Four Questions with L. Marie Wood

I’m so excited that L. Marie Wood stopped by ahead of the launch of her latest work, The Horror Aesthetic: Essays from the Dark Corners of the Genre. I met Wood two years ago at StokerCon on the Black Women in Horror panel, and she is as kind and giving as she is brilliant. That year, Wood was nominated for a Stoker Award twice in the same category; I joked that she was the rare author who was competing against herself. Wood is the Horror Writers Association’s current Vice President, and the organization is blessed to have her in that role.

Tamika Thompson: What is horror?

L. Marie Wood: Horror, to me, is anything that unsettles. Coming from the quieter side of the genre (well, most often), I don’t subscribe to the notion that gore equates to horror. I prefer the slow build, the mounting fear, the dread that comes with not knowing if there is something in the corner or if your mind is playing tricks on you. There is something to be said about that dance between reality and unreality that is incredibly intriguing to me, and that space is rife with horror.

Thompson: What is the spookiest experience you've ever had?

Wood: I get chills thinking about this, actually!

I visited Pharoah Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple in the Valley of the Kings (Egypt), and it was an amazing experience. The stories about her reign, what happened to her statues, the reliefs—it was all magnificent and anyone who hasn’t heard of her should look into her story. Many people stood taking pictures from the sandy approach and we did the same. The structure is massive, so we wanted to be sure we got at least one picture of the whole thing and the mountain behind that it was cut from. Everything was fine as we all piled in, snapping pictures and thrumming with excitement to go see more. But as we entered the space beyond where a chain or string marked where the guides stayed out and the tourists went in, we were met with gnats, a fair amount of them, in the air. We all found ourselves swatting them away and moving forward on the long walkway toward the mortuary structure at a faster clip than intended, driven by the annoying bugs in our face. Once we got onto the structure, the gnats gave us all a reprieve. We were able to look at the reliefs and statues with clear, albeit hot air (but that was to be expected of Africa at 10 a.m.). When we returned to the walkway to leave the temple a good 20 minutes later, we were met with the gnats again, but this time in full force. You could see an actual dimming of the color of the day—not dark like a storm, but something. We all began swatting more urgently, started walking a little faster. And then, when we got out, they were gone. Note I said there was a chain or a string marking off the entryway—not a wall or any other kind of structure that bugs wouldn’t be able to penetrate. But the gnats did not exist outside the barrier. At all.

There wasn’t a single one of us who came away unfazed by that. The guards knew all about it too; they were ready to help us process what we had collectively experienced. Lots of calming gestures and hushed tones.

I remember it still and it was over 20 years ago.

Thompson: What is the scariest book you've read and what about it frightened you?

Wood: I’d have to say The Monk by Matthew Lewis. Old, old, old tome (written in 1796) but it relates today in ways that are still terrifying. It has everything—temptation, obsession, murder. Mounting dread. Unbelievable twists. It is a wonderfully frightening read because the character arc is scarily identifiable.

Thompson: In your upcoming work, The Horror Aesthetic: Essays from the Dark Corners of the Genre, readers are taken on a journey that celebrates the craft of writing horror while also examining the genre. What inspired you to bring together these essays, and what did you learn in the process?

Wood: The short answer is, believe it or not, I don’t know. I have been part of the genre for a long time, and I’ve seen some things. I’ve made some mistakes. I’ve had some successes. I guess I feel compelled to pull those experiences together and share them so that people can be better equipped than I was to move forward on their journeys. I spent a lot of time uncovering things that people could sidestep if they had the benefit of knowledge. So, I share. I live my life in this way—I believe we should help each other along the way because we are all in this together.

We are creators and that automatically manifests a kinship. Part of that kinship, I believe, includes support, and while that can take on many forms, information transfer is one of them. The process of compiling these essays was more functional than anything else. It’s the lived experiences that compelled me to write these essays in the first place that taught me something. In a nutshell, I think I can say that I learned that the only way to do it is to do it. I’m hoping that this collection helps people plot their own paths toward whatever “it” is for them armed with a fair amount of practical wisdom in their back pocket.

Bestselling author L. Marie Wood is a Golden Stake Award-winner, a two-time Bookfest Award winner, a two-time Bram Stoker Award® Nominee, and MICO Award-winning screenwriter, as well as a Rhysling nominated poet, an accomplished essayist, and a burgeoning playwright. She creates immersive worlds that defy genre as they intersect horror, romance, mystery, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy elements to weave harrowing tapestries of speculative fiction. Wood has won over 50 national and international screenplay and film awards. She is also part of the 2022 Bookfest Book Award-winning poetry anthology, Under Her Skin, as well as Bram Stoker Award® and Shirley Jackson Award Nominee anthologies Shakespeare Unleashed and Mooncalves. She has been published in groundbreaking works, including the anthologies Sycorax's Daughters and Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire, as well as industry staples such as the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Nightmare Magazine.  Her nonfiction has been published in academic textbooks such as the cross-curricular, Conjuring Worlds: An Afrofuturist Textbook. Her papers are archived as part of University of Pittsburgh’s Horror Studies Collection. Wood is the founder of the Speculative Fiction Academy, an English and Creative Writing professor, a horror scholar, and a frequent contributor to the conversation around the evolution of genre fiction. Learn more about L. Marie Wood at www.lmariewood.com.