Welcome back, and happy October! This year has truly been flying by, and I can’t believe it’s almost Halloween already!

I’ve got a very special roundtable just in time for the holiday. A bit of background first: My recent collection, The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own, includes the brand-new story, “Lost in Darkness and Distance,” which imagines what would happen if a beheaded Marie Antoinette wandered into Lord Byron’s ghost story contest and met Mary Shelley and her compatriots. The unlikely connections (and juxtapositions) between the executed queen of France and the famed author of Frankenstein fascinated me, and it was such a joy to write this particular story.

Earlier this year, I did a roundtable of authors who have written horror and dark fantasy retellings of Marie Antoinette’s ordeal. There’s so much misinformation about her, and it was interesting to see how each of the writers approached her life story.

Now of course, I need to turn the spotlight to the other side of my story’s equation: the fantastic and beloved Mary Shelley. So I gathered five incredible authors who have each written a story inspired either by Mary Shelley herself or by her novel, Frankenstein. We discuss their love of Shelley, how they developed their own tale, and what they’re working on next.

And now let’s take it away!

Tell us about your Frankenstein-inspired story.

LEILA SIDDIQUI: I’ve always wondered about the summer Mary Shelley spent with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron and the fateful night that gave way to the nightmare that later inspired her to write Frankenstein. I wanted to write an origin story of sorts, but with the twist that not only is the villa they were staying in haunted, but that the perspective of the origin story is told from the point-of-view of Mary’s Indian maid Mehr. 1816 was the year without a summer because of a volcano that had erupted in Indonesia, lowering global temperatures. While on holiday, the trio, along with Byron’s personal physician John Polidori were often rained in and spent quite a bit of time telling ghost stories by the firelight. The lore says that Byron challenged each of them to write a ghost story. I thought it would be fun to play with the lore, but also to change the perspective and include what was historically happening at the same time. Britain was just beginning to colonize India and I wanted to bring in an outsider from my culture to tell the story.

TIM MCGREGOR: Eynhallow is more of a side-quest in the Frankenstein story, rather than a retelling. It explores the identity of the intended mate of Frankenstein’s creature from Shelley’s novel.

ADDIE TSAI: I have many! The first time I adapted Frankenstein was when I co-created Victor Frankenstein, a dance theater adaptation, with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater. You can take a look at a clip here, a duet between Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley. At that point, I had been writing prose poems, largely dramatic monologues, about Frankenstein, and had also started a monologue work as well, but remains unfinished and that I’d love to come back to one day. But my first truly finished work of Frankenstein happened a decade later, when I wrote Unwieldy Creatures, my queer Asian retelling of Frankenstein. Unwieldy Creatures is a retelling of Frankenstein which imagines Victor Frankenstein as a queer Indonesian reproductive scientist who seeks to create life through in vitro gametogenesis, a fertilization process using stem cells instead of sperm or egg.

COREY NILES: Blood & Dirt is a paranormal horror novel set in Pittsburgh that follows boyfriends Vincent and James. After they fall victim to a violent hate crime, James passes away. However, weeks after his funeral, he reappears, changed.

In the face of an apathetic police force and a growing number of missing gay men, Vincent and James must work to identify the criminals who assaulted them and uncover what really happened on the night of their attack.

ANYA MARTIN: My novella “The UnBride or No Gods and Monsters” appeared originally in the anthology Eternal Frankenstein (Word Horde, 2016). When editor/publisher Ross Lockhart asked me to write something for that anthology, I immediately thought I would like to write a story centered around Elsa Lanchester. As I read Elsa’s autobiography, the plot quickly snapped into place and so much so that luckily Ross was open to a novella! I wrote the first draft in a frenzied six January days. Basically it’s a dark and stormy night, just like in the opening segment of the 1935 movie Bride of Frankenstein featuring Mary Shelley, her husband Percy, and Lord Byron, except in LA. Director James Whale laments to Elsa and her husband Charles Laughton about studio pressure to film a sequel to the wildly successful Frankenstein and having no ideas. Elsa offers to tell a true story to them that becomes the basis of the film. I don’t want to give away too much, but it’s set in 1923 London and the foundational aspects of the plot come straight out of Elsa’s autobiography, such as the electricity game she played with her brother, the Lazarus frog, her radical mother being secretary to Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor, and Elsa dating a “White Russian” and acting in the Capek Brothers’ The Insect Play. From there, it’s easy to believe the rest could have really happened, too. The novella is all in first person so I also listened to recordings of interviews with Elsa to get a sense of her voice. It really was great fun and wrote itself, and I have been really thrilled with the response it’s received from readers. It’s also reprinted in my collection, Sleeping with the Monster (Lethe Press).

What was your first encounter with Frankenstein?

LEILA SIDDIQUI: Because I’m one of the youngest in my large family, when my older siblings had required reading, they often passed it down to me. So I had first read Frankenstein when I was in elementary school and it made a very big impression on me. The writing felt so sophisticated to me back then, but also full of such anguish and longing. It is dripping with emotion on every page, especially the sections from the perspective of Frankenstein’s creation, and I had never yet read anything like it before.

TIM MCGREGOR: So long ago, I don’t remember. It had to be a comic book or a Saturday morning cartoon. Franken Berry cereal? As a cultural touchstone, Frankenstein is so ubiquitous that it could have been anything.

ADDIE TSAI: I first read Frankenstein in college, at the age of 19, the same age Mary Shelley was when she first began to write her original. I was immediately taken with it, but in ways that were very specific to my experience as a biracial person of color, an identical twin, and as someone who experienced maternal distance and abandonment. I returned to it in my late twenties, and from that point on I’ve been hooked ever since.

COREY NILES: I first read Frankenstein in 11th grade. It was an assigned reading. I was usually a diligent student, but for some reason, I didn’t start the book until the night before we were going to be tested on it.

I made a pot of coffee and read it until the early hours of the morning. My bedroom was in the attic, and I remember it was raining. Between the sleep deprivation and the rain hitting the roof, the whole experience was a fever dream. The story was so dark and devastating. I loved it.

ANYA MARTIN: Sadly I don’t remember precisely. It really feels that like I was born knowing about all the classic monsters. I suspect my first contact was either the Universal movies on TV or the Adam subplot on the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, which involved the creation of a man from human body parts. Adam went through a personal journey similar to Mary’s creature, and eventually demanded a bride, Eve, played by marvelous redhead Marie Wallace whom I later met at a Dark Shadows convention with my dad. When I was in elementary school, I definitely watched all the Universal and Hammer Frankenstein movies on Friday Night Frights on Atlanta’s Channel 17 (Turner Broadcasting) with Alice Cooperish horror host Dead Earnest. I eventually read my dad’s 1953 Lion Books paperback of the novel which had a lurid cover of a seemingly dead woman in a low-cut yellow dress on a bed with a brutish-looking man staring at his murderous hands.

What is it about the story of Frankenstein that keeps resonating throughout the centuries? Also, what drove you to want to write about it yourself?

LEILA SIDDIQUI: Mary Shelley challenges us to empathize with what is supposed to be a monstrous creature. It is very hard to come away from it not feeling bad for the creature.

Growing up in a South Asian household, I understood what it felt like to be othered, to be on the outside looking in. To want to be loved and accepted exactly as you are. I think most people can see some form of themselves in the creature, and for the way Mary Shelley presents its humanity.

TIM MCGREGOR: Someone—I don’t remember who—said Frankenstein was the first myth of the modern era and it’s hard to disagree with. As a metaphor for a creation that turns on its maker, it still snaps with resonance. Nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, social media—they’re all Frankensteins ready to bite us in the ass because we, as humans, always assume we’re the smartest people in the room.

As for the inspiration for Eynhallow, it was curiosity and luck. Wanting to write a Bride of Frankenstein story, I went back to Shelley’s novel to find the details to how Victor Frankenstein created his creature’s mate. I was amazed to find no details about who she was or how she was put together. There was just this mystery about her identity, and the opportunity to play in Mary Shelley’s fictional world.

ADDIE TSAI: There are so many elements of Frankenstein that continue to resurface in different ways throughout time. Certainly, I think the tension between creation and responsibility remains such an important issue for all human life. The question of “taking power into one’s own hands” especially as it relates to the advancing of technologies changes over time in different ways, but the same ethical issues that faced (and plagued) Frankenstein bubble up over and over again. The Creature’s tale of being rejected by his parents and the world for being considered “hideous” and unwanted, especially as a mirror that reflects the deeper fears of society, resonates with so many of us and I can’t imagine that ever changing.

The largest motivator for beginning to write through Frankenstein was out of a love and homage to a novel that has meant so much to me for so much of my life. But what really drove me to begin Unwieldy Creatures was considering it in a particular cultural and historical moment, in which reproductive technologies were become more accessible to a wider public at the very moment that women and LGBTQ people’s reproductive rights were being threatened and restricted. This seem to me a similarly fraught time to Shelley’s at the height of the Industrial Revolution, and the perfect set of conditions to consider a new Frankenstein. I also wanted to write a Frankenstein that considered whiteness as a kind of systemic force rather than accepted as universal. To speak and write of cishet white men through the frame of narcissistic irresponsibility felt too easy, too expected. What would happen if we considered Frankenstein’s actions through a queered and minoritized landscape and subjecthood? How would it change? What would need to change for it to be believable? I wanted to write a Frankenstein for queer people and people of color, not only in terms of who was being depicted but how Frankenstein could speak to the deeper issues of our lives. Finally, I wanted to consider the Creature, who had never been raised within civilized society, in a twenty-first century landscape. Would the Creature be considered gendered without being assigned gender at birth? How would that change the Creature’s embodiment and experience? These were some of the questions I was excited to explore in Unwieldy Creatures.

COREY NILES: At its core, Frankenstein is a story of grief, isolation, and the search for acceptance and love, which are universal experiences. I was struggling to come to terms with my sexuality in a small town when I first read Frankenstein, and the story deeply resonated with me. The chapter where the monster befriends a blind man and is eventually chased off when the man’s family sees his monstrous appearance gave voice to a lot of my fears. What if someone rejects me for who I am?

I was inspired to write Blood & Dirt after a man, who was apparently enraged by my boyfriend’s and my queerness, screamed slurs at us and threatened to kill us when we were out with friends. I was left wondering what would’ve happened if we weren’t in a crowded public space. Those early anxieties returned to me along with Frankenstein. I reread it and dove into the Prometheus myth as well as comparable stories in other mythologies and religions. That’s when the story really started taking shape.

ANYA MARTIN: Mary’s literary depiction of the monster’s plight moved me deeply from the first time I read it. I already sympathized with the creature in the film depictions I had seen, but reading the book really brought the creature’s tragic plight to life for me. He was the ultimate outsider struggling to fit in and then rejecting the society that wouldn’t accept him. I think though the novel’s resonance is much greater than any of the individual themes it explored from the creature’s exploration of self to the scientific implications. It was such a seminal intersectional text, the first truly significant work of not only horror but also science fiction, Weird fiction, gothic, and it was written by a woman at a time when men dominated the arts (and science)! When Ross asked me to contribute to Eternal Frankenstein, I was thrilled, but I knew I had to deliver a tale that not only explored the book’s core themes but added something new. Elsa Lanchester provided me with that portal even more so than I imagine, including a way to focus on a strongly feminist angle.

What’s your personal favorite adaptation of Frankenstein?

LEILA SIDDIQUI: I’ll be honest that I haven’t actually watched any adaptations because I’m too worried I’ll be distracted thinking of all of the differences. I’m just too close to it!

TIM MCGREGOR: The correct answer is James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, but have you ever seen 1971’s Dracula VS Frankenstein? It’s beyond terrible. Dracula sports a perm and plastic fangs and Frankenstein’s monster resembles a boiled cabbage. Fun fact: the director was later murdered and buried under his own bathroom floor.

ADDIE TSAI: Young Frankenstein is my favorite!

COREY NILES: While I’ll admit that this may be recency bias, I adored Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 adaptation. There have been other, more technically faithful adaptations, like Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but I think the 2025 film better captures the emotional turmoil of the original story. The lavish sets and costumes certainly don’t hurt either.

ANYA MARTIN: I absolutely adore Bride of Frankenstein, but I will also always have a sweet spot for Frankenstein: The True Story, which was produced by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis and co-written by Curtis and key Dark Shadows writer Sam Hall. It was promoted as a major TV event in 1973 and aired over two nights. The title itself suggested the plot was supposed to not just follow the book but portray the actual events behind the book. It was groundbreaking for a Frankenstein film, long before Coppola or del Toro tried to stay truer to Mary’s vision, lavishly shot and well-acted and delved deeply into the book’s themes. The creature was initially beautiful rather than always misshapen, adding an extra tension to the love/hate relationship with his “father” Victor. And it also devotes quite a bit of time to the Bride, Prima, played by a young Jane Seymour, and the significance of her choker in the narrative made a big impression on little girl me who totally wanted a choker just like it from then on!

If you could ask Mary Shelley one question, what would it be?

LEILA SIDDIQUI: Why did you spend so much of your writing years trying to make Percy Shelley a household name after he died, when we could have been blessed with so much more from you than the few novellas we have.

TIM MCGREGOR: Did she really lose her virginity on her mother’s grave? No, wait, I don’t want to know the truth, let’s stick to the legend because it makes for a better story. Did she really keep her husband’s unburned heart as a paperweight?

ADDIE TSAI: Did you meet Anne Lister? Vibes?

COREY NILES: Limiting it to one question isn’t easy. I’m torn between questions concerning her work and her eventful life, which was equally fascinating. Catherine Reef’s young adult biography, Mary Shelley: The Strange True Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator, sent me down a rabbit hole about Shelley and her adventures. While I’d be tempted to ask her about keeping what she believed was her late husband’s heart in her writing desk, I’d probably ask her a craft question about her writing process. I’m always curious about how authors construct their works, particularly when it’s a book I admire like Frankenstein.

ANYA MARTIN: I would love to transport her to the present and ask her how she feels about the stature Frankenstein has in the literary, science fiction, and horror canons today and her being dubbed the mother of multiple genres! Plus the interest in restoring the text to her version, versus the published version edited by her then-famous husband—and that she is now more famous and influential than either her husband or Lord Byron, both celebrities of her time! I wonder how she would react to being called a “mother” since the loss of her own child was one inspiration for Frankenstein. Would she be delighted to be called a mother or have mixed feelings since it is for a literary work rather than an actual child? But if I need to ask Mary in her own time, I might ask her about the influence of her famous progressive mother Mary Wollstonecraft who died from complications giving birth to Mary had on her own writing and Frankenstein in particular.

What are you working on next?

LEILA SIDDIQUI: I have a couple of things I’m working on! One is a regency era slasher, another is a novel about Houdini’s quest against fraudulent mediums in the 1920’s. I’m also toying with an idea around convent horror too.

TIM MCGREGOR: SATAN LOVES YOU comes out next year from Raw Dog Screaming Press. The moral hysteria of the Satanic Panic sweeps through a small town, culminating in extreme violence on Devil’s Night, 1990.

ADDIE TSAI: I’m currently working on a novel about Taiwanese history, ancestral ghosts, and an underground art movement.

COREY NILES: After spending the past two years focusing on poetry and my eco-horror collection, In the Woods Only the Trees Hear You Scream, which is coming out from Rooster Republic Press this fall, I’ve shifted gears back to fiction. I recently finished a novella that shares some connective tissue with Frankenstein. The story is about a reclusive doll remodeler who starts working on more organic projects. It’s probably the darkest and strangest book I’ve ever written, so I’m excited to begin shopping it around soon.

ANYA MARTIN: My writing has been in an annoying period of stasis due to a variety of life challenges starting with the pandemic, and especially the journey of my mother through Alzheimer’s disease. Since she passed away last December, I have been working on finding my path back to writing. I’m still passionately interested in Weird fiction, but the current story I am working might technically be high fantasy but hopefully still profoundly Weird. And speaking of Frankenstein, I am exploring an expansion of “The Un-Bride,” into a full novel, though I hesitate to state that out loud. While the story does seem to wrap up, I left a few loose ends because from the start, I saw the potential for a deeper dive. However, I don’t want to do it unless I can do it right, and it’s taken some years to figure out exactly how to make it work. I think I’m close though and maybe just saying it here will amp the pressure on me to get it done!

Thank you so much to our five featured authors for sharing their thoughts on Mary Shelley and Frankenstein! It was so great talking with all of them!

Happy reading, and happy Halloween! 

Welcome back, and happy July! Today, I’ve got a brand-new roundtable about a topic that you probably won’t see on most other horror websites: Marie Antoinette.

I’ve been fascinated by the story of Marie Antoinette since my high school days when my French teacher informed us that the ill-fated French queen never said “Let them eat cake.” That was more than a little intriguing to me, considering that was one of the primary things I knew about her. From there, I learned that Marie Antoinette was a much more complicated figure than she’s often depicted. Add in Sofia Coppola’s polarizing biopic, Marie Antoinette, from 2006, and the former French monarch has swirled around quietly in my mind ever since.

That interest in Marie Antoinette came to fruition in my story, “Lost in Darkness and Distance,” which is one of the three brand-new tales in my new collection, The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own. In the story, Marie Antoinette digs herself and her disembodied head out of a shallow grave and wanders the European countryside. That is, until she stumbles into the famous ghost story at Lord Byron’s estate and meets Mary Shelley herself. Soon Marie becomes Mary’s very own Frankenstein’s monster, and the two women find themselves bonding and sparring over their respective lots in life. It’s one of the stranger stories I’ve ever written and also one of my personal favorites.

Fortunately, I’m not the only horror and dark fantasy writer out there who finds Marie Antoinette to be a complex and even misunderstood historical figure. I recently gathered together three other authors whose recently released books explore Marie’s legacy. Together, we discuss how we discovered the life of Marie Antoinette and why we decided to include her in our own body of work.

What made Marie Antoinette someone you wanted to write about? Do you remember the first time you came across information about her? Or was there a particular moment when something clicked for you, and you knew this was someone whose legacy inspired you in some way?

AZZURRA NOX: My fascination with Marie Antoinette began when I was three years old, after watching the anime series The Rose of Versailles. The story follows Oscar, a fictional woman raised as a man who rises through the royal military to become Captain of the Royal Guard. Her life becomes deeply intertwined with that of Marie Antoinette, and through their relationship the series introduced me to both French history and the human drama behind it. What struck me most was that the show didn’t shy away from the brutality of the French Revolution or Marie Antoinette’s tragic fate.

That early fascination grew into a lasting obsession. I spent years reading biographies, watching films, and researching her life, yet I was consistently frustrated by how narrowly she was portrayed. Most depictions focus on her youth and extravagance, reducing her to a symbol of excess while overlooking the complexity of who she became later in life. She arrived in France at only fourteen years old to marry Louis XVI, and yes, she could be naïve and frivolous in her early years. But what moved me was the strength and dignity she displayed after losing everything.

In her darkest moments—stripped of her titles, separated from her children, imprisoned, and facing execution—she did not lash out with bitterness or demand revenge. Instead, in her final letters, she urged her children to forgive the French people and expressed regret that she had not fulfilled her role as queen more successfully. That resilience and compassion are rarely explored, even though they reveal the most human side of her story.

That is why my book, Panico! Marie Antoinette’s Journey During the Reign of Terror, focuses primarily on her final years. I wanted to tell the story of a woman who, despite her flaws, faced unimaginable loss with remarkable composure and courage—qualities I believe history and popular culture often overlook.

JULIA JACKSON: I have always been obsessed with history. In particular, I have always adored the works of French artists and the political landscape that shaped their work. I studied art history, devoured history docs and books, and somewhere along the way stumbled upon Marie Antoinette. When I finally travelled to France to see all I loved, outside of projector slides and in the flesh, I made sure Versailles was top of my list. To walk where Marie had was surreal, and something clicked for me that day. Walking through the gardens and down the hall of mirrors, I felt I understood her better. Beyond ink on paper, she was indeed a living, breathing girl who held so much weight upon very small shoulders.

JESS HAGEMANN: European history never stuck in my head until I learned about Marie Antoinette. I think it was the fact that she was so young when she was married off to France and how she met her grisly end. The guillotine is iconic. Still, apart from watching and loving Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette in 2006, I didn’t become obsessed with the queen’s story until I took a 23&Me DNA analysis test and learned I “shared a common ancestor” with Marie Antoinette. My mother-in-law gifted me the DNA test. She then gifted me Antonia Fraser’s comprehensive biography of Marie Antoinette, and the rest was history. I knew I needed to adapt her story in some way because so many parts of it, from her child-bride status to the way she was “canceled” by the French peasantry, still feel resonant today.

All of your books contain elements of either horror, fantasy/magic realism, or both. What is it about Marie Antoinette and her legacy that blend so well with the horror and fantasy genres?

JULIA JACKSON: I had just finished a manuscript and needed to dive into a new project. I’ll never forget driving along the highway from my day job and suddenly thinking about Marie. How she went through so much at such a young age. I thought about my young daughter and how I couldn’t imagine her going through that in just a few years time. It was horrifying, really – this 14 year old girl who endured some of the first braces without anesthesia. Who had everything she knew and loved in Austria stripped from her to go to France at 14. To marry a complete stranger at 14 and then have the court gather round to encourage consummation. A young girl used as a political pawn, used as a scapegoat, labelled as the villain, and finally, used as a symbol of the end of the monarchy with the blade of a guillotine. And it hit me then. Marie‘s story was a horror all along, and it was meant to be my next book.

JESS HAGEMANN: That blade! That drop! The way her head bounced, eyes still open, as onlookers rushed to soak their handkerchiefs in her royal blood! Marie Antoinette‘s is a real-life horror story. I just updated it to include some of today’s horrors, including making her the pupil of a Jeffrey-Epstein-inspired teacher, who was in turn modeled on another real-life figure, Count Axel Fersen. In MOTHER-EATING, she also rules over a sex-and-torture cult in Austin, Texas instead of the country of France.

AZZURRA NOX: I think the horror element in Marie Antoinette’s story is almost impossible to ignore because so much of her life was defined by real, human terror long before the French Revolution reached its peak. She was sent to France as a bride at just fourteen years old, became queen at eighteen, and suddenly carried the expectations of an entire nation on her shoulders. On top of that, she endured years of scrutiny and humiliation over her marriage and her inability to conceive children—only to later lose several of the children she fought so hard to have.

People tend to picture Marie Antoinette through the lens of luxury and extravagance, but when you look closer, her life was already a kind of psychological horror long before she was imprisoned and taken from Versailles. The fear, isolation, public judgment, and eventual loss of everything she loved are what drew me to telling her story through a darker, more emotional lens.

Some readers have described my book as having elements of fantasy, but I see the only “fantasy” aspect as my decision to write from Marie Antoinette’s point of view rather than from a distant third-person perspective. I wanted readers to experience her humanity directly—to feel her fear, grief, confusion, and resilience as if they were living through it beside her. For me, stepping into her perspective was the only way to tell her story with the emotional honesty it deserves.

Are there any particular books, films, or documentaries about Marie Antoinette that you used in your writing process?

JULIA JACKSON: Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette brought history to life. It showed the soft, tender side of Marie. The girl who wanted to have fun and make the most of a new life, all while having the crushing pressures of court upon her. When the film was first released, I went to the theatres to see it more times than I should admit. And many years later, when I decided to write Powder & Poison, I studied it all over again. I spent six months not writing a single word of my book. Instead, I immersed myself in all the history books I could get my hands on. I painstakingly studied courtlife, Marie and all those around her, and I even studied detailed layouts of Versailles and its gardens. Half a year of research was well worth it, and I am so happy I got to know her world as well as possible before putting pen to paper.

AZZURRA NOX: I read countless books while researching Marie Antoinette, but the sources that affected me most were the ones that brought me closest to her final days as a prisoner. Marie Antoinette’s Darkest Days: Prisoner No. 280 in the Conciergerie by Will Bashor was especially influential because it captures the fear, isolation, and emotional strain she endured during imprisonment. I also spent a great deal of time reading the actual court documents and trial transcripts from 1793 through Gallica, which preserves records from the Revolutionary Tribunal. Reading her words and the accusations leveled against her, in their original form made her feel startlingly human rather than mythologized.

I’ve also watched nearly every major film adaptation about Marie Antoinette, and my personal favorite remains Marie Antoinette (1938) starring Norma Shearer. There’s a tragic elegance and emotional depth in her performance that has always stayed with me.

I do appreciate the visual style and atmosphere of Marie Antoinette (2006), and I think Sofia Coppola genuinely tried to capture the feeling of girlhood inside Versailles. I’m also a fan of Kirsten Dunst. But for me, that version still leans too heavily into the popular caricature of Marie Antoinette—the frivolous, out-of-touch queen—and in doing so, it unintentionally reinforces many of the damaging myths surrounding her, including the infamous “Let them eat cake” quote, which she never actually said.

JESS HAGEMANN: Yes! Besides Sofia’s film and Fraser’s biography: The Queens podcast and History Chicks podcast episodes about Marie Antoinette. We also hired a UK-based artist, James Hutton, to re-interpret a real political cartoon of Marie Antoinette that circulated during her reign and depicted her as a harpy. That’s the sweet MOTHER-EATING cover art!

If there was one thing you wish people knew about Marie Antoinette, what would it be?

JESS HAGEMANN: She was, in my opinion, so unfairly maligned. She’s one of history’s most hated characters, but I don’t believe she deserved it. Imagine being “traded” by your mother to a foreign country at 14. You don’t speak the language, you don’t know the customs, you’re married to a fellow strange child, and you’re navigating all of it in the public spotlight. Of course you’re going to be naive, and of course you’re going to make mistakes. While she probably was a little ignorant when it came to the true plight of the French people, she never said “Let them eat cake” and wasn’t owed beheading.

AZZURRA NOX: More than anything, I want people to understand that in her darkest moments, Marie Antoinette revealed an extraordinary kind of courage. By the end of her life, stripped of power, separated from her children, and condemned by the public, she faced her fate with remarkable stoicism and dignity. That is the side of her I feel history often overlooks.

If I were to share one fact that many people may not know, it’s what happened after her execution. Her body was reportedly left near the scaffold for nearly two weeks before being taken to a cemetery and thrown into a common grave. It wasn’t until the Bourbon Restoration in 1815 that her remains—and those of Louis XVI—were exhumed and finally given a proper royal burial.

Learning that deeply affected me. The image of her body being discarded so carelessly, almost as if she were no longer human but simply an object to be disposed of, says so much about the dehumanization she endured during the Revolution. It reinforced for me how easy it can become for societies to strip people of their humanity once they are turned into symbols rather than seen as individuals.

JULIA JACKSON: Marie never said “Let them eat cake!”  A quote was taken from a book and attributed to her because it so perfectly fit the propaganda of Marie being out of touch with the people of France and living a life of luxury without a care in the world. Propaganda turned into a globally believed fact across time—that sounds like true horror to me. And that’s what the horror genre is able to do more than any other: confront the horrors of humanity, shining a spotlight on how terrifying things that were happening hundreds of years ago are still happening today.

What are you currently working on? Any upcoming projects you’d like to share with everyone?

AZZURRA NOX: I’m currently working on a horror novel set during World War II in Gela, Sicily. The story centers on a secretive cult of women who worship Medusa, and how their lives are completely upended when they take in a wounded American soldier. It’s a blend of psychological horror, mythology, and wartime tension, which has been incredibly exciting to write.

JULIA JACKSON: I am currently working on a found footage cult book with lots of twists!

I recently finished an angry little novella called TELL ME YOU LOVE ME that I think every woman will relate to in some way or another…one that, very intentionally, has many trigger warnings. Think MAEVE FLY x SALTBURN.

I also co-founded Grave Belles, a small press dedicated to raising female and non-binary voices, focused on dark story telling and building community. Our first anthology, OF PLAGUES AND BLASPHEMY released on May 5, with proceeds going to The Trevor Project. The next anthology, THE CAGES WE ENDURE, is out October 6, and we are currently accepting submissions for our SUMMER SLASHER anthology.

JESS HAGEMANN: This year I novelized an existing movie for Encyclopocalypse Publications! My treatment of BURNING PALMS (2010) by screenwriter/director Christopher Landon drops August 11, 2026. I’m also at work on a new body horror novella! Stay tuned at www.jesshagemann.com

Thank you so much to my three featured authors! It was so much fun talking to them about Marie Antoinette and horror!

Happy reading! 

Welcome back for the third and final part of our Pride Month horror spotlight! As I discussed in our previous two posts, I recently asked a group of fabulous LGBTQ+ horror authors the same question: who’s your favorite queer character in horror that really changed your life?

And now I’ll let our writers in our third installment share their favorites!

J.A.W. MCCARTHY: I first saw Lucky McKee’s 2002 film May at a time in my life when I was facing my sexuality again, after years of shelving that part of myself. Bisexuality was often portrayed as an identity invented by people who wanted an excuse for their indecisiveness and promiscuity. I had friends who believed that. When I saw the titular May yearning for companionship and understanding, her desires clear-eyed and open regardless of gender identity, I saw a piece of myself.

I can’t say if May would identify as bisexual, pansexual, or something else. What I know is that she’s lonely, hungry, and honest in her need for connection. Though she was ostracized as a child for a physical difference, she remains hopeful in adulthood, eager for companionship even as she stumbles through social interactions and struggles to keep her urges at bay. She becomes infatuated with a male mechanic and female coworker, optimistically exploring relationships with both. Angela Bettis portrays May with an aching vulnerability and guilelessness, making her increasingly unhinged actions believable in her pursuit of love and acceptance. How could you not root for May? The problem is, she takes things way too far.

Despite her actions (mind the CWs), I found myself identifying and sympathizing with May back in 2002 and today. Like her, I know the pain of being hungry and lost, searching for another soul who will understand and embrace me, bad-weird parts and all. While there are many queer characters I love, May is my tender underbelly turning towards the light.

L.L. MADRID: Dorian Gray was one of the most attractive monsters in the show Penny Dreadful. With his soulless nature, he wasn’t a role model, but I couldn’t help but admire how unapologetic he was regarding his sexuality.

When Penny Dreadful first aired, I was a quiet, semi-closeted bisexual. I’d only had casual flings with women and been in just a couple of serious relationships, both with men, which felt safer. My youth had been church-heavy, and it was hard to get rid of the ever-lurking sense of shame.

Dorian had no shame. He didn’t concern himself with gender norms or social standing. A true hedonist, he sought pleasure, taking lovers he found alluring. He didn’t deny or suppress his fluid sexuality and reveled in the diversity of his partners. Dorian Gray inspired me to cease thinking about those who would disapprove and to create queer characters who may feel shame, but never about who they love.

KATHERINE SILVA: One of my first introductions to queer characters in horror was in the 2000’s with Willow Rosenberg and Tara McClay of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The beautiful and dark places their relationship went as they grew closer, the hurtles they had to overcome and the loneliness they felt were all so palpable and rare for television, especially in shows aimed at young adult audiences. To this day, I think they are two of the best depictions of a lesbian relationship in horror because they show that queer characters are allowed to be fully-developed powerful individuals who are more than the tropes their sexuality is often portrayed as.

MARTIN AGUILERA: The queer character in horror that haunted my adolescence and, to a degree, impacted my life, was the character of “Nothing” from the novel LOST SOULS by Poppy Z. Brite. As a teen in the mid-90’s I was fully aware of my sexuality, and thankfully never struggled with owning my identity to myself or the people in my circle, but growing up in El Paso, Texas was a very alienating experience for me. I was in love with the prose of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Clive Barker, V.C. Andrews, and the queen Anne Rice’s sensual, gothic Old World vampires. But it was Poppy Z. Brite who showed me a character who felt as alienated and isolated as I did, and who was also contemporary. That’s what really made him stand out. “Nothing” was a version of me, but also a version of the emo boys I was attracted to at the time, and his descent into darkness was equally profound and entirely titillating. I’ve never forgotten him, or the novel, which isn’t talked about as much anymore, but I hope is ready for rediscovery, along with the complete body of work by Poppy Z. Brite (now William Martin).

HARALAMBI MARKOV: As with most media, there is a significant delay between horror anything being released in the US and it finding its way to Bulgaria. Being a former communist country meant much catching up to do, so it wasn’t until my late teenage years I watched the Nightmare on Elm Street series. I was particularly drawn to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, agreed by everyone to be queer-coded on steroids and it really did me in as a closeted teen.

My heart raced every time Jesse Walsh appeared to the screen and confronted not just Freddy but something else that I didn’t have the language for then. Part of it was definitely the fact that Mark Patton was cute, but also that he was vulnerable and displayed masculinity that didn’t conform to the macho male archetype that I grew up with. Jesse quelled my worries that I was very much wrong. I remember how viscerally I lived through Jesse’s discomfort as a young queer person and the sense of isolation that comes with your entire reality being upended by some internal force that you can’t name. I was going through it at the time and honestly, Jesse Walsh calmed me down a lot during those years where I fought my own demons. Cheers to the male Final Girl!

MAE MURRAY: Lestat and Gabrielle de Lioncourt. I know it’s probably a cliche, and I wouldn’t be surprised if others said the same, especially about Lestat, especially if they’re Gen X or Millennial. But reading The Vampire Lestat as a pre-teen truly changed the trajectory of my life. I first read it over 20 years ago, and I still remember the lighting in my bedroom and how I was lying on my belly, feet kicked up, when I read the Wolfkiller scene (IYKYK). Anne Rice had a way of living through her characters, both Lestat and his mother Gabrielle, who, when turned into a vampire, began to dress as a man and cut her hair short. Anne Rice herself said she never felt like a woman. “I would see a gay man in the park and think, ‘That man has my body,'” she once said. “I felt like an imposter as a woman.” “I feel like I’m gay and forget I have a gender.” In Lestat, Rice showed me how to be fearless in feeling. In Gabrielle, she showed me another way to be a woman. And in all her works, she showed me how to create queer worlds that are alive.

CATHERINE LUNDOFF: Dr. Frank-N-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show was probably the first bi/queer media character that I was aware of before I came out. Out, loud and deliberate, no coding needed, no ambiguity – it was a revelation in 1982 or so when I first saw him! My high school friends and I would dress up as the characters (I was Magenta) and go see the Rocky in Greenwich Village in the early 1980s and it was one of the first times that I can recall having a sense of belonging. Just a bunch of freaky, geeky high school kids who would eventually come out as queer or as crossdressers in later years. Bearing in mind that this was the height of what would be historically known as the AIDS Crisis and we were in NYC’s epicenter for the plague, having someone represent being queer as joyous and powerful, if a tad fucked up, was pretty amazing. I can still sing along with most of the songs and cheer every time I see Tim Curry in any role because what he gave us was a gift to be treasured.

RACHEL BOLTON: Many bisexuals can relate to the idea of “do I want to be her or with her?” When I was young, I did not understand that this feeling was attraction to women. But there was one male character who invoked this in me, Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes. While not straight up horror, the Granada adaption of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories have strong horror elements. The Hound of the Baskervilles is a gothic mystery and several cases are quite gruesome.

I remember watching Brett’s Holmes with layers of admiration. It was more than just a crush, I wanted to be as observant, smart, and capable as he was. This blend of desire and mimicry was normally reserved for characters like Shego from Kim Possible or Judy Funnie. I dressed up as a detective for career day and made my sister and friends play Sherlock Holmes with me.

While Jeremy Brett never publicly talked about his sexuality, he was known to have relationships with men and women. I admire him as Sherlock Holmes for more than just being under the same part of the rainbow. Brett was committed to portraying an accurate version of the character and stories. During the end of the series, Brett continued playing Holmes even as he was struggling with bipolar disorder and dying from a lifetime of complicated health. His only complaint on set was saying, “But, darlings, the show must go on.”

CHAD STROUP: Though this choice may be a bit too recent to qualify as my “favorite” queer character in horror, I’m going with Owen from I Saw the TV Glow, because the portrayal of this tragic soul deeply affected me and has stuck with me since. Upon finishing the film and soaking in Owen’s journey of existential horror, I was awestruck. Yet at first I wasn’t sure why, so I allowed the story’s impact to sit with me for a few days. Then it hit me–Owen’s tragedy could have easily been mine had I not finally lived my truth. As someone who came out as nonbinary fairly late in life (at about age 47), I was at risk for living an inauthentic existence. Growing up as a teen in the late 80s/early 90s, I didn’t have access to the same vocabulary and support many queer people have today. Despite occasionally toying with gender in various capacities, there was no epiphanic moment. Only confusion and thoughts of, “Oh, I’m just weird, I’ll grow out of this.” And so I locked it all away instead. Just like Owen. Fortunately, my story has a far less somber ending, as finally coming to an understanding of my personal relationship with gender has led to me becoming a much more content and complete human. I only wish Owen could have been so lucky to experience the same joy.

THERESA DERWIN: This one is tricky as a woman coming out in her forties, especially as a late bi awakening descended on me. Ironically, everyone I then told – and it took years – said “Oh I knew” or “Oh, I assumed.” So, I have to be honest, Orange is the new black hit that button. At the same time I was devouring American Horror Stories; the first run. And a figure in a certain black body suit.

In retrospect it was obvious. I was reading Clive Barker, Poppy Z Brite, Christopher Fowler – And then I found Spanky.

Something about Spanky – and let’s face it, that original kinkster cover – spoke to me. Spanky was the brave, sexual, sarcastic and cheeky devil I wanted to be. He helped Martyn discover his real self.

I was never that comfortable with my body or the feminine aesthetic. That came later in life but even now it’s easier to wear joggers or shorts with t-shirts.

In later years the discovery of the kink (BDSM) community gathered me in its arms and welcomed me. I started going to the BBB event in Birmingham and finding new friends, new family.

To be fair, my family did kind of notice I was a rebellious little devil.

And now, in my fifties and my post menopausal era … I’m even more so.

AMANDA HEADLEE: How could I have known, as a teenager in the late ’90s, picking up Sabriel by Garth Nix for the first time, that the book was the beginning of a chapter that would lead me down a road toward understanding who I am?

Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom series has had a profound impact on my life as both a reader and a writer. These dark fantasy novels shaped my love of fiction, magic, and worldbuilding. I still find myself reflecting on how Nix constructed the Old Kingdom and its unique magic systems, as well as the depth he brought to every character, from the protagonists to the supporting cast. Looking back, I can see just how much these books have influenced my own approach to storytelling.

But it wasn’t until I read Clariel, the fourth book in the series, in my late 30s (yes, I know I was a bit late to the book), that the series took on a much deeper personal significance for me. There was something about the protagonist, Clariel, that resonated with me in a way no fictional character ever had before. She is most fulfilled when pursuing her own interests rather than seeking romance. She resists her family’s attempts to push her toward marriage and struggles to understand the complexities of romantic relationships and society’s fixation on them.

Her strongest desires are never framed in terms of love or partnership; instead, they center on independence, nature, and the ability to determine the course of her own life.

What I admire most about the book Clariel is that these traits are never presented as a lesson or reduced to a label. Clariel simply exists as herself. Her asexuality emerges through her thoughts, feelings, and actions rather than through explicit explanation. As a reader who spent much of her life feeling out of step with expectations surrounding romance and attraction, I found something deeply familiar in her experience.

After finishing the book, I learned that Nix had intentionally written Clariel as an asexual character. I was familiar with the term, but I had never taken the time to explore what it really meant. Curious, I started reading. One article led to another, and before long, I found myself learning about asexuality, aromantic identities, and the broad spectrum of experiences they encompass.

The more I learned, the more I recognized myself in what I was reading. For the first time, I had language for feelings (or the lack thereof…no pun intended) that had accompanied me throughout my life. Things I had once dismissed as personal quirks or as simply failing to meet social expectations suddenly made sense. I wasn’t broken, and I wasn’t missing something everyone else seemed to have. I simply viewed attraction, relationships, and connection differently. I now understand that romance doesn’t have to be a priority in my life and that I don’t need to squeeze myself into the perfectly shaped “ideal woman” box that society deems acceptable.

When I first entered the Old Kingdom, I was captivated by bells that bound the dead, ancient magic, and dark journeys through Death. I never imagined that years later, the most important thing I would find there would be something far quieter: a character who helped me
understand myself more clearly than ever before.

Sometimes self-discovery doesn’t arrive in the first chapter. Sometimes it arrives decades after the story has already begun.

And that’s part three in our spotlight on queer horror characters! Please check out part one and part two of our series as well! And be sure to celebrate queer horror all year-round! 

Happy reading, and happy Pride Month! 

Welcome back for part two of our Pride Month Horror Spotlight! As I mentioned in our last post, I recently asked a group of wonderful LGBTQ+ horror authors the same question: who’s your favorite queer character in horror that really changed your life?

So I’ll let our writers in part two take it from here!

ADDIE TSAI: Jareth in Labyrinth. I was completely entranced with Bowie’s embodiment on stage and how the character encapsulated villain and prince, flamboyant and masculine, powerful and vulnerable. I would later realize that his genderbending aesthetic immensely influenced my own genderfluid style, in ways that persist to today, especially in terms of its theatricality and pageantry.

REI ALYSSA MURRAY: This character will probably appear several times throughout this post from various authors, but I am too spiritually connected to her to say anyone otherwise: Carmilla. Vampires have always been a very important archetype to me, and as someone who has identified with the image of the female vampire for a long time, this mysterious lesbian vampire has always been dear to my heart and has helped me to build an internal image that I am trying to externally express now.

My honorable mentions, speaking of vampires, would be Lestat and Louis. Those two definitely had some gay stuff going on.

JESSICA MCHUGH: Dr. Frank-N-Furter and the cast of the Rocky Horror Picture Show had a profound effect on me. I’d probably pinpoint that as my introduction to queer culture in a visual sense, not just as a topic of conversation at slumber parties…where I also had some of my scariest and gayest experiences up to that point. 😉

The campy horror glam won me over instantly—every sparkling weirdo, every boisterous song—and I found Frank-N-Furter endlessly intriguing. I already knew and loved Tim Curry from roles like Legend and Annie, but I was utterly fascinating by this man embracing femininity while still being so dominant, so fearless. He was beautiful and powerful, wild and wounded, and entirely unapologetic about who he was.

Personally, that scene of him hooking up with Brad followed by a hookup with Janet had my brain buzzing. Like, you can DO that? Brad AND Janet?! BOTH?! It would be years before I came out as bisexual, but middle school Jess was enthralled and curious and very excited to discuss this interesting development at the next slumber party…right after being dared to leave a hickey on Emma H’s butt cheek.

ANGELA SYLVAINE: My favorite queer character is Lucy Westenra from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I first saw the movie in my teens on the big screen, and it’s my first memory of seeing a bi character. While Lucy wasn’t explicitly bi, it was pretty obvious to me, and I was smitten. She was so incredibly vibrant and unapologetically herself.

Lucy helped me realize I was bi, but she’s also meaningful to me because of what she endured. From her suitors to Dracula, no one cared what she wanted, only what she could give them. While she seemingly had a repressed hunger that was released at her turning, she never had a choice. I remember being very angry that she was villainized and “saved” from her own impurity by the same men who sought to possess her. Sure, she was about to feed on a baby, but a girl’s gotta eat (#girldinner).

She showed me that women are often judged and used and controlled and owned. That we are robbed of choice. That we aren’t allowed to be vibrant and unapologetically ourselves. And if we dare, we may pay a painful and perhaps deadly price. There was time when I internalized this as a cautionary lesson, but in recent years that caution has burned away to leave only fury at how she, how we, are treated. For me, Lucy has shifted over time from a crush to a monstrous femme icon. I wonder if we should all become monsters.

SARA TANTLINGER: Dr. Alana Bloom from NBC’s Hannibal is one of my favorite queer characters. In the books, Dr. Bloom is a male character with a minor role, so for showrunner Bryan Fuller to gender-swap the original and give her a complex storyline was exciting. Plus, by season 3, we learn Alana is bisexual. Watching this show in my early 20s and seeing not only the most beautifully macabre show I had ever seen, but for there to be queer characters and a bisexual woman was so meaningful.

Seeing any queer female character in horror media who wasn’t being treated as an object for the male gaze was significant. When she begins her relationship with Margot Verger, I remember some of the backlash that came out. Viewers were upset that her sexuality wasn’t hinted at more obviously before, and I thought that was a ridiculous criticism. Someone not revealing their bisexuality right away isn’t a “trick” that they’re hiding. Then again, I was never surprised by her bisexuality. Something about her character made more sense to me when she bonds with Margot over the visceral horrors they both endured. Alana spends so much time trapped between the desires of Hannibal and the breakdown of Will Graham. To see her become stronger in season 3 as she embraces a little darkness, and with Margot by her side, only made her cooler in my view. It is definitely a character arc that really had an impact on me and continually inspires my writing!

BILL COZZA: A queer horror character who has never left my brain is Will Rabjohns, from Clive Barker’s Sacrament. As I started really digging into horror, as a bi man, I paid close attention to how certain groups were represented, and most of what I was picking up portrayed queer people very stereotypically, almost never as the main character. Then I read Sacrament, and the thing that struck me about Will is how unremarkable his sexuality is in the scheme of the book. Will’s a gay man, and a portion of the book is him reflecting on AIDS and its effect on his community. But when it comes to the overall plot, Will is just like any other male protagonist. He acts the same way a straight man does, he makes the same decisions, deals with the same things. He’s introspective, he’s brave, he’s complex. He’s not written as a “gay main character.” He’s just the main character. Coming from Clive Barker, one knows this is intentional and to prove a point. And knowing that Clive had a fight over publishing this book because Will was gay (and this is only the mid-90’s), his refusal to change this aspect to sell better has always been a beacon to me. I’ve always looked for bi representation, but Sacrament was the first book I read that showed me that queer characters in general could carry a story, unapologetically, and not stereotypically, as main characters. So, Will stays with me after all this time.

ALAN KELLY: American Horror Story: Asylum‘s Lana Winters is my Favourite Queer Character

AHS: Asylum follows reporter Lana Winters (Sarah Paulson), a woman whose storyline initially resembles a Final Girl narrative arc; she gradually evolves into an infinitely more complex and well-rounded character as the season progresses. As much a literary homage to the brazenly Sapphic characters of a Rita Mae Brown novel as she is a non-traditional horror story heroine — exactly what LGBTQ people need in our dark times – Lana Winters is one of the strongest queer/lesbian characters in horror.

MAY WALKER: To age myself in spectacular fashion, I remember watching Isabella Rossellini in Death Becomes Her at a sleepover party, while eating Green Apple Jolly Ranchers. My brain tends to file important memories away in full sensory detail, and that one is etched in neon green. And I’m far from the only one. To paraphrase an article from Vanity Fair, Isabella Rossellini said she can predict with 90% accuracy if someone is gay by telling her they loved her in Death Becomes Her. She might be onto something.

GARRETT COOK: I think my favorite Queer character in horror cinema is Doctor Septimus Praetorius from The Bride of Frankenstein. Ernest Thesiger’s performance is so shamelessly gay at a time when homosexuality in public life was still a huge taboo. He is big, broad and ridiculous and instantly transports this gothic production into a world of Bizarro camp with a laboratory full of weird little homonculi. Praetorius is a good role model in this way because he reminds us that being authentic genuinely transforms the world around you. He might be a campy archvillain but he has control of the world around him, control of the plot and knowledge of what it is to be an outsider. Praetorius is just really cool.

SAMANTHA CURTIN: Surprising to no one who knows me, my queer horror icon is the great character of Tiffany Valentine who graced the screen in the 1998 Bride of Chucky. Since seeing her in both human and doll form unlocked something in my baby queer self that I’ve been trying to embody ever since. Tiffany was also notably played by a queer horror icon in her own right: Jennifer Tilly. The fact that later on in the series they went meta and she played not only Tiffany, but herself, continued to prove just how iconic she is.

VIOLET MCMASTER: For my response, I offer my unhinged beloved May Dove Canady, the titular character of the 2002 film, and played sublimely by Angela Bettis. May’s attempts at desire throughout the film felt like the fumblings of someone uncomfortable in both body and sexuality. Desire for friendship and connection gets wrapped up with sexual exploration, culminating in a sense of confusion and performance as a means of finding recognition, of feeling seen. But humans are untrustworthy. They so often flee at the first sign of strangeness. If we can’t find friends…we must make them.

May likely had little understanding of the totality of queerness throughout the events of the movies, but she was figuring it out before the string of rejections that awakened her inner Victor Frankenstein. Queerness here has less to do with sexuality and more to do with isolation bred from the pursuit of perfection as a means of fostering connection. Obsession leads to her undoing, yes, but this world wasn’t built for her trauma in the first place. May is receiving a well overdue reevaluation, and I think we can thank the Weird Girl movement in film and literature, as well as more normalized conversations regarding queerness and the myriad expressions it takes. Yes, her methods for making friends are questionable on many levels, but at least her heart is sort of in the right place…as is her eye.

KRISTY PARK KULSKI: It’s Lisa from Girl, Interrupted. Sure, Angelina Jolie holds an honored place in my realization of being a bi-sexual woman and this movie was significant part of that self-discovery process—but I see Lisa as something more significant. She’s permission to be dangerous. While not classified as a horror, to me, Girl, Interrupted is a horror. To be institutionalized for being “problematic,” for needing something the world will not give, for being true to ourselves as women, even more so as queer women—that is where horror lives.

Oh, cruel, raw, yet powerful, Lisa, who says, “some advice. Don’t point your fucking finger at crazy people.”

How can we exist as queer women and not feel fucking crazy sometimes? Who doesn’t get tired of the bullshit? Lisa drags the rage and pain into the open and laughs at it, at us. She calls people out. She knows that makes her dangerous. Be inconvenient, make others uncomfortable, be imperfect and damaged. Be human.

Lisa doesn’t just say the truth, she mocks you with it. She can’t stand you holding back either. What she wants is the truth—no matter how horrible or painful it is. She wants you to tell her the truth about herself too. We already know she’s not healthy, but she doesn’t pretend to be either.

She knows she’s a problem, but she won’t stop—can’t stop—and I both love and hate her for it. Worse, I want her to be okay. But she won’t be and that’s part of the horror.

STEPH PATTERSON: One of my favorite queer characters in horror is Yaya Betancourt from Queen of Teeth by Hailey Piper. A queer cosmic body horror. As a bi woman with chronic illness, I absolutely devoured this book. A woman named Yaya discovers she has teeth between her thighs and then it transforms into a large entity with tentacles and a mind of its own. During all this, she falls in love with a woman named Doc.

Reading about a queer character going through unimaginable body horror, falling in love, and then becoming fantastically larger than life was empowering and healing. It made me reflect about my own queerness, and how often as a teen I was taught to shrink that part of myself. I now fully embrace my bisexual identity.

Yaya was so badass and inspiring to me that I wrote a poem called “Devour Me.” It’s an ode to Yaya, her love for Doc, and the entity that becomes Magenta. An ode to when queer love cannot be contained. I first posted it on my Instagram, and then later published it in the anthology The Alien Buddha Loves You Too from Alien Buddha Press.

JOHN LINWOOD GRANT: To find a queer character with a direct influence on my own life, I have to go back to the folk-horror television play Penda’s Fen, which I watched as a teenager when it first came out, in 1974. A strange and very personal encounter for me, because like the play’s protagonist, Stephen, I too was at an old-fashioned all-boys school and lived in a small village; I too wandered a rural setting which could set the imagination ablaze. More than that, in those days we really did fear the techno-atomic threat which is an undercurrent in the play – not so far North of our village stood an early-warning station, a constant reminder of destruction.

Against that backdrop, Stephen wrestles with life and, crucially, with his sexuality; I had a swooning crush on our gorgeous village paper-boy, extremely non-Platonic feelings about male schoolmates, and yet found some of the local girls almost as attractive – just to confuse my adolescent brain. And as I watched the play, I walked alongside Stephen with his musings/fears; I echoed him, or he echoed me. So I still remember Stephen well, a boy who turns from a conflicted prig into – essentially – a free thinker, with hope. Maybe others found hope from Penda, and from recognition that life is a constant, flexible dialogue, informed by history but not constrained by it, not an orthodox monologue to be hammered into us. Queer, ironically, can also turn out to mean unfettered.

BRONTE ROWAN: I’m writing this shortly after arriving back in my hometown after attending a human rights conference. Already I can see my colours fading.

Honestly? It hurts to let the rainbow bleed out of me.

It is in moments like this that I remember my favourite anti-hero, Lestat de Lioncourt. What would he do? He’d raise hell in the name of equality. In The Vampire Lestat, he plans for vampires to come out – Anne Rice was very much aware of what she was doing with her monsters.

There is a certain kind of poetic justice in queering vampires.

Eternal love is a beautiful juxtaposition to how queer love has always been erased. Lovers are historically portrayed as friends, a whole generation of queer people was left to die during the AIDS crisis, and queer people face horrendously high violent crime rates.

The vampire is also a metaphor for found families because through blood, Lestat establishes his own coven of people to create the family he always longed for – people who care for each other.

I know that, as queer people, we still scare others because of our identity and sexuality. I feel sorry for those who believe that the only kind of love is of a sexual nature.

Anne Rice’s characters – Lestat in particular – toy with that. He is unafraid of what others have taught him to fear.

Happy Pride – stay safe, embrace your (found) family, and scare the hell out of the bigots by being your beautiful, queer selves.

That’s part two of our Pride Month Horror Spotlight! Please check out part one and part three while you’re here! 

Happy reading, and happy Pride Month!

Welcome back, and happy Pride Month! I’m so thrilled to present this year’s Pride Month Horror Spotlight! I’ve asked a group of amazing LGBTQ+ authors the same question: who’s your favorite queer character in horror that really changed your life? The answers are of course just as incredible as the authors themselves!

So without further ado, here’s part one in our Pride Month horror roundtable!

JESSICA GLEASON: I thought about this, pressing myself to find something poetic to say. As a teen, soaking in the more adult horror, representation was sporadic at best. Often, the queer character was the monster, a big reveal to villainize the othered. We didn’t have Mindy Meeks, a cynical horror-loving nerd, whose queerness is part of the whole. She’s a real girl instead of a plastic token. No Cole and Rust, gay heroes, not victims. For me, Willow Rosenberg is a standout, her sexuality fluid as she moves from her longing for Xander Harris to her relationship with the wolfish Oz and onto her love affair with Tara Maclay. She was imperfect and, at times, downright awful. I would never call her a role model or something to aspire to, but she represented possibility. Choice. Never once did I question her varied tastes, each partner made sense as she let her heart and not gender guide her romantic entanglements. Is she my favorite, though? No. That spot belongs to the alluring and unhinged Dr. Frank-N-Furter. So much of my youth and tastes were, in some way, a reflection of Tim Curry’s version of the character. Black clothing. Dramatic makeup. Tattoos. And, a love for Brads and Janets everywhere. “Don’t dream it. Be it.”

KASSIDY VANGUNDY: I know it’s a little basic, but my favorite queer character from a horror film is Jennifer Check from Jennifer’s Body. Although I’m probably more of a “Needy” myself, Jennifer and her gorgeous succubus ways had me rooting for her throughout the entire movie. It was so camp and transgressive. Her iconic “I go both ways” line made teenage me flip out as one of the few openly out queer kids at my Midwestern high school. Suddenly, I felt affirmed as a fellow bisexual femme who also had a bit of a toxic crush on one of her best friends at the time – a hallmark of queer adolescence really.

C.R. LANGILLE: I didn’t really become active in the LGBTQIA+ community until I hit my 40s after I transitioned. It was during this time that my egg broke, and when it did, it hit me like a cannonball. So, I don’t have a lot of influential queer characters that were a huge influence or that have changed my life. I will say, watching I Saw the TV Glow and what the character, Owen, endured by staying closeted was heavy to watch and a reminder of what a possible future could look like when hiding that side of yourself.

I am happy to see that queer horror is really starting to stand on its own two feet now. Representation matters, and seeing so much trans and queer horror coming out from different authors and presses has helped fill my little dark heart with love. I hope to see the trend continue to grow as more and more folks feel comfortable writing the stories that they need and want.

SIAN PENNY: Let’s talk about how entirely I vibe with Alexia from Titane (Julia Ducournau, 2021). Not that I have all that much in common with a lesbian serial killer who gets herself pregnant with a cyborg baby after having sex with a custom car and goes on the run by pretending to be a dead teenaged boy. But the thing about Titane is that it’s not really a film about a genderfucky transhuman psychopath, it’s really a film about how genderfucky transhuman psychopaths are still human beings who absolutely, completely can be loved and adopted with a pure, unconditional fervour.

And in the eyes of so many people we’re monsters and we receive the treatment that people think are due to monsters. Many of the worst people in the cishet world have people who love them. So why don’t we get that?

Alexia is a messy, spiky character, who doesn’t conform to any idea of “good representation” — but that’s a domesticated idea anyway. Alexia is a monster, but she’s one of the most authentically human monsters in cinema. And people like us need that.

CHLOE SPENCER: For me, it’s gotta be Deena Johnson from The Fear Street trilogy. She’s badass, resourceful, and unapologetically queer. What’s also significant about Deena is that she’s a major queer character that’s headlining an entire trilogy. Yes, technically the 2nd and 3rd films focus on other characters, but she’s present throughout each of the films and is ultimately the one that propels the action throughout the interconnecting story. It’s refreshing to have a character who is confident in her sexuality and who she is.

SARAH GRAVEN WEIR: Having grown up in the nineties, Tara Maclay in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first queer character I truly remember seeing on television. A shy outsider with a gentle soul, Tara stood out to me because she felt different from the louder
female characters often portrayed. She was soft-spoken, emotionally intelligent, awkward, kind, yet quietly powerful, and she carried a strength that didn’t rely on toughness or clichés. Her relationship with Willow Rosenberg gave viewers a chance to see themselves reflected in horror during a time when queer representation still felt rare. As someone still
trying to figure things out, Tara resonated with me because she felt believable rather than
exaggerated or performative.

I’ve always found outsider characters far more intriguing, particularly within gothic and supernatural horror because they often carry vulnerability and more hidden depth beneath
the surface.

Although I wasn’t keen on the way Tara’s story ended, especially during a time when
queer characters rarely received happy endings, her death became a turning point for
Willow’s darker storyline surrounding grief and addiction. Even so, Tara’s impact lasted long
after the show itself ended. She also helped challenge stereotypes that not all queer people
look or behave the same, and opened the door for more layered LGBTQ+ characters within
the horror genre.

During my final years at school, I also had the pleasure of meeting Amber Benson at a
signing in Forbidden Planet in Birmingham, UK, which made Tara feel even more
meaningful to me personally.

GAYNOR JONES: Can you say you were in the closet if you didn’t even know you were? The question’s lingered since acknowledging my bisexuality in my 40s, and I thought it often while watching Daniel Molloy in AMC’s Interview With The Vampire adaptation. Here, the interviewer has aged; he’s in his 70s, he’s ill, but sharp, astute. Though perhaps not about his own sexuality. Early episodes give glimpses – in the way he shifts when Louis comes close, and especially the way he gazes at Rashid. Indeed, when Louis feeds on Rashid in front of him, Daniel wonders what he tastes like.

Daniel’s sexuality is more explicit in flashbacks, where young Daniel tells Louis, “I mean, if something happens, you know, I’m cool”, then removes his shirt to “[fulfill his] side of the social contract” with an expectant grin wide on his face.

I kissed girls when I was younger, I collected clippings of female celebrities, paused and rewound certain films at certain times – but I was straight, right? I used to drink heavily then, Daniel did drugs; maybe we were looser, or maybe categories just didn’t occur to us.

Back in the present, when Daniel is jokingly propositioned by Louis, he blinks and swallows but doesn’t answer. He presents as a man who is clearly queer, but amongst openly queer people can’t quite acknowledge it. I think of myself – married to a man, doubted by friends, still in the closet to most people – and I fully understand why I relate to him so much.

HAILEY PIPER: I wracked my brain for a more direct choice, but I can’t deny the Gillman. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a classic, but specifically the third movie in that trilogy, The Creature Walks Among Us, was the one that hit me in a unique way. After a fire burns the Gillman, it’s discovered he has traits that make it possible for him to live on land, and the other characters attempt to make him part of the human world. It goes disastrously because the key theme of the trilogy continues to be: this creature was doing just fine before humans decided they needed to have their way. Much of the movie disgusted me as they try to change the Gillman, and though I didn’t have the phrase as a closeted queer child, it read as conversion therapy. “Who you are, how you are happy, these are wrong. We will make you right.” I’d seen attempts to tame and cage movie monsters before, but I’d never seen attempts to fundamentally change who and what they were until then, and it was disturbing. Perhaps that’s projection to some extent, but that’s just how art works sometimes.

ROBERT LEVY: One of my all-time favorite protagonists is Cass Neary, Elizabeth Hand’s mad, bad, and dangerous-to-know bisexual photographer who first appeared in the novel Generation Loss. I’ve long been attracted to damaged characters, and not only is Cass herself damaged but she also has a preternatural ability to spot this trait in others; in fact, it helps fuel her art.

Hand once described Cass a kind of alternate, frayed version of herself if she’d had her brakes cut, a concept that’s stuck with me over the years. There’s something inherently uncanny about queerness—ostensibly appearing normal, but in fact being different or somehow “off”—and the idea that as writers we can create fictional versions of ourselves on the page with varying fates is a natural extension of this same queer uncanniness.

NICK AUCOIN: While perhaps more horror-adjacent, the first queer character I remember having a big impact on me was Willow Rosenberg in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Watching her character realize that she’s developing feelings for another woman, explore that, come out to other characters on the show, and then grow into a relationship she hadn’t considered before meant a lot to my younger self.

AZZURRA NOX: My favourite queer character in horror is Lestat de Lioncourt from The Vampire Chronicles. I discovered the series when I was thirteen, and up until then I hadn’t really encountered queer characters in the books I read. What made Lestat so important to me was that he existed with complete fluidity in his sexuality. Many people place him under the bi umbrella, and I understand why, but what resonated with me was that he never seemed confined by labels — he simply was who he was.

For me, that was incredibly liberating. I was growing up in a deeply homophobic environment: a Sicilian town and a private American school where being queer was treated like a character flaw. I remember people I considered friends saying things like, “If my child was gay, I’d feel like I failed as a parent,” or reacting to Madonna and Britney’s MTV kiss by calling it “disgusting.” Against that backdrop, Lestat felt radical. He was unapologetic, expressive, and entirely free in the way he loved and desired.

That freedom shaped the way I think about sexuality myself — as something fluid rather than rigid or boxed into a single label. While “bi” is probably the closest term for me, what I connected to most in Lestat was his refusal to be limited by definitions.

SUMIKO SAULSON: Like many young goths in 1983, at fifteen, I was obsessed with vampires. My most recent cinema crushes on Irena Gallier (Natasha Kinski) and Paul Gaullier (Malcolm McDowell) in 1982’s Cat People, made me aware of my bisexuality, but I was still closeted. Then The Hunger hit the big screen. A perfect vehicle for my adolescent fantasies: from the minute the Bauhaus started performing “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” in the opening credits, I was hooked.

It’s a steamy love bloodsucking love triangle where Miriam Blaylock is the hinge. Powerful, sophisticated, immortal, and eternally young, the charismatic Miriam sucks in her human companions with promises of immortality. Once changed, they live for hundreds of years before suddenly, rapidly aging. To our horror, they don’t die. The book’s author Whitley Strieber is heterosexual, as is Catherine Deneuve, who plays Miriam, but both David Bowie, the actor who plays her husband John, and Susan Sarandon, who plays his would-be replacement Sarah, are bisexual.

Because the characters were openly bi, and Bowie was already out at the time, it served as a platform for discussions with friends and family about bisexuality, and I came out to my cousin, Gina, during a conversation about the movie. Sarandon came out as bi many years later.

The AIDS/HIV Pandemic deeply impacted our young lives at the time, and made The Hunger important as a queer cinema of the era. Gay and bisexual men were being prohibited from donating blood, and vampires were an obvious metaphor.

SEREN LEE: As my 2014 Instagram bio can attest (“Don’t Dream It, Be It!”), The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s Frank-N-Furter had a life-altering effect on my creative development. Call me Brad and Janet (asshole! slut!), but as a closeted theater kid with a cookie-cutter framework, Tim Curry’s audacity and fishnets embodied a version of authenticity I had never seen before. Though murderous and imperfect, he loves big, loves freely – and it’s that determined self-assurance that infects all mere mortals who dare to enter his castle. May we all stand in our power, follow our desires, and leave the critics shaking with an-tici——pation!

NICOLE GIVENS KURTZ: My favorite queer character in horror that changed my life was when I first watched Ruby Baptiste (played by the astounding Wunmi Mosaku) sing in episode one of Lovecraft Country, I not only fell in love, but also changed my life. Here, for the first time, was a Black woman who wasn’t rail thin, blonde, or racially ambiguous. Ruby was confident and independent, sexy and queer.

Initially, she’s wooed by a white man named William, but she later discovers that it is a disguise for the treacherous white woman Christina Braithwhite. The discovery of the betrayal doesn’t stop their now bisexual relationship. As noted in A Guide to Watching Lovecraft Country, Ruby and Christina’s relationship is intertwined with body horror. When Ruby is temporarily transformed into a white woman to get a taste of privilege she’s missed out on as Black woman, it’s Christina’s potion that provides the means to do so. Her lover grants her wish, but it serves only to remind Ruby of the great width between their stations.

Moreover, it isn’t stated what happened to Ruby at the end of Lovecraft Country. It isn’t necessary, because I know what effect she had on me. Watching Ruby’s fall into her bisexuality was confirming to me. I didn’t discover I was bisexual until I was 24 and falling in love with a woman for the first time. Upon reflection, I realized I’d fallen for women many times before but due to society and religious pressures, I denied them. It wasn’t an open acknowledgment but rather, a “I love this person who happens to be a woman…”

The same was the case with Ruby. She fell for William, but when it was discovered that it was a woman, she still stayed. Because she loved the person, gender didn’t matter.

And for me, it still doesn’t.

And that’s part one of our Pride Month Horror Spotlight. While you’re here, consider checking out part two and part three of our spotlight as well!

Happy reading, and happy Pride Month!