I'm most familiar with her Odium series. This is fantastic series with engaging ideas and settings along with real characters that you can care about. It was my pleasure to interview Claire to get her perspective on horror stories and writing.
What are your works and what can you tell us about them?
My Odium The Dead Saga series is my most popular work so far. Of which there are currently 2 full books and 2 novellas, with both the third full length and novella in the making.
Think zombies, apocalyptic worlds,
dystopian landscapes. It focuses more on realistic characters than just the
blood and gore though. Though of course
there’s gore a plentiful!
My other series is My Obsession Series – Limerence – that’s based around old school
gothic style Bram Stoker-esq vampires.
I also have several anthology
contributions under my belt such as, Fading
Hope: Humanity Unbound, State of
Horror Illinois, and Let’s Scare
Cancer to Death A charity zombie anthology.
Why do you
write about dark and scary things?
I honestly don’t know why. Every time I
have tried to write something, shall we say, normal (?) I end up killing
someone or having them be a monster of some sort. I’ve no idea why it happens
haha. From a young age I was fascinated with movies like The Lost Boys and Bram
Stoker and Night of the Living Dead, so it’s obviously stuck with me through
the years. I read pretty much any genre though, so I’d really like to be a
genre hopper myself and branch out…whether I can do that without killing
someone off is another matter though.
What is your
latest project/release and what is it about?
I’m
currently hard at work on two full length projects and two anthology
contributions. I’m working on the third in the Dead Saga series, which I’m
hoping will be out January time if all goes well, and I have a Super Secret
Project that I’ve been working on also. It’s 90% complete as I write this, but
I’m certain once this interview airs it will be completed and with the edited.
I can’t say much more about it than it’s a zompoc book and I love it. It’s so
far 85’000 words (again, only 90% complete) and has only taken 3 weeks to write
it so far., THAT’S how much I've loved writing it.
When did you
know you wanted to be a writer and how do you go about the writing process?
I’ve ALWAYS wanted to write. I have
notebooks and pads filled with horror stories that I wrote when I was only ten
or eleven. (Seriously, why were my parents not more worried?) For my twelfth
birthday I got a typewriter but it only lasted a year because I went through so
much ink for it my parents refused to buy me anymore and I went back to my
trusty pen and paper!
My
publishing journey actually only started in 2012 when I joined the writing site
Authonomy. I put online a couple of chapters of the book I was currently
writing – Limerence and got talking with other writers and learnt a lot about
my skill and how to mould it into something useable.
I
normally find an image I like and from that image I come up with the plot. I
try to write an outline, and in all honesty when I have done it’s made things
so much easier. BUT I really struggle with writing them. I’m a seat of your
pants writer and my plot changes as my characters become reckless assholes who
decide to ignore my demands of staying on one plot path, so I have to
constantly alter it as I write.
What advice do
you have for other writers?
Keep going, keep writing. DO NOT under
any circumstance, write one book and put all of your energy into promoting and
pushing it for the next two years. You’ll waste your time and your readers. A
reader wants to become invested in a writer, and to do that they need more than
one book. So write, write, write.
And
I mean that literally. Write every day. I aim for a minimum of 2k a day
regardless of if I’m at my boring day job, or my three kids are on school
holidays and I have to work until midnight. Write every day, hone your craft
and enjoy it. Because it shows in your writing.
What is your
favorite zombie movie and why?
Well I have two. Night of the Living
Dead because I love the old school zombies, and they are what I write about.
But I also love 28 Days Later because it scares the crap out of me! I freaking
hate that film, and 28 Weeks Later made me scream and run for my car after me
and my husband went to watch it at the movies hahaha! Don’t judge haha, it was
midnight and dark, and I would be dead within the hour if the zombie apocalypse
began and they were fast zombies!
What’s up next
for you?
Well, like I said I have my Super Secret
Project coming out Jan/Feb and Odium III The Dead Saga around the same time.
Then Odium Origins A Dead Saga Novella Part Three May2015 ish. I also have
several other anthology contributions coming up also, so I’m very busy.
In
2015 I’m also at my first book signings. One in London UK in April and another
in Birmingham UK in July, so I’m nervous and excited for those.
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