Four Questions with Alethea Lyons
Author Alethea Lyons has a new book out, The Hiding, and she was kind enough to stop by to discuss horror, a spooky experience in her own life, and the scariest book she’s ever read.
Tamika Thompson: What is horror?
Alethea Lyons: That's a difficult one! I guess I'd classify it as fiction where one of the primary aims is to scare people, whether that's through disgust and gore, or through creepiness and tension.
Thompson: What is the spookiest experience you've ever had?
Lyons: For someone who writes dark fiction, I'm afraid I don't have a lot of spooky experiences. Most everything is my own brain. Like the nightmare I had last week that was of being stuck in this recursive loop of a nightmare within a nightmare within a nightmare. I woke up so freaked out, I had to go check my toddler was still breathing then read for an hour before going to sleep with the light on. Couldn't even remember what the base nightmare was about.
Thompson: What is the scariest book you've read and what about it frightened you?
Lyons: I tend to avoid books I know will be too scary for me, I'm a complete wuss. Most of the time I read horror, it's as a beta reader for friends—I know some amazing women and enbies in horror. The act of having to make notes makes their works a little less scary to read. The scariest book I've read isn't really one that's horror, probably—Battle Royale. It's the only time I've stopped reading a book halfway through but asked a friend what the ending was. I literally could not make myself finish it, I was too nauseated. I can't read/watch gory things, but they aren't scary per se. It's the psychological side of things, like with Battle Royale. The parts where the person next door to you, or at the desk opposite, could commit horrific acts like torture or murder. I had nightmares for two weeks after watching The Shining. I've never dared read the book.
Thompson: The Hiding includes characters both magical and grounded in science—a demon hunter, a “technowitch,” and a forensic scientist. Describe how magic and technology intersect in this book and throughout the “Seer of York” series.
Lyons: Supernatural creatures use a lot of very similar technology to us. They're hiding in plain sight, so they use phones and computers, basically any tech a human would. But if one has magic, why not use it to improve the tech a bit, and vice versa? It's a bit like making an instrument electric. The violin exists as an acoustic and lots of people use it that way, but we also know how to use electricity to manipulate sound. That would look like magic if you took it back five hundred years.
Similarly, there are some scientific rules that magic follows. Just the same as we use symbols to program a computer, a witch can use occult symbols. Magic leaves traces on the world around it, things that can't be seen by the human eye, but advancing technology can make it visible.
Alethea (she/ze) writes various forms of SFF, with a particular love for science-fantasy, dark fantasy, dystopias, and folklore. Many of her works take place at the intersection between technology and magic. She enjoys writing stories with subtle political and philosophical messages, but primarily wants her stories to be great tales with characters readers will love. She also has soft spots for found family, hopeless romances, and non-human characters. Her short stories can be found in a variety of publications and links for these are on her website. Alethea lives in Manchester, UK with her husband, little Sprite, a cacophony of stringed instruments, and more tea than she can drink in a lifetime.
