By KEVIN HOOVER
The realm of dark fiction isn’t likely the first place you’d think of turning if hunting for new ways to benefit mankind, but Marc Ciccarone is working hard to change your mindset. His imprint, Blood Bound Books, has long been authoring the narrative of “Spreading Hope Through Dark Fiction,” and it’s a sentiment that anyone who has ever benefitted from the publisher’s frequent book donations to classrooms and blood donors will attest to. BLOOD BANK: A CHARITABLE ANTHOLOGY continues that commitment to leaving this mortal coil better than we found it. An anthology brimming with stories from the likes of Neil Gaiman and Jeff Strand, a portion of every sale will be donated to the youth literacy-championing Read Better Be Better and Hagar’s House, which provides sanctuary and resource management skills to women, children, and gender non-conforming individuals.
Recently, contributing authors Lucy Leitner (Outrage: Level 10), Jo Parypinski (It Will Just Be Us), and Kristopher Triana (The Thirteenth Koyote), alongside Marc himself, convened with Rue Morgue to discuss their newest offering.
How did each of you become involved with this newest anthology?
Kristopher Triana: Marc and I have worked together several times in the past. He’s put out several books of mine: Body Art and most recently, A Fine Evening in Hell. Marc reached out to me with a book that was for a good cause. Blood Bound Books has done a lot of work in the past when it comes to blood drives and things like that, so when he asked me, I said “absolutely” and gave him a new story for it.
Kris Triana
Joanna Parypinski: This is my first time working with Blood Bound Books, and I was excited to be invited to be a part of this anthology. This was also my first charity anthology, so it was gratifying to be part of something that’s going towards a good cause.
Jo Parypinski
Lucy Leitner: I wrote my story on a whim a year ago, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. Then Marc asked me if I would be a part. I said, “yes, and I already have this story that would be pretty perfect for it.” Then he told me about the charities that were involved, in particular, Read Better Be Better. My family is from Arizona, and my grandmother was a children’s librarian and helped start one of the libraries in Flagstaff, AZ in the 60s. I thought it was cool and similar to something that my family has been involved in for generations.
Lucy Leitner
Marc Ciccarone: With BLOOD BANK, I love that this is a blending of having people in there that I’ve worked with before; this being an invite-only anthology, I wanted people that I know can deliver. I love working with them and that’s where I reached out to Kris and Lucy. The other half of the book, I wanted people that I admire, yet I’ve never worked with them at all – that’s where Jo comes in.
Without giving away any spoilers, talk a little about your individual stories.
JP: Called “Clown Doll,” this story was fun for me because it’s the only story I’ve ever written that was based on something that happened to me in real life. I was living in an apartment with my boyfriend at the time – now he’s my husband – in Los Angeles and there was a little courtyard down below where we were on the second floor. It was near Halloween and in the middle of the night, we woke up hearing this ridiculous, mechanical cackling outside. We look out the window and there’s this Halloween decoration that somebody had put up outside their apartment. My husband tells me it was a witch, but for some reason, I thought it was a clown. It was laughing and there was this woman standing there shaking it so that it would laugh in the middle of the night. I was so unsettled by this mysterious thing that was happening and had no understanding of what she was doing. I never found out why she was down there shaking this toy, so I ended up writing about that in the story. I used the actual setting, the apartment that I lived in, and I based some characters on people who were in that building.
LL: My story, “They Say the Sky is Full of Snakewolves,” was also based on something in real life, which is rare for me. It was March or April 2020, and where I live in Pittsburgh, we were under shelter-in-place orders. No one knew what exactly that meant, but everyone understood the rules differently. I was taking a walk in my neighborhood, and there are usually people out, but it was so quiet; there were no cars on the street, and no one was outside. I thought that was interesting because I never understood taking a walk in my neighborhood to have been prohibited, but apparently, some others understood it that way. It got me thinking of what people could be told that would make them scared to leave their house. I had this interesting idea of an alternate present-day in which there are monsters that have been existing outside and no one’s ever seen them, but they’ve been slaughtering people in the streets. I was also inspired by the house I live in with my boyfriend. We’ve got rules where we’re not allowed to put holes in the walls to hang stuff; we’re not allowed to wear shoes in the house because the floors are pristine. I was thinking about what if I take my landlord’s rules and make it into an abusive boyfriend situation? I have this woman who’s trapped in the house, terrified of this guy who is attacking her for minor transgressions against the floors and weighing the possibility of running outside and risking the monsters versus staying inside with him.
KT: My story was a combination of things. One was I had read an article about Disney World and how they won’t let an adult go in alone; you have to be with other people. One of the reasons is that they’ve had problems with weird people who are attracted to Disney-related things. There have been times when people were arrested and had to be dragged out because they were assaulting someone dressed as Mickey Mouse or Tinkerbell. I wrote my story, called “Pictures of a Princess: A Fable,” about a guy who goes with his wife and daughter to this Disney-like place but all the stuff is themed around public domain fairy tales. His daughter is obsessed with this one princess and we find out that her dad has conditioned her to love this princess because he had loved her when he was a kid and has this dark, twisted obsession with her. I was also somewhat inspired by the movie Crumb, which is a documentary about the artist Robert Crumb. When he was a kid he had a picture of Bugs Bunny in drag, and he was starting to have sexual feelings and was very attracted to the drawing and used to keep it with him in his wallet. I thought that was an interesting, weird thing and so I incorporated that into the story to where this guy was obsessed with this princess because he had a picture of her in a storybook when he was growing up.
Blood Bound Books is often regarded for extreme horror. Because this is a charitable anthology, was there ever any thought into toning down the subject matter, in hopes of appealing to a broader audience?
MC: It’s something that’s become very cognizant to me in the last five years. I was always a teacher, so one day I’m playing with the kids, because I started as a P.E. teacher, and then I was coming home and editing Body Art for Kristopher Triana. I’ve always kept these two parts of my life very separate. I’ve thought about that a lot and that’s why I penned the letter that opens BLOOD BANK. I’ve learned that you don’t have to be ashamed. Sometimes we feel like we’re the black sheep. “Spreading hope through dark fiction” has become our motto and I write in there that before you can see the light, usually you have to know darkness. I no longer feel the need to tone everything down. I mean, if I had gotten certain stories that were over-the-top, I’d say, “no, this is too graphic,” but overall, the book is exactly how it needed to be.
Horror is an all-inclusive community, and Blood Bound Books has the mission statement: “Spreading Hope Through Dark Fiction.” Did you ever envision that, in your horror writing career, you’d be out there trying to change the world?
KT: I like to hope that the stuff I put out makes a difference. To be able to share all the dark visions in my mind with other people, and for them to enjoy this world and be able to share it with others on a large scale, is incredible.
LL: I never set out to be a horror author. Around 2007 – 2008 was when I came up with my first idea and it was a satire on office life and office politics. Everything that I write usually is some sort of observation that I’ve made, and so the goal I wouldn’t necessarily say is to change the world but to make people think about the things they see around them.
JP: I’ve been writing since I was a kid but I always thought of it as a very individual activity. Once I started getting involved in the horror writing community I realized all these dark, terrifying people are the nicest people you could meet. It’s a wonderful feeling to be part of such a great community where there are a lot of people who are trying to do good things. I also like that it defies the general expectation that horror writers must all be dark and evil. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve thought more about why I’m doing this and what I want to do with it. I teach English at a community college so I’ve learned how I can give back to my community and help other people in that way. Also, like Lucy, it’s about how to get people thinking about things that are important; my upcoming novel which comes out in October, called When the Night Bells Ring, touches on climate change because that’s a large issue that’s always hanging over our heads. I like to explore these topics that are important for people to think about.
What would you say to folks who’d be interested in supporting the charitable causes, but don’t want to buy this book because of the subject matter?
KT: Buy it and give it to someone else!
BLOOD BANK: A CHARITABLE ANTHOLOGY is available now for purchase here.
