Billie Sue Mosiman for Women in Horror Month!

Billie is the author of more than 60 books on Amazon! Her genres include: thriller, suspense and horror. Here's sampling of just SOME of her books!

In her own words:

"In a diary when I was thirteen years old I wrote, "I want to grow up to be a writer." It seems that was always my course. My books have been published since 1984 and two of them received an Edgar Award Nomination for best novel and a Bram Stoker Award Nomination for most superior novel. I have been a regular contributor to a myriad of anthologies and magazines, with more than 160 short stories published. My work has been in such diverse publications as Horror Show Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

I taught writing for Writer's Digest and for AOL online, and gave writing workshops locally in Texas. I was an assistant editor at a Houston literary magazine and co-edited several trade paperback anthologies with Martin Greenberg. My latest work in paperback and Kindle digital is SINISTER-Tales of Dread, a compilation of fourteen new short stories all written in 2013.

Recently I've sold short stories to the anthologies BETTER WEIRD edited by Paul F. Olson from Cemetery Dance, ALLEGORIES OF THE TAROT edited by Annetta Ribken, FRESH FEAR edited by William Cook, WRAPPED IN RED edited by Jennifer Greene, and SOMEONE WICKED edited by Weldon Burge. My latest suspense novel, THE GREY MATTER, will be published by Post Mortem Press by May 2014.

I was born in Alabama and live now in Texas on a small ranch. My work has been predominately suspense thrillers, with my short fiction being more speculative. My latest novel is BANISHED, a dark fantasy horror novel involving fallen angels.

I love to read (especially on my Kindle), watch old movies, take photographs, and travel.

Because of my love of storytelling, I've been fortunate enough to make a lifelong investment in writing stories and novels.

News of my e-book publications can be found at: http://peculiarwriter.blogspot.com/

My Facebook page is: http://www.facebook.com/billie.s.mosiman

Find me on Twitter @billiemosiman

Some Insight into Billie Sue

:

1.       How did you feel the first time you sent something off to be published?

Like a warrior, like a wunderkind about to step into my real world.

2.       Was horror always your favorite genre to read and to write in?

No, not really. I spent some years reading widely and still do. I like literary novels, historical novels (that aren't really romance), biographies, the greats from the past of literature. I began writing without genre in mind. I wrote what I was most interested in and that was the aberrant mind. Psychology interested me in characters more than action unless the action was reflective of character.

Years afterward I discovered the suspense genre and read in that, soaking in all the best books by the best writers. I read little in horror. My horror short fiction work probably comes more from the old supernatural tales of ghosts and ghouls and beasts in the woods that I heard while very young, listening to my extended Southern family talk about these tall tales. My short work began to reflect what I'd heard. My novels began to reflect my love for suspense. I progressed naturally to where I should be, as we all do.

3.       If you could meet one author (from any era, alive or dead) who would it be and why?

Oddly enough it might be Tennessee Williams. Or Truman Capote. Or Flannery O'Connor. Their very Southerness feels companionable and their deep interests in the vagaries of the human heart. Yes, I would sit with any one of these three and listen and learn forever.

4.       What inspired your very first story or novel?

Just the urge to write. Then when my idea for WIREMAN came along it was inspired by TV news and the newspaper about murders in Houston, where the bodies were decapitated. I kept gathering the clippings and wondered at how the different Houston districts weren't noticing this was probably the work of a serial killer. I interviewed a detective, the coroner, and various other people and then I had my novel. I sat down and wrote it and luckily, it was published.

5.       What writer influenced your writing more than any other? Just one name please.

Crap. No, that's not a name. It's my frustration I must name just one. I suppose it would be Flannery O'Connor. You might have expected a name from horror or suspense, but it was Flannery who inspired me to write darkly, to delve way down deep into the psyche, to write about it without flinching, to be human in my storytelling and to be real.

Real doesn't mean graphic, though at times my work can be that. Real is honest human feelings and my trying to give them from me to my characters without fudging, without relying on familiar tropes, and without gussying it up too pretty.

Yes, I guess I will have to say Flannery. When I read she had died young and left so little behind her, I was bereft. She was a spirit who knew the darkness and she wrote of it in a way horror writers do not write (usually). She's known as a literary figure and she's that, but she's also someone who taught me how to write about "horror" or "suspense" in my own way, in my own voice, with no restraints from any quarter.

~*~

Thank you so much, Billie for answering my questions and thank you for gracing my blog!