Four Questions with Jennifer Anne Gordon
The award-winning author joining Tamika Talks Terror today has a tattoo of one of the scariest lines in all of horror literature.
I’m grateful that Jennifer Anne Gordon stopped by to answer four questions amid the launch of her latest collection, The Japanese Box: Tales of Grief and Horror, and to tell us about that tattoo.
Tamika Thompson: What is horror?
Jennifer Anne Gordon: This is such a subjective question. Horror is different for everyone.
If I think about the basics, it’s about eliciting fear in a reader. As a writer I like to think about it in broader terms. I like to elicit unease in a reader. I don’t think all horror has to be frightening. It can be much more personal, for example grief horror may not be typically scary, but the idea of losing someone or something you love is a frightening experience.
Thompson: What is the spookiest experience you've ever had?
Gordon: My father suffered from a long illness before he passed away. While he was sick, he had a brass bell next to his bed that would ring if he needed anything. About a year after he passed away my mother very abruptly decided to move out of the house that I grew up in and she moved to Florida. The entire process happened in just a few days. I then moved back into our family home.
A few days later I woke up in the night to the sound of that bell ringing. It rang most of the night and eventually stopped. When I spoke to my mother, she let me know that she had brought the bell with her and it was not in our house any longer. The sound of the bell happened on and off for a few weeks. I was not the only one that heard it. And even though I knew it was my father, it was still unsettling to say the very least.
I eventually spoke to a ghost hunter, and she suggested that I go into my father’s former bedroom and just talk to him, she thought that he might be confused about why my mother was no longer there. So I explained to him that mom was okay, but she had moved.
After that the bell was almost always silent; it would only ring on occasion, and only ever when I was very upset or going through a hard time.
Thompson: What is the scariest book you've read and what about it frightened you?
Gordon: The book that has consistently frightened me for many years is The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I am very drawn to haunted house stories that also deal with psychological issues and mental illness. I fell in love with Eleanor, the main character in Hill House right away; her connection to Hill House was part love story, and part obsession. I loved that the house seemed to become more alive because of her. I also have the scariest line (to me) of the book as a tattoo on my arm. The line is “Whose hand was I holding?” For readers of the book, they will know that it is a truly terrifying moment.
Thompson: Your latest book, The Japanese Box and Other Stories, is described as a collection of short stories “contemplating horror, grief, and trauma.” What do you hope will be the takeaway for readers about these three forces?
Gordon: I hope readers come away with not only a greater understanding of “quiet horror” but also an appreciation for horror stories that are not only deeply personal but also experimental in theme and style. Also selfishly I hope they take away a greater understanding of who I am as a writer as well as who I am on a very personal level. The story “The Japanese Box” actually started as a personal essay and only became “horror” later in the writing process. It very much is speculative horror memoir.
Jennifer Anne Gordon is an award-winning author and popular host of the Vox Vomitus podcast. Her novel Beautiful, Frightening and Silent won the Kindle Award for Best Horror/Suspense for 2020, Best Horror 2020 from Authors on the Air, and was a finalist for American Book Fest’s Best Book Award - Horror, 2020. It also received the Platinum 5 Star Review from Reader’s Choice as well as the Gold Seal from Book View. Her latest novel Pretty/Ugly won the Helicon Award for Best Horror for 2022, the Kindle Award for Best Novel of the Year (Reader’s Choice), as well as the Gold Medal from Literary Titan. Jennifer is a member of Mystery Writers of America, the Horror Writers Association (where she serves on a jury for the Stoker Awards), and is the Agents and Editors chair of the New England Crime Bake Committee.
Her latest collection is The Japanese Box: Tales of Grief and Horror (Last Waltz Publishing), and she is also a featured essayist in Let Grief Speak by Diane Zinna (Columbia University Press 2024). Her personal essays on grief, trauma, and horror have been published in The Horror Tree, Ladies of Horror Fiction, The Nerd Daily, and Reader’s Entertainment Magazine. You can find her online at www.JenniferAnneGordon.com.
