The Official Blog of Iain Rob Wright: An interview with author, Tracie McBride...

Friday 13 April 2012

An interview with author, Tracie McBride...


 With us today is dark fiction author, Tracie McBride...

Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m a New Zealander by birth, but have lived in Melbourne, Australia since 2008.  I have a husband, three children, a dog, a cat and a white picket fence (just joking about the fence).  By day, I’m a mild-mannered teacher aide and by night I craft dark speculative fiction stories.  I also read and assess a lot of other people’s horror tales in my roles as a slush wrangler for Dark Moon Digest and as vice president for Dark Continents Publishing.

Could you tell us what work you currently have available?
The best place to find the definitive list of all my currently available work is my Amazon author page - http://www.amazon.com/Tracie-McBride/e/B005FD2VTA/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
I’m a short story writer, so I have a story in this magazine, a story in that anthology…you know how it goes.  If you’re looking for “all Tracie, all the time,” my first collection, Ghosts Can Bleed, is available in e-book and paperback from most online retailers.

Tell us about your latest release.
That would be April Fool and other Antipodean horror stories.  It’s a novella-length collection of short stories, part of the Tales of Darkness and Dismay e-book series released by Dark Continents Publishing in January this year.  I co-wrote it with fellow Kiwi writer John Irvine.  John and I share a country of origin and a certain dry sense of humour…and that’s about it.  Our differing writing styles and choices of subject matter make for some interesting contrasts in April Fool.  

For someone unfamiliar with your work, how would you describe your writing?
Recently someone described my writing style as ‘stark’.  I’ll take that as a compliment…?  My stories are usually (but not always) dark in tone and usually (but not always) speculative in nature.  I’m fascinated with the question “What if?”  I like to Omit Needless Words, and I like to leave plenty of room in my stories for the reader to layer his or her own interpretation.  Common themes for me are the family dynamic and family relationships – often with monsters thrown into the mix.  

What else do you have in the pipeline?
It’s a never-ending production line at my desk!  I have some more stories coming out in various publications this year, some more under submission, some more under construction, a stockpile of previously published pieces for my next collection…and a recently purchased piece of software for writers that is intended to help me wrestle my first novel into shape.

What writers have had the most influence on your own writing?
I couldn’t point to any writers and say, “I write like this person,” but if you’re asking me which writers I admire, whose work I enjoy the most, who inspires me, the list is long.  I’ll limit myself to a minute and see who first springs to mind – China Mieville, Robert Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Anne Rice, Margaret Atwood, Clive Barker, Stephen King, P K Dick, Dr Seuss (the genius of the latter is only now becoming fully apparent to me, now that I’m helping to teach kids to read in a professional capacity).

What was the last thing you read?
The last paperback I finished was a Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (I think it was number 15?).  The last e-book I finished was The Crooked God Machine by Autumn Christian (keep an eye out for this young woman, she is going to be a star).

Anything else you’d like to tell us about?
Why, yes I would!  Remember way back at the beginning, I mentioned Dark Continents Publishing?  We launched the company at the World Horror Convention in 2011, and now we have thirteen titles on our catalogue, with several more scheduled for publication this year.  Those titles include Monster’s Ink which is a paperback -only collection of short stories by indie superstar Scott Nicholson, Quiet Houses by Simon Kurt Unsworth and Campfire Chillers by Dave Jeffery, both of which have been longlisted for the prestigious Edge Hill Prize, and The Collector which is the latest offering from up-and-coming horror writer Daniel I Russell.  You might want to check us out…

Dark Continents Publishing catalog:  http://darkcontinents.com/catalog/

2 comments :

Tracie said...

Well, would you look at that! Friday the thirteenth! Thanks again for hosting me, Ian. I hope that date is a good...ahem...omen.

Iain Rob Wright said...

No problem Tracie. Have a successful summer.