taping indie tracks from The Evening Session (with Jo Wiley & Steve Lamacq) onto a C90 and listening to them over and over, trying to find artists and styles that I liked.

But enough about me; this is the first in a series of guest-posts from other writers who listen to music when they write. I've asked each to pick a few selections and explain why they like it, but more importantly how it affected their writers, what stories they remember writing to it etc. Brian Eno hasn't got round to recording Music For Writers yet, but there's no need for him to bother now.

First up is Andrew Hook, a fantastic writer (check out his novella The Greens as a taster) who despite me being an utter music snob has managed to pick five tracks I really like.

Take it away, Andrew:

I mostly listen to music when writing shorter works, and as I tend to write short stories in one sitting I find music maintains the headspace conducive to creation. It creates a bubble within which I am contained as a writer, and negates outside distractions. I won’t choose anything too abrasive or lyrically challenging, as this can work against the process, but anything subtle can help with ambience. And once I’ve begun writing, the music barely registers, it fades in and out of my consciousness, even when the same song is played over and over.

Occasionally, the music will bleed into the story. I’m fascinated as to how ideas can shift and shape purely from coincidence. Sometimes lyrics – misquoted or actual – can make their way into the piece, but this usually happens during a brief pause in the writing where the singer suddenly fills the gap. On those occasions, it almost feels like the song was specifically written for me to incorporate that fragment at that exact moment. Of course, this is true with other influences – snow falling, a dog barking – but I find there’s a certain serendipity with music which excites me.

Here are the five artists always on my writer’s playlist:

Bjork

I’ve written more stories whilst listening to Bjork than any other artist, usually the albums Vespertine, Vulnicura, and Music From Drawing Restraint 9. I find her music creates a mood perfect for writing, an all-encompassing sound which is more emotion than song, coupled with a literary sensibility which immediately allows me to settle in to writing without distractions. Stories written whilst listening to Bjork include 'Blood For Your Mother' (published in Black Static) and 'The Nomenclature of Fear' (a chapbook from – the unfortunately now defunct – In Short Publishing). When listening to albums on repeat, no individual songs stand out, so as with all these selections I’m going for a random track and in this case it makes sense to start at the beginning: 'Hidden Place'.

Blonde Redhead

This New York trio comprised of Italian and Japanese members first came to my attention through their Misery Is A Butterfly album in 2004. From more raucous beginnings their music has trod an increasingly ethereal path, and I’d recommend the above album plus 23, Penny Sparkle and Barragán as background music. Stories written to their music include 'Shipwrecked In The Heart Of The City' soon to appear in the anthology, Night Light (Midnight Street Press), which has a nightmarish, perhaps Lynchian quality, which I feel was assisted by listening to the Barragán album. For this selection, however, I’m going for the lighter song, '23'.

Echobelly

When listening to music I’ve found it important for any lyrics to be pushed into the background, to be almost subliminal when listening, otherwise I am much more likely to concentrate on the music rather than the writing which defeats the purpose. Echobelly have been a favourite for some time, but I couldn’t write listening to their first two albums because their power-pop jaggedness would intrude. Out of their later material, however, Gravity Pulls is a record I return to time and time again. There’s a soothing, tranquil quality which I find particularly effective. Stories written listening to this album include 'Memories Of Olive' published in Ambit magazine earlier their year, and 'The Easy Flirtations'. Both these stories form part of my ‘Hollywood celebrity death’ collection which is currently seeking a publisher. Here’s the title track.

The Flaming Lips

This band – with their psychedelic SF imagery and sometimes sweeping orchestral-like arrangements are perfect for certain types of stories, particularly their albums Embryonic and Oczy Mlody. I find them epic in the best sense of the word, evoking wonderment and positivity even when the subject matter is poignantly morose. I wrote my Bradbury-esque short story, 'The Day My Heart Stood Still' (published in a PostScripts anthology), listening to Embryonic, and a recent, Kafka-esque story, 'My Tormentors', listening to Oczy Mlody. It what whilst writing about a castle in the latter story that I realised through pure coincidence there was a track called 'The Castle' on the album. I love these weird connections which – even if there is no direct influence – tether one work to another. I’m choosing 'Evil' from Embryonic as an introduction.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

I’ve dipped into Nick Cave over the years, but whilst I’ve usually enjoyed what I’ve heard I never wrote to his music until Push The Sky Away. Being an obvious storyteller, I think some of Cave’s work would be very difficult to have as background music, his lyrics dominant and intrusive, sometimes barked rather than sung, but Push The Sky Away hits the right chords for me to write (I should rework that sentence!), and there’s a definite bleed from the music into the fiction, an ambience of intent. Stories written include 'The Call Of The Void' published in Milk: An Anthology of Eroticism, and 'The Ice-Cream Blonde', another of my celebrity death stories which I consider to be one of the best pieces I’ve ever written. This is how the album begins:

I should also mention in passing the following artists I regularly write to: Coeur de Pirate, Anita Lane, Mercury Rev, Radiohead and Portishead.

Finally, whilst I usually listen to an entire album on repeat when writing a short story, sometimes it’s a single song. The record for this is 'The City Never Sleeps At Night' by Nancy Sinatra, which I listened to seventy times whilst writing 'Blanche' (published in the “Something Remains” anthology from Alchemy Press). If I’m allowed an extra track then it’ll appear below:

Course you're allowed an extra, Andrew!

Guest Post: Alex Davis on The Dark Side Of Cinema

So, I was meant to post this yesterday as part of a blog swap with Alex Davis, but life got in the way. So a day late, here's Alex's wonderful guest post. And over on his blog, you can find me talking about a key influence on The Quarantined City and one of my favourite ever shows, Twin Peaks.

Take it away, Alex:

The Dark Side of Cinema

One of the things I've always really loved to have in my working life is a bit of variety. Freelancing gives you the opportunity to explore lots of interesting things with a kind of freedom you don't often have in a regular working environment. And when, at the very start of this year, I noticed Ginger Nuts of Horror – a fantastic website if you've never been by – were looking for reviewers and writers, I decided to throw my hat in the ring with a pitch for a series looking at the most extreme of cinema. And so, Film Gutter was born.

I've always enjoyed things that are from the edge, alternative, a bit outre. And the same very much goes for films – I've rarely been one for a blockbuster, much preferring independent and world cinema. What first set me off thinking about Film Gutter was a quick trawl through Youtube at people's lists of 'disturbing films' or 'disgusting films' or 'controversial movies' and it struck me how many I had already seen and not been that affected by. And that started me wondering – is there a line I won't let a film cross? Is there a point where I would press the stop button and give up because something had disturbed me so much? If those things that really shook other people up had produced so little effect in me, was there something out there that would make me feel that perturbed?

So the rationale was effectively something akin to masochism, a movie-based Man vs Food – bring it on and see if you can break me. Six months in, I've taken in some absolutely horrendous movies, but it's been fascinating to explore what is out there and what people are doing in extreme horror. There are a lot of films I don't know if I would have checked out or not if I wasn't writing the column. 

So here are a few highlights of the first six months of Film Gutter:

Best Film: Flowers, all day long. An astounding piece by director Phil Stevens, without a single word of dialogue in the whole piece. The visuals and the atmosphere are simply incredible, and the wordless performance from the six female leads are also wonderful. This one is on its way soon from Unearthed Films, and I can't suggest checking it out enough.

Worst Film: Yet to type up my review for this one, and I may yet not bother, because Chaos was so awful. Lazy characters, cliché violence and dialogue put into the mouths of teenage characters but clearly written by somebody many years out of touch. Just lousy from beginning to end, some kind of attempt at an informational film but not even achieving that.

Most Harrowing Film: Megan is Missing. A relatively simple found footage movie, but well played by all the teenage actors and having one of the most horrific, impactful finales you are ever likely to see. The last twenty minutes of this one left me absolutely shellshocked.

Most Reprehensible Film: Snuff 102. It's rare to find a film was so few redeeming features as this Argentinian piece. Flat out horrible and simply designed to upset from the get go, with graphic and realistically presented snuff violence and scenes that send me a bit queasy even to think of.

Hardest Film to Watch: Thanatomorphose. My hand lingered over the stop button so many times during this movie it's untrue. I made this stomach-churning body horror even worse by watching it while I ate dinner – very bad move indeed. The last few minutes of this one had me covering my ears with my hands and asking the screen 'Is it over?'

There are still plenty more disturbing films out there to watch, and I'm looking forwards – perhaps a little strangely – to maybe finding the film that can break me...

You can read the full set of Film Gutter reviews so far athttp://www.gingernutsofhorror.com/film-gutter.html. And, if you fancied something a bit gentler, you can check out my novel The Last War at http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00YQICMHQ