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Night Time Logic is a term for the parts of a story that are felt but not consciously processed. It is also the name of this interview series here at Cemetery Dance<\/a> online and over on my YouTube channel<\/a>, where we explore the night time part of stories, the strange and uncanny in horror, dark fiction, and more.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n My latest book, <\/span>Phantom Constellations: Strange Tales and Ghost Stories<\/span><\/i><\/a>, out now from Cemetery Dance Publications, is full of subtle, strange, and intentionally ambiguous tales that operate with Night Time Logic. I recently had a chance to speak with a returning guest to the column and program, Gwendolyn Kiste. <\/span><\/p>\n Gwendolyn\u2019s latest book is the outstanding short story collection titled <\/span>The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own. <\/span><\/i>The book is full of inventive stories that I found to be extraordinary.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n DANIEL BRAUM: <\/strong>Congratulations on the new book. The story \u201cA New Mother\u2019s Guide to Raising an Abomination,\u201d<\/strong>operates as a great flip on the theme of the other<\/em>. What is your approach to presenting that theme in your creation process?<\/strong><\/p>\n GWENDOLYN KISTE: \u00a0I really love this question, because I feel like it can be so different for each story. Personally, I don\u2019t mind a very overt theme, because sometimes, life can be really blunt. We all have learned a lesson about something at some point where the universe was so on-the-nose about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n With this story in particular, it was for a David Cronenberg tribute anthology, and I really just started with the question of \u201cwhat if the children from <\/span>The Brood<\/span><\/i> just wanted to be left alone and the world wouldn\u2019t let them live their lives?\u201d <\/span>That\u2019s of course not what happened at all in that film, but I couldn\u2019t stop thinking about how difficult it can be to just exist when you\u2019re the other<\/em> in some way. The world can be so awful and so cruel. From there, this story really grew into its final form. It\u2019s one of my favorites.<\/span><\/p>\n I found the story, \u201cThe Girls from the Horror Movie\u201d to be a cool reflection and examination of the horror film industry. With cool references and verisimilitude, yet also its own thing with its own emotional heart.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Once upon a time, many years ago I went to a reunion event for the Dawn of the Dead cast in the mall location in Pennsylvania. This is where I got my impressions and observations of lives of actors post-career in the film industry. What is your take on the lives of these actors? Any thoughts and observations in your experience?<\/strong><\/p>\n Years ago, I was an independent horror filmmaker, and I used to go to horror film conventions and promote my movies. For a while, I actually found it to be a really fun experience, selling my DVDs at the table and hanging out all evening near different horror movie actors from previous decades. Eventually, I burned out on the convention experience\u2014and on the filmmaker life\u2014but the time certainly holds a special place in my heart.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I love that you mention the <\/span>Dawn of the Dead<\/span><\/i> cast reunion at the Monroeville Mall, because when I was writing this story, I was literally imagining the old Monroeville Convention Center where I would invariably have my table set up near the actors from the Romero zombie movies. They were all delightful people, at least so far as all of my interactions with them, so that was in my mind and in my heart when I was writing this story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The story \u201cThe Sea Witch of the World\u2019s Fair\u201d has such a cool concept. We have a real mermaid, pretending to be a human pretending to be a mermaid at an exhibit in the 1940s World\u2019s Fair in Queens, New York.<\/strong><\/p>\n What was it like writing a period piece? Favorite noir and neo-noir films?<\/strong><\/p>\n It was really a lot of fun to write this particular story (and honestly, it was fun to write all the stories in the book). But for \u201cThe Sea Witch of the World\u2019s Fair,\u201d it was truly a joy to do all the research into the 1939 World\u2019s Fair and especially Dali\u2019s Birth of Venus exhibition. Because that was several decades into the twentieth century, there were plenty of photographs to draw from, which was so wonderful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In terms of my favorite noirs, I absolutely adore <\/span>Laura<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>The Maltese Falcon<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>Leave Her to Heaven<\/span><\/i>. I would also call <\/span>Sunset Boulevard<\/span><\/i> a bit of a noir as well as a gothic horror movie. As for neo-noirs, I adore <\/span>Bound<\/span><\/i>, and I fondly remember my first experience of watching <\/span>Two Days in the Valley<\/span><\/i> when I was way too young, even though it\u2019s not necessarily my favorite as an adult. Honestly, I can never get enough noir and neo-noir; it\u2019s a genre that\u2019s so closely connected with horror and the gothic, and I love it so much for that kinship.<\/span><\/p>\n What are your thoughts on horror as revenge? Horror as justice? Or, at the the very least, the trope of bad things happening to bad people?<\/strong><\/p>\n I personally love a revenge tale; it\u2019s honestly one of my favorite kinds of horror. I grew up with so many horror stories that definitely used the genre as a way to enact revenge or justice. I\u2019m thinking of <\/span>The Twilight Zone<\/span><\/i> or <\/span>Creepshow<\/span><\/i>. There weren\u2019t always happy endings in those stories, but many of them did see a certain kind of justice against the people who harmed others. <\/span><\/p>\n Fast forward to feminine revenge stories like <\/span>Carrie<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Jennifer\u2019s Body<\/span><\/i>, and I\u2019ve been hooked on this kind of storytelling for years now. For \u201cHer Skin a Grim Canvas,\u201d I really loved the idea of exploring the world of fashion while combining it with the fairy tale of <\/span>Bluebeard<\/span><\/i>. I genuinely love fashion, but I also fully understand how toxic the industry can be. It seemed like a natural fit with the story of <\/span>Bluebeard<\/span><\/i>, especially since both Bluebeard and the fashion industry swaps out women like they\u2019re disposable. I really wanted to change the script on that and follow a character who refused to be erased.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSister Glitter Blood\u201d is written as instructions to a board game. What is it like writing in alternative and experimental formats like this?<\/strong><\/p>\n I absolutely love how experimental you can be in short fiction. Of course, there are experimental novels as well, but I think it can be easier to maintain an unusual narrative device over the length of a short story. I\u2019m a big fan of board games\u2014my husband and I have played them many times together over the years\u2014and it feels like such a nostalgic and familiar pastime. So naturally, as a horror writer, I couldn\u2019t help but make it horrible and unnerving in \u201cSister Glitter Blood.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe Mad Monk of Motor City\u201d opens with the ghost of Rasputin in modern day Detroit. Please tell us your thoughts about the psychogeography of Detroit in the story. How the city is a ghost of itself.<\/strong><\/p>\n That\u2019s such a great way of phrasing it: \u201chow the city is a ghost of itself.\u201d I think that\u2019s true of a number of American cities, especially in the Rust Belt. There are these echoes of what these areas used to be. This kind of industrial promise that was very meaningful to the local economies at one point but are all but forgotten now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I grew up in Northeastern Ohio, which is absolutely part of the Rust Belt. Those landscapes of rust and rot and abandoned or failing factories definitely were part of the backdrop of my childhood. I\u2019d already written about Cleveland in my novel, <\/span>The Rust Maidens<\/span><\/i>, as well as a couple of my short stories, but I realized I\u2019d never written about Detroit. I loved the alliteration of putting Rasputin\u2019s nickname of the Mad Monk with Detroit\u2019s nickname of the Motor City. I also really thought it would be interesting to compare the fall of Russia to the fall of Detroit. We don\u2019t think of them as being similar at all, but anytime a place that once held a lot of possibility starts to crumble, that\u2019s devastating to the people who live there. It doesn\u2019t always have to be the fall of an empire like in Russia; it could be something seemingly quieter like the failing of the steel industry and the closing of factories. People\u2019s lives are still destroyed and upended either way. Those ideas were all woven into this story right from the start, and it was a sad and strange but intriguing way to explore Rasputin and his own sordid history.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Some characters in \u201cThe Mad Monk of Motor City\u201d feel like ghosts and are haunted by all sorts of loss. Are these kinds of characters hallmarks of the modern ghost story?<\/strong><\/p>\n Oh, I love this question! I do think these kinds of characters absolutely can be hallmarks of modern ghost stories! For me, it\u2019s such a scary prospect, how much people can be haunted by the past. While I love ghosts as a metaphor and as a device in horror, the concept of not being able to let go of something from the past is terrifying to me. I feel like human beings thrive the most when we\u2019re able to move forward with the lessons we\u2019ve learned. Don\u2019t forget entirely about the past; definitely do your best to learn from it. But don\u2019t mire yourself in it. That kind of rumination doesn\u2019t seem to lead to a happy, healthy, thriving life, and that\u2019s one of my biggest personal fears: not being able to move forward.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The book closes with the title story \u201cThe Haunted Houses She Calls her Own.\u201d In the story the \u201cBlack Dahlia\u201d is learning to \u201clive\u201d as a ghost and is revisiting the places, the haunted houses from her life (and murder).<\/strong><\/p>\n What opportunities and differences did you encounter in telling and retelling this story of the Black Dahlia?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Black Dahlia, whose real name was Elizabeth Short, is such a tragic figure, and in so many ways, she\u2019s been flattened into an archetype or trope of a victim. I spent a lot of time researching her for this particular story, and I wanted to learn as much about her life as I could.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately, there\u2019s still not enough information out there about her; while there was certainly a lot of sensationalism around her murder, there doesn\u2019t seem to be as many people who came forward and really talked about who she was as a person. That makes me so sad, and it also seems like such a cautionary tale in terms of what we do to victims. That was something I was exploring in this story, and it feels like a perfect way to end a collection about forgotten and reclaimed women. These voices are around us all the time. I feel like all we have to do is listen.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Haunted Houses She Calls Her Own<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>is available now.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n ABOUT THE AUTHORS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n GWENDOLYN KISTE<\/b> is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens<\/em>, Reluctant Immortals<\/em>, Boneset & Feathers<\/em>, Pretty Marys All in a Row<\/em>, and The Haunting of Velkwood.<\/em> Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including Lit Hub, Nightmare, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, CrimeReads, Titan Books, The Lineup, and The Dark. She’s a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror Award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Shirley Jackson, Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, and Dragon Awards. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Find her online at <\/span>gwendolynkiste.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.cemeterydance.com\/extras\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Gwendolyn-Kiste-Author-Photo-1.jpg?resize=232%2C350&ssl=1\")
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