Willow Dawn Becker, CEO and Editor-In-Chief of Weird Little Worlds Press, shared the spotlight with author Gemma Files on June 15th during the Story Hour Facebook vlogcast with host Daniel Marcus. Gemma has been a featured author for WLW Press, having a story in Humans are the Problem: A Monster’s Anthology as well as the upcoming Mother: Tales of Love and Terror.
Gemma Files talked briefly about her recent collection, In That Endlessness, Our End, which just recently won a Bram Stoker Award® for Best Collection of 2020. She then shared the story, “Nick Timoney,” from the upcoming anthology It Was All a Dream: An Anthology of Bad Horror Tropes Done Right from the new Hungry Shadow Press. In the tale, Gemma takes on the trope of sparkling vampires, injecting the tale with all the blood, gore, and dread that it truly deserves.
Willow then shared her story, “The Skin Least Taken,” the featured cover story for Dec. 2020’s Space & Time Magazine, edited by Angela Yuriko Smith. In a near future, an android named Eliza completes her coursework to be legally human, and is allowed to choose a skin. But, the plan that her employer has for her is compromised when she uses her newfound freedom to choose a skin that is unexpected.
Both stories dealt with a common theme of transformation, and the host, Daniel Marcus, commented on how interesting it was that, despite the authors not knowing the selection of the other, they seemed to mesh together very well.
Watch the entire episode here.
