The latest Positively Horror interview celebrating Women in horror month is with the brilliant horror author, Kay Parker. Please enjoy the full interview below.
Please tell us a bit about yourself and your relationship with the genre?
Hi! Thank you for having me. I’m known as Kay and believe it or not I’m first and foremost a medieval historian working for the National Trust! However, I’ve been an avid reader all my life and a great lover of sci-fi and horror since my early teens. My introduction to the genre was Stephen King (of course!) unless you count a vast collection of Goosebumps books when I was a child!
What was your introduction to horror, and at what age?
It was probably Hellraiser, The Lost Boys and IT movies with my mum at the very raw age of 8-9 years old. They scared me to death! They were such an upgrade from the Goosebumps show and Are You Afraid of the Dark? that I was obsessed with. They’re still some of my favourite films today! I saw Nightmare on Elm Street around the same age and couldn’t sleep for a fortnight! He terrified me. I learned to turn that fear on its head though by making him my favourite bad guy!
What drew you to writing horror?
It was a long process. I’ve always dabbled in writing horror shorts, writing them for English homework at school, writing them to read to my friends... but it was never anything I did seriously. A few years ago I was commissioned to write a history book for a publisher who later let me down, it piqued my interest so I began looking into things to do with publishing and self-publishing and began playing with ideas. Those ideas culminated in the release of ‘Sleeping with Her Demons’ in September 2020 and it was so much fun! I’m still at it!
You currently have a book out for pre order, 'Fairfolk of the oaks' could you tell us a bit about it?
Of course! ‘Fairfolk’ is definitely my favourite work so far. It will be my fourth story but my third book and it’s heavily influenced by my own spirituality, my own beliefs and my own home environment. It’s the story I’ve always wanted—a faery tale that tells us of the dangers of the fae, a faery tale where the witch isn’t a big, bad villain but actually just a lovely, nature-loving free spirit. It’s also a gorey, bloodied mess of vicious elemental beings eating people from the inside out and turning them into fungi.
As an own voices author all of your books have LGBTIA+ representation. How do you feel representation in horror has changed over the last few years?
I don’t really think it has but I hope to bring that much needed Queer Rep into the horror genre. There are very few horror books out there with honest, wholesome rep that I’ve seen and it is something I’d love to see more of within the community.
It's currently women in horror month, how do you feel the role of women has changed in the genre over recent years?
There’s certainly a lot more women in horror these days! That’s for sure! But I do think we still need a bit more representation in the community. Most of us are self-published and I can’t help but feel this is more due to our gender than it should be. Most publishers are only looking for the next Stephen King and unfortunately they don’t think that can be a woman.
Do you feel that the online horror community has helped to garner more inclusiveness with things like women in horror month?
Yes!! The online horror community is so welcoming and inclusive! I’ve never felt at the edges of things within it at all, not as a woman, nor as a queer identifying person. The community is much more fluid, free thinking and inclusive than the publishing sector for sure!
As a woman working in the genre, what would you like to see for the future of horror?
I would really like to see more inclusivity in horror. I want to see more queer and female authors, I want to see more queer horror, I want to see black/minority protagonists too! I’d also personally like to see more female antagonists! The bad guys are always just that... guys, males.... I’d like to see some lady killers.
Who are some of your favourite people working in the genre at the moment?
This is a tricky one to answer because almost all my favourite authors are oldies. However, I do truly adore Lou Yardley, Sergio Gomez, James Brogden and Kealan Patrick Burke.
And are there any other projects you're involved with that you'd like to talk about?
Well, alongside working on ‘Fairfolk of the Oaks’ I’m also working on a SF Horror, an anthology of short stories featuring lady killers and a women’s history book that will be traditionally published by Pen and Sword Books. So they’re all things to look out for over the next few months and years!
Thank you again to Kay for the wonderful interview. To keep up with Kay and to get her books, including the pre order for Fairfolk of the Oaks please follow the links below.
https://Instagram.com/spookiesthistorian/
https://Twitter.com/kayparkerauthor/
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheSpookiestBookShop
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