Two years ago, I returned to Buffalo from Florida with my wife and daughter only to discover that a freak snowstorm had wreaked havoc on nearly every tree in Buffalo and its suburbs. Every square foot of my front lawn and backyard were covered with fallen tree limbs and branches; my fence was smashed; my neighbors' truck was crushed; and we had no power or telephone service for a week. I sent my family to stay with my in-laws, and I--the Man of the House--stayed at home, in the cold and in the dark, with my two cats, to guard the castle. I remember wrapping myself up in blankets in the bedroom, with candles on either side of me, and reading a slim Insidious Publication with a flashlight. That novella was Mama's Boy, written by a newcomer named Fran Friel. Nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction, it is now available from the Apex Book Company as Mama's Boy and Other Dark Tales.

Fran, I kind of remember you seeming to come out of nowhere on various horror messages when you announced that Insidious Publications was publishing your novella Mama's Boy. If I'm wrong, correct me. But tell me about your past lives and what led to your decision to become a horror writer.

All I remember is a rabbit hole and a grinning cat and BAMM! there I was at the gates of the Horror Library. Somebody told me I could get published if I wrote a horror story that won the HL Slushpile contest and somehow my naivete paid off and I actually won. Thus began my jaunt into horror.

My past lives? Leaving out the gory metaphysical answer, I've done a few things to provide fodder for my writing career, at least that's a good excuse for my multi-job history.

Ready?

*takes deep breath*

I graduated from a conservatory as a classical musician, freelanced in Philly for a few years, worked as a silversmith's assistant, and of course I did my fast food restaurant stint (a requirement of all struggling musicians), a credit card customer service wench, moved to the United States Military Academy at West Point with fellow musician/husband (he joined the band--I became a "military dependent"), became a florist, a Realtor/sales staff trainer, a mom of a wild and wonderful daughter, an Anthony Robbins workshop staffer, I worked as a seamstress of limited skill, went back to school to become a holistic therapist, divorced the musician, had a private therapy practice for 15 years, trained other therapists at my alma mater and did logistics for their national workshops, then I moved to England then back to the US, acquired a new and improved husband who encouraged my lifelong desire to write fiction which was followed by the BAMM! I mentioned earilier and then that rabbit hole swallowed me. It's been a fun, crazy-arsed ride to this point and now I'm here with you at Fear Zone! What more could an escapee from the asylum of reality ask for?

I know you've told this story before, but we need to follow a timeline or readers unfamiliar with you will be lost. Tell us the origin of Mama's Boy and how Insidious came to publish it.

MB has followed a crooked path and I've learned a lot along the way. The novella started out as a micro-flash piece inspired by a Valentine's Day prompt: "And that's why I love you." This was my pre-horror days and the prompt was not horror related, but my mind went immediately to an image of a man with a sharp knife, running the tip of it from the throat to the navel of a naked woman. I'm a reasonably well adjusted human being (or so the voices tell me) so I have no idea why that image popped in my head, but that's how Mama's Boy was born. Several months later I expanded the flash into a scene for a third person short story I was writing for a class. I wrote it from the victim's point of view knowing all along that it should have been written from the antagonist's perspective, but the guy scared me too much so I wimped out.

Motivated by a call for novellas for an anthology, I recycled Mama's Boy once again (talk about getting some good tread from a story, huh?), but this time I took the plunge and wrote it from that nasty character, Frank's point of view. Incredibly intense to say the least. I really had to push through my own fear and loathing of the character to write the story--it felt like he was sitting behind me urging me on to tell his tale. Like I said, I've learned a lot from this project and besides getting a ton of valuable rewrite experience, the most important lesson I learned was trusting the story and being brave enough to write the truth of the character--not an easy task with an extremely dark character like Frank. Some of the scenes horrified me and made me cry at the keyboard--and yes, I did say I'm a wimp.

The final lesson was the value of rejection. The editor of the novella anthology accepted MB conditionally and asked me to rewrite the ending, which required significant work on the entire piece. I hammered through it for a solid two weeks, then the editor decided it wasn't right for the project. I was only mad for about ten minutes then I moved on. Later that week I pitched the story to Insidious Reflections Magazine as a possible series. They read it, loved it and asked if I'd like MB to be published as the first book in their new novella series. Well, yeah! Hence, I learned that sometimes rejection isn't a bad thing.

One of the things I find fascinating about Chris Hedges is just how much he loves the physical process of making books.


Chris is a sweetheart to work with and yes, he makes his beautiful books by hand! I'd imagine it's a love-hate sort of thing sometimes (especially when he's dealing with shipping deadlines or a cantankerous cutting machine), but he's incredibly talented (writes a hell of a story, btw) and because of his love of the craft, he's publishing and creating a wonderful library of limited edition novellas for Insidious Publication's legacy.

I recently discovered that Chris is restoring old, damaged books, as well. It's absolutely remarkable what he does with a book that most folks would think lost forever to decay, abuse and neglect. I think we should start calling Chris the Book Whisperer.

Zach McCain was working on your project the same time he was working on mine, so I kept seeing advance peeks at what he was doing on Mama's Boy. Isn't it an exciting process to work with an artist and see how he interprets your characters and stories? Especially when they're doing multiple illustrations and not just a cover, so they have more than one image with which to contend.

Zach was a joy to work with and like you, I loved his interpretation of scenes from the book. His style is crisp and dark at the same time and his images are compelling. His work really helpt to elevate the novella to something very special. I felt very privileged to work with him on the project.

I had the pleasure of working with Billy Tackett on the second Mama's Boy project. I swear the man is psychic--he knew exactly the images I was describing to him via email and he did a stunning job on the cover art of the collection. Talk about a dream to work with. I got a chance to meet Billy in person at Hypericon in June and he's one of the nicest guys in the business--professional and very personable. Again, working with him was a privilege.

I've been a lucky woman with these fabulous artists in my corner. I believe a great cover and illustrations can really make a difference in the success of a book.

I finally met you in person at World Horror Con in Toronto, where I was particularly impressed with your foul, disgusting performance in the Gross Out contest. Do you feel you broke a glass ceiling there?

*chuckles* So glad you enjoyed my twisted little offering. I don't know if I broke any glass ceilings, but I had a blast. Truth is, I had never even been to a Gross Out Contest before so I didn't know what to expect and I certainly didn't know what to write, but author JL Benet said that there weren't any women in the contest and he challenged me to participate. Well, I boldly but naively took the challenge, and with a little advice on content ("just include lots of bodily fluids, etc and be really disgusting and when you think it's nasty enough, go one step further") I sat in my hotel room that afternoon and wrote my story. I've got to say that I wondered a little bit about myself in the process because I found it exceptionally easy to be, well, you know, really gross, and the whole time I was writing, I was grinning.

Turned out I was last on the reading roster which was a tough spot considering the masters of gross whom I followed (Jeff Strand, Cullen Bunn, Wrath James White, etc), but while I waited for my spot listening to the masterful level of grossness being achieved, I think I laughed harder than I'd ever laughed in my life. When I finally got my chance to read at least I didn't get carted off the stage in disgrace. Dang, it was fun. And if you'll remember, the judges were Chris Golden, Tim Lebbon and Joe Lansdale and later that night somebody told me that Joe's beautiful daughter, Kasey, was there as well and she kept looking at me strangely as I read my story and was later heard to say, "That woman's not right." I was oddly proud when I heard that--which I suppose makes Kasey absolutely correct in her observation.

OK, now we come to Mama's Boy and Other Dark Tales, which Apex Books is publishing as a limited edition hardcover. First things first: how did you hook up with Jason Sizemore on this project?

Apex is printing 100 copies of the signed limited and they'll be numbered, as well. A trade paperback version is also be available. I was very happy Jason decided to go this route with the printing since the original novella sold out and so few folks got to read it. The TPB is beautiful and very affordable, so just about anyone can get a copy now.

As for Jason, for years I've been a huge fan of Apex Science Fiction and Horror Digest, (Sizemore's first phase of world domination) and he got word that I was looking to re-release the Mama's Boy novella. So when MB was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award in long fiction, it just so happened that Jason's Aegri Somnia was a nominee in the anthology category. So the stars crossed, we both ended up in Toronto for the award banquet, we had lunch, a deal was eventually struck and Mama's Boy was reborn!

The ToC lists 13 additional stories, but I've heard you say that some of them are original novellas.

Yes, that's right, 13 stories plus Mama's Boy. And please forgive my gushing hubris for sharing this with you--I saw a post by Ronald Kelly over at the Shocklines message board just a couple of days ago and this is a little of what he said about the MB collection:

"By far this has to be one of the most diverse and satisfying collections that I've read in years. Mostly short story collections are simply that... short stories. Like a hearty and filling stew, this had a smattering of everything; short fiction, novellas, poetry, flash tales. You name it, it's there."

I'd met Ron for the first time at Hypericon this year and was impressed by his easy, kind and professional manner so I was thrilled when I saw his impromptu review. It's wonderful to see this old pro back in the business after a decade long hiatus.

Now that I've got the gushing out of my system (hopefully), to answer your question, there are 3 original novellas ( Beach of Dreams, The Sea Orphan and Fine Print) and 4 additional new short stories written expressly for the collection. I guess nearly half the content is new fiction.

And a Top Dog has written a wonderful introduction for the book.

Oh man, are you ever right about that. Gary Braunbeck is simply marvelous and a great inspiration to me and many other "young" writers. I recently told him that he's been my unknowing mentor for many years. His work is so rich, dark, funny and wrenching all at once. I can only aspire, really, so when he offered to write the intro to the collection I nearly fell over.

And the intro--oh my god! Writers work a lifetime to get an intro like that. I was literally stunned when I read it. After receiving a copy of it in an email, I was sitting at the computer and my husband came home from work and asked if I was okay. I was speechless and gawking at the screen. I haven't been right since (See, Kasey Lansdale was right again) and like I said before, I'm a very lucky woman.

What appeals to you about short stories, and what appeals to you about novellas?

As a reader what appeals to me about any length of story is the storytelling and the elegance in which it is told in structure and language. But specifically, I love the tight beauty and craft of a great short story. And the novella just seems perfect for some stories--giving the ideas and characters within room to expand and flower.

As a writer, I'm finding it harder these days to write in the short story length preferred by many magazine publishers (around 2000-3000 words)--I'm compelled to layer my stories more heavily so I often feel confined by a tight word count, but the novella length is sweet in that I have glorious space to paint those story layers with much greater ease. Oddly enough, I find flash fiction easier than the short story...go figure. Doing a timed flash with a prompt using the fast drafting technique (which for me helps to quiet the internal editor and unleash the muse) can really get those creative juices flowing. A lot of the collection came from flash story seedlings.

Do you have any novels in the works?

I do indeed have a novel in the works. I put it aside to complete the MB collection, but just last night I did some commando brainstorming with a friend and as a consequence I'll be doing some heavy modification from its original form. It will be in the works for a while yet, but I think you might just like it when it's done. I hope so anyway.

How does your daughter feel about your decision to follow your nightmares? Did she always know you had this interest?

I've always been a little different than the average mom so when I dove into writing horror a few years ago, she wasn't surprised. She actually loved Mama's Boy, but she wasn't sure she wanted her friends to read it. She'll be 21 this month, so when I mentioned that selling my books could help pay for grad school, she got online and sold several to her friends in less than 10 minutes. Ah, the motivation of the greenback--like magic. *wink*

How do you feel about your decision to answer this calling?


I love it, Greg. It feels like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing in just the right time of my life. My daughter is grown, I'm not starving to write, I live by the beach which energizes and inspires me, I have an absolutely amazing husband who completely supports my work in every way, and I have extraordinary friends in the writing community who help to guide and inspire me. I love what I do.

Just the other day I had a chat with a friend and they said, "You must be so excited to see your book!" But I wasn't really and I wasn't sure why. I felt kind of guilty about it, but I was of course extraordinarily pleased to have the book published and it looked gorgeous, but because of the conversation I finally realized that the book is really a vehicle of sorts, and the thing that really excites me is the journey of writing it and the awesome sense of joy when I complete the project. But the most glorious feeling of all for me is when a reader tells me they love my work. I swear, it's like literary crack for me--I get kind of giddy from it. I guess I'm like those comedians who are addicted to the laughter, but me, I'm addicted to those happy readers and I'm going to do my best to keep 'em happy for a long, long time.

Thanks so much for spending some time with me, Greg. It's been a honor and a pleasure.

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Vist Fran Friel at www.franfriel.com