CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT: Die Booth
DIE BOOTH is a queer indie author who likes painting pictures and exploring dark places. When not writing wild lies, he DJs at Last Rites—the best (and only) goth club in Chester, UK. You can read his prize-winning stories in anthologies from Egaeus Press, Flame Tree Press, Neon Hemlock, the Cheshire Prize for Literature, and many others. His cursed new novella Cool S is available online, along with short story collections My Glass Is Runn, Making Friends (and other fictions), and 365 Lies (one flash fiction a day for a whole year, with sales proceeds going to the MNDA) and his horradventure novel Spirit Houses. He’s currently working on a queer coming-of-age Folk Horror novella. You can find out more about his writing at diebooth.wordpress.com or say hi on Twitter @diebooth.
The Fiends in the Furrows III: Final Harvest
“Paper Coins”
What do you like most about Folk Horror?
For me, I think the appeal of Folk Horror is largely twofold. One – I love the imagery. The natural landscape holds my whole heart, so combining my love of horror as a genre with my lifelong attraction to folklore, history, the countryside, and beach, and to finding beauty in those things—decay, darkness, desolation, the Other World—that are typically considered ‘frightening’, quite naturally leads to Folk Horror. Two—I love how Folk Horror offers the perfect opportunity to focus inward. It’s a very personal type of horror, where the communities are small and stakes often seem low, but the true horror of isolation and introspection can really be explored.
What inspired you to write your FIENDS III story?
“Paper Coins” draws inspiration from the Welsh folk tale ‘Guto Bach and the Fairies’ although the folk tale has an ending much different to my story (whether it’s happier or not depends on your interpretation of “Paper Coins!”) I was also hugely inspired for this story and others by the real location of World’s End. Having dropped pebbles through the hole in that capstone, into the mineshaft below, and waited for far too long to hear them hit, I can personally attest to how lonely and eerie it can get on the moors. This won’t be the last story I write about that place.
What upcoming projects are you working on?
I’m currently querying a collection of Folk Horror short stories that I hope to find a home for soon. I’m also working on a Folk Horror novella, about coming out in a small town, grief, loss, survivor’s guilt, and The Wild Hunt, provisionally titled We Are Seven. When that’s complete I have a ’90s-set, coming-of-age horror novella in the works as well.
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.