Tag: Occult Horror

Kara Jorgensen (they/them) is a queer, nonbinary oddball with a penchant for all things antiquated, morbid, or just plain strange. While in college, they realized they no longer wanted to be Victor Frankenstein but instead wanted to write like Mary Shelley and thus abandoned their future career in science for writing. Kara melds their passions through their books and graduated with an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing in 2016. When not writing, they can be found hanging out with their dogs watching period dramas or trying to convince their students to cite their sources. 

Website: www.karajorgensen.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/authorkaraj
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karajorgensenwriter/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@authorkarajorgensen
Bluesky: https://staging.bsky.app/profile/authorkaraj.bsky.social

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Thank you for having me. First and foremost, I am a queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent writer of queer historical paranormal books, most with a healthy dose of romance. I like to describe myself as Vincent Price meets Julia Child because I love things others find spooky or macabre, but I also love to teach and encourage others to experiment with their art. My day job is teaching college students creative and academic writing at my alma mater, so I spend much of my time talking about writing. My interests are numerous, but I really love my dogs, art history, crafts (and the history of), crustaceans, dinosaurs, medical history, and of course, queer books and history.

Congratulations on your recently released book, The Reanimator’s Soul! Could you tell us what it’s about and where the idea for the book came from?

So The Reanimator’s Soul is book 2 in the Reanimator Mysteries series. Without giving too much away, book 1, The Reanimator’s Heart, is about Oliver, an autistic necromancer, who accidentally reanimates the guy he has had a crush on for years after finding him murdered. Together, Oliver and Felipe team up to solve his murder and the murder of a nun. In book 2, they are called to investigate a body that was dumped in the middle of a cemetery with its organs missing. The investigation leads them to a mysterious clinic that claims it can remove people’s magical abilities. Unfortunately, Oliver’s obnoxious ex is also working the case, so they all must work together, all while Felipe is dealing with his recent un-death and family obligations.

With this book, I really wanted to explore what it’s like for Oliver and Felipe to navigate the complexities of being magically tied together while Felipe’s family has no idea he’s undead. Felipe and Oliver are both adult men with lives of their own trying to figure out a relationship, their own insecurities, and solve a mystery at the same time. It’s a lot. Most queer romances are one-and-done, but I enjoy exploring what comes next and how they grow as a couple in order to overcome whatever is thrown at them. The Reanimator’s Soul also explores some heavier topics that are as prevalent today as they were in the 1890s, such as conversion therapy, how medicine upholds the patriarchy, and ableism.

Since Geeks OUT is a queer centered website, could you tell us a bit about the LGBTQ+ characters featured in your books?

Basically, every character in this series is queer. Oliver and Felipe are both cis gay men, but Oliver’s best friend Gwen is also queer (this will be discussed more in future stories). Felipe’s lavender marriage wife, Louisa, is a cis lesbian who is partnered with a bisexual trans woman named Agatha. Most people who work at the Paranormal Society are some manner of queer as that tends to go hand-in-hand with having magic. While the outside world in the 1890s might not have been accepting of queer and trans people, the Paranormal Society is a community where they can thrive.

I didn’t see many characters like me growing up, so something that’s very important to me is portraying disabled and/or neurodivergent queer characters. There are quite a few of them sprinkled throughout my various books with Eilian being asexual, ADHD, and an amputee, Oliver being gay and autistic, and Theo being bisexual and dealing with epilepsy.

As a writer, what drew you to writing fiction/fantasy, especially that intended for adult audiences?

I’m not exactly sure, but that’s always what I’ve written. Even back when I was a teen, I wrote about adults. I think I prefer the autonomy and complexities of adult characters, but this might be because I didn’t realize I was many layers of queer until I was an adult. The whole young adult coming out narrative often feels alien to me as that wasn’t my experience growing up in the early ‘00s with very little queer rep. It’s also important to me that queer, neurodiverse, and disabled adults are portrayed as people living full lives with people who love them, even if they’re still figuring some things out. There’s a lot of infantilization of neurodivergent and disabled adults, so it’s important to show them doing adult things, and while that does often include sex and romance for me, it’s also things like managing their own lives (sometimes with help) and going on adventures.

Were there any books that touched you or inspired you growing up? 

I feel like these will sound very weird yet make total sense if you’ve read my work, but the two series that had a major impact on me as a kid are the Bunnicula series by Deborah and James Howe and Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. The Bunnicula books were my first brush with the Gothic or spooky narratives beyond those Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books, and I devoured them in elementary school.

Anne Rice’s vampire books were probably my biggest inspiration and what made me want to become a writer. I probably read them too young (I was eleven), but the lush historical settings, sensuality, and queerness drew me in and resonated with me, even before I realized I was queer. I don’t often reread books, but Anne Rice’s The Mummy is one I have gone back to several times as it made me want to write my own archaeology adventure story when I was in college and realize I might be queer.

You do not shy away from making your characters unique, seeming to focus on people with different ways of dealing with the world and those with non-typical behavior living patterns. Can you go into more detail on how that evolved?

I write about this a lot because that’s how I, as a neurodivergent, chronically ill person, move through the world. Often, what is taken for granted as “normal” by neurotypical, non-ill people is wildly difficult and inaccessible for people like me. In writing from the perspective of characters who live in ways that go outside the norm, I hope that people can see themselves or see how they can make things easier for others by pushing back on norms that don’t work for a lot of people. When I wrote my first book, The Earl of Brass, Eilian’s AuDHD comes across as somewhat muted because I wasn’t sure if readers would get him, and I was afraid to be too pointed with the representation. With Oliver in The Reanimator’s Heart, I went full tilt into him being autistic and based a lot of his experiences off my own. If readers don’t like it or think it’s too much, then my books probably aren’t for them, and at this point in my career, I’m okay with losing readers in favor of authenticity.

What inspired you to pick the location and time period you’ve set the Reanimator’s Mysteries and Paranormal Society series in?

All of my books so far are set in the 1890s, and when I was writing my first book, I was struggling to decide on the time period until I realized the 1890s were referred to as “The Gay Nineties.” My twenty year old self took this as a sign. After doing research, the 1890s appealed to me because so much of what society was exploring and grappling with, we are as well, such as quack medicine warring with science, anti-queerness laws, and purity culture that was enforced through Comstock Laws that can be seen in modern book bans.

In terms of location, my first six books are set in England, but I wanted to explore my own local history on the East Coast of the US. I’ve grown up traveling to New York City regularly, so setting the Reanimator Mysteries and the Paranormal Society Romances in New York felt right since in the 1890s not only was it a hub of queerness but it was exceedingly diverse.

What’s something you haven’t done as a writer that you’d like to do?

One day I would love to write a Scandinavian-inspired fantasy trilogy. It’s still marinating in my brain and has been for a while. I’ve never written an epic, expansive fantasy before and still don’t know exactly how to do that, so I probably won’t get to it for a while. It’s one of those projects where every once in a while you sit down to think about it, add a few ideas to a running document, then confirm you are not ready and/or skilled enough yet to pull off this idea, and vow to come back later.

What do you wish you had known at the beginning of your writing journey? 

That half of writing is maintaining your mental health. I write to help purge my brain and stay mentally balanced, but if things go off the rails, I struggle to write and things go from bad to worse. Early on in my writing and publishing career, I tanked my success several times because I was running myself into the ground instead of listening to my brain and body when I needed a break. My biggest career regrets stem from not allowing myself more time to breathe, recover, and avoid burn-out. When you’re mentally fried, you don’t make good decisions or produce your best work, so if you can avoid that hustle culture mentality, you’re more likely to succeed long-term, no matter what others lead you to believe.

Are there any projects you are currently working on and are at liberty to speak about?

There are a few in various stages of completion/development. Currently, I am writing a Reanimator Mysteries short story set after The Reanimator’s Soul, which will be a freebie for my newsletter subscribers. Felipe convinces Oliver to take a vacation at the beach, and the plan goes completely awry. I think my readers will really like this one; it’s quite sweet and silly.

Once that’s finished, I will be working on the third Reanimator Mysteries book, which involves Oliver, Felipe, and Gwen going to a “murder town” to investigate only to discover the secrets hit far closer to home. I also want to write a story featuring Joe and Ansley from The Reanimator’s Soul, but I’m not sure when I’ll get to that book. 

Aside from writing, what do you enjoy doing in your free time? 

My two favorite things to do besides writing are crafting and learning. I love to do deep-dives on things I need to research for my books or random topics my partner or I stumble upon (we love to share a good info dump), like uranium glass or how the undead manifest in different cultures. On the crafting side, I started crocheting a few years ago and really enjoy it. I also like to do plastic canvas village kits, painting, and whatever new craft I can get my hands on. I like to joke that every mental breakdown or burnout leads to learning a new hobby.

What’s a question you haven’t been asked yet, but wish you were asked (as well as the answer to that question)? 

Kara, what is your writing process like?

I’m not going to lie, I enjoy talking about my writing process because I find the way people’s creative brains work to be fascinating. I know a lot of people sort of go off what tropes they want to put in a book, but my brain immediately goes for who are the two main characters and how do they fit together? For example, with Oliver and Felipe, I knew I wanted an autistic main character and that he should be gothy because that’s the tone I wanted for the story. What works well with that? A necromancer, which then leads into how can a necromancer get in trouble in a story? By accidentally reanimating someone. Even though my stories have magic, my brain is always fixated on logic, so I was like, how could I keep MC2 from decomposing? If he is a self-healer, his body can stave off decomposition. What jobs might be good for a self-healer? Anything dangerous, and that’s how I decided that my two main characters were a monster hunter and a necromancer. Once I have the characters, I struggle for a bit to figure out the conflict and how that fits with the overall theme and growth these characters need to go through.

From there, all my ideas get tossed into a doc and slowly hammered out, but I tend to only loosely outline one act of the book at a time. I’m a plantser/gardener, so I don’t outline too heavily or I lose interest. Each day, I edit the chunk I wrote previously before starting my writing for the day in order to tidy up what I have and reacquaint myself with where I left off. I tend to be a slower writer, but this process works well for me. 

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors/creators would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

This is a very non-exhaustive list, and I’m sure I’ll be kicking myself later for forgetting someone, but here are some of my favorite queer authors and/or authors of queer characters: Anna-Marie McLemore, Nghi Vo, Jordan L. Hawk, Cat Sebastian, KJ Charles, Joanna Chambers, Talia Hibbert, Freya Marske, Azalea Crowley, Arden Powell, Vanora Lawless, Olivia Waite, A. E. Bross, Darcy Little Badger, Sakaomi Yuzaki, Rebecca Roanhorse, and P. Djèlí Clark.

Rory Michaelson (they/them) is the author of the multi-indie-award winning Lesser Known Monsters books, a queer dark fantasy series with a diverse found-family cast. Rory is always too busy but rarely doing the things they ought to be. They are generally a solitary creature that can often be found hunched over their laptop eating cookies in London, England.

Tiktok: @RoryMichaelson
Twitter: @RoryMichaelson
Website: rorymichaelson.com
Instagram: @Rory_Michaelson_Author

First of all, welcome to Geeks OUT! Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Thank you so much! I feel welcomed. I’m very much an introvert (though publishing demands I pretend otherwise on social media). I’m queer, neurodivergent, non-binary, and love writing stories. It’s something that allows me to connect with other people in a really special way. If I can make you laugh on one page and cry on the next, I’ve done my job–but if I can make you laugh and cry at the same time, even better. Interesting fact: though I write about monsters and darker themes, I am too scared to watch most horror films (but do need to read the full synopsis of every horror film I hear about on Wikipedia and look at the cast to know what happens to each character!).

Congratulations on your very successful series, Lesser Known Monsters! Could you tell us what it’s about and where the idea for the book came from?

Oh I don’t know about ‘very successful!’ Maybe if there’s ever a TV adaptation or something? Lesser Known Monsters has found quite a few people that it really connects with that tend to be loud about how much they love it. That’s my favourite kind of success, really though. 

The Lesser Known Monsters series follows a character called Oscar Tundale who is “entirely average in many ways and less than average in more.” Oscar gets dragged into an investigation of his workplace crush and discovers that not only do monsters exist but for some reason they’re very interested in him. Now, the fate of the world is in Oscar’s dithering hands, and the best he can do is try to not end it by mistake.

With Lesser Known Monsters I really wanted to give urban legends and folk-lore some love and send people into google-loops to learn even more about them. I often find traditional ‘hero’s journey’ and ‘chosen one’ narratives a bit uninspiring and tired, so writing Oscar–who is far from heroic–gave me an exciting angle into that world. Because he’s overwhelmingly human, I got to explore the world of monsters through a character who struggles with his own agency being faced with difficult situations. The stakes of the story in terms of events might be apocalyptic, but the heart of it is absolutely Oscar finding his own kind of strength, even if it doesn’t seem like much to others.

As a writer, what drew you to writing LGBTQ+ fiction, especially that intended for mature audiences?

As a queer person who grew up in section 28 in the UK I was very starved of representation. I was a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and when Willow and Tara kissed it was like an awakening. I got to see queerness brought into a world and characters that I loved, and it made my existence feel more possible. When young people don’t get to see characters like them, I think it really impacts the growth of their identity. I don’t think I really hit what should have been my ‘teens’ until my early twenties. This made that sort of ‘new adult’ phase an incredibly important growth period in my life and one I wanted to try and represent. I remember hearing V.E. Schwab talk about how when she writes, she does it for a very specific version of herself, so I wrote Lesser Known Monsters for that tired and fragile adult version of Rory that was struggling to figure things out. As creators we put parts of ourselves in our work, and we also are gifted with the chance to create a place for others, too. Now I get to help other people feel like their existence is more possible, just like Willow and Tara did for me. 

Since Geeks OUT is a queer centered website, could you tell us a bit about the LGBTQ+ characters featured in your books?

I really wanted to center the story on a small found-family that was representative of a few different parts of our community. The main character is a gay man, and his best friends are a lesbian (Zara) and a trans man (Marcus). All of the characters come into the story fully realised in terms of their queer identity. Queer trauma and coming-out narratives are super important, but I wanted to write stories with queer leads that were just getting into trouble and experiencing peril and joy of a different variety! We later get to meet bi/pan, and non-binary characters who play important roles, and there’s a variety of different romance pairings throughout the cast. Personality wise, I really wanted to create a group that, whilst they were all very different from each other and at times argued or fought, they offered a real sense of belonging both together as a group and to the people reading.

Were there any books that touched you or inspired you growing up? 

I don’t think I really found books that spoke deeply to me until I was quite a lot older, maybe even in my thirties. When I was a teenager I mostly remember reading a lot of Buffyverse books, and then moving onto The Wheel of Time. Interesting that these both have a lot of found family vibes, right? I didn’t really get access to queer literature until I was older–at least not without the sense of shame around it that had been forced on it and me whilst I was growing up. I try to read a lot of stories now that nourish my inner teen and find that incredibly healing; reading the books today that I wish I’d have been able to read when I was growing up. I’ve started writing YA too, which adds a whole new layer to that. This is why a lot of authors joke about writing being cheaper than therapy, huh?

Where did you get your start in creative writing? What pulled you to fiction?

Fanfic! I used to write secret stories about my favourite TV shows but make the characters queer–creating my own representation since I couldn’t get it elsewhere. I think I stopped doing that when I was about sixteen. Then I was wrapped up in the drama of college and university and things, then went into a career in science, so all my writing became of a strictly academic nature. I don’t think I did any creative writing at all then for maybe fifteen years, until I finally found myself in a space to start rampantly consuming media that primarily focused on queer characters. It was incredibly revitalising and refilled a creative well inside me that I didn’t really know existed anymore.

I’ve always gravitated toward fiction. I love the escapism and adventure of it all. I suppose transplanting personal parts of ourselves to characters into fantastical settings and putting them through grueling, thrilling, and liberating experiences is a way for us to find a different sort of satisfaction that which we consider ‘mundane’ at a safe distance. It just scratches that itch that I can’t quite reach otherwise.

What’s something you haven’t done as a writer that you’d like to do?

Because of the little snippets I put in chapter breaks in Lesser Known Monsters (which feature things like poems or doodles) I technically became not only a published author, but illustrator and poet, too. This is hilarious to me because I think I’m pretty awful at the latter two things. Honestly though, I’d also love to be invited to things like events and panels. It’s quite a challenging prospect for me (as I’m very anxious and shy), but one I’d also really love to explore more. In terms of writing, I’m working on a book with a non-binary main character which I’m really excited to share in the future as I think it’s something we need more of, and also something which is really fulfilling for me to create.

The second book in the series, The Bone Gate, deals with a world wide illness, was that inspired from the COVID-19 pandemic? 

It doesn’t feature much! Early on in The Bone Gate, I mention that there’d been a pandemic following the events of the first book, but never really elaborate (beyond a little speculation of the magical-realism variety). It was mostly because I wrote it amidst the height of COVID-19 and it seemed strange to completely separate the world I was writing from the world we live in. I think the characters having experienced that event provides a grounding for relatable context within the narrative for readers. The pandemic was a life changing event for lots of us, so showing an echo of that in my story allows people another step closer to being tethered inside the characters heads, but it also doesn’t feature enough to be distressing.

Your main couple, Oscar and Dmitri, exhibit a few common tropes in their relationship, but you also seem to be having them grow beyond that. Was that all planned out? Or did it change as you wrote them?

Yes! I love tropes, but even more I love subverting them. One of my guilty pleasures is taking something that people expect and understand and giving it to them until they’re about to get sick of it, then revealing that it was actually something else all along. Lesser Known Monsters was the perfect story to do that with. I honestly don’t think that what I’m doing really starts to hit hard until the middle of the series, which I realise is pretty risky, but I’m so happy with how the series turned out all put together. I’m very much a discovery writer, so I like to let my stories run wild as I create them, but most of the big character and plot notes I absolutely had in mind from the beginning. There’s quite a lot of foreshadowing throughout–even from small occurrences in book one that pick up again in the finale. 

Are there any projects you are currently working on and are at liberty to speak about?

I actually have two books finished that I’m querying with agents at present! They’re both YA and sit within different shades of horror. The first is my spin on one of my favourite movies ever The Mummy, and features a queer autistic librarian as the lead. The other is about trying to rescue all of the queer characters killed off in stories before their time with a Happy Death Day meets Addie Larue sort of vibe. I’m also working on a few other things in earlier stages. A YA horror about a sleep paralysis demon, an adult fantasy about steampunk sky pirates with superpowers, a heist, and perhaps a standalone foray back into the Lesser Known Monsters universe from a different angle…

Aside from writing, what do you enjoy doing in your free time? 

So much of my time is spent balancing overstimulation and understimulation. I work a full-time day job and spend just as much time on my writing work as I do there, but I also love playing video games (Dead by Daylight, and recently Baldurs Gate 3). I’m also a big fan of traveling and holidays (though I usually need a few weeks and a spreadsheet to prepare myself and spend almost all my time when I’m there writing). That’s all quite a lot, isn’t it? Sometimes I just lie under blankets holding my big plushie bulbasaur and close my eyes.

Finally, what LGBTQ+ books/authors/creators would you recommend to the readers of Geeks OUT? 

There are so many incredible creators out there that I’m terrified of missing someone amazing out. Terry J. Benton-Walker is doing incredible things in YA (Blood Debts) and MG (Alex Wise) with rich and heartbreakingly brilliant storytelling and vivid characters. Adam Sass is another one that somehow destroys and nourishes me in equal parts with amazing YA stories like Surrender Your Sons and Your Lonely Nights are Over. Both of them have such wickedly addictive writing but also descriptive and exciting voices.  I’m also a huge fan of Jonny Garza Villa (Ander & Santi Were Here), A.J. White (Hell Followed With Us), Xiran Jay Zhao (Iron Widow), Kalynn Bayron (You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight), and V.E. Schwab (The Shades of Magic). I also beg people to check out indie and self-pub authors which have so many diverse voices that bring new and exciting perspectives and imaginative stories you won’t find in other places. Check out books by Tiny Ghost Press who are an indie imprint specialising in Queer YA fiction, and also explore work by authors like Jayme Bean (Untouched), Gabriel Hargrave (The Orchid & The Lion), and Gideon Wood (The Stagsblood Trilogy) among so many others!