AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT: Lindsay King-Miller
“The Fruit”
What is your favorite season and why?
Could any self-respecting horror fan not say “fall”? Harvest time is cozy, sure, but it also has a dark underside—there’s a reason “you reap what you sow” often sounds like a threat. Fall is when we come face to face with which of the seeds in our garden we’ve really been tending to. Plus, sweaters and scary movies.
What drew you to Folk Horror?
I didn’t set out to write folk horror specifically, but I wanted to write about the border between the human world and the “natural” world, which—although today we often use “natural” as a code word for correct or desirable—is far from benign. Folk horror tends to inhabit those borders, and especially the things that cross them.
What does Folk Horror mean to you? How would you describe it to someone?
I think Folk Horror is probably the root of all horror, and maybe even the root of all storytelling. The oldest stories are probably the ones we tell to keep our children out of the woods, or away from the river, at night. That’s what Folk Horror is, to me—an exploration of how close, and how dangerous, the natural world really is.
What is the most Folk Horror thing you’ve seen/encountered in your community?
I’m a city girl, so Folk Horror is something I only encounter in small doses, outside of my everyday life. Once I was in a tiny, rural town in Mexico, looking for what was supposed to be an ancient ruin, and I realized that all the stray dogs I saw were running, and they were all running in the same direction. I still wonder what they were running toward, or away from.
What writing projects do you have next?
Oh, my ongoing writing project is to try to figure out which of a dozen different ideas I want to focus on. I have several short stories in the works, some essays about parenthood, and a novel about lesbians and werewolves. And eight or nine other things. I’m really bad at being a Virgo.
