Interview with Cassandra Daucus

How long have you been a writer?

The short answer is “since I was a kid, maybe,” but really it’s more complicated. I remember writing a few stories when I was young – three, to be precise. Then I wrote a story when I was about 30. A few years after that I got invested in a couple of movies and started writing fan fiction – I wrote my first fan fic in 2015. I wrote steadily on-and-off until 2021, when I started to get bored and my writing tapered off. Then in mid-2022 I decided to try my hand at writing original horror, and I haven’t really looked back (although I still read fan fic, I rarely write it).

Have you always written horror?

Oh yes! Those three childhood stories were all horror (well, two were horror and one was kind of creepy speculative). The first one I wrote as an adult was horror, and I even wrote a lot of horror as fan fic (both speculative, spooky ghost stories and toxic romance, kidnapping, serial killer type stories). So when I decided to write original fiction, horror was always going to be what I would be writing.

What was your first published horror piece and how did you feel when you got published in that genre?

I’m going to cheat a little bit here, because my first three published horror pieces were all drabbles, and although it felt great to get them out in the world, I didn’t feel like I’d really published something until that first short story. That first story was also very short, though! It’s called “Teething,” and it’s about a woman sitting up late with her teething baby. Ruth Anna Evans published it in her collection Ooze: little bursts of body horror. Seeing my words on the printed page was incredible, nothing like it. I still love seeing my words on the page! (I also don’t want to give short shrift to those three drabbles, two of which were published in Trembling With Fear and the other was a Deadly Drabble Tuesday by Hungry Shadow Press. I’m so appreciative that these markets gave newbie me a chance when I was just getting started out).

I’m actually still cheating, because my very first published horror piece is The House on the Beach and The Unicorn, two stories that I self-published together. But again, I didn’t feel like I’d really been published until someone else told me I was good enough for them to publish my words. This is definitely a me issue, I still self-publish and I know a lot of other people who do, too. But as a newbie trying to find my sea legs, that recognition was important.

Do you feel it is important to recognize women horror writers? Why or why not?

I guess I feel it’s important to recognize good horror, wherever it comes from (with the caveat that the definition of good horror will vary from reader to reader). I’m also ambivalent to talking about “women horror writers” as some kind of community, or “women’s horror” as though it’s a subgenre the way splatterpunk or cosmic horror are subgenres. My experience as a middle-class North American cis woman is going to be very different from the experience of a poor trans woman from South America, and we’re likely going to write very different types of stories. There are lots of different women in the world, with various backgrounds, from many different countries. Women write horror, and women have always written horror, and women will write horror! We should read their work.

Do you agree that the horror genre is dominated by male writers?

I don’t think this is something I can agree or disagree with, either the horror genre is dominated by male writers or it isn’t. That said, I see plenty of women (and other non-cis-men) writing horror in every subgenre I can think of. Perhaps men are better at selling themselves, or get more attention? Right now, Ruth Anna Evans is doing a call for novellas, and she had a post where submissions for men are outnumbering submissions from women eight to one! I know more women than that are writing. Maybe we’re conditioned towards self-doubt? I know I am constantly questioning if my work is “good enough.” But I don’t know how much of that is me as a person, and how much of that is my conditioning being raised as a girl and now being an adult woman.

Why do you think the horror genre appeals to women writers?

I think horror appeals to women because honestly life can be horrific for women. In the USA and all over the world, abortion rights are being (and have been) lost. There’s a lot of horror to be written about this loss of autonomy. This is just one example. Women earn less than men, they’re constantly fighting for their rights, everywhere in the world. Finally, I’m not trans, but I know that trans women have their own issues and concerns, dealing with laws that make their lives more difficult and make them unsafe, and they also have to deal with people spouting trans-exclusionary radical feminist ideology. It’s exhausting to be a woman, and both writing and reading horror is a great way to wrestle with some of these big issues.

Who are some of your favorite women horror writers? Please feel free to mention any books by women horror authors, as well.

Shirley Jackson is one of my favorites! I know she’s someone people always mention, but she’s great. “The Lottery” and “The Summer People” live rent free in my brain, and I re-read The Haunting of Hill House every few years. For women writing today, I love everything I’ve read by Cat Voleur and Ruth Anna Evans, Haley Piper writes great cosmic horror, and Judith Sonnet is the queen of splatterpunk. But that’s just picking from a very full basket, there are so many great women writing today (read Dark Blooms and you’ll see what I mean, and that’s just one single anthology!)

What kind of involvement do you have in the horror genre?

I’ve been writing and publishing stories since the last quarter of 2022. Aside from that I have been participating in a few different communities. On Facebook I participate in events hosted by Psychotoxin Press, they run online readings that are fun to attend and to read in, and I’m always looking for chances to submit something to their story calls. I’m also on the Tenebrous Press Discord server, that’s a very active and fun place to meet other writers, chat, cheer each other on, and share stories. I’m also dipping my hand in editing; along with Cat Voleur and Iseult Murphy, I’m co-curating Tasteful Anthology, a cannibalism short story anthology benefiting Philabundance–my local food bank, serving Southeastern PA and NJ–and we’ll be encouraging readers to donate to other food banks, too. This is an exciting way both to try something new and support people in my area.

What forthcoming works can we look forward to seeing of your being published?

I have a few fun forthcoming stories! “Emily’s Teeth” will be in It Was All a Dream 2: Another Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right published by Hungry Shadow Press. This is so soft it’s barely horror, although it contains some horror-ish tropes. My slasher story “Truth or Dare,” is coming soon in Scorned, an anthology of stories about scorned women getting revenge, published by Unveiling Nightmares. “A Unique Case of the Maledictus Vaginae,” is a silly flash fiction about a woman with a haunted vagina, it will be in Quarterly’s WET issue, forthcoming in May or June 2024. And finally I have an untitled two-sentence story coming in Short Scares: Two Sentence Horrors Anthology, edited by Lauren Carter

Where can we find your work online?

I’m on (but not very active) on most social media platforms, and I have a newsletter where I send out updates and a website where I list all my published stories. All of these links are gathered on my linktree.

ABOUT CASSANDRA:

Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft, M. R. James, Shirley Jackson, Robert Aickman, and a ton of fan fiction, Cassandra Daucus (she/her) writes a spectrum of horror. She is intrigued by how the human mind responds to the unknown, and also enjoys a good gross-out. She has stories published and forthcoming in several literary magazines and anthologies. Cassandra lives outside of Philadelphia with her family and three cats. Her social media and website can be found here.

BIO:

Dawn Colclasure is a Deaf burn survivor who lives with her husband and children in Oregon. Her articles, essays, poems and short stories have appeared in several newspapers, anthologies, magazines and E-zines. She is a former journalist and poetry editor. She is the author and co-author of over four dozen books, among them Parenting Pauses: Life as a Deaf Parent; On the Wings of Pink Angels: Triumph, Struggle and Courage Against Breast Cancer; A Ghost on Every Corner; and her autobiographical poetry collection, Touched by Fire. She publishes the free monthly newsletter, The SPARREW Newsletter, and she writes a monthly column for First Chapter Plus Magazine as well as Monstrous Femme Magazine. Her websites are at https://dawnsbooks.com/ and https://www.dmcwriter.com/ Her Twitter accounts are @dawnwilson325 and @dawncolclasure. Her insta is dawn10325.