Creatives Getting Coffee

Millennial Chaos With Clarissa Cottrill

Clarissa Cottrill is the author of Café Vengeance, a modern spin on Dante's Inferno, from Tea With Coffee Media. She's also the co-host of 30, Dirty, & Dying, a millennial nostalgia podcast that revels in early-30s angst.

 

In this interview, Clarissa discusses her inspiration behind Café Vengeance, modernizing themes of good and evil, and the millennial chaos of running too many gosh darn social media accounts.

 

Add Café Vengeance to your TBR on GoodReads

Follow Clarissa on  Instagram and TikTok: @clarissa_explains_nothing & @30dirtyanddying

Candid Coffee Chats: Fiction Mentor Mo Medusa

Mo Medusa is a writing mentor who helps writers discover their voice, passion, and routine within fiction. They're also an experienced writer themself, as well as a poet and musician.

In this Candid Coffee Chat, Mo discusses how they have dealt with rejection in the past, how they encourage their clients to embrace rejection, and how we can view feedback in a positive way while building ourselves up as authors.

Find them on Intagram and Facebook: @fictionmentormoand Author profile on Instagram: @momedusawrites

Creating Gloriously Weird Horror With Joshua Hull

After the critical success of the Shudder exclusive film Glorious, screenwriter Joshua Hull makes his long-form prose debut with Mouth, which releases on March 15th.

In this interview, we discuss his filmmaking journey, his love for Indiana (and Indiana's love for him), his exciting plans for the future, and the journey that landed him a publication deal at Tenebrous Press, home of New Weird Horror.

Author Bio:

Joshua Hull is an author (Underexposed! The 50 Greatest Movies Never Made, Bedtime for Bobby, Tales From The Cryptic Closet Vol. 1 & 2, MOUTH), screenwriter (Glorious), and filmmaker living in Central Indiana.

 

See what all the fuss is about on GoodReads

Purchase Mouth directly from the Tenebrous Press site

Follow Joshua on Instagram @joshuathehull

Potential Cult Activity With Michael Bettendorf

Michael Bettendorf's debut New Weird Horror gamebook/novel Trve Cvlt will be published by Tenebrous Press in late-2024. In this interview, we discuss his inspiration, try our best to define "New Weird Horror" (the Tenebrous Press website does a much better job), and get into some very strange things that happened in his hometown (Spoilers: It's spooky!).

 

About the Author:

Michael Bettendorf is a speculative fiction writer from Nebraska, primarily interested in genre blending sci-fi, horror, and crime, often inspired by his Midwestern upbringing. He is a library technician in Lincoln where he earned an English degree from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln with an emphasis in creative writing in 2012. Michael’s work has been nominated for the 2022 Brave New Weird award at Tenebrous Press, Best Short Fiction (2021), Best of the Net (2021), and spent some time writing critical essays about comics. He lives in Lincoln with his partner and dog, where he tries to convince the world that Nebraska is too strange to be a flyover state.

 

He can be found on Twitter (@BeardedBetts) and on Bluesky (@beardedbetts.bsky.social)

 

Visit his website here.

Tiffany Koplin, Owner of Indie Book Boxes

Tiffany Koplin is the (awesome and super humble) owner of Indie Book Boxes, a business that highlights and celebrates independent horror authors by including their books, swag, and exclusive items in themed book packages. She's also involved in fundraising efforts for Scares That Care, a participant in the Scarelastic Book Festival, and a contributor to the wildy popular Books of Horror Facebook group. Basically, she's an all-around swell person who does some incredible work for this tight-knit book community that listeners of this podcast love.

In this interview, she discusses the inception of the business, her love of independent horror, and her very exciting plans for themed boxes moving forward. Follow along with her journey via the links below!

 

Indie Book Boxes on Etsy

Instagram: @indieboxboxes

Scarelastic Book Fair

Scares That Care

Living the Independent Publishing Dream With Deborah Wilde

Deborah Wilde is the former screenwriter and *hehe* Wilde-ly successful indie author of multiple urban fantasy series. With 21 books under her belt, this episode is packed with valuable information for the writing community. In this interview, she discusses growing a fanbase, dealing with burnout, and how her experience as a screenwriter for television shaped her affinity for world-building and series-based storytelling.

Her new book Big Demon Energy is available now and is the start to a new urban fantasy series Bedevilled AF!

About Deborah Wilde

Deborah Wilde is a global wanderer and hopeless romantic. After twelve years as a screenwriter, she was also a total cynic with a broken edit button, so she jumped ship, started writing funny, sexy, urban fantasy and paranormal women’s fiction novels, and never looked back.

She loves writing smart, flawed, wisecracking women who can solve a mystery, kick supernatural butt, banter with hot men, and still make time for their best female friend, because those were the women she grew up around and admired. Granted, her grandmother never had to kill a demon at her weekly friend lunches, but Deborah is pretty sure she could have.

Deborah also explores her Jewish heritage through her main characters and the mythologies that she creates. An avid reader growing up, she never saw herself reflected in the stories she read, unless it was about the Holocaust. Those are crucial stories to tell, but she wanted a girl like her going through a wardrobe or down the rabbit hole, so, she’s changing that narrative with Jewish woman having magic adventures with a huge dash of steamy romance.

TLDR: Pick up a Deborah Wilde book and enjoy magic, sparks, and snark!

 

Visit her author site to learn more about her work.

Inspired By Nightmares with Dr. Stuart Knott

Dr. Stuart Knott is a PhD graduate and a writer of horror fiction. Most recently, he published Here There Be, a Stephen-King-inspired witchy horror novel. In this interview, we discuss his work, his writing process, his academic career, and somehow we veer into an in-depth discussion on video game movies.

A lifelong fan of video games, comic books, and horror, action, and science-fiction films, he is primarily influenced by the writing of Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft and the films of David Cronenberg and John Carpenter. Dr. Stuart Knott has published several short stories, novellas, and novels ranging from traditional slashers to surreal terrors.

Unafraid to push the limits and always seeking to try something different with each story, Dr. Stuart Knott aims to infuse the mundane nature of everyday life with dark comedy and macabre events.

 

Visit his Amazon Author Page

Spilling Out Our Fears With Thomas Emson

Thomas Emson is the author of eight gut-wrenching, page-turning, action-packed novels including Maneater, Skarlet, and Zombie Britannica, all published under Snowbooks Ltd. In this interview, we discuss his latest (incredibly rad) novel Ironbones, his experience writing quickly and efficiently, and his positive outlook on the modern self-publishing landscape.

As well as scaring the pants off you, Thomas can also help you write your own novel. His short, sharp guide, How To Write A Novel In 6 Months details the methods he uses to write his books.

 

View his work on his website.

The Why Behind the Horror With Andrew Adams

Andrew Adams is the author of several independently published works, including, most recently, Serial Publication, wherein a serial killer becomes the host of a reality TV phenomenon.

 

In this interview, Andrew discusses his transition from filmmaker to horror/thriller author, fitting writing into his busy routine as a welder, teacher, and parent, and his exploration of horror from a psychological standpoint.

 

View his works on GoodReads

An Affinity for Creativity With Chloe Spencer

Chloe Spencer is an author, journalist, game developer, and filmmaker. In 2024, her one-to-two novella punch of An Affinity for Formaldehyde and Mewing will be released into the world from Grindhouse Press and Short Wave Publishing, respectively.

In this interview, we discuss her inspirations for these two (AWESOME) upcoming novellas, how she's been able to be so productive in her writing output, her writing approach in different mediums, and how early-20s angst often seems to seep into her writing.

Author Bio:

Minnesota native Chloe Spencer is an award-winning writer, indie gamedev, and filmmaker. She enjoys writing sci-fi/fantasy, horror, and romance. In her spare time she enjoys playing video games, trying her best at Pilates, and cuddling with her cats. She holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Film and Television from SCAD Atlanta.

Author Site

An Affinity for Formaldehyde

Release Date: January 19, 2024

Mewing

Release Date: February 27, 2024