Among the Headstones - Interview with Kyla Lee Ward

I’ve interviewed fellow contributor to Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard, Kyla Lee Ward, as part of the preparations for the release of the anthology early next year. Full details about the haunting anthology are provided at the end of the interview.

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What are cemeteries like in the country where you live?

The main things that differentiate Australian cemeteries from those in Britain or other British colonies are the dangers of heatstroke and snakes. And spiders - really large spiders that live in holes. The cemetery of Rookwood covers 314 hectares and large tracts have gone quite wild. I know whereof I speak.

What gives you the creeps?

Let’s see – if it’s not graveyards, snakes, spiders, or nightfall, then it must be people. Not all people, but certainly some. What people can do to each other and the scars it leaves, sometimes in the very walls.

What do you like about the Gothic Fiction genre?

To me, the Gothic is about coming home. That’s one of its key tropes – the young outsider who enters the crumbling mansion, discovering its secrets and those of their own heritage. Think of Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour and Tanith Lee’s Dark Dance. Finding a place where you belong, even if it is stained with murder and full of ghosts and bats. Especially if it’s full of ghosts and bats, and people behaving very, very badly. That’s history - the present is just a tiny, shiny ticket booth at the entrance to that old pile. You can’t understand who you are until you enter.

What’s the scariest story you’ve written?

Oh goodness, how do I answer this? The two Stoker nominees, “And In Her Eyes The City Drowned” and “Should Fire Remember the Fuel?” must be considered officially good as well as officially scary. The former has been translated into Japanese, which may give it an edge – but that story of mine which has been most reprinted is a very short and wry piece titled “The Loquacious Cadaver”. It is also included in The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities.

How do you go about research for the fiction you write?

I read a great deal of history, myth and legend, custom and tradition. Past endeavours have found me in the Special Collection of the Mitchell Library, teasing out a description of Memphis written by a Persian adventurer in the 12th century, from a book printed in the 19th century, in my extremely shaky French – now that I think about it, there had to be an easier way. But when you’re dealing with a place that still exists, there is no substitute for having visited it yourself. I have been privileged to travel and find that some places present me with stories on platters, while the memory of others may lurk for years in the back of my mind before the right tale presents itself.

Another fine method of research is visiting museums (always take a sketchbook and make notes about every photo you take) and engaging in historical re-enactments. I am a part of the medieval re-enactment movement in Australia, and I assure you, it is much easier to describe the sensation of moving in armour once you have done so.

What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on a dark fantasy novel and pulling together the material for my first full story collection. I have written substantial new work for this, including a novella concerning necromancy and the French revolution that makes extensive use of the Paris catacombs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kyla Lee Ward is a Sydney-based creative who works in many modes, that have garnered her Australian Shadows and Aurealis awards. She has placed in the Rhyslings and received Stoker and Ditmar nominations.Reviewers have accused her of being “gothic and esoteric”, “weird and exhilarating” and of “giving me a nightmare.” Her latest release is The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities, her second collection of dark and fantastic poetry after 2011's The Land of Bad Dreams. Her novel Prismatic (co-authored with her partner as "Edwina Grey") won an Aurealis Award for Best Horror. 

Her short fiction has appeared in the likes of Weirdbook, Shadowed Realms, Gothic.net and in the anthologies Oz Is Burning and Gods, Memes and Monsters: a 21st century Bestiary. Her work on RPGs including Demon: the Fallen saw her appear as a guest at the inaugural Gencon Australia. An artist and actor as well as an author, her short film, 'Bad Reception', screened at the Third International Vampire Film Festival and she is a member of both the Deadhouse immersive theatre company and the Theatre of Blood, which have also produced her work. In addition, she programmed the horror stream for the 2010 Worldcon. A practicing occultist, she likes raptors, swordplay and the Hellfire Club. To see some very strange things, try http://www.kylaward.com

ABOUT THE BOOK

Among the Headstones: Creepy Tales from the Graveyard edited by Rayne Hall, presents twenty-seven of the finest - and creepiest - graveyard tales with stories by established writers, classic authors and fresh voices.

Here you'll find Gothic ghost stories by Robert Ellis, Lee Murray, Greg Chapman, Morgan Pryce, Rayne Hall, Guy de Maupassant, Myk Pilgrim, Zachary Ashford, Amelia Edwards, Nina Wibowo, Krystal Garrett, Tylluan Penry, Ambrose Bierce, Cinderella Lo, Nikki Tait, Arthur Conan Doyle, Priscilla Bettis, Kyla Ward, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul D Dail, Cameron Trost, Pamela Turner, William Meikle and Lord Dunsany who thrill with their eerie, macabre and sometimes quirky visions.

You'll visit graveyards in Britain, Indonesia, Russia, China, Italy, Bulgaria, Thailand, USA, Australia, South Africa and Japan, and you can marvel at the burial customs of other cultures.

Now let's open the gate - can you hear it creak on its hinges? - and enter the realm of the dead. Listen to the wind rustling the yew, the grating of footsteps on gravel, the hoo-hoo-hoo of the collared dove. Run your fingers across the tombstones to feel their lichen-rough sandstone or smooth cool marble. Inhale the scents of decaying lilies and freshly dug earth.

But be careful. Someone may be watching your every movement... They may be right behind you.

Purchase Link: mybook.to/Headstones 

The ebook is available for pre-order from Amazon at the special offer price of 99 cents until 31 January 2022. (After that date, the price will go up.) A paperback will follow.