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CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT: Ryan Cassavaugh

by | Dec 26, 2023 | Contributors, Interviews, The Fiends in the Furrows III | 1 comment

Richard Thomas The Keeper of the Light Fiends III

RYAN CASSAVAUGH is a playwright and author originally from the cold frozen wastelands of New Hampshire. He’s written a whole bunch of plays. Jimmy’s First Christmas on Parole is good; Three Glorious Weeks is even better. He wrote and directed over 30 hours of original scripted audio for the live radio series and podcast Don’t Close Your Eyes: Live Radio 362 Theatre, which he co-founded with writer/director/Jeopardy winner Keith Suta. Ryan is best known for writing the book & lyrics for the psychedelic rock-and-roll horror musical/ comedy/giant puppet show “Freak Out!” (With music composed and arranged by well-known guitarist, the late great Joe Knapp.) He used to write horror stories when he was young, but then he got busy and stopped; then all the theaters had to shut down nationwide for some reason, and he started writing them again. He now resides in the cold frozen wasteland of Montana with his amazing wife Sadie, brilliant daughter Rosemary, and two sneaky dogs who like to steal trash and, therefore, will not get mentioned by name.

The Fiends in the Furrows III: Final Harvest

“The Last Honeyboy”

What do you like most about Folk Horror?

There is so much about Folk Horror I love – the relationship between us and the land, the unsettling otherness of the natural world, the innate dread of the natural cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, all woven with all the trappings and dangers of the religious fervor and pious sanctity. Imagine how our ancestors saw the world and all its power and what that belief would look like if that belief had evolved into the modern world. 

What inspired you to write your FIENDS III story?

Most of my stories are assembled from fragments of things I see and hear. I stumbled across an article on human melification (the process of mummifying someone in honey) while reading a biography on a musician who had earned the nickname “Honeyboy” for his “sweet sound.” That name stuck with me and the idea of “Honeyboy” being a revered position in a religion based around honey grew out of that. I had been bouncing around the idea of a folkhorror version of the book of Job for a while; the story of a loyal believer whose faith is pushed to its limits appealed to me.

What upcoming projects are you working on?

As well as a handful of short stories in the hopper, I am currently in the process of finishing a rewrite of my holiday farce Jimmy’s First Christmas on Parole, for publication, and finishing up the first draft of a novel, House in the Wyrdwoods. It’s a young adult folk horror novel about a young girl forced to move to an ancestral home deep in the New Hampshire woods, only to find they are the long absent Lords of the Village, and they have a terrible debt to pay to the Wyrdwood for their absence. 

THE FIENDS IN THE FURROWS III

THE FIENDS IN THE FURROWS III: FINAL HARVEST is a collection of nineteen stories embodying the menacing essence of Folk Horror.

Folk Horror fans will uncover in these short stories tales of rampant rural monstrosity and agrarian horror within rustic settings, where dread sinks its roots deep into the earth to bring forth a bountiful crop of unforgettable terrors.

Nosetouch Press is proud to present THE FIENDS IN THE FURROWS III: FINAL HARVEST to horror readers everywhere.