Darkeva interviews World Horror Convention’s Poet Guest of Honor, Bruce Boston.

Darkeva: There’s definitely a strong contingent of poets among the sci-fi/fantasy/horror communities, and you’re certainly one of the most accomplished with publications in all the top magazines. Tell us a bit more about how you got your first few sales.

BB: I was publishing poetry in literary magazines, mostly non-paying, some of it speculative, throughout the 1970s, though I didn’t yet have the label “speculative” for it. I’d also sold a few science fiction stories to commercial anthologies. In 1978 I saw a market report for a magazine titled The Anthology of Speculative Poetry. I submitted several poems and Editor Robert Frazier accepted them all. He also recommended I join the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which had just been formed by SF novelist Suzette Haden Elgin. Through the SFPA I discovered numerous small press genre publications that would allow me to combine my love of poetry with my love of sci-fi/fantasy/horror. And unlike most literary magazines, many actually paid to publish it. Usually not much, but at least the idea was in place that writers should be paid for their work.

Yet it wasn’t until the early 1980s, when Shawna McCarthy took over as editor at Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine , that I began selling poetry regularly to professional, commercial markets. Prior to Shawna’s editorship, Asimov’s published mainly rhyming poems that were often humorous. Shawna introduced poems that remained genre in setting and content, yet more accurately reflected the state of modern poetry in form and voice. After my poems began appearing regularly in Asimov’s and received a few awards, I soon began publishing poems regularly in Amazing Stories and genre anthologies, and eventually in Weird Tales.

Read the rest of the interview at Darkeva’s Dark Delights.

Darkeva interviews World Horror Convention’s Author Guest of Honor, Caitlín R. Kiernan.

Darkeva: Although you’re mainly known for your powerful and dark novels such as The Drowning Girl, The Red Tree, Silk, and Low Red Moon among many others, you’re also a prolific comic book writer, most notably for Alabaster, but also with Vertigo for The Girl Who Would Be Death and The Dreaming, spin-offs of sorts from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels. Tell us a bit about how you came to write for these series, what you enjoy (or least enjoy) about writing for comics, and if you have forthcoming comic projects.

CRK: I began doing comics back in 1996, after Neil called to ask if I’d like to do a three-part story arc for The Dreaming. I was actually in Eugene, Oregon at the time, attending the WHC. I was a great admirer of The Sandman, so, naturally, I said I did. The series’ sales had been pretty abyssal, certainly not what Vertigo had expected after the wild success of The Sandman. But there was an increase in sales with my arc, so I was asked to do a second. Eventually, I was offered the opportunity to be sole writer for the comic.

I wanted to do it, and the money was good. And it was great for a while. But after a year or so it became a grind. I was relieved when the series finally ended. And yes, while writing The Dreaming I also did The Girl Who Would Be Death, but I’ve all but disowned that, due to interference from DC editors who demanded changes I refused to make until they threatened to have someone else rewrite the last issue. It was ugly.

A year or so I did one last mini-series for Vertigo, Bast: Eternity Game, also a Sandman tie-in. It was intended as a four-part story, but was cut to three after I started, which ruined it. And which left me with no desire ever to work for Vertigo again. Or, for that matter, in comics.

Read the rest of the interview at Darkeva’s Dark Delights.

Blogger Darkeva has posted a fascinating interview with World Horror Convention Guest of Honor Amber Benson.

Darkeva: In addition to your acting career, you’re also an accomplished film director, producer, and writer, but most people know you for your role as Tara on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As urban fantasy and horror readers already knew you, how did that affect your transition to becoming a novelist?

AB: Well, I’d always written – mostly bad poetry and a few short stories and plays – but being on Buffy opened the door, as far as novel/prose is concerned, to a whole new world. It was through the show that I met Christopher Golden – who basically let me take Writing 101 at Chris Golden U! – and that’s how I learned I could write a book. Something I’d been scared to do up until that point.

Read the rest at Darkeva’s blog.