This month’s Behind the Zines interview features Clara
Madrigano. She is co-editor at The Dark, and I am so grateful to get a
chance to talk to her about her work at the zine!
More about Clara Madrigano:
Clara Madrigano is a Brazilian author of speculative
fiction. She publishes both in Portuguese and in English, and you can find her
fiction in The Dark and in Clarkesworld.
On to the interview!
Q. First up, what is your background, as in: where are
you from, where are you now, and what do you do inside and outside the world of
speculative fiction?
Clara Madrigano: I was born in Brazil; in Rio de Janeiro,
more specifically. And I still live in Brazil, but now I dwell in the city of
Curitiba, in the occasionally cold-as-hell South of my country. I love it here,
with all of its problems. I’d say I live a very Dickinsonania, Brontëania life:
I enjoy being inside, I enjoy my room, my writing desk, the company of my
books. Being surrounded by them, I can let my imagination roam free, chasing
stories wherever they are.
Outside of speculative fiction? Is there an outside?
(I practice calisthenics. There you go, a random fact about
myself).
Q. What attracted you to horror specifically, and the
speculative fiction genre in general if applicable, when you were a child or
young adult (or adult)? What lured you into genre fiction, and are there some
specific books, movies, TV-shows or similar that you feel were responsible for
pulling you into the world of horror/SFF?
CM: Fantasy has always been a big part of my life, as well
as horror. My parents never stopped me from watching or reading anything I
wanted, which means that, by age 10, I was both a fan of The Princess Bride and
Alien; or Labyrinth and A Nightmare on Elm Street. I grew
up with this mix of fantasy and horror, first as movies, and then as books.
Inevitably, that diet made me what I am today. Ray Bradbury’s The October
Country, which I stumbled upon as a child, haunted me for years. And, of
course, there was Harry Potter—a series I nowadays think about with less and
less nostalgia, but that had a huge impact on me at the time it was being
published, introducing me to the world of fanfiction—which is how I began to
write in the first place.
Q. What do you love about the horror genre, and why does
it appeal to you as a reader and writer?
CM: I’d say terror is what is so appealing to me. Not
knowing what it’s happening. Or knowing, but suffering from the anticipation of
getting there. The raising of the hair in my arms, the cold sweat; that’s what
always glued me to my metaphorical chair—as a kid and as an adult. And it’s the
feeling I try to impart in my stories.
Q. Who are some of your favourite writers or creators in
any medium right now? (Both living and working today, and older works and
creators?)
CM: There are so many people I could name. I’ll focus on the
authors working today, because I think we live in such a wonderful age for spec
fiction—so many great writers are working right now, I even have trouble keeping
up. I have to name Kelly Link, of course, Audrey Niffenegger, who wrote my
favorite book of all time, The Time Traveler’s Wife. Eugenia Triantafyllou,
Suzan Palumbo, A. C. Wise, Stephen Graham Jones, you—yes, you, Maria [my
note: I AM BLUSHING]—Tananarive Due, Octavia Cade, Angela Slatter, Carrie
Laben, Gemma Files, Kaaron Warren…
Q. You have recently picked up the reins as co-editor of
The Dark Magazine. How did you first get involved working at The Dark, and what
are your thoughts on this new role for you. What do you do as co-editor on a
day-to-day basis, and what are some of the best, and worst maybe?, things about
being a co-editor?
CM: The first magazine to ever publish a story I’d written
in English was The Dark, so I feel like I’m coming full circle now. I
feel like it’s an honor, really—to be able to publish authors who sometimes are
just starting their writing careers. There’s a particular joy in finding a good
story—recognizing that talent—and then having it published, so others will feel
the same joy you did. My days as a co-editor are spent reading good stories. I
have no complaints there. But the hardest part is always having to reject some
of those stories—because most of them are really, really good. They just don’t
fit the magazine’s theme, most of the time. I wish I could publish it all.
Q. What advice would you give to writers submitting
stories to The Dark, and publications in general? What do you look for in a
story, and how do you approach the process of selecting stories for the zine?
CM: First: read the submission guidelines. I can’t stress
enough how important that part is. As I mentioned before, we get a lot of good
stories, beautifully written stories, that simply don’t work as horror or dark
fantasy. In approaching the magazine—any magazine, really—I’d recommend reading
a lot of what they have already published—so you get the idea of what they work
with. As for myself, I’m a terror girl. Everything that keeps me on the edge
through the entirety of the tale—that’s my drug of choice. When we get these
types of stories, those are always my favorite moments.
Q. Has your work behind the scenes at The Dark affected
your view of the world of speculative fiction publishing? What do you see as
the main challenges of running a zine like The Dark.
CM: I always knew the market was very competitive, and that
there are a lot of great writers working today. So this hasn’t changed. The
main challenge is letting people know they are wanted—their stories are wanted.
Some minorities, because they’ve already been shunned by the market—in one way
or another—will sometimes shy away from submitting their stories; they think
they have to be really, really good, when they already are really, really good.
I try to encourage minorities to send us their stories (white men don’t need
encouragement, believe me). I want them to realize how talented they are, and
that they deserve to be published as much as any other author they admire.
Q. You are a writer yourself and you have had work
published in both English and Portuguese. What are your thoughts on the
sometimes rather English-speaking and North America-centric focus in
speculative fiction when it comes to SFF publications, awards, cons,
publishing, etc.?
CM: I think I started publishing in English at a time when things
were already changing. Of course, there’s still a prevalence of certain types
of fiction and tropes—but all in all, I feel like the market is becoming more
diverse by the day. All one needs to do is check the last ballots for the major
spec fiction prizes. Things are changing. People opposing that change, trying
to keep the status quo intact, will lose—like old men yelling at clouds. You
simply can’t contain so much talent, so many voices, all the stories being
written and published; you can’t, and you won’t.
Q. For people out there who might be thinking about
getting involved with a podcast or a zine in any capacity, what would you say
to them? Any tips or advice?
CM: I hope you love reading. Because you’ll be doing a lot
of it. Passion for fiction is a prerequisite. And so are kindness and patience.
Q. What’s up next for you, both as a co-editor and as a
writer?
CM: For editing, I have a feeling I’ll be staying in The
Dark for a while (unless Sean Wallace gets tired of me and locks me in the
dungeon). I simply love what I do there. As for fiction, I have a new story in Nightmare
this September; and a few other stories, in other venues, I still can’t
speak about.
Huge thanks to Clara for talking to me about her work!
In this interview series, I talk to people working behind the
scenes at various speculative fiction publications. My goal
is to highlight the work that goes into keeping these publications alive, and
to share insights from the people doing that work. Each interview is available exclusively on my
Patreon for one week, and is then posted here at Maria's Reading.
If you want to support my work, check out my Patreon or Ko-Fi.
There was a shop in old Haifa that specialised in Treif
artefacts, so that was where Mili went first. Haifa sprawled along the side of
Mount Carmel. Successive waves of regeneration didn’t do much to change it. Now
adaptoplant buildings sprouted like weeds between the cracks, and down in the
harbour Drift ships waited, gleaming in the sun. Mili crossed through federated
streets and enclaves, moving between Judean and Palestinian authority, briefly
cutting through a Baha’i enclave, her ident tag pinging off each authority
server, but it didn’t really make any difference these days. The quilted land
slumbered: in Haifa the afternoon rest was still sacrosanct.
This story is such an excellent science fiction tale, and an
excellent example of Tidhar's lush and immersive storytelling and world-building. I love the way the details of this future-world are hinted at and described in passing without slowing the narrative, the way descriptions and story flow together and then flow outside the frames of this particular story until it feels like a real place and time. Everything in Tidhar's world is anchored firmly in the past,
and our now, in a place where war and peace, enemies and allies, life and
death has played out in a thousand different ways throughout the millennia, and
will continue to play out in new and ancient patterns in years to come. In this land, Mili is
searching for an old, maybe imaginary, entity and in the process, it seems she
stirs up the dust of a very old conflict. A compelling tale from start to
finish.
Cool and Sexy Asian Girl stands outside the convenience
store under the striped awning and waits for the rain to stop. The rain is
never going to stop. Cool and Sexy Asian Girl would need to go to a different
city for the rain to stop, a city not built on phosphorescent fluorescence and
slick glass, a city that doesn’t breathe through its elevated train lines and
subways. Cool and Sexy Asian Girl doesn’t remember when they built the train
lines. She dreams of cities where it is not always night. Not that it’s always
night here. But it is. In the heart, it is.
Kim's story about a cyberpunk dystopia and the characters/archetypes inhabiting that dystopia is an absolute thrill to read. Cool and Sexy Asian Girl navigates the city where it always rains and where it seems it's always night, and where the story's protagonist keeps searching for something he'll never find. Kim weaves together the story while reflecting on and interrogating these KINDS of stories, including how tropes can be used to trap and/or empower various characters over others, and what it would be like (what it is like) to inhabit a world where you are not the main story. But, even if you're not the main story, you might find ways to use the main story to change yourself and your own life, though this might come at a cost.
So what happened was, I’m back from clicker training Ms.
Jordan’s dogs over on Dexter, sitting on the porch with a mojito, thinking how
fucked up it is that the Old West Side Association stealth-planted tulips in
our garden (because the yard looked so shitty without them, I guess—sorry for
having a rental in your high-value neighborhood, Evie) when the Viking
or whatever comes down Eighth.
This story by Sarah Pauling is a fantastic romp that puts
new twists and sharp turns into the usual scifi/fantasy quest, time-travel /
time-cop story. I adore the voice and style and vibe of this story and its
decidedly darkly humorous take on the genre.
The first time I saw him, I was crouched in a ditch by the
highway, lancet poised, holding a crumbly-paged book open to the words to
reanimate a dead owl. Anne leaned against our dad’s old car on the shoulder,
just a few feet past the impromptu memorial some of Mom and Dad’s students had
put up. The flowers were wilting and the photos were fading, just like our
parents’ ghosts in the ditch where they’d died. I walked all up and down it,
grasses itching at my legs despite my jeans.
This is a dark and brilliant gem of a story by Blackwell. Two orphaned sisters
grow up together, and one of them is teaching herself all sorts of magic of
reanimation and necromancy, using blood and birds and spells to connect with
the dead. One day they meet a man, and both sisters can sense that he has death
on his hands. What follows after that is a deliciously sharp and incisive twist on the tale
of Bluebeard, planting the story firmly in what feels like our own world,
except that here, it's also run through with magic... if you know how to access
it.
Arsha plays the role expected of her, though she’s known for
years how their rebellion will end. She thought she could endure one last
survey of her knights and archers and footmen before the final battle, but the
guilt still cracks her insides like a pickaxe. The free people of the world
have placed their faith in her, the Chosen One. Tomorrow she’ll face the
Flensed Lord and betray them all.
I love stories that twist the trope of the
Chosen One into new shapes, and Kinney does that brilliantly in this short
story. Arsha is the Chosen One, so everyone around her believes, the one with the power to
destroy the evil Lord of the world. But Arsha, secretly, has another theory as
to what her power is, where it comes from, and what her true purpose is, and
she is riven by guilt and self-loathing. Even so, she faces the final battle and
enters the Flensed Lord’s keep, convinced that the terrible truth will be revealed
to all those who have followed her into battle. There’s so much pain and doubt in Arsha,
and Kinney explores her journey as he crafts a story where good and evil are not what you
might think.
She can’t have been dead more than an hour, most of the
night still to come, when she staggers up to her feet in the rain.
Such a deliriously, deliciously dark tale of an avenging
ghost. Rowat’s tale is beautifully told and grisly terrible in its details as a
young woman haunts the living in order to find her murderer. The prose is
exquisitely crafted to capture and paint a specific world, a place, and a
character. I love every bit of this story, including its wrenching end.
I am given to understand that, on an afternoon many years ago, Klimt found and opened the door through which Nell beckoned me. Properly pre-pared, Nell tells me, a thought becomes Thought, and becomes to that other place what mould is to plaster. I am, she says, the articulation of a shape that she very carefully imagined.
An evocative, strange, and riveting story about a place where doorways can be found to other, very peculiar, worlds, and where a living, sentient camcorder is being used to record and document various phenomena in our own world. I love the unabashed weirdness of the world in this story and the way it hints and slowly reveals the purposes and motivations of its characters. To quote Fusion Fragment on Twitter: "Explorer / Cartographer" might be your jam if you're into living camcorders, finding gates to other worlds, and discovering the smell of garlic.
🕮
Constructed by Brandon Crilly in Haven Speculative
A beautiful story that shows us a world on the verge of being reconnected to the rest of the universe after many years of isolation. Like everyone else in his world, Kenli is excited about the Reconnection, and he is also excited (and worried) by his discovery of an old piece of magic and technology: a machine/creature called a Construct that has deep ties to the past. I love the wistful tone of this story and the way it builds a compelling world and place in such a small space.
A wicked sharp horror story about a journey to a small
Spanish town and two men in a relationship that has just gone from bad to
worse. There's something so ur-horror-ish about stories where someone travels
to a small community and doesn't have a clue about what kind of terrifying
rules and rituals are enforced and practiced there. (For other recent examples
see the game Resident Evil: Village and the movie Midsommar, for example.)
Bennett adds the element of vengeance, an affair, and a protagonist that is
rather full of himself, for a story that plays out like a twisted nightmare.
At that moment, I should have known what sort of story I was
in. I used to yell at characters in horror movies who split from the group or
went into the basement without turning on the lights. I threw popcorn at the
screen which always made Ryan laugh and Becky smother her giggles. Maybe I
didn’t realize it because, when you just think of yourself as the hero of your
own story, you don’t realize you’re the bit player in someone else’s.
Another great horror story from The Dark. In this one,
Daniels gives us a terrific take on the haunted lake, the final girl trope, and
summer-camp horror, all at once. This story has an earthy, tactile vibe that I
really love, especially in the depictions of childhood and friendship in a
small town, and in addition to its horrors, this story also has a satisfying,
darkly funny streak. I LOVE the turn things take toward the end, and the
historical and emotional depth to the "villain" of the story.
Position: Overnight home companion for shut in. Must be able
to read. Lack of imagination a plus.
Salary: 250 dollars a night. I’ve never seen who pays. But
the cash is there every morning at sunrise. A brown paper bag in the mailbox,
twenties and tens. Good money, right? But I need to explain some things. I
don’t want you coming in blind like I did.
This flash fiction story is part of the excellent episode Flash
on the Borderlands LXII: Flash Fiction Contest 7 Winners. As you might
surmise from the quote above, this story is horror with a sense of humour, and
it's all about a job that seems so easy... but is it? Well, you be the judge!
🕮
Flowstone
by Steve Toase in Three-Lobed Burning Eye
His Father had been a few steps in front of him, letting
Dave take the steep descent at his own pace, so he never saw what caused his
Father to lose his footing. Didn’t see why he fell so far and broke so
certainly. The stairs are now lit with industrial-looking lamps laced with
safety cages. He reaches out to one and flinches at the heat.
There's a new issue of Three-Lobed Burning Eye and the entire
thing is well worth your time (and your money). This story by Toase is
wickedly, profoundly disturbing and creep. It's one of those stories where you know
something is wrong, but it still catches you by surprise just how wrong it is.
Wonderfully written horror.
A lot of things are twined together in this story: the
nursery rhyme about the church and the steeple and the people, the scientific
research on how to warn people away from a place long after our own languages
and societies are gone, and, well, the horror of tentacles. Nelson builds this
story and his characters with such precise and exquisite care, and then
unravels the world and plunges those characters (and the reader) into a pit of
terror. Excellent stuff.
A lyrical and gorgeously wrought story about death and the
afterlife, belonging and loss, love and fear and loneliness. To quote the
author from Twitter, this story features: "death caught in the
city lights, young queer hipster lovebirds, urban hunger, and defiant joy as a
means of survival." This is the kind of story where the language, its
rhythm, its quiet spaces, and its melody, tell the story just as much as the
words themselves. Please read it, because it sings.
This is a terrific and mind-bending science fiction story
where a researcher from Earth crash-lands on a planet that was populated by
humans a very long time ago. What she finds there is something so strange and,
in essence, alien that she can barely understand what she's experiencing at
first. In the end, the encounter changes her in profound and unforeseeable
ways. There's so much depth and texture to this story, and it is infused with
both science and fantasy and ancient religion.
My name is Hercules, and the name nearly lived up to me. Or
perhaps I, it. Time, I suppose, will tell.
I have been called many things in my life, and alone, none
have done me justice. Titles never do. The children of the home I served called
me Uncle Harkness, a name I could not fathom how they conceived out of my birth
name. They thought their familiarity was a kindness. The Chief of the Kitchen
because of my profession and my possessor. Mister Lee called me cook, the
closest thing to disrespectful as he was able. I imagine that I could be
grating and being told what to do by someone like me must have irritated him
greatly. Boy, I have not been called in many years, but we all remember the
keen sting of the first time.
The theme for this issue of Fiyah is food and cuisine and it
is chockfull of excellent stories that will likely whet your appetite and make
you hungry as anything. In Barrie's story, the narrator is Hercules who cooked
for George Washington. Hercules was a slave and an excellent chef, and his
abilities with food went way past regular chef's skills. It's a rich, powerful
tale of slavery, US history, food, and also righteous vengeance. I love the way
fantasy and fiction is woven into the fabric of real history here and Barrie's
prose is exquisite.
There is a little alleyway that hooks off İstiklal Caddesi
known only to the children of Karaköy. On summer nights they spill through the
dim doorway at arcade’s end, under the sign that spells “Dr Daidalo and Son”.
The little theatre is cramped, its wooden benches bare. They squabble and cuss
in their seats, elbowing for room, until Dr Daidalo himself steps out to
welcome them, clever knobbled fingers tugging at grey whiskers.
The July issue of FFO features stories that have are either
reimagined fairytales, or at least inspired by old stories and tales.
Makarios's story has a bit of Pinocchio in it, perhaps, but what I really love
about it is the vivid and gorgeously wrought prose. The melody and rhythm of it
is just exquisite, and its set in a world and place that feels at once utterly
familiar yet also thoroughly magical. This is a tragic tale, about a place riven
by conflict and violence, but there is hope here, and some of it comes from Dr.
Daidalo and his son.
The white lady of Irrigan is so named because one of her
experiments bleached a lock of her hair. Her maids, affectionately, claim she
is more badger than woman. It makes her smile, but they won’t say a word about
the scar that runs down her chest.
Irrigan now keeps the windows in her lab open to test her
most recent work. She holds a vial to her face, purses her lips, and blows over
the top. The air ignites into a stream of blue flame.
She laughs, each new breath fueling the fire.
I do love dragon stories, and this one is beautiful and
fierce. Irrigan is supposed to get married, but she has no interest in being a
wife. What interests her is dragons, and her own research, and on this day she
will bring these two things together, finally. The scene in this story with the
multitude of dragons flying the skies overhead - "Above her, the
dragons weave through the clouds like thread through linen. From horizon to
horizon, they do not begin or end." - it's so perfect and so alive
with wonder and magic. This whole issue of FFO is wonderful, and the whole
thing is well worth reading.
The stone was legendary even before Myrddin embedded the
sword within it. Fallen from the heavens, it gave off strange emanations,
energy that those close enough could feel. The stone was a relic from the time
the Masters entered the world and still contained some of their energy. The
sword... well, Myrddin was proud of that clever, poetic fiction.
I am a big fan of The Once and Future King by T.H. White (I was obsessed with the book as a teen), and also a big fan of stories that do new things with the old Arthurian legends and stories. Khanna's tale is wonderfully complex and intricately constructed and I love the way it reflects on the power of the story, and the telling of stories as a source of power. Both Khanna's story and R.K. Duncan's "Uncounted Leaves of Ends of Camelot" in this particular issue of BCS do new and inventive things with the tales about King Arthur, and both are definite must-reads.
The highway unwound before her like a spool of frayed grey
ribbon. Once the jewel of America, now the system was cracked and crumbling,
its future stolen by children too greedy for the present. Not broken—not
yet—but in time all things must come to dust. Or gravel, as the case might be.
A beautiful and compelling story where ancient myth is woven
into the fabric of our own world, or rather a (maybe) not too distant future version of it that teeters on the edge of
destruction and collapse. Strange things are afoot in the haunted and haunting
Midwest landscape, and as the story unspools, and as we begin to understand
more of the deeper things at work in this story, things turn ever stranger. Brennan
is a wonderful storyteller and this story is a real showcase of her
craft.
If you’ve read the brilliant novel Ink by Vourvoulias, you
might remember the wonderful character Meche. This story in Fantasy Magazine is
Meche’s prequel, told in the form of an evocative and mesmerizing story. There’s
also an excellent interview with the author in the magazine, where she has this
to say about Ink, and this prequel:
Meche, the protagonist in “The Memory of Chemistry,” first
appeared in my novel, Ink—an
immigration dystopia originally issued in 2012 and reissued by Rosarium
Publishing in 2018. Her character is, in fact, a reader favorite, and over the
years a number of them have expressed interest in finding out what happened to
her after the events of the book. I’ve always resisted writing a sequel, to be
honest, because what follows dystopia is the unbelievably hard work of living.
But at a friend’s urging, I decided to write a prequel story
focused on what made Meche who she was in the novel—a ferociously smart and
self-possessed chemist who used her science as a form of resistance. Still (as
she did while I was writing Ink) Meche wanted to take her story
somewhere other than what I had first imagined. So I followed.
It turns out both Meche and I wanted to explore the
emotional landscape of aging. How you cross a threshold after which, no matter
how innovative or brilliant you are at your craft, no matter how deep your
activism, no matter how rich the well of your experience—you will be defined,
and invisibilized, by your age. So I set out to do the unpardonable to a
favorite character: to let her get old and see her.
Anyway, read Ink, and read this story: it's great stuff.
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