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\u201cStrange Tales,\u201d \u201cGhost Stories,\u201d and \u201cEco Horror\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Night Time Logic is the part of a story that is felt but not consciously processed. It is also the name of\u00a0this interview series here at Cemetery Dance<\/a>\u00a0and over on\u00a0my YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Through in-depth conversation with authors this column explores the night time part of stories, the strange and uncanny in horror and dark fiction, and more.<\/p>\n My short story collections\u00a0with Cemetery Dance<\/a>\u00a0are full of the kind of stories that operate with Night Time Logic. My latest is called\u00a0Phantom Constellations<\/i>\u00a0and is coming in Autumn 2025.<\/p>\n I spoke with Rebecca Cuthbert, author of <\/span>Six O\u2019Clock House and Other Strange Tales<\/span><\/i><\/a> about her work, about ghost stories and strange tales, as well as the work of authors who influenced her such as Shirley Jackson.<\/span><\/p>\n We began our conversation with a question about author Daphne du Maurier.<\/span><\/p>\n DANIEL BRAUM: You open the book with a Daphne Du Maurier quote. Why did you choose this quote? Do you have a favorite Du Maurier story? How has her work influenced your writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n REBECCA CUTHBERT: Du Maurier absolutely influenced my writing. I won\u2019t compare my work to that of my heroes, of course, but I do consider myself a grateful guest at the table they set: Du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Edith Wharton, and more contemporary authors like Carmen Maria Machado and Tananarive Due. These women all wrote\/write gorgeous prose and present the speculative with artfulness and often subtlety. Many of them are masters at crafting creeping, inescapable, mounting, Gothic dread. Their feminist horror is all the more devastating for its beauty.<\/p>\n Of course, back in college, I didn\u2019t know I was reading literary horror and dark magical realism \u2014 I\u2019m not even sure the term \u201cspeculative\u201d was used at all in my undergrad years. It was only later, after having \u201cgenre fiction\u201d spat out at me like a bad taste in grad school, after trying to be a good girl who wrote literary fiction, that I realized a drafty deserted mansion is a drafty deserted mansion by any other name. Which brings us back to Du Maurier.<\/p>\n Rebecca<\/em> is an excellent novel. It\u2019s a stunning example of how Gothic elements pull past evils and buried secrets to the surface by way of blowing curtains and snuffed candle flames. There\u2019s also that crafty ambiguity present in Rebecca<\/em> that I love so much in feminist horror, and have emulated in my own work. Is this a haunting? If so, what kind? What\u2019s real, and what\u2019s a hallucination hatched from a mind already cracked by the patriarchy\u2019s abuses? When does domestic cohabitation cross the line into complicit confinement?<\/p>\n Many of my narratives explore those same questions. And all these influences are fairly clear, I think, in several of the stories from Six O’ Clock House & Other Strange Tales<\/em>, but especially in \u201cDamp in the Walls,\u201d \u201cJoiner,\u201d and \u201cHey, Stranger.\u201d A recent review of my book called my stories American Gothic, and I\u2019ll take that label all day long. My settings may not (all) be crumbling castles and sprawling old estates, but why can\u2019t the Gothic thrive in damp greenhouses and greasy breakfast diners? My bartenders, waitresses, and data entry clerks are the proud great-great-great-granddaughters of traditional Gothic heroines: smart, disadvantaged, and brave because desperation requires them to be. Down, as they always always are, but never out.<\/p>\n That Du Maurier quote: \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t make for sanity, would it, living with the devil,\u201d for me at least, gets to the very center of this madness that is a world controlled by men. One only has to consider the current United States government to see this truth. Women are told that we don\u2019t own our own bodies, that we are not fully human, that we don\u2019t deserve autonomy \u2014 but we are expected to smile for strangers on the street. When we don\u2019t, we are called out for it. If we are anything but thankful for our objectification, we deserve abuse and more \u2014 we are, in fact, \u201casking for it.\u201d But really, we are only asking for the rights every human should have. It\u2019s what my characters fight for. Some win it, others don\u2019t.<\/p>\n I\u2019m glad you found your way past those speaking about genre fiction that way. To me it seems like some of genre fiction\u2019s best authors and works are right there in the literary fiction canon.<\/strong><\/p>\n Your latest short story collection is Six O\u2019Clock House and Other Strange Tales<\/i>. How do you define strange tales? What prompted your decision to include strange tales in the title of the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n Strange tales exist in murky, unsettling otherness. In liminal spaces. They are at home in the Uncanny Valley, making readers balance on one foot. Fall one way, and they\u2019re in the real, expected world. Fall the other way, and it\u2019s danger, chaos, death. I give my writing students the following examples, which often bring about actual shudders: Imagine you are hanging out with your best friend you\u2019ve known since childhood. But when they laugh, it\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s not their<\/i> laugh. Nothing else about them is different. Or this: Picture coming home. But everything, everything<\/i> in your home, has been moved six inches to the left. You might not be able to articulate, immediately, what\u2019s wrong, but you would FEEL it.<\/p>\n Shirley Jackson was especially gifted when it came to strange tales, and I still hold her up as the expert. \u201cThe Bus\u201d is the gold standard: a town that doesn\u2019t exist, strangers who are helpful but cruel, a deserted bus stop at night in the rain, a bar that is a house, a house that is and isn\u2019t the protagonist\u2019s childhood home, a closetful of old toys coming to life, an escape thwarted by a time loop\u2026<\/p>\n I have another story collection coming out in the fall, called The Hauntings Back Home<\/em>. Though closer to more traditional (quiet) horror as a whole, there are plenty of strange tales in it, like \u201cSuffer with the Trees,\u201d in which an abandoned newlywed explores her property only to find herself in an orchard she can\u2019t escape \u2014 an orchard that was cut down decades ago.<\/p>\n I\u2019m thrilled to hear of your discussion of strange tales with your students, especially the part about it not being someone one can necessarily articulate but can feel. I was also very excited to read the strange tales in Six O\u2019Clock House<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n The book opens with the story \u201cJoiner.\u201d In my readings I always hope to come across a strange tale, a story that fits or is close to the term as I see it and not merely used as a literal description. I found \u201cJoiner\u201d to be wonderful example of this kind of a story.<\/strong><\/p>\n It overlooks the eighteenth green, which is surrounded by the biggest of the five ponds \u2014 the only one that isn\u2019t man made. The pond is really more of a lake, though no one has ever measured how deep its middle is.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The above is the passage that stood out to me and captured my attention. It clued me in and foreshadowed that the work might be a strange tale. In addition to being a hallmark of your unique brand of story.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cJoiner\u201d could be read as a supernatural story or just as readily approached as a story with no supernatural happenings at all. Tell us about the use of this intentional ambiguity in the story.<\/strong><\/p>\n The most direct way for an author to involve the reader is through second-person narration, and though I do love that and employ it whenever I think it suits, ambiguity shouldn\u2019t be underestimated as a way to bring the reader into the story (or maybe it\u2019s the other way around). Ambiguity is also a feature of many of my favorite aesthetics \u2014 the Gothic, the Uncanny, the Grotesque.<\/p>\n Sometimes a neatly tied-up story is what people want \u2014 the comfort and closure of it. But ambiguity refuses that, dangling the answers just out of reach. However, I think if an author goes too far with ambiguity, they can lose the reader. Well-done ambiguity is paired with enough facts and hints and subtext to allow the reader to feel confident in the conclusions they draw, even if those conclusions differ from another reader\u2019s.<\/p>\n I love when I can dabble in the mystery genre, along with my other, more comfortable haunts. The story \u201cJoiner\u201d opens with Devon, one of the bartenders at an upscale country club, going missing. The protagonist (another Rebecca, for phonetic reasons I won\u2019t give away here), is left to cover Devon\u2019s shifts, answer to police and bosses and customers alike, and contemplate the ever-louder presence of the frogs in the golf course\u2019s deepest pond.<\/p>\n Was foul play involved in Devon\u2019s disappearance? If not, did she leave willingly? Did curiosity loom too large for her, as it may for Rebecca? Is there an ancient supernatural presence at the country club, or does human evil lurk there? Will Rebecca solve any of it \u2014 including her complicated feelings for a married regular \u2014 while she still has the chance?<\/p>\n I could tell you. But I won\u2019t. Folks will have to read the story and come up with their own theories.<\/p>\n Many of your stories use the possibility of supernatural or psychological to great effect. In addition to this skilled use of craft the stories are full of wonderful renderings or a range of dynamic characters and their real-life struggles, situations, and conflicts.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Can you tell us about Rebecca, the protagonist in “Joiner”?<\/strong><\/p>\n Rebecca from \u201cJoiner\u201d is a blue-collar worker struggling to get by, as are so many of my protagonists. They\u2019re intelligent but don\u2019t have the socioeconomic privilege that would make their lives easier \u2014 cue the gothic heroines! But I think that\u2019s why so many readers connect with my characters and compliment their genuine humanity. We know these people. We are these people. We go to work and juggle the bills and hope our old cars don\u2019t break down.<\/p>\n I worked in the service industry for almost two decades. Most of that was waitressing and bartending, but I also worked at a greenhouse, at a clothing store, even on a tree farm for a little bit. I was a \u201cflag girl\u201d at an auction house that sold repo\u2019d ATVs. That life experience is what helped me learn how to create believable characters and portray them in ways readers don\u2019t just understand, but feel.<\/p>\n In \u201cJoiner,\u201d Rebecca\u2019s life has stalled. She\u2019s lonely, vulnerable but not weak. She bears witness to strange happenings, and must decide if she\u2019s going to look closer or run away. How many times have we all been in similar circumstances? Muscles tensed, poised to jump, just not sure of our direction.<\/p>\n The book is full of characters with jobs we recognize. Real world \u201csmall\u201d stakes yet ones that mean everything to their lives. In this way, along with your use of the supernatural and psychological your stories favorably evoke Shirley Jackson and Robert Aickman.<\/strong><\/p>\n In the discussion guide included with the book it is mentioned that themes are redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness, reprieve, and revenge. Please tell us about the characters you choose as your protagonists and how they bring out these themes?<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you for that fantastic compliment! What lovely comparison!<\/p>\n Back to characters and themes, I mentioned that most of my protagonists are working-class people. A lot of them are also screw-ups. They are so flawed they make readers wince a little, or a lot, if the readers see too much of themselves on the page.<\/p>\n My favorite of these is Sean, the protagonist from \u201cA Bargain at Twice the Price.\u201d I didn\u2019t intend to like him. He was inspired by a friend\u2019s then-boyfriend, who was sort of the worst. When the story opens, Sean is selfish and shallow and bitter. He drinks too much and blames other people for his problems. He calls his ex so much it becomes harassment.<\/p>\n I used second-person narration for this story, because Sean is also self-hating and self-destructive, and his voice is the voice we hear in our heads when we\u2019re loaded with guilt and embarrassment and anxiety \u2014 \u201cyou\u201d is Sean, and it\u2019s Sean talking to himself, but it\u2019s also us, berating ourselves for the latest social catastrophe or cringeworthy interaction. This is him meeting his new neighbor for the first time \u2014 an elderly woman named Caroline:<\/p>\n You tell [Caroline] your name is Sean, and that you recently moved in next door, but of course she already knows that last part. She nods. You stammer and apologize and say you couldn\u2019t help but notice the truck for sale, then wonder why you have to make everything so fucking awkward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n After spending time with Sean, I couldn\u2019t hate him. I saw in him what Caroline does \u2014 potential to be something more, the capacity to forgive and be forgiven. I\u2019m not sure if it was me or Caroline, but one of us was like \u201cI think I can save him.\u201d I\u2019m a sucker at heart. A softie. So, if someone is capable of change, I at least give them a shot.<\/p>\n Another character, Viv, is plagued with several versions of herself after going to therapy in \u201cInfested.\u201d Her story, like Sean\u2019s, is one of suffering and toil. Because, as I know personally, when a deeply damaged person goes to therapy, it gets much worse before it gets any better. All that naked confrontation, all that processing \u2014 it\u2019s like being cut open and scraped out. Whether or not Viv can actually do the work isn\u2019t clear at the outset. Which Viv will emerge victorious? Which will be silenced, pummeled, bid farewell?<\/p>\n The themes in this collection are fairly universal. We all want love and acceptance. We want forgiveness. We want justice and revenge. My characters want those things too.<\/p>\n Wonderful character work with Sean. You\u2019ve done such a captivating job depicting the chance for change and redemption in his dynamic character arc.<\/strong><\/p>\n In stories such as (Sean\u2019s) \u201cBargain at Twice the Price\u201d and \u201cThick on Wet Cement\u201d and \u201cInheritance\u201d we are presented with depictions of people who start off lonely, or in the aftermaths of the end of situations such as the end of jobs or end of relationships.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n How are the supernatural elements or the possibility of the supernatural in these stories used as catalysts of change and growth for these characters?<\/strong><\/p>\n This is going to sound very after-school-special, but, true character is revealed through hardship. It\u2019s easy to be a good person when everything is going great. But what happens under pressure? Who are we at our worst, or when we are faced with the worst? How do we respond when life knocks us to the ground, boots us in the stomach, and spits on us to make a point?<\/p>\n I want my characters stripped down to these essential, raw versions of themselves, when they are at their most vulnerable \u2014 their most susceptible<\/i>. When do people pray? When do they ask the universe for a miracle, or attempt to summon the devil to make a deal?<\/p>\n When they are desperate. The supernatural is everyone\u2019s Hail Mary and always has been.<\/p>\n Divine intervention and the influence of evil are direct-contact balm and poison. Speculative elements give form to the choices my characters must make, sometimes in the space of a moment: adapt, grow, change, take hold of a second chance; or shrivel, fester, rot, and die. Readers will find this heal-or-break moment in many of my stories.<\/p>\n Hardship, desperation and vulnerability are wonderful avenues into conflict and it shows in the your stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n Another question from the discussion guide references that no heroes come to the rescue of these characters and they must save themselves, in light of all of what they face. \u201cInfested\u201d strikes me as one of these stories. In other stories, such as \u201cPunching In\u201d there is no definitive resolution but a tangible shift in a direction, hopeful or otherwise.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Tell us about how these story structures lend themselves to creating and presenting dynamic characters, rich conflicts, and stories with change or the sense of imminent change?<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019m a champion of good ol\u2019 Freytag and his pyramid (or story mountain, which is my preferred image). That story structure works for a reason. But, as I tell my writing students, we don\u2019t always have to give our readers the whole pyramid, or move up and over it in linear chronological order.<\/p>\n \u201cInfested\u201d gives readers a story structure that is as complete and classic as it can get. We meet Viv, get a glimpse of the ground situation, then we learn what her major problem is. Her attempts to solve her problem make it worse \u2014 and those try\/fail cycles increase the pressure and the tension, giving the story energy to advance up the side of the mountain. Eventually we get to the tippy-top \u2014 I like to think of it as the point of no return. Viv is confronted with the biggest aspect of her problem \u2014 one she didn\u2019t initially understand and didn\u2019t even see coming. It\u2019s the story\u2019s turning point because the outcome of THAT interaction will determine whether she will solve the rest of her issue or let it run her over.<\/p>\n \u201cPunching In\u201d is different. Readers get a slice of the mountain, not the whole thing. It\u2019s flash fiction, so must be faster paced. It kicks off mid-problem, with the protagonist, Trish, investigating her predicament. It\u2019s almost what I\u2019d call \u201cOffice Noir,\u201d since her future just gets bleaker and bleaker. The changes aren\u2019t step-by-step methodical, the way they are in \u201cInfested.\u201d But Trish\u2019s frustration, the relentlessness of her predicament, is also true to life, and as her days drag on we see her anguish mount and her power manifest. What can a woman supercharged with rage do? What is she capable of? Trish\u2019s coworkers are going to find out. In that way, she and Viv are almost opposites \u2014 Viv has a toolbox, Trish has a flamethrower.<\/p>\n The structure of \u201cHey, Stranger\u201d was a bit harder to configure and the most ambitious set-up I had tackled to that point. It\u2019s got dual timelines, and that\u2019s not so odd, but the timelines are concurrent, with one happening slightly ahead of the other, and in the more recent timeline, the protagonist, Missy, is telling an unidentified listener about ongoing developments in the less recent timeline. To make things even more fun, the reader only gets one side of the conversation \u2014 Missy\u2019s \u2014 and the reader is left to piece together what the listener says and does through Missy\u2019s cues and context clues. There\u2019s lots of dramatic irony, and I\u2019d consider it comedy-horror. One reviewer said it\u2019s the most original ghost story he\u2019s ever read, which of course tickled me.<\/p>\n As for \u201cno rescuers allowed,\u201d I think that is me, again, following my literary heroes\u2019 lead. Protagonists cannot be dynamic and interesting if they have no agency. Characters cannot show their mettle if they are sitting still, waiting for someone to solve their problems for them. I\u2019m a firm believer in \u201cGive your protagonist a problem, then make it worse.\u201d Make it so bad that, eventually, they have to at least try<\/i> to do something about it.<\/p>\n Strange Tales are often a genre or kind of story that is classified as horror or horror adjacent. Some stories, such as \u201cLovesick,\u201d feel closer to the horror genre to me. Perhaps this is because the encounters with the supernatural or perceived supernatural have no clean nor definitive resolutions, and the characters do not have that chance to grow as their arcs feel cut short and their lives affected detrimentally by the encounters. Even when heroic choices are made, such as Drew\u2019s choice in \u201cPoor Billy,\u201d the stories still deliver a sense of tragedy or horror. Tell us about your use of structure and how it contributes to a sense of dread and horror.<\/strong><\/p>\n Some of those endings, for me, are compromises between happy and unhappy. When someone reads \u201cPoor Billy,\u201d they may wonder how in the world I classify that as anything other than unhappy, but, if you look at story building not as \u201cwill this character be healthy and happy on the last page\u201d but \u201cwill this character accomplish any of their goals by the last page,\u201d you end up with these types of resolutions \u2014 a win tempered by a loss, a loss bolstered by a win.<\/p>\n Some folks say there are no happy endings in horror \u2014 that if you have a happy ending, it\u2019s not horror. I don\u2019t agree, but I will say that horror stories leave far less room for wholly positive outcomes, and that in a collection, you must have balance. If stories all end the same way, readers will become bored quickly. I wanted to offer them variety \u2014 variety of characters and stories and endings.<\/p>\n That mix doesn\u2019t work for everyone, but when it hits, it\u2019s so validating.<\/p>\n Please tell us about the title story \u201cSix O\u2019Clock House,\u201d the main character and the choice she makes at the end of the story.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n That is an odd story for me in that I knew the ending first. That\u2019s uncommon for me \u2014 I\u2019m more often a \u201cLet\u2019s see where this character takes me\u201d than someone who plots everything out. It\u2019s common for me not to know the ending until halfway through a story. But I had this vision of a woman in a greenhouse \u2014 that\u2019s as much as I\u2019ll say here \u2014 and then I had to work backward. How would she end up in that situation? What would push a person to make a decision like that? And from there, I could develop everything else: her personality, her family and personal history, the people she works for. And when I put her in that place with those people, it was easy to determine the series of related events \u2014 all those dominoes that had to fall for the story to end where I wanted it to.<\/p>\n That story is difficult for some readers to get through due to its content. I hope they feel the sympathy with which I created the protagonist, and understand that the story is a critique of diet culture and the systems, small and large, that prop up bullies. But I do understand why some readers can\u2019t make it to the end of that one.<\/p>\n I really like your story openers. I find that the openers are already keyed in to the heart of the story, the heart of the conflicts, setting up character or conflict or setting and often more than one or all of these things. All the stories I find to be well crafted and strong. Please tell us about your creative process and how you begin writing a story.<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you! Openings are so important \u2014 they are your one chance to entice people to keep reading. As for my approach, I like to situate readers as soon as I can. That usually means starting with statements of premise or descriptions of setting. More points to me if I can nail down the narrative voice in that opening \u2014 whether it\u2019s first-person or another narration choice.<\/p>\n I also think about the old advice \u201cDon\u2019t bore, don\u2019t confuse.\u201d Don\u2019t drag out your first-page exposition. Don\u2019t make the reader wonder what the hell is going on, unsure of where they are or whom they\u2019re supposed to be watching. That also means usually <\/i>avoiding dialogue openers (though sometimes I\u2019m a rebel and do it anyway), because readers want to meet a character before they hear them speak \u2014 they need to know who the person is and why what they\u2019re going<\/i> to say will matter.<\/p>\n The best opening lines beg questions. They don\u2019t have to be huge questions \u2014 just breadcrumbs left out for the reader to follow. The opening line from \u201cInfested\u201d is a simple example of this: \u201cThe will isn\u2019t complicated; he\u2019s an only child.\u201d A reader might ask any of the following: Who died? Who\u2019s an only child? What\u2019s he inheriting? How will this inheritance complicate his life?<\/i> Plus, opening lines that reference death, directly or indirectly, tend to work well.<\/p>\n As for my creative process, I wish I could say I had one trusted strategy. But in all honesty, every story requires a different approach, and some take longer than others from conception to polished draft. The oldest story in this collection is \u201cJoiner.\u201d I wrote the very first draft of that in 2007. I finished it in 2021. Others, like \u201cInfested,\u201d came about fairly quickly, with only a few drafts taking me from one to done. Sometimes I know the ending when I start, but nothing else, like \u201cSix O\u2019Clock House,\u201d or I only know the general concept, like \u201cInheritance.\u201d For \u201cDamp in the Walls,\u201d I had a detailed outline, and the story almost wrote itself.<\/p>\n Regardless of approach or number of revision cycles, though, every story here was born from or developed by the knowledge and skills I have worked so hard to acquire. I take every writing workshop I can, learn from examples, and listen to my mentors (Moaner Lawrence and Lindsay Merbaum). I trade feedback with writer friends. I take notes at panels and author talks. Whether it\u2019s formal or informal education, I encourage every author to keep learning and trying new things. No one knows everything, plus learning is fun.<\/p>\n Several of the stories, in addition to being your own hallmark brand of stories, can also be said to be ghost stories, as they literally and unambiguously have ghosts in them. Tell us about the appeal of ghost stories to you, as a reader and as an author?<\/strong><\/p>\n I love ghost stories! They are my favorite type of story to read and to write, and I\u2019ll never get tired of them. My next collection is a tribute to my hometown library, the Anderson-Lee Library, where I spent many happy hours as a kid, looking up ghost story collections in the card catalogue and searching the stacks for treasure.<\/p>\n Ghosts are fascinating to me, in part, because science cannot DISprove them. Most of the \u201cevidence\u201d supporting ghosts\u2019 existence is anecdotal; and photos, videos, and sound recordings of ghosts may<\/i> be real, but could be faked. However, there is no evidence, perhaps because there can be<\/i> no evidence, that they\u2019re a myth.<\/p>\n Ghosts represent the ultimate mystery \u2014 what happens after death? Is there anything at all on the other side? Does consciousness survive after the body has expired? And how much control do we have once we\u2019ve passed on to whatever\u2019s next? Maybe we believe in ghosts as a comfort to ourselves. But what\u2019s wrong with that? How is it any different from religion?<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what I DO know. If, after I die, I become a ghost, hanging around the earth in some form, and it is within my powers to do so, I will absolutely haunt people and have so much fun doing it. I will zap lights and snuff candles and clomp across the attic floor and laugh and laugh and laugh.<\/p>\n Because, perhaps most importantly, ghosts are just a good time. You can add them to any other genre. Ghosty horror? Of course. Paranormal mystery? Yes. Paranormal romance? Sure. Silly comedy-horror populated by funny ghosts? Yes please. I could go on and on.<\/p>\n Nature plays a large role in your writing. How does it come into play in the stories?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n There is a relationship between feminist horror and eco horror \u2014 women and nature suffer from the patriarchy\u2019s dual plagues of oppression and abuse. Men in power seek to tame them both, to own them both, to keep them both in line and use them as they want.<\/p>\n That is not to say men have to be the villains in every eco horror story and feminist horror story \u2014 feminism\u2019s core is autonomy and equal rights, which means women can be bad, too! And humans of all genders and types damage the environment.<\/p>\n Those subgenres often have revenge themes in common, as well, and they are so satisfying to read (and to write). But that brings me to your last question\u2026<\/p>\n The stories \u201cTumbling After,\u201d \u201cRest for the Wicked,\u201d and the last one in the book, \u201cDamp in the Walls,\u201d felt like they belong together thematically. The final story operating to bring together many of the themes in the book. Please tell us about this group of stories, about any themes you see in the work, and about the sequencing of the stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n In these stories, victims take cruel treatment until they don\u2019t \u2014 sometimes they are pushed to act (or not <\/i>act) to protect themselves, sometimes it\u2019s because they must protect someone they love. Then again, it may be a supernatural entity that acts on behalf of a person\u2019s victims\u2014a force that seeks to balance the universe in some small way.<\/p>\n \u201cDamp in the Walls\u201d contains pretty graphic depictions of domestic violence. Those scenes were difficult to write, and I will admit I cried more than once writing that story. Because it\u2019s important for me to get those experiences right, to portray them accurately, I got a sensitivity reader to help me \u2014 a friend who escaped a violent marriage herself. She assured me that Jen and Kevin were, sadly, true to life.<\/p>\n As for the order of stories, I wanted to bookend the collection with two of what I call my \u201cwater stories.\u201d In addition to \u201cJoiner\u201d and \u201cDamp in the Walls,\u201d the collection includes \u201cDanger: No Swimming, No Fishing.\u201d The first and last stories in a lineup require intense consideration \u2014 they are the first and last gifts you will give your readers. I wanted to make sure they were two of my strongest.<\/p>\n And why all the water? Well, there is so much transformative imagery and lore associated with it, especially when we\u2019re talking about natural bodies of water, and the gothic appeal of an abandoned reservoir at night or a swollen creek in a raging storm is, to me at least, irresistible. Water has the power to kill or rescue, to give or take. It\u2019s natural and supernatural, and can be setting or character or plot device or all of the above.<\/p>\n I grew up on the shores of Lake Erie and live there again now. Perhaps that\u2019s another reason I\u2019m drawn to water and water imagery. It\u2019s always been there, in my peripheral vision. The lake stretching to the edge of the horizon. But it\u2019s not just Lake Erie that has influenced me. The reservoir in \u201cDanger: No Swimming, No Fishing\u201d is based on a real abandoned reservoir in my hometown \u2014 and the real deaths that have occurred there.<\/p>\n The creek, storm, and flood in \u201cDamp in the Walls\u201d are real, too \u2014 in 2009, a \u201chundred-year flood\u201d took lives and ruined homes when a storm swelled the banks of Cattaraugus Creek and rushed downhill to lower regions. I remember that storm, but I still researched the heck out of it so I could nail the details.<\/p>\n As for the reservoir story? I didn\u2019t need to do much new<\/i> research for that. I was the reporter standing on its bank in 2017, snapping pictures, wondering why it felt so haunted.<\/p>\n So I did what any writer would do, and I put it in a story.<\/p>\n ABOUT THE AUTHORS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n REBECCA CUTHBERT writes dark fiction and poetry. She loves ghost stories, folklore, witchy women, and anything that involves nature getting revenge. Her titles include\u00a0<\/span>In Memory of Exoskeletons<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(poetry),\u00a0<\/span>Creep This Way<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(nonfiction),\u00a0<\/span>Self-Made Monsters<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(hybrid collection),\u00a0<\/span>Down in the Dark Deep Where the Puddlers Dwell<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(children’s book), and\u00a0<\/span>Six O’Clock House & Other Strange Tales<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(stories).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For her author website, free stories, and more, visit\u00a0<\/span>linktr.ee\/rebeccacuthbertwrites<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n An illustrated volume of his work titled <\/span>Creatures of Liminal Space<\/span><\/i>, featuring illustration and design by Dan Sauer, is available at Jackanapes Press<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n His all-new short story collection <\/span>Phantom Constellations<\/span><\/i> is coming in Autumn 2025 from Cemetery Dance Publications.<\/span><\/p>\n More about him can be found here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/rebecca-cuthbert.jpg?resize=252%2C350&ssl=1\")
![\"cover](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Cuthbert_Six_OClock_House_FRONT.jpg?resize=233%2C350&ssl=1\")
<\/b>This collection of stories was my first finished manuscript but my fifth published book. That\u2019s because fiction that straddles lines can be hard to sell \u2014 for lovers of straightforward, bloody, screaming horror, my stories don\u2019t scratch the itch. Those who prefer realism and slice-of-life vignettes might read my fiction and say \u201cEw, is this a ghost story?\u201d I describe my book as literary horror and dark magical realism, so, for me, \u201cStrange Tales\u201d was the descriptor that fit without overexplaining.<\/p>\n![\"photo](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/AP-DBraum-1.jpg?resize=193%2C350&ssl=1\")
DANIEL BRAUM writes \u201cstrange tales\u201d, intentionally ambiguous stories in the tradition of Robert Aickman that evoke the old Twilight Zone<\/em> shows. His stories, set in locations around the globe, explore the tension between the psychological and supernatural.<\/span><\/p>\n