Look at this! Another 3Q’s annnnddd another Canuck writer haha!

I’m excited to introduce you all to Madison!

Welcome, Madison!

Steve: What does your writing time look like? Do you try to write at the same time each day? Do you have a word count you attempt to hit?

Madison: I’m tempted to lie and say I have some intense gothic writing process, but alas, I’m a bit of a cliché. I like parking myself at picnic tables, coffee shops, and libraries; when writing at home, I tidy up my apartment so I’m not staring at too much clutter and set myself up with a record and a cup of tea. Sometimes scented candles, lava lamps, and/or essential oil dispensers are involved.

Music is probably the most important part of my set-up. I can’t get much done without a soundtrack and I make a big production of selecting songs, albums, and playlists that match the tone of whatever I happen to be writing. (For The Doom That Came to Mellonville, that meant listening to Richard Band’s Re-Animator score on repeat).

I often start writing with an idea for a vibe rather than a plot, and music feeds into that; my novelette The Forest Dreams With Teeth owes a lot to Robert E. Howard and The Wicker Man, but it probably wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been walking in the woods in the ‘burbs while listening to Dio.

Steve: If you could write a story for another author’s fictional world/series, which would it be and why?

Madison: Conan the Barbarian or Beastmaster. I love sword-and-sorcery and I don’t think its possible to create a better hero than Conan or Marc Singer’s Dar. Specifically, I want to write a prequel to Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus, which I’m sure there’d be a market for. And the Conan universe is just so swashbuckling and mysterious; I’d love to write a Howard-style throwback that really plays up the weird horror.

I also recently had an idea for a Hellraiser story focused on a vengeful Chatterer, which I might actually sit down and write.

Steve: Tell me about your newest release (novel/story/poem/novella) and why someone should read it!

Madison: My debut poetry chapbook Fringewood was released this summer by Alien Buddha Press. It’s a collection of 22 gothic, folk horror, and paranormal-inspired poems set in a strange little town that may or may not exist.

Content-wise, it’s a mix of monster mayhem and melancholy musings (and that’s my alliteration allotment for the day). When I was pitching the collection, I compared it to My Heart is a Chainsaw, Midsommar, and Welcome to Night Vale, as well as the works of The Misfits and Phoebe Bridgers, which seems a little presumptuous; but if you can’t carnival bark for your own stuff, no one else will.

Self-indulgently, I was very excited for this one because I drew the cover illustration (a first for me), and many of the poems are very personal. There’s also a lot of in-jokes – for instance, “Tunney’s Pasture,” which I portray as a muddy field that dissolves rubber soles and mutates livestock, is the name of a downtown Ottawa bus station I used to hate waiting at.

Check out Fringewood if you like witchcraft, cryptids, and sinister small towns.

Steve: Bonus Question! Do you have a cherished book?

Madison: In the dying days of Zellers, I picked the carcass of my local store and found a single copy of Clive Barker’s Cabal. The 1989 paperback edition with just a U.K. price on the back – I’m honestly not sure how it ended up in a Canadian Zellers in 2013. I was a high school senior and had never consumed any Barker before, but I was immediately drawn in by the beauty of the language and the vividly conjured characters (not to mention the feminist and queer themes). This particular book also had the most tantalizing back cover copy I’ve ever read.

Sadly, Barker’s planned trilogy never happened, so we may never learn the fate of the Nightbreed. But Cabal is still a small masterpiece and my all-time favourite book.

Great choice and that is crazy that it ended up at a Zellers! I love when people make crazy finds!

Thank you again, Madison!

To discover more of her work – click the links!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Madison-McSweeney/e/B0979N64R1

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MMcSw13

Website: https://madisonmcsweeney.com/