10p039: "I know when I'm in the presence of greatness"—a conversation with the authors of POSTHASTE MANOR
I am screaming something that will later be deleted, And bracing for a world no longer suitable for life, 'Cause there's a bomb inside my head, And I wish that I could disconnect the threads
Hey Ho, Tenebrous Cult!
Welcome to October, the Horror community’s favorite month of the year! Our next book, POSTHASTE MANOR, is out in just over two weeks and we’ve got a treat to kick off the Halloween season.
Rather than Alex and me blathering on about how this novel is the “perfect New Weird Gothic Haunted House tale but actually it’s a whole lot more than that,” we bribed threatened cajoled co-writers Jolie Toomajan and Carson Winter, the scandalous degenerates unqualified geniuses behind POSTHASTE MANOR, into doing the heavy lifting for us, and they wound up interviewing each other.
So without further ado: POSTHASTE MANOR, according to the authors**:
**minor spoilers ahead. Edited for clarity because when these two get going, clarity is the first thing to go out the window.
Carson: Most of us know you as a short story writer, and yet there’s a pretty long narrative in POSTHASTE MANOR that is compelling, dark, funny, and well-executed. Was this your first crack at longform fiction? How did you approach telling Adira’s story?
Jolie: This is pretty close to my first real try, and I did it by messing it up several times. The novella that we have is much different than the one I set out to write, which I realized very quickly wasn't going to be interesting for an extended period of time and also boiled down to A Woman Is Menaced, which is not really my vibe.
So I stepped back and thought about the other threads of Adira's life, and Selah's relationship with Adira was the most compelling to me (especially written in parallel with Otho's story). Even when I had that, I rewrote their relationship and the ending several times. I just kept throwing things at the wall until it looked like a novella.
Jolie: “The End of Posthaste Manor” was, ironically, the first story written. When you showed it to me, what really struck me about it was the imagery; [too spoiler-y!] lives rent free in my head. Incredibly effective and it was accomplished in, like, ten words. Do you have a preferred technique for evoking emotion like that while still sticking to your effective minimalist style? Like how did you do that?
Carson: I think the fastest way to get to the heart of something is to just say it. Sometimes, I find myself trying to get an idea out and my tongue gets tied when I try to be a proper writer. When that happens, my best technique is to say it how I would to a friend. Eschew the fanciness and just lay the facts out on the table. This is what is happening, look at it.
Then I just hope that what’s happening is compelling enough to be worth the attention.
Carson: “Conscious Uncoupling” is one of my favorite chapters. It’s told as a transcript of a conversation; why did you choose this for that particular chapter?
Jolie: Okay, truthfully I had to work that one out backwards. Originally I wrote it that way because I thought it was funny. There's something about representations of silence on the page that I wanted to play with, and a lot of the things I thought to do with it entertained the hell out of me. But when it came time to edit this story—and I needed to make it competent and not [just] a series of things that I thought were super funny and horrifying at the same time—I had to sit down and figure out what I had started to build. I looked at the pieces of what I had, what characters I had created, and built it backwards, added the neighbor; and instead of a back and forth dialogue, it became a transcript. I imagine everyone who interacted with them felt like they were being cast in a play against their will, so I wanted to play that up.
Jolie: “Rats and Dogs on the Planet Nowhere”…you know what? Just talk about this story. I know when I'm in the presence of greatness.
Carson: This story was a fucking blast to write. The kernel for this was the first line:
So, look—”Dancing in the Moonlight” is my fuck song.
When I was writing this thing, my wife had an old car that was totally unaware of the powers of bluetooth. It was a 2003 Ford Focus and the only music it knew was radio and the compact disc. Because of this, I’ve probably spent way more of the 21st century making mix CDs than...I assume almost everyone.
I’m a punk rock guy through-and-through, but I have a soft spot for oldies and pop and anything that can get me a side-eye while on a road trip. So, in between anthemic fist-in-the-air populist barn burners, I’d also drop stuff like Sisqo’s “Thong Song” and, of course, King Harvest’s “Dancing in the Moonlight.”
I hadn’t heard it for years, but revisiting it as an adult gave me instant vibes. Gold chains, open shirts, and the promise of exquisite, candlelit romance (or in this case, a swingin’ orgy). From there, the rest of the story and its cosmic implications just grew out of that setting. I liked the idea of a haunted house with mad Dracula A.D. 1972 atmosphere; it’s a fun sort of juxtaposition. Like, what is less Gothic than shag carpet?
The end result is one of my favorite pieces I’ve written.
Carson: Do you find writing therapeutic? It’s hard to imagine a story like “Mrs. Mutilate’s Husbands” not being a tiny bit cathartic to write. Can you tell us more about how that story came to be?
Jolie: Usually I write pretty emotionally heavy fare, and there's still some of that here. Isa-Belle is a tragic character when her story unfolds over the course of the book, but I went into POSTHASTE wanting to have a bunch of gruesome, perverse fun. As soon as we decided how we were going to structure the original draft of the book, I knew I wanted to do a take on a Merry Widow and a stack of dead husbands, dispatched by the story the same way she does. Parts of that story were an absolute blast to write, because she doesn't need anything. She's the rich one, these men are just a wall between her and something much worse, and one's as good as the next. I had her get a little drunk on some "Actually I won't be smiling through any bullshit" and that's a fun feeling to write, especially as a woman.
Jolie: Usually the haunted house is inextricably tied to people living in it, or at least staying for an extended period. You center two stories—”Everyone’s Just Screaming, All the Time” and “Real Estate”—on people who have to come into contact with the house because of their work. How does that interact with the Haunted House trope for you?
Carson: When writing a beloved trope like the haunted house, I want to do something different with it. For those stories, I looked at the world beyond Posthaste, because it is a physical thing that interacts with the physical world around it, and there are stories to be told outside of its tenants (though I did some of those too!)
By taking the story of the house outside of the house, it acknowledges that horror doesn’t exist in a vacuum—that bad things don’t just get swallowed up in one place and stay there. The rest of the world—the people only tangentially connected to the horror—suffers too.
So, yes, Posthaste chews up and spits out its inhabitants. But there are dudes who have to fix the boiler too. There are neighbors watching each and every family come and go. There are real estate agents who have had to sell the house thirty times now, who have walked its halls more than its latest owner.
Basically, the world is a lot. And bad things don’t just happen within a forcefield—they spread and affect innocent bystanders everyday. For me, this was injecting my bit of “truth” into a classic trope.
Carson: Gothic vibes permeate your work, especially in a story like “Howl,” which really makes us feel the setting in such elegant, intentional strokes—making Postie (our nickname for the titular manor) feel like a silent, observing character in itself. This is a broad question, but why do places matter and why are we so entranced as readers by the idea of a Haunted House?
Jolie: Anyone who has ever had an unhealthy living situation can tell you why places matter. I've absolutely had some living situations where taking your chances with the vindictive dead would be a more appealing option.
Some of it might be familiarity. Very few of us grew up in super functional homes, where we were always safe and cared for and confident in that. Many adults live in really precarious or dangerous situations because they have no choice. I think the chaos of the haunted house is likely more familiar than unfamiliar.
Jolie: You also end with an outsider in “New Neighbor”, who much like the father in the first story, is practically salivating to be involved in this site of horror. What was behind your decision to have mostly outsiders interact with the house, especially outsiders who fetishize the experience of other's pain?
Carson: I’m obsessed with tragedy. I’m the rubbernecker that watches the train wreck. I’m the guy who reads Wikipedia pages on murder before bed. I mean, Jesus, I’m the guy who wrote SOFT TARGETS!
For whatever reason, I think a lot about tragedy, and so much of it comes down to the urge to process it, categorize it, and become impervious to it—possible or not.
While these characters are ghoulish, I think they’re also real. They’re perversions; embellishments of my own morbid curiosity; and they’re drinking up the horrors of the world and transubstantiating it into entertainment.
But they’re also trying to shield themselves, make themselves immune to it. And time and time again, they find out that that’s simply not possible. When dealing with violence, horror, heart-wrenching loss: no one comes out unscathed.
Carson: “The Absolutely True and Correct Account…” is told from the perspective of a cat. It made me think about how the haunted house is this oddly anthropocentric concept, and how we both sort of undermine that in different ways throughout the book. Can you talk a little bit about the idea of horror beyond humans?
Jolie: One of my cats totally had a cosmic experience. He is a fat, spoiled indoor cat who got out into the yard for several hours, and he leaped into my arms when I heard him crying and opened the door. I don't know what he ran into, but he was pretty clearly not happy. I thought like…well, he's never going outside again, but the opposite happened. It is now his mission in life to get back outside. I don't know what he saw, but it changed him. He must know more.
Part of this was my way to argue that horror is positional. I'd argue that Echo actually has a pretty great time in the house. Everyone else…less so. Usually the pet in a haunted house is meant to be dispatched early, and is just an early warning of the horror to come. I wanted to subvert that expectation, because my cats think I'm a footnote in their story and not the other way around.
About POSTHASTE MANOR:
NEVER TRUST A HOUSE WITH A NAME.
Everyone has a story about Posthaste Manor.
None of the stories end well, but that doesn’t stop the hopeful from hoping and the desperate from trying.
This composite novel stands as both history and eulogy of one very haunted house, as recounted by artists, real estate agents, and beloved family pets; by the debauched, the dead and the dying, and anyone looking for one last chance.
Raise a glass in celebration. Just don't linger within its walls for long.
Cover art by Trevor Henderson.
Interior illustrations by Alex Woodroe.
POSTHASTE MANOR is out everywhere, October 18th!
There will be not one—but two!—release parties to celebrate POSTHASTE MANOR. If you’re in the Portland, Oregon area, there’s an in-person one:
And next week we’ll have information for you about an online release party taking place on Saturday October 21st, featuring readings from both Jolie and Carson; a Q&A; prize giveaways and more!
THIS WAY TO WEIRD: SUBMISSIONS FOR BRAVE NEW WEIRD ARE OPEN!
We’re back for a second year of the Brave New Weird Awards and its accompanying anthology, BRAVE NEW WEIRD: The Best New Weird Horror of the Year Volume Two, edited by Alex Woodroe!
Submissions are open for the entire month of October, and the guidelines are below; pieces can be submitted by the authors themselves, their publishers, editors and readers, but keep in mind that this is a reprint-only anthology. Click below for the details, and bring on the Weirdness!
SCREAM FOR HALLOWEEN: PREORDER SPLIT SCREAM
POSTHASTE MANOR isn’t the only October release we have queued up; Halloween Day also brings the fourth volume (and first for Tenebrous!) of editor Alex Ebenstein’s acclaimed SPLIT SCREAM series!
About SPLIT SCREAM Volume Four:
LADY MANTIS BOOKS GONNA MAKE YOU SWEAT
“LADY MANTIS publishes at the intersection of terror and titillation. The imprint specializes in erotic horror, and is interested in stories that are sex and kink positive, queer, and subvert the ways sexuality has often been portrayed in the horror genre."
It’s a new imprint from our friends at Brigids Gate, and LADY MANTIS’ Editors-in-Chief—Rae Knowles and Ev Freeling—will be joining us for an extra spicy edition of Tenebrous Sessions in our Discord in just a couple weeks!
Read the details and submit here. Much like our usual Pitch Sessions (but sexier!), you can submit either the first page of your erotic horror manuscript, or a single erotic scene, for a gentle—but not too gentle!—critique at the hands of Mistress Rae, Mistress Ev, Mistress Alex, and Master Mistress Matt. Actually I may just keep my mouth ball-gagged shut this time around, kick back and sweat with the rest of y’all.
You don’t need to submit to listen in; all are welcome! Though you do need to be a member of our Discord, which you can join right here:
H.P. LOVECRAFT FILM FEST IS NEXT WEEKEND…
…and Tenebrous will be there! We’ll have all our books for sale, early copies of POSTHASTE MANOR (hopefully!), shirts, patches, tote bags and more.
And apparently I’m on a panel, but I don’t know the details of that yet. Danger Slater and Carson Winter will likely pop by to sign books at some point too. It’s all going down at my favorite theater, the Hollywood, next Friday through Sunday.
OK, that’s enough for one week. See you soon.
Hail Indie Horror.
Hail the 10pCult.
Alex & Matt