You write horror – have you always been interested in darker fiction? How did that develop?

My first idea of horror was actually movies, especially Vincent Price. I loved B movies and Japanese horror movies. Later, I watched a lot of crime documentaries and read a lot of crime fiction, which is different from horror but close. When I came to writing, I thought I’d like to try something creepy and viola, The Mountain City Bronzes was born.

When did you start writing? Was it a childhood calling, or something that came along later in life?

As a child I did a lot of drawing and writing poetry. My father kept all these little ‘books’ pages stapled together that I had given him of poetry written when I was a child. I wrote stories later, in my teens, I liked science fiction then and my English teacher said she’d never read such a good student short story. This encouraged me but I didn’t really know how to go about it, so I left it and pursued drawing and painting, until the ninties, when I took a correspondence course in writing. I was in my thirties.

I love the tagline for THE MOUNTAIN CITY BRONZES: How far will a community go to protect the safety of their children when they start to disappear? The story is a compelling, engaging read – what inspired it? 

I wrote this for a student story, when I started the writing course. My first lesson was write what you know, so I wrote something about a sculptor and a small town. I took a lot of literary license with sculpting techniques.

Kevin is in an interesting character–is he based on anyone close to you? 

Kevin represents ‘boy’ to me, just a typical boy, based on every boy I’ve ever known who worshiped his father.

Do you have a favorite horror story? One you’ve read over and over?

No favorite horror story. There are so many good ones. Of course, Poe is a favorite.

What’s the scariest thing that’s ever happened to you?

The scariest thing that happened to me was when I was about two and we went to an inn. There was a pier and my sister and I ran out on it. I fell off the end and under the pier was a giant spider. It was so huge that sometimes I think that it was only because I was so small that I thought it was so big. I had a terror of spiders for years.

Put yourself in the townspeople’s shoes–what would YOU do if your child disappeared?

I would search forever if my own child disappeared and probably become morose and even feeling guilt,y and I’d never move so the child could always find  me. My original story had the line. “It is so hard to lose a child, the searching never stops'” but my editor wanted it out. But that’s how I feel.

Let’s get personal. You live in Eastern Canada, a beautiful part of the world. How does that play into your writing? What do you do for fun?

I like the seasons in Eastern Canada, so a lot of my writing has a lot of seasonal things in it. I do like to walk and do genealogy research.

What’s your next project, and where can readers find you?

I’m working on some more dark fiction, maybe not so dark as the first. I have a bio on amazon.com and on the museituppublishing website. I also have a blog at http://madworldca.blogspot.com.  On Twitter I’m known as Madoxane, and I have a facebook and linkedin page.

Excerpt from THE MOUNTAIN CITY BRONZES:

The jail was a great refuge in June, but even in the winter, I found it pleasant to play in. There was so much fun imagining the structure when it was full, back in the gold rush. I could almost hear the walls and floors resounding to the voices of the thousands of lawless men that lived back then. In the large, empty vastness of our jail, I loved pretending I needed to find escape routes.

One day after tromping through the halls for an hour, I found a locked door.

Why is it shut tight?  What is behind that door?

Buy At MuseItUp (99 cents)

Buy At Amazon (99 cents)

Coffee Time Romance (59 cents, on sale)

Thanks so much for Madeline for stopping by. Please make sure to leave her some love!