Author Spotlight: Chelsea Mueller

Posted on July 2, 2023 by cmariebissett

Q. Tell us a little bit about your background, and your evolution as a writer. If you’ve taken more than one workshop at the Storied Imaginarium, what is it that keeps bringing you back?

I’m a writer who loves to try new things, which means you’ll find my stories shelved throughout the store. My debut novel was a gritty urban fantasy called Borrowed Souls (Skyhorse, 2017). It’s set in a contemporary world where people can rent souls and has a reluctant soul repowoman has its main character. It’s the first in a series.

Photo Credits: Lauren Bethany Photography

From there I moved to writing young adult novels—both horror and thrillers. I’m best known for Prom House (Delacorte/Underlined, 2021), which is a throwback to ’90s Fear Street and Christopher Pike with 10 teens renting a house prom weekend and one by one they start to die. Very fun. Lots of kissing.

My short fiction has been all over the place, too, but I’m delighted that my most recent published piece is one written in the Season of the Bear workshop at Storied Imaginarium. It’s titled “Hibernation Heirloom” (Sunday Morning Transport, 2023) and features a touched-out new mom seeking self care the hard way.

Q. Can you tell us what inspired your Season of the Bear story?

Motherhood?

I’m only half joking. I have a three-year-old and still live in a state of perpetual fatigue—as most parents of littles do! The Season of the Bear had a module that examined bearskin stories as well as hibernation. While many Bearskin tales feature daughters fleeing gross fathers, I focused on the act of donning a bearskin as an act of freedom. Expectations were shed when fur appeared.

So who needs hibernation more than a postpartum mom? Those early days of sleep deprivation and hypervigilance around your kid are real. The added layer of some lactating parents becoming more aggressive only added to the story of my mama bear who needed her own mother and a sense of peace and an excuse to let her husband take care of the baby while she rested.

All of that came together in “Hibernation Heirloom.”

Q. How did you come to writing and who are some of your influences?

I’ve always been a writer. (Does everyone say that? Probably.) I had a career in journalism for many years, writing mostly pop culture, music, and lifestyle pieces, but when newspapers became an unstable workplace, I switched careers and became a marketer. Marketing is a lot of fun, but doesn’t have near enough writing to sate me. That’s when I began writing fiction.

Q. Can you give us an insight into your writing process? Any habits when you sit down to write?

I find time whenever I can to write, so I’m much less focused on ritual and more on routine. I love to sprint in 20-minute bursts, because I can make my brain focus on the one thing for that long. Then I allow myself five minutes of checking email or scrolling Instagram, and back in until I hit my goal for the day.

All that said, if I am at home, I’m likely to have a coffee on one side and a lit candle on the other. Right now it’s Alchemy & Ink’s “The Darkling” scent. It’s almost gone and I’m very sad because it’s a perfect moody candle. They describe it as “winter wind, night, bare branches,” and that feels about right for the domestic horror I’m working on!

Q. What is next in store for your readers?

I’m working on several new things: a new atmospheric horror novel and a trio of fantasy short stories centered on women bending the world.

My latest novel, Cloud Nine, released in March and is the first in an explosive new YA dystopian series. It’s breakneck pacing with a big mystery plot and buckets of sexual tension. Bonuses of women in STEM and friends you’ll love. I’m writing the sequel this summer!

Author Website: https://chelseamueller.com/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15515427.Chelsea_Mueller

Amazon Author Page:

https://www.amazon.com/author/chelseamueller

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChelseaMuellerAuthor/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/ChelseaVBC

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ChelseaVBC

Author Spotlight: Wailana Kalama

Posted on April 19, 2023 by cmariebissett

Q. Tell us a little bit about your background, and your evolution as a writer.

I’ve been writing since I was a kid, fantasy was my jam, I’d create these worlds and languages and civilizations to go along with them. Honestly I spent more time world building than actually writing, hah. Then I fell in love with creative nonfiction, spent a few years doing that, and travel pieces. In the past 2 years I’ve been diving headlong into the wonderful world of dark fiction and finding it makes me deliriously happy most days.

Q. Have you published any stories that have come out of the generative workshops at the Storied Imaginarium? If so, what inspired your pieces, and where can we read them?

I took the Storied Imaginarium’s Season of the Hare in the Spring of 2022, and now have published two stories that came out of that. “The Sea-Hare” was inspired by the eponymous Grimm fairy-tale. The image of a girl trapped into a tower while all these suitors swarmed her was just so striking. I just thought it’d make more sense if she had a way to defend herself against all that smothering love. So I gave her a rifle, the same one that Simo Häyhä used in WW2. You can read that story in Apparition Literary Magazine’s April 2023 issue: https://apparitionlit.com/issues/

“Kill Switch” is another piece I wrote during that workshop. We read a BBC article about the dangers of seeing your own doppelgänger. Obviously, my story doesn’t have any doppelgängers, but it did get me thinking about alternative modes of reality and identity, and how technology can affect your body’s perception of what’s real, what’s yours and what’s virtual. You can read it in Dark Matter INK’s Monstrous Futures: https://darkmattermagazine.shop/products/dark-matter-presents-monstrous-futures

Q. What advice do you have for writers working with fairy tales and myth as well as combining them with current science and social issues?

Read as much as you can and don’t be afraid to brainstorm. Inspiration is a diving board, not a prescription. Pay attention to what stories and themes you gravitate to the most. If you have unanswered questions while reading an article/story, write them down and think how you might solve them creatively.

Q. How did you come to writing and who are some of your influences?

Probably my biggest influences are the short stories of Stephen Graham Jones–his Father, Son, Holy Rabbit alone inspired me to pick up the dark fiction mantle to begin with.

Others whose work shakes me include Oshimi Shuzo, Brian Hodge, Nathan Ballingrud, Gemma Files, Paula D. Ashe, Josh Malerman, Iain Banks, Algernon Blackwood, Angela Carter, Marguerite Duras, Albert Camus, Joe Sacco, Brian Doyle, Joan Didion, Tom Stoppard.

Q. Can you give us an insight into your writing process? Any habits when you sit down to write?

I guess the only thing I really do habitually is turn on my playlist. I have a playlist per story I’m writing and it helps me sink back into the world almost instantly.

Q. What is next in store for your readers? I have two upcoming pieces later this year, a coming-of-age short in Rock and a Hard Place magazine and a paleohorror piece in Dark Matter INK’s Monster Lairs.

Wailana Kalama is a dark fiction writer from Hawaii, with credits in Weird Little World’s Mother: Tales of Love and Terror, Pseudopod, Dark Matter INK’s Monstrous Futures and Monster Lairs (upcoming), and more.

Author Website: https://linktr.ee/whylana

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/27720197.Wailana_Kalama

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Wailana-Kalama/author/B0C1MDZJH5

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Whylana

What Roni has to say about the workshops at The Storied Imaginarium:

Carina Bissett is a knowledgeable, kind, and honest instructor who provides invaluable feedback, as well as collaborative brainstorming to help participants through places they may be stuck. I highly recommend The Storied Imaginarium workshops to anyone looking to get quality writing done in a supportive and creative community with a fantastic instructor. The Storied Imaginarium workshops have helped me generate many stories, poems, and story ideas. While being primarily generative, I have learned more from Carina and my fellow workshop writers, through discussions and critiques, than I have in more instructionally focused workshops. The modules cover an expansive and in-depth selection of retellings, research, and related articles. I’ve come back to them again and again when looking for creative sparks. — Roni Stinger, author of “The Ground Shook,” Dark Matter Magazine and “Worm Bagging,” Unnerving Magazine.

Registration is currently open for the Season of the Bear (March-May). For more information, click HERE.

Nomination News: “Fracture” by Mercedes M. Yardley

Posted on February 13, 2023 by cmariebissett

The Storied Imaginarium wants to congratulate Mercedes M. Yardley for her recent presence on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker Awards® for 2022! Her story “Fracture” is featured in the category of Best Short Fiction. Mercedes wrote this workshop story in response to the module “The Princess on the Glass Hill” & Glassworks (Season of the Hare), and we are super excited here to see this lovely piece about a glass girl get the attention it deserves.

“Fracture” was originally published in the anthology Mother: Tales of Love and Terror by Weird Little Worlds (October 2022). The publisher has made it available to read online for free HERE. Enjoy!

NOTE: Active members of the Horror Writers Association can cast their votes on the preliminary ballot no later than MIDNIGHT US West Coast time on February 15.

She was safe and she was loved, but that wasn’t enough. One night when the moon was full and the air was as clear as Crystal herself, she donned her warmest cloak and fled into the night.

She ran like a rabbit. She ran like a stream. She ran like her mother so many years ago, her human heart thumping against her fragile ribs, her legs shining in the dark. While her mother had carried a precious unborn child of glass, Crystal carried her fragile, human heart.

It wasn’t easy for a glass girl in a city. There were cobblestones to trip on and carriages that run past. Crystal’s pinky finger was caught in a door and broke off in the jam. Her tears plink, plink, plinked as they fell and shattered on the ground. Children hurried to collect them before they broke, sucking on them like candy.

Mercedes M. Yardley is a whimsical dark fantasist who wears stilettos, red lipstick, and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of many diverse works, including Darling, Beautiful Sorrows, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy, Detritus in Love, and Nameless. She recently won the Bram Stoker Award for her story Little Dead Red, and was nominated for “Loving You Darkly” and the Arterial Bloom anthology. Mercedes lives and creates in Las Vegas with her family and menagerie of battle-scarred, rescued animal familiars. Mercedes is a member of the Horror Writers Association and co-chair of the Las Vegas HWA Chapter.

WHAT MERCEDES HAS TO SAY ABOUT THE WORKSHOPS AT THE STORIED IMAGINARIUM:

“The best writing career money I ever spent was on the Storied Imaginarium Monstrous Women writing course presented by Carina Bissett. We studied together, wrote stories based on that week’s module, and then critiqued each other’s work. I immediately sold two pieces that I had written in the workshop, and made dear friends that I still associate with. I’m planning to sign up for another one of Carina’s classes next time they open. It was astronomically helpful and inspiring.”
— MERCEDES M. YARDLEY, AUTHOR OF LITTLE DEAD RED. (STORYVILLE: WHAT’S THE BEST MONEY YOU’VE SPENT ON YOUR WRITING CAREER?, COLUMN BY RICHARD THOMAS)

Registration is currently open for the Season of the Bear (March-May). For more information, click HERE.