Check out this interview we did with Emz back in 2019
Irish Horror Writers Month – Interview with Emerian Rich
Tell us a bit about yourself? Name, State or country?
I am Emerian Rich and I live in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area. I write Horror, Romance, and ever so often SciFi. I’m the Horror Hostess for HorrorAddicts.net and am also an artist, graphic designer, and book designer.
What is your connection to Irish Heritage?
I am 5 generations from the cross-over, but it’s a part of our heritage we’ve kept pretty close with it.
Do you know what part of Ireland your ancestors came from?
County Down in Northern Ireland.
Do you live close to where they lived? Have you visited there?
No and no. It’s one of my life goals to travel there.
How and when did you start writing?
I started writing stories when I was in Middle School. I had received a journal for Christmas. I started writing about my own life, but by half-way through I was so bored of my own life, I decided to write how I wished my life would be. This new me got to go on adventures, solve crime, and experience things I could only dream of. My first novel was when I was 13. 89 pages of big, bubbly cursive in pencil on white, lined notebook paper. However, I didn’t know I wanted to be a writer until in my 20’s.
Why write Horror?
There’s something special about a story when it can horrify you and make you feel safe at the same time. I enjoy creating stories and characters that people can experience horrific situations through without leaving the comfort of their reading nook. Most people’s lives are nice and safe—which we want them to be—but there isn’t much excitement in living our daily lives. We need to escape every once in a while and dream the impossible. Sometimes the trauma the characters go through can help us work through our own.
What inspires you to write?
Beautiful locations, interesting history facts, and most of all, my dreams. Day dreams of what I wish I could do and sleeping dreams where my subconscious goes off the rails.
Does being Irish inspire any part of your writing?
As far as it being part of who I am, it’s all in my writing. My heritage did inspire one particular character most of all. The Irishman, Markham O’Leary, in my Night’s Knights Vampire Series is a direct inspiration from my own family heritage. I patterned him loosely off of my grandfather and his family.
What scares you?
What scares me in a good way is Classic Horror or Horror with a classic slant. Movies like The Woman in Black, Crimson Peak, and Ghostship have the mysterious darkness to them that I have enjoyed all my life.
What scares me in a bad way is the real-life trauma our world is going through right now. Hate crimes, domestic violence, mass murder, and the simple fact that a large part of the population no longer has respect for life in general.
Who is your favorite author?
I can never name just one. Anne Rice has been a favorite for a long time along with Andrew Neiderman and Jane Austen, but recently I’ve been delving into horror classics like The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, The Grey Woman by Elizabeth Gaskell, and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood.
What is your creative process like? What happens before you sit down to write?
I generally have so many ideas I can’t possibly write them all down fast enough. My novels are big, enormous ideas that simmer in my head for quite a while before I actually start writing them. If I’m writing a short story, I usually get the email from the publisher or see the call and get inspired by the idea or the cover. Then I think about it for a few days. In a day or two I’ll think of something awesome I want to do. I usually get the beginning and the end and write it down (long hand) as much as I can. When I have a pretty solid first draft, I read it into my phone and email it to myself. Once it’s on my computer I make it pretty, flesh out the descriptive parts, sure up the dialogue and fill in the missing bits. Then it’s ready to send to my betas.
Tell us about your current projects.
I have just finished a modern rewrite of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. It’s sort of a Clueless-meets-Lydia Deetz-from-Beetlejuice YA Romance about a Horror Addict who falls in love over winter break in New York City.
I am writing my third vampire novel, Day’s Children, and have a few other short Horror stories coming out in anthologies this year.
What have you written and where can our readers find it?
Readers can find out about my vampire series, Night’s Knights, and all the other fun stuff I do at: emzbox.com
Night’s Knights (#1)
Delicate fingers tremble
Curated by Daphne Strasert, Bloodthirsty (2020)
Delicate fingers tremble
Curated by Mark Orr, The Bloody Dead of Night (1945)
Hello Addicts,
Tea seller Cassandra Raven has been creating fun and witchy-inspired products for seven years. She works with herbs, roots, and resins to make hand-blended incense and tea to sell in her Etsy store, RavenMysticUK. Inspired by her surroundings, she’s extremely lucky to live in an English Victorian Gothic mansion famous for its hauntings and spiritual activity. Surrounded by woods and in the depths of a valley, there are always plenty of energies to work with.
Adam Breckenridge
As some wise unknown soul once noted, “A cup of tea solves everything.”
Darrin Bardin has been making Horror housewares for about two years. While holding an array of day-jobs that gave little room for creativity, Darrin decided to start sewing. “These projects keep me busy and focused on fun things to make.” He created D’s Sinister Sewing 666 and sells his wares at Horror con vending booths around the Bay Area.
HorrorAddicts.net 
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