Mercedes M. Yardley – Women in Horror Month

In conversation with Mercedes M. Yardley

As a lover of dark fairy tales, I quickly connected with Mercedes M. Yardley after discovering her novella Little Dead Red, which won the Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction in 2015. When the special edition of Little Dead Red & Other Stories came out with Vault Books in 2018, I was one of the first to order it. Today, I am the proud owner of copy #34 out 124 numbered copies released, and I keep it tucked away on a special shelf with some of my other beloved collectibles. I have other, more accessible books by Yardley on my shelves as well. Luckily, there is plenty to read when it comes to this prolific author lovingly known as Miss Murder. 

Since she released her debut novel Nameless: The Darkness Comes in January 2014, Yardley has published seven novels and two short story collections. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies. In fact, last year her short story “Fracture,” which was included in the anthology Mother: Tales of Love and Terror, won the Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in Short Fiction. In addition to Yardley’s work as an author, she has also stepped into the role of editor more than once. In 2020, Yardley received recognition for her editorial debut with the Crystal Lake anthology Arterial Bloom. And currently, Yardley is working as the senior fiction editor for Gamut Magazine. As much as I love her work as an editor, it’s her fiction that keeps me coming back for more. In recent news, Yardley announced that her novella Little Dead Red is currently being translated into Italian. But even more exciting to this lover of dark fantasy is the news that Yardley will be releasing a new collection of stories, Love Is a Crematorium, with Cemetery Dance later this year. Fairy tale lovers rejoice! –Carina Bissett

About Mercedes M. Yardley

Mercedes M. Yardley is a whimsical dark fantasist who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She is the author of numerous works including Darling, the Stabby Award-winning Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls, Love is a Crematorium, and Nameless. She won the Bram Stoker Award for her stories Little Dead Red and “Fracture.” Mercedes lives and works in Las Vegas. You can find her at mercedesmyardley.com

Interview with Mercedes M. Yardley

BISSETT: What was your first experience with horror?

YARDLEY:I mean, I grew up in the 1980s. That was my first experience with horror. Mom and Dad were at work and the neighborhood children were all unsupervised. I lived in a rural area, and we were falling into creeks and getting caught up on barbed wire fences. We all knew which kids were getting beaten at home, but nobody ever did anything. Ourparents didn’t know what to do about that any more than we did. But I grew up on Macaroni and Cheese, creepy Don Bluth cartoons, and Stephen King. It was idyllic and terrifying and horrible and wonderful.

BISSETT: What attracts you to horror as a genre?

YARDLEY: I like being scared. Correction: I like being scared in a safe environment. Horror is a great way to release the knots in my neck and soul. There’s something so delicious about feeling dread, especially if you’re hanging out with your friends and watching a horror movie together. I was always the little girl telling scary stories around the campfire. After a night of that, you aren’t strangers anymore. You’re friends. I love that. Horror draws us closer together. 

BISSETT: Who or what terrifies you?

YARDLEY: I was taught to be frightened of absolutely everything. As a child, I was afraid of monsters and strange men and especially Gremlins. Now my fears are less corporeal. I’m very open about my depression and anxiety. I’m afraid of seeing it manifest in my children. I’m afraid of sending my kids to school to face school shootings. I’m afraid that maybe I’m not so special after all, and instead of changing the world through my writing, I’m just a failed housewife who can’t keep up with the laundry.

I think we all have fears like this. I work hard every day to push back at them. My New Year’s Resolution is “Do things that scare me.” That’s how I try new things. I climbed a volcano. I’m on a wellness board. I sing in front of crowds. I try not to let fear hold me back. If you’re afraid, then do it afraid. It doesn’t take away the glory of doing it.

BISSETT: What are the challenges you’ve faced as a woman working in horror?

YARDLEY:Men don’t take women seriously. Women don’t take women seriously. A woman must work twice as hard, twice as long, and be twice as loud to be heard. When she is heard, she’s often called demanding or bossy. It’s frustrating, but it is what it is.

We’re also dismissed. “Women can’t write horror. Women are too soft.” Women know horror in a deep, intimate way that many men, thankfully, don’t. We’re victims. We’re prey. I often say, “My brother doesn’t know what it’s like to keep a knife in his boot for self-defense.” I don’t walk him to his car. Women’s bodies cramp up and gush blood. We carry beautiful parasites inside of us for nine months. We’re usually physically smaller, we’re silenced, we don’t hold political power…and people say we don’t understand horror? We’re wired for horror. We live it every single day of our lives.

BISSETT: What are you currently working on? 

YARDLEY: I’m working on so many things! I’m working on a few short stories for different anthologies I’ve been invited to. But the three main projects right now are: turning the entire book of Pretty Little Dead Girls: A Novel of Murder and Whimsy into a massive graphic novel script. It will be a project years in the making, but my wonderful artist Orion Zangara and I are committed to it. I’m also rewriting my current novel so I can shop it around. And, you know this, Carina, I’m working on a novella currently titled The Girl Who Cried Wolf, which is dark and important. It has the potential to be quite powerful if I don’t bungle it. I’m going to treat it with such care.

BISSETT: How do you balance your role as the fiction editor at Gamut Magazine with your own personal work as a novelist and short story writer in your own right?

YARDLEY: It’s a careful balance. As much as I rebel against structure, I tend to do well with it. I take care of Gamut in the mornings. I read 150 submissions a month and that doesn’t include fielding emails, writing things up for the newsletter, promotion, and all the cool miscellaneous things. I read slush every time I sit down for breakfast and lunch, because I can read while I eat. I can’t write while I eat. I meet up with an evening virtual writing group ran by Donna Sokol about three times a week. We write together for an hour, discuss our progress in about 10-30 seconds afterward, and then bebop on out. That’s where I work on things due for deadlines, classes, etc. It’s extremely helpful. The rest of the time is all for me. I tend to do late nights starting at 11 pm and write until 2 am for myself. But consistently having this loose structure allows me to know what I’m working on whenever I sit down. Boom, it’s Gamut. Boom, it’s submission calls or it’s my novel time. It helps.

BISSETT: In addition to being an author and an editor you are also a mother. Do you have any advice for other women trying to juggle their careers along with the demands of family?

YARDLEY: Yes, I do. Don’t let those dreams go. You can write anywhere at any time. You can dictate into your phone or use a computer or a pen on the back of a recipt. But be kind to yourself. Family comes first, always. If you’re dying to write, you’ll find the time. I’m famous for writing in 15-minute increments because sometimes that’s all I have. You can do anything for 15 minutes a day, right? Neil Gaiman said he wrote one sentence a day on Coraline and that’s how he built his story. I love that. 

But also give yourself patience and love. Maybe you’re tired. Maybe right now isn’t the season to write heavily, and that is okay, too. The window on writing never closes. It isn’t like sports or dancing where our bodies give out and we can no longer do our chosen profession. I was just talking with a well-known author who said he didn’t start writing until his kids were out of the house. So, my advice is write if you want to write, but take a break if you need to. The stories will always be there if you want to come back to them. Writers can’t change who they are, and that’s a wonderful thing.

About Darling by Mercedes M. Yardley (Black Spot Books, 2022) 

“Horror literature readers and fans who want more than just a story of evolving evil will find much to like in Darling, a gothic horror piece that follows one woman’s departure, return, and struggle to survive her decisions.”—Diane Donovan, Midwest Book Review

Darling has its demons.

Cherry LaRouche escaped the claws of Darling, Louisiana at sixteen. When she is forced to return after her mother’s death, Cherry and her children move back into her childhood home where the walls whisper and something sinister skitters across the roof at night.

While Cherry tries to settle back into a town where evil spreads like infection, the bodies of several murdered children turn up. When Cherry’s own daughter goes missing, she’s forced to confront the true monsters of Darling.

Carina Bissett

Carina Bissett is a writer and poet working primarily in the fields of dark fiction and fabulism. She is the author of numerous shorts stories, which are featured in her debut collection Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations (Trepidatio Publishing, 2024), and she is the co-editor of the award-winning anthology Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas. She is currently a Bram Stoker finalist for her essay “Words Wielded by Women” (Apex Magazine, 2023), a comprehensive retrospective of women in horror. Links to her work can be found at http://carinabissett.com.

Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations

In this powerful debut, Carina Bissett explores the liminal spaces between the magical and the mundane, horror and humor, fairy tales and fabulism. A young woman discovers apotheosis at the intersection of her cross-cultural heritage. A simulacrum rebels against her coding to create a new universe of her own making. A poison assassin tears the world apart in the relentless pursuit of her true love—the one person alive who can destroy her. Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations erases expectations, forging new trails on the map of contemporary fiction. Includes an introduction by Julie C. Day, author of Uncommon Miracles and The Rampant. 

Praise for Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations

Check out Steve Stred’s Review of Dead Girl Driving here

“Carina Bissett is one of my favorite speculative authors writing today—magic and myth, horror and revenge, wonder and hope. Her stories are original, lyrical, and haunting—Shirley Jackson mixed with Ursula LeGuin and a dash of Neil Gaiman. An amazing collection of stories.—Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion, a Bram Stoker Award finalist

“Carina Bissett’s collection is a thing of wonder and beauty. It is a true representation of Carina herself: whimsical, visceral, lovely, and fierce. You can hear women’s voices screaming while roses fall from their lips. Dead Girl, Driving and Other Devastations is a triumph.”—Mercedes M. Yardley, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Little Dead Red

“From fairy tale revisions to fresh takes on monstrous transitions and the absolute horrors of being female, no one knows how to write a story like Carina Bissett. Fierce yet fragile.”—Lindy Ryan, author of Bless Your Heart

“In a debut collection weaving folklore and fairy tale and told in magical, lyrical, irresistible prose, Carina Bissett inveigles readers with the breadth of her skill. A feat of woven wonder, with spells sketched in the air and strands stretched taut, Dead Girl Driving and Other Devastations is an enchanting tapestry of silken stories, the collection establishing Bissett as a world-class author of fabulism, fantasy, and horror. A must-read for lovers of Neil Gaiman, Angela Slatter, and Carmen Maria Machado.” —Lee Murray, five-time Bram Stoker Awards-winning author of Grotesque: Monster Stories

“Ravishing flights of fantasy.”—Priya Sharma, Shirley Jackson award-winning author of All the Fabulous Beasts and Ormeshadow

“Dark, often violent, Dead Girl, Driving & Other Devastations doesn’t lie to you about the nature of its stories. Between the title page and the Afterword lies a harrowing alliance of nightmare and fairytale. The pages are full of strange birds, resurrections, second chances, monstrous women, enchantments, and inventions. These stories explore a dark and permissive imagination, unafraid to disturb the monster at the back of the cave. It is a collection for the brave and forlorn, for those seeking escape, vengeance, transformation, or grace. There is wonder here, and freedom from shackles—for those fierce enough to wrench loose of them.”—C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter

“Carina’s short stories are absolutely luminous and deeply unsettling. Savour this collection like a fine blood-red wine. It’s absolute perfection and will linger long after the pages are closed.”—KT Wagner

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