Candace Nola, Putting the Splatter into Splatterpunk By Lionel Ray Green
Uncomfortably Dark Horror creator Candace Nola is one of the most talented triple threats in the indie horror fiction field today, successfully wearing the hats of award-winning author, editor, and publisher.
Her most recent collection Demons in My Bloodstream, released by Death’s Head Press in August, is receiving high praise for its dark, brutal, and powerful stories. The Queen of African Horror Nuzo Onoh called the collection “a masterpiece of gore and splatter.”
One of two multiple nominees at the 2024 Splatterpunk Awards, Nola received a Best Novella nomination for her seafaring pirate tale Sirens and Seaweed, while she earned a Best Anthology nomination as editor of Dark Disasters.
Candace Nola, who’s from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is no stranger to Splatterpunk Awards, having won twice as editor of two anthologies, Camp Slasher Lake: Volume 1 (with D.W. Hitz) in 2023 and Baker’s Dozen in 2022.
Her short stories are featured in numerous anthologies, and her longer works include Shadow Manor, Bishop, Transformation, Breach, Beyond the Breach, and Hank Flynn.
Nola agreed to an exclusive interview for Ginger Nuts of Horror about her work and her thoughts on the future of splatterpunk fiction.
Candace Nola, Putting the Splatter into Splatterpunk
GREEN: As an anthology editor, you’ve won two Splatterpunk Awards and were nominated again in 2024. You obviously have an eye for extreme horror fiction. In your opinion, what makes a story a “splatterpunk” story?
NOLA: For me, a splatterpunk story is a story with an extreme edge to it, that also delivers a message within it. Normally this message is a reflection on the state of the world today. A point the author is trying to make regarding society and current affairs.
Today, this message could be about women’s rights, trans rights, LGBTQ+, poverty, racial issues and more. It does this in a very blunt, in your face way, much like the punk bands from the 80s were known to be.
GREEN: As an author, your novella Sirens and Seaweed received a 2024 Splatterpunk Awards nomination. What did that recognition mean for you personally as a writer, and what do you think the creation of the Splatterpunk Awards, which debuted in 2018, has meant to the extreme horror subgenre as a whole?
NOLA: Having the nomination was just an incredible honor. To be selected from so many of my peers, all of whom are amazing authors as well, is always a humbling feeling as well as rewarding. To know that readers are enjoying my work will always be my biggest reward, with awards for it just being the cherry on top, so to speak. The Splatterpunk Awards overall have brought well-deserved recognition to this genre, and I think it has really shed some light on the authors that write it.
GREEN: Death’s Head Press just released your debut collection of six stories titled Demons in My Bloodstream. As I mentioned, Nuzo Onoh, a 2022 Bram Stoker Awards Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, hailed the book as “a masterpiece of gore and splatter.”
How do you react when you receive that kind of praise from the Queen of African Horror, and how did this collection develop?
NOLA: Having that much praise from Nuzo Onoh was amazing. I may have gotten a little teary-eyed from her blurb and the many others that it received. I still feel like a rookie out here, so when my work is recognized and praised, I always get a little overwhelmed by it. The collection developed over the last two years, during a time when I was originally approached to write some chapbooks for Death’s Head Press. But when it changed hands, I was asked to make it a collection instead, so I added some more stories to it and the title poem to go with it. Theme-wise, it was not really planned out other than to focus on inner demons. The characters in the stories had plenty of those, as do we all.
Candace Nola, Putting the Splatter into Splatterpunk
GREEN: In the powerful introduction of your dark poetry collection Unmasked, you write “poetry is the purest, deepest expression of self.” Why was it important for you to “stand, naked and terrified,” as you describe, and bare your soul to readers with that collection?
NOLA: I’ve been writing poetry since I was a young child. It was my entryway into writing as well as my personal outlet. When I began writing seriously and having some success with it, I realized that I could not be true to my roots or to my fans unless I published all aspects of my writing. In order for me to feel fully accepted as an author, I had to be willing to take off the mask and show my readers who I am inside, human, flawed, and scarred, just like them. Showing your pain and showing what you overcome allows readers to relate to you as a person. It shows them that they are not alone.
GREEN: As a publisher and editor, what are your thoughts on the future of the extreme horror and splatterpunk subgenres?
NOLA: I’m excited for the future of horror, overall, all subgenres of it. The number of voices writing today is phenomenal, and the variety of stories that we can enjoy, experience and learn from is wider than ever before. I think we are in a great place for horror and only moving toward greater things. I’d love to see more cultural stories, more folklore-based stories based on other countries, other lifestyles and perspectives. Reading allows us to experience things we normally would not be exposed to, and I think that is just beautiful. I would really like to see more minority main characters, stronger female roles, including villains. I think the damsel in distress trope has had its time, and we can do so much better than that, if we allow ourselves to explore outside the box.
LINK: Uncomfortably Dark Indie Horror Fiction Author
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