MASTERS OF HORROR: MJ MARS
1. What first drew you to horror—and was it something you experienced, feared, or imagined?
I've been drawn to horror for as long as I can remember. Fear always straddled that beautiful line of feeling most alive, and I think I clung to that even as a little kid. My earliest horror memories come from watching 80s movies and obsessing over the horror books on my parents' shelves. I picked up a Laymon book for my first holiday abroad and never stopped reading him. Probably most significant was a famous one-off TV show in the UK called Ghostwatch, a 'documentary', presented and promoted as though they were going to a real haunted home and showing the events unfolding live. It came out on Halloween night when I was 9, and the fear stuck with me for a long time! It's was kind of a love/hate relationship back then, but now there is nothing but love.
2. How do you tap into real fear when writing—do you draw from your own nightmares, or do you create new ones?
Fear for me is all about the person experiencing it. Someone's deepest trauma and the fears surrounding an event or object will have a huge impact on them, but perhaps not the person standing next to them (or anyone else they know). Likewise, some people are wired so that even the most traumatic events can be dealt with by simply moving on and forgetting about it. That's why I believe you have to know the character enough to make the fear real for the reader, even those tiny moments that don't have much significance but lead to the build-up. If the reader can say, "Oh God, this character is gonna hate this!" and get completely on board with the character's experience, it doesn't matter what the actual horror is. It could be a spoon or a piece of confetti even. If the reader gets the 'why', that's the key to convincing fear.
3. Have you ever written something that disturbed even you—a moment where the story took a darker turn than expected?
Ha! The only time that really springs to mind is the story "We've Already Gone Too Far" from my short story collection of the same name. It details government cover-ups and the inevitability of our own timeline when it's in some higher power's hands. At one point, this culminated in one of the characters who had been forced to learn the future scooping his own eyes out and filling them with excrement. I have to say, even I had to step away from the computer after writing that scene because I genuinely felt sick!
4. If your stories had the power to summon something into the real world... what do you think you've already unleashed?
Ooh, what a great question. I hope that nothing from The Fovea Experiments is ever brought to life because I have enough trouble sleeping as it is!
I once heard that real spirits can gain power the more they are thought about, so perhaps the character of Anthony Pile who appears in The Suffering could make the ghosts of the Hellfire Caves in the UK stronger. While Pile isn't actually a real figure, the other occultists of the Hellfire Club were, and the caves they frequented to get up to no good are a popular haunted tourist attraction.
5. How do you keep horror feeling fresh and terrifying when so many tropes are well-trodden?
It's such a difficult part of the writing process. Writing something that nobody has ever written anything like is nigh on impossible. But as long as you have your own individual voice, I don't think that matters. That is where the individuality comes from. I know what excites me, so I think the "write the book you would want to read right now" advice always rings true.
Another side of the coin is, you have to find your readers. People fall in love with tropes for a reason. If someone stopped writing about them simply because lots of other people have already done it, there would be a lot of disappointed book lovers out there just waiting for a new book about the thing they like most!
BONUS: Tell me about your latest project and where we can find it.
My second novel from Wicked House, The Fovea Experiments, is out in July. I can't wait to get it out there! An experiment gone wrong. A survivor under suspicion. A teen searching for the truth.
Ostracized by her friends, Nala finds solace creating true crime content for her YouTube channel. When she breaks into her mother’s private investigator files and finds evidence of multiple teen deaths during a sleep experiment in the 2000s, she’s shocked to see the sole survivor is her schoolteacher. She creates a sensationalist video, outing him as a suspect.
Josh is tormented by what happened during The Fovea Experiments. He gets through the days by throwing himself into his job as a teacher, and survives the nights with a little liquid courage. Nala’s video puts him under suspicion once more, and the trauma he experienced as a teen takes him to breaking point. As he fights to clear his name, he discovers his worst nightmare is unfolding.
Because The Fovea Experiments are happening again. And, this time, the people behind it are determined to see it through to the end.
Some say the eyes are the window to the soul. Or are they a doorway to something far worse? The Fovea Experiments. You'll Never Sleep Again.
Coming soon from Wicked House Publishing!
As always, a big thank you to MJ for indulging me and taking time out of her busy writing schedule to do this interview with me. I truly appreciate it!
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