One on One with Frances Addison
My interview with one of the contributing authors to Feral Lands
Samak Press published its first horror anthology, Feral Lands, in June. All through July, I will be spotlighting contributing authors in exclusive one-on-one interviews.
We’re continuing the interview series this week with Frances Addison. Her contribution to Feral Lands is The House on Europa, which is also the lead story in the anthology. The House on Europa chronicles an astronaut who inexplicably discovers a facsimile of her childhood home on the titular icy moon’s surface.
An avid reader and writer across all genres of fiction, Frances Addison spends her working life writing about video games. When she’s not doing any of that, you can probably find her somewhere waxing lyrical about obscure science and mythology to anyone who will listen.
Tell us about your story in Feral Lands. What stands out about this story among the ones you've written and published?
Frances: The House on Europa tells the story of an astronaut in the near-ish future encountering an unexpected structure on Jupiter’s moon Europa, with no immediate sign of how it got there or who built it. It’s partly about the horrors we can build up in our own minds as a result of profound isolation and alien surroundings, but it’s also more simply about being menaced by the unknowable horrors of space.
The story’s relatively unique amongst my written works in that no monster actually appears on the page, and it’s left ambiguous as to whether there was any danger at all. Typically, I prefer to work with more concrete elements of stories where though characters may not truly know what’s happening, there are answers to be found within the text. For The House on Europa, I wanted to explore a more nebulous approach to horror in a way that will hopefully leave readers thinking about the story long after they’ve finished reading it.
Where do you draw inspiration for your stories? What goes into bringing them to life?
Frances: All my stories usually start with a single idea for a scene or even a solitary ‘shot’, like you might see in a film. It might be a location, or a character’s emotion, or, quite often, a brief dialogue exchange. That part of the process just sort of happens without my conscious input — all the hard work comes after that as I work to build out that idea into a cohesive narrative.
For The House on Europa, for instance, the initial inspiration was the idea of feeling watched in a place where there absolutely should not be anyone else to watch you. That then developed into questions of where that place should be, what circumstances would bring a character to such a place, and how they start to become aware that something is terribly wrong. I played with a few ideas to answer each of those questions — the first loose draft actually took place at the bottom of the ocean — before I settled on the details you can see in the final product.
What are your main dreams or goals as an author?
Frances: I have a few novel ideas that I’d like to publish one day, but largely I just want to always have the freedom to write whatever I’d like to. Writing is an important outlet and entertainment for me, and I’m currently fortunate in that I have a day job that leaves me enough time to fulfil that passion outside of work hours. I’m not in it for fame or fortune – but walking into a bookshop one day and seeing something I wrote on the shelves would be the pinnacle of accomplishment for me.
What draws you to write stories in the horror genre?
Frances: It sounds foolish given that I write horror myself, but when it comes to most horror mediums, I’m a total wimp. I almost never watch horror films because I won’t be able to sleep properly for weeks afterwards, and I can only sometimes stomach horror audio dramas. I find written works a little easier because they have a naturally slower pace and I can always elect to just not picture something if it’s scaring me too much, silly as that may sound.
Likely as a result of that, I find written horror fascinating — being able to craft that kind of dread and fear with words alone is, in my opinion, one of the hardest things to do as a writer. Fortunately, I like a challenge, and it’s a genre that I think has a lot of scope to play around in. Coupled with the way horror can reflect some important and discussion-worthy aspects of the human condition and state of the world, the genre is, to me, one of the most limitless to explore.
Outside of writing stories, what's a passion or hobby you enjoy pursuing?
Frances: My day job is actually as a writer for a video games company, so it’s perhaps no surprise I’m a gamer myself. When I’m not exploring virtual worlds, I love almost everything creative — I paint and sketch, sew, knit, crochet, and I’m desperate to try my hand at wood carving in the future. I’m not especially good at any of them, but I love to be able to start a new project and then bring an idea to life with my own hands. Even if the end result isn’t perfect, there are things in the world that only exist because I took the time to make them, and I find that rather addictive.
If you get all expenses paid to travel anywhere in the world, where are you going? Why that particular spot?
Frances: It’s a tricky question, but probably Arcadia in Greece. As anyone who has spoken to me for more than a few minutes has likely realised, I’m fascinated by ancient history with a particular interest in mythology. Being able to track human history through the stories we tell is one of my greatest passions, and Arcadia’s home to the oldest surviving sites of Ancient Greece with a huge amount of history to explore. Other contenders on the list include many of the ancient sites in South America, Petra, and a range of places in what used to be Mesopotamia (wherever possible given modern-day travel restrictions). If it’s very old, I’m probably interested.
An apocalyptic alien invasion starts tomorrow. How do you spend your final day before the world ends?
Frances: It’s cliché, but I’d get my immediate family — parents, siblings, niblings — together and just try to have a normal day together without thinking about tomorrow. We’d make a roast dinner and then do all the washing up together, telling stories about the past or films we’d watched recently, and probably argue about politics for a while. We’ve been through a lot together and we’re not keen on goodbyes, so we’d not want to make a big production of it. Just simple joy at being together.
I’d also cuddle my cats a lot, but I do that most days anyway. One’s even sitting on me while I type this.
You find a genie. What are your three wishes?
Frances: If we’re going by Aladdin rules… First, I’d want the ability to talk with animals —namely my cats and tortoises, but I think it’d be fun to chat with most critters. I’m sure the local crows have gossip I’d love to hear. Second on the list would probably be reserved for something humanitarian like a panacea for all disease or the like, and third would likely be predictable and boring like a vast sum of money or a paid-off house. Financial security is the best superpower of them all, after all.
Thank you, Frances, for taking time to answer a few questions and giving readers of this newsletter a chance to get to know you better.
Check back for future installments of this interview series after Ripples in Space is published in September.
