New Treasures and Interview: C.S.E. Cooney’s Saint Death’s Herald
Simulcast on Black Gate : https://www.blackgate.com/2025/02/15/new-treasures-and-interview-cse-cooneys-emsaint-deaths-heraldem/
Tuesday, February 18, 2025 SELindberg Comments 0
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Black Gate’s interview series on “Beauty in Weird Fiction” queries authors/artists about their muses and methods to make ‘repulsive things’ become ‘attractive.’ We’ve hosted C.S. Friedman, Carol Berg, Darrell Schweitzer, Anna Smith Spark, and Janet E Morris (full list of 29 interviews, with Black Gate hosting since 2018).
This round features C. S. E. Cooney (CSEC), who is no
stranger to Black Gate [link
to listings]. She is a two-time World Fantasy Award-winning author: first,
for Bone Swans:
Stories, and most recently for Saint
Death’s Daughter. Previously on Black Gate, an
all-star crew heralded its release with a video cast including readings
of Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney.
Forthcoming in April 2025 is Saint
Death’s Herald, the second in the Saint Death series.
In this post, we reveal exclusive details, CSEC’s creative process, and hint of
Book #3’s contents! Read this and her contagious energy will infect you!
Cripes, simply by doing this interview, I was infected with a buttery aura!
Read more and learn C.S.E. Cooney’s real identity and code name too (Tiger of
the gods? Or is it Lainey!)
An Interview with Saint Death’s Daughter (a.k.a. C.S.E. Cooney
_______________
SEL: Saint Death’s Daughter was
released in 2022, and we’ll dig into that momentarily. Mark Rigney
interviewed you a decade ago Black
Gate (2014 link). How have you changed as an author since
then? Were you inspired by your Lord Dunsany readings?
Re-reading that 2014 interview is hilarious. And exuberant.
And painful. Oof. That line towards the end about Howard making me read Lord
Dunsany? Seth, I have to say that right now, I just want Howard alive again,
and making me read anything at all. That’s what I want.
[SEL Sidebar: Howard Andrew Jones, Black Gate print
magazine editor, longtime author, and friend/mentor to countless writers,
passed away this January after battling aggressive brain cancer. CSEC led the
charge with a GoFundMe campaign
for his family (with help from a crew including the just-mentioned Mark
Rigney), and Black Gate has hosted several
tributes (i.e., from John
O’Neill, Jason
Ray Carney, & Bob
Byrne); as one of HAJ’s Skull Interns, I am capturing links to many
more memorials. Peace to our dear friend.]
Otherwise, sadly: I don’t recall much about my Lord Dunsany
readings. I didn’t even remember that reading Dunsany made me want to be
referred to as “the tiger of the gods.” Now, why didn’t that catch on, I
wonder? You may henceforth refer to me in this interview as “tiger of the
gods,” please.
Have I changed as an author since then? Yes. Yes, I’m not as
fast as I was ten years ago, and everything about the world seems harder, and
sadder. I think it was always hard and sad, but I’m feeling it more now, I
guess.
But also… also, it’s all so much more interesting.
Over the last ten years, I’d experienced such burnout, such
weariness and bitterness about the craft, that at one point I announced I
wasn’t going to write again until I wanted to write. My
friends and family were afraid I was serious. (I was.) They were like, “Claire,
what are you doing?”
But I really just wanted to want to
write. Was any of the work even worth it if I didn’t want it anymore?
And it took a few weeks of me staring out a
window, giving myself permission not to write. But then,
suddenly and spontaneously one morning, I had one of those magical “what if”
thoughts. That was something that hadn’t happened in literally years of
revision and submission and revision and submission. The next morning, that
“what if” had built into a whole dang story idea. So I sat down and started
writing it out long hand — something I’d also not done in years. The experience
was so pleasurable, so permissive, and so, I don’t know. Healing.
The whole world seemed new. Writing was possible again.
Phew! I’d made it through the wasteland and to the other side.
Since then, the whole creative process just keeps getting
weirder and more wonderful. Concentrating on the unique bizarreness of process
has really opened me up to so many branching avenues of boundless curiosity.
Now I know: if I need to stop writing for a while, I will. (After I
meet my deadlines, of course. That’s what a professional does.)
For me, the sensual ritual of writing has become the point.
And community. Community is the point.
What else has changed? I’ve never done so much body
mirroring while writing in my life: writing in silent zooms, or with people in
the room. I’ve never done so much timed writing. I even
started listening to music while writing — which I never used to do. I still
can’t listen to anything with words (some Hildegard von Bingen chanting aside).
I started listening to fantasy gaming soundtracks, because if I listen to movie soundtracks,
I just have that movie’s story and dialogue running through my brain. But since
I’ve not played most fantasy games, that’s not a problem. (I can’t, for
example, listen to the Baldur’s Gate soundtrack, because I did
play that. Which was awesome.)
I know this now: even when I’m sad, and tired, and lacking
all motivation, I still want to want to write. All the
rest is hacking my brain to get the motor running. Music, company, handwriting,
candlelight… all of those rituals put me in a more celebratory and
ludic headspace for writing.
What’s the same? Well… every time I have to write
something new, it’s still like learning how to write all over
again. Some of the same skills apply, sure, but I’m constantly learning how to
write something I couldn’t even fathom before I started.
Like fight scenes. Fight scenes are so hard.
“Henceforth refer to me in this interview as ‘Tiger of the Gods’ ” — C.S.E. Cooney
Saint
Death’s Daughter (2023 World Fantasy Winner) Blurb
Nothing complicates life like Death.
Lanie Stones, the daughter of the Royal Assassin and Chief Executioner of Liriat, has never led a normal life. Born with a gift for necromancy and a literal allergy to violence, she was raised in isolation in the family’s crumbling mansion by her oldest friend, the ancient revenant Goody Graves.
When her parents are murdered, it falls on Lanie and her cheerfully psychotic sister Nita to settle their extensive debts or lose their ancestral home — and Goody with it. Appeals to Liriat’s ruler to protect them fall on indifferent ears… until she, too, is murdered, throwing the nation’s future into doubt.
Hunted by Liriat’s enemies, hounded by her family’s creditors and terrorised by the ghost of her great-grandfather, Lanie will need more than luck to get through the next few months — but when the goddess of Death is on your side, anything is possible.
SEL: At first glance, the summary of Saint Death’s
Daughter sounds like a horror adventure, but it reads more like a
comedic/fun, coming-of-age story. How would you describe the book to new
readers?
TIGER OF THE GODS: Generally, I give this elevator
pitch: “Girl grows up in a family of assassins, but is allergic to violence.
Her allergy indicates that one day, if she survives long enough, her aversion
to violence will be so strong, she’ll be able to RAISE THE DEAD.”
Boom! Necromancy book, baby.
For comp titles, I say something along these lines: “Like if
Terry Pratchett and the Addams Family had a necromancer baby who really liked
pink frilly dresses and cutie patootie mouse skeletons.”
Those are light, easy ways about talking about my
book. My book which is, in reality… much weirder.
BUT! I really don’t want to intimidate people. I want
to invite people.
I also like to describe Saint Death’s Daughter as
a Bildungsroman — a coming-of-age story. Now, I know that all YA books must
perforce be coming-of-age stories. That’s the genre. It’s just that, at no
point in the drafting process, did I imagine I was writing YA with Saint
Death’s Daughter. But it is still a Bildungsroman.
I am, as I was ten years ago, still under the influence of
Lois McMaster Bujold. I wanted to write a character like Bujold’s
Miles Vorkosigan. The first few novellas about him may have covered his
childhood, but over time, we get to experience him at many ages.
Saint Death’s Daughter is just Lanie
Stones’s first book. It’s just one point in the timeline of
her full life — perhaps not even the most important part. I imagine her in her
thirties. (Sexy beast!) Her forties! (Whoa, what a powerhouse!) I imagine her
as an old woman — with even more wisdom and compassion and mischief, and far,
far more powerful. (Also, probably a foodie.) I imagine her on her deathbed. I
imagine future scholars writing about her as a historical figure of a certain
time and place that is perhaps no more. (This makes footnotes very fun.)
SEL: Discuss the media of necromancy which feels very artistic,
especially the paint-like, colored essences of panthuama and ectenica.
TIGER OF THE GODS: I made up the word “panthauma” out
of the words “pan” (all) and “thaumaturgy” (miracle or marvel-working). I
wanted a word for sorcery that was slightly alien, so I could apply my own set
of rules to it without previous reader bias. But I also wanted, in addition to
that whiff of mysterious, a sense of familiarity, linguistically-speaking.
And then I wanted a new word for “death magic” that wasn’t
just, you know “death magic.” “Necromancy” is the obvious word, and I do use it
in the book. But its actual etymology has more to do with divining via
the dead than raising them up. (All the “-mancy” words have to do with
divination.) So I wanted necromancy to be a specific kind of
death magic, not the word for death magic.
I wanted a new word, something more flexible, less familiar.
A word that evoked ghosts! And also super fun to say. So I
took a closer look at our word “ectoplasm,” and then just sort of f*&%ed
with it to make “ectenica.” Just say it aloud. All those clicky consonants!
Lanie’s a bit of a synesthete, in that she associates smells
and colors with magic; that’s her brain trying to process the unimaginable. So,
for panthauma, when the gods are drawing close and lighting up the world
with Their attention, her vision goes bright-yellow with hard edges,
like faceted topaz, and her body responds with a kind of champagne-y,
effervescent reaction. Her sensual reaction to ectenica is much
colder. She perceived it as a sort of starry blue. And the smell of her god,
and of death magic, is always some variation of citrus. Other gods have other
smells. I think, to some degree, most of the sorcerers/saints in my world have
synesthesia.
Celerity Stones, one of Lanie’s aunts, was also a
traditional artist, and her portfolio included portraiture like “Barely There:
The Exquisite Art of Excoriation, With (Predominantly) Live
Models”. I’d love to see her collection. Can you tell us more about
Celerity’s inspiration and art?
Celerity had been much in demand for her pen and ink drawings, her sanguine sketches, her oils, watercolors, and illuminated calligraphy. Later, she won renown as an anatomical scientist. Very precise with spreader, was never easy to ignore her most famous work, The Flayed Ideal, which hung on the wall of Stones Gallery and had a way of glaring at you. Its exposed and accusatory eyeballs, rendered in oil on canvas with exquisite delicacy, followed you around the room — and very often out the door and down the hall.
— from Saint Death’s Daughter
TIGER OF THE GODS: You know those stories we
have of anatomists and resurrection men in prior centuries who’d illegally dig
up bodies in order to study them, to become better doctors? (I’m glad that the
laws — and some minds — have changed to allow for voluntary donation in such
endeavors, but for a while it was considered absolutely heinous.) And you know
all those stories about how powerful people in history — doctors, surgeons,
psychologists, prisons, military — exploited marginalized communities,
sometimes going so far as to medically experiment on people without their
informed consent, for purposes of their own research?
That’s my inspiration for Celerity Stones.
She was not a good person. She was talented
and precise and obsessed with her work. But she — like the whole toxic Stones
family — hurt people to achieve her greatness.
One of the reasons that the Stones family ultimately falls
is that cruelty like that is not sustainable, however it sometimes seems to
advance society in the moment. Undoing the Stones’s legacy, and especially the
glamorization of the violent family narrative, is something that Lanie has to
consciously learn how to do as she gets older.
Every time I’ve seen you at Gen Con, you are wearing
impressive regalia. Do you craft the costumes? Do they represent
characters?
TIGER OF THE GODS: I don’t craft costumes, per
se. Like, I don’t think of myself as dressing up as certain characters. But I
do dress according to my mood that day — or the mood I’d like to have. Heck, I
just like dressing up. When I was a kid I had a “dress-up trunk” and I just
preferred every secondhand prom dress and thrift store “glass slipper” (plastic
with rhinestones) and dilapidated tiara to any of my school uniforms, softball
jerseys, or neon skorts in my regular wardrobe. All these years later, I still
do. Only now MOST of my closet is “dress-up” trunk.
These days, if I have to dress to go somewhere
where there’s an expectation of dress code, that’s when I feel like I’m in
costume. Like, when I go into the booth for audiobook narration, I have
to wear “soft clothes.” I think of them as “ninja clothes,” but a friend
of mine said it just looked like I was wearing pajamas. But you can’t wear
anything that tinkles or rustles or chimes!
I was watching a “maximalist” influencer talking on
Instagram about how the act of getting dressed is a creative process. And when
you put together an outfit (or “fit” as the kids are calling it) to completion,
you get that little bump of dopamine, like when you finish a puzzle or complete
a recipe or win a game. Creative clothing is a small, achievable goal, and it
makes me happy. Maybe, in some ways, I’ve been sartorially self-medicating
since childhood!
Saint Death’s Herald Blurb
Much-anticipated follow-up to the whimsical, joyous, zombie-packed World Fantasy Award-winning Saint Death’s Daughter
Lanie Stones is the necromancer that Death has been praying for.
Heartbroken, exiled from her homeland as a traitor, Lanie Stones would rather take refuge in good books and delicate pastries than hunt a deathless abomination, but that is the duty she has chosen.
The abomination in question happens to be her own great-grandfather, the powerful necromancer Irradiant Stones. Grandpa Rad has escaped from his prison and stolen a body, and is heading to the icy country of Skakhmat where he died, to finish the genocide he started. Fortunately for her, Lanie has her powerful death magic, including the power to sing the restless dead to their eternal slumber; and she has her new family by her side.
Grandpa Rad may have finally met his match.
Saint
Death’s Herald (preorder link) is coming in April 2025. What
can we reveal? Anything special we can say about this, only heralded via Black
Gate?
TIGER OF THE GODS: Oh, gosh. Well. A Black Gate
exclusive, eh?
Well, here’s the thing. I LOVE spoilers. I don’t even call
them spoilers. I call them SPICERS. But not everybody (not even most
people) think of them that way. So, with the caveat that those people
who consider any information at all a SPOILER, perhaps they could skip this
part?
Hush, come close! I’ll tell you, dear Black Gate readers,
that Lanie Stones has only grown in power since Saint Death’s Daughter.
I’ll tell you that when she enters fully into sympathy with a dead object, she
can… SHARE PARTS OF ITS SHAPE.
She is also learning how to communicate through the dead —
so if she has a… a toe bone, for example, from a particular corpse, and
if you have a different toe bone from
that same corpse, she’ll be able to call you. Like a
one-way cell-phone.
My plan is, for Book 3, that Lanie will be so good at
sharing shapes with the dead, that she can basically take on and maintain the
appearance of any dead creature whose accident (physical material) she is in
contact with. This makes going undercover to investigate crimes against the
death god (totally random plot idea, not the basis for Book 3 at all,
doo-dee-doo) much easier.
Can you discuss the cover art creation and artist?
TIGER OF THE GODS: Oh, this is the wonderful,
wonderful Kate Forrester! Fantasy readers will already know and love her work
from such glorious novels as Zen Cho’s The True Queen and
Theodora Goss’s Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club trilogy.
Basically, for Book 1, my editor Kate Coe consulted me about different cover
artist options, and some ideas for the art.
When Kate Forrester was chosen, Kate Coe and I generated a
few wild cover ideas to throw her way. Then Forrester came up with the
wonderful silhouette idea. My editor asked if I could send the artist a few
elements from the book that the silhouette could have trapped in her hair.
Then, for Saint Death’s Herald, my editor David
Moore arranged the same sort of information exchange. In Book 2, the silhouette
is facing the opposite direction, with different elements caught in her hair.
The cover was done long before the book was done — so I had to make sure that my
final draft included all the visual cues that I had originally suggested when I
was still in the early stages of writing! Phew!
I wonder what Book 3 will look like? Forward facing? Or two
silhouettes facing in opposite directions? That would be kind of cool:
especially if Lanie spends most of the book incognito — as both herself
and not herself!
But that’s years away.
“For me, the sensual ritual of writing has become the point.
And community. Community is the point…even when I’m sad, and tired, and lacking
all motivation, I still want to want to write” – C.S.E.
Cooney
I adore your character names. For example, the protagonist
& heroine “Lanie Stones” has a formal name of “Miscellaneous Stones”; and
her contentious grandfather Irradiant ‘Grandpa Rad’ Stones. Can we
contract you to assign us pseudonyms with all the grandeur your characters’
names have? I’d love to lure you into calling me names.
Tiger: That sounds like SO MUCH WORK! But
it reminds me of the Fairy Tale Heroines workshop that The Carterhaugh School
of Folklore and the Fantastic runs. One of the last things
everyone does is assign themselves a “fairy tale heroine” (or hero/non-binary)
name. But to do this, here are some questions: What’s your favorite animal?
What kind of magic user would you be? If you could choose one of these to be:
human, gentry (fairy folk), or goblin, which one would you be? If you were to
choose one of the 12 gods from Saint Death’s Daughter, which would you
choose? What’s your favorite obscure or forgotten word?
SEL: Eh gad, return fire. Those are hard
questions! I love the return fire. Fairy and “humors” (alchemical medicinal
version) … and I am still learning the 12 gods of your stories. I’m too young
and ignorant to recall them all and choose (I’m not worthy). I do love Lainey
and her scarecrow though.
Tiger: Okay, then, so if you were a Stones,
you’d probably be named Butter-of-Antimony Stones, son of Alkahest and
Argyropoeia Stones…. Friends would call you “Bu” for short. (We won’t get into
what your enemies call you.) And if you were a gentry, you probably would be
named Crasis, a cloudskin (sometimes “cloud — skin” and sometimes “clouds-kin”)
who can transform into whatever shape they please, though you will be
insubstantial as vapor.
SEL: Okay, I want to know your secret Stoneses
name too.
Tiger: Miscellaneous, of course!
BU: You are an award-winning poet (Rhysling Award-winning
poem “The
Sea King’s Second Bride” included in How to Flirt
in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes), and have written plays. The
previous Black Gate interview mentioned you also sing! Please
discuss how expression works across media.
TIGER OF THE GODS: Oh, gosh. I’m just drawn to
some kinds of media over others. Like, I don’t have any current desire to write
a screenplay or a graphic novel or MG/YA. But I often get the itch to write
plays and musicals and poetry.
I just wrote a 10-minute play to submit to a local theatre
festival for fun, and it felt so good to stretch those playwriting muscles
again. My husband Carlos wrote one too! We both submitted to the same festival.
Whatever happens now, at least we’ll have done something that challenged us
artistically and brought us delight.
Re: musicals and albums: for the past few years, as time
allows, I’ve been collaborating with Tina Connolly and Dr. Mary Crowell on a
6-episode musical theatre podcast called The Devil and Lady Midnight. And
in 2023, I mounted a short, collaborative musical called Ballads
from Distant Stars, with songs by myself, Amal El-Mohtar, and Caitlyn
Paxson (with occasional melodies and harmonies by my brother Jeremy Cooney and
Dr. Mary Crowell).
Eventually, I’d love to figure out how to bring both of
the projects to full audio production. I’ll probably
record Ballads from a Distant Star myself, with the
help of my awesome musician brothers, and helpmate husband — like I did with my
Brimstone Rhine album and EPs. However, The Devil and Lady Midnight will
be a lot more complicated and expensive — but super rewarding if we can do the
work!
What I’ve learned over the last 10 years about making albums
and theatre: without an infrastructure already in place, a space to perform in,
and people wanting to produce the work for you, you have to build that
infrastructure from scratch. So there’s either a lot of crowdfunding involved,
so you can hire people who already know what they’re doing to help you, or
you’d better be ready to go full autodidact and learn how to do it all
yourself. Whichever way you go, there’s still a cost: in time, in equipment, in
the goodwill of the community, etc.
I try to find collaborators who are interested in making art
for art’s sake with me. It’s not like I think we shouldn’t get paid, but I
don’t really go into a creative project dreaming about all the money it might
rake in. That said, I’m interested in collaborative partners who, once the
creative process part is done, are also interested in taking that piece of
polished art to production or publication — either via crowdfunding,
bootstrapping, submitting, or grant-writing. Because it’s really daunting to try
to run that gauntlet alone.
I also adore writing poetry. I stopped for a while — though
in that lacuna, I did start writing songs — and now that I’m writing poetry
again, I’ve got enough for a collection. I’m calling it The Day I
Superglued the Moon: 10 Years in the Life of a Speculative Poet. It’s
massive. It needs curation. I don’t know what to do with it. Self-publish? Ask
my agent to submit it? Approach a small press?
Meanwhile, I feel so raw and tender and personal about
it, because it’s poetry! so I keep avoiding doing
anything at all. For now.
BU: ‘Macabre and beautiful’ (and fun) has even taken
root in a game! You and your husband Carlos Hernandez co-designed a table-top
roleplaying game called Negocios
Infernales, Kickstarted
October 2023. What is this game about? Does it inspire storytelling?
Weirdly beautiful stories?
“In the initial design, taking this all into account: here’s
what we did. One of Claire’s favorite games is Mysterium, which she
loves in part for its gorgeous, surreal cards that have this melancholy timbre
to them. You can look at the cards and be inspired, even outside of the
game. So I thought: What about instead of dice and all the rules that
govern them, you have a deck of beautiful cards, maybe a little macabre, but
also inspiring? It’s always very simple to determine success or failure
in Negocios, as easy as Candyland. If your card matches
one of the cards on your character sheet, success. If it doesn’t, not success!
And everything else you just get to make up.” – Cultureslate Interview,
Carlos Hernandez quoted
TIGER OF THE GODS: Co-designing a narrative game
was a wild departure from my personal normal. And I’m so grateful that Carlos
nudged me in that direction, because it opened up the whole world of gaming to
me — board games, TTRPGs, and video games!
Carlos is a game designer, and when we first got together,
he said I was perfect, I was MORE than perfect; maybe my only flaws were that I
don’t like coffee and I don’t really play games.
Dear Black Gate Readers, I now like
espresso. Okay, just a little bit of an
espresso—¡un pocito espressito!—once every few months, but I can
honestly say I like it.
And now, I also like games. But I didn’t always. In fact, I
liked board games much better than TTRPGs when we first started playing
together, for all that I’m an actor and a writer, and by my nature should
be a shoe-in for roleplaying games. But I’d sort of had a “meh” view
of TTRPGs, due to some less than stellar experiences, so Carlos suggested we
design one together that I’d actually like.
We designed a game that has some moving pieces and some
timed elements (like a board game), that’s big on character creation and world
building and plot development, that’s easy for beginners, but also incredibly
rich for experienced players. It’s so much fun, and so weird, and so moving.
Negocios Infernales’s tag line is: “The
Spanish Inquisition… INTERRUPTED by aliens!”
Imagine a fantasy world — Gloriana — much like Earth
(Gloriana’s more of a superplanet that’s mostly water, and it has two suns, but
bear with me here). Now imagine a country called “Espada”—Spanish for “blade” —
which is a lot like our Spain in the 15th century. The queen, Reina Resoluta,
is about to sign religious persecution into law. Then… benevolent, enlightened
aliens intervene! They offer cosmic powers in exchange for a zero-genocide
policy on Espada.
Of course, the Espadans mistake the aliens for
devils (because their deelie boppers look like horns), and while they
do strike a deal for “magic powers,” they think their bargain is an infernal
one.
So you play a “wizard” with “magical powers,” certain
that you’ll be damned for all time for it. It is a game of cosmic irony.
One of the best things about it is our “Deck of Destiny.”
It’s a 70-card oracle deck, and it’s our main mechanic for character creation,
world-building, magic checks, inspiration, all of that.
But separate from the roleplaying game, we use the Deck of
Destiny to run what we call “Infernal Salons,” where we invite writers and
artists of every stripe to pull a card prompt or three. We set a timer.
Everyone writes something, no matter what form it takes. And then, whoever
wants to, shares aloud. This creates such fantastic, generative, creative
nights. Many published stories and poems have come out of these salons, both
for Carlos and myself, and also for many of the people who’ve participated.
The “Infernal Salons may be my favorite thing that has come from designing this
game.
Negocios Infernales is available for
pre-order right now from Outland Entertainment, and should be in our backers’
hands in a few months — if the International Shipping gods are kind.
C. S. E. Cooney
C. S. E. Cooney (she/her) is a two-time World Fantasy
Award-winning author: for novel Saint Death’s Daughter, and
collection Bone Swans, Stories. Other work includes The
Twice-Drowned Saint, Dark Breakers, and Desdemona and the Deep.
Forthcoming in 2025 is Saint Death’s Herald, second in the Saint
Death Series. As a voice actor, Cooney has narrated over 120
audiobooks, and short fiction for podcasts like Uncanny Magazine, Beneath
Ceaseless Skies, Tales to Terrify, and Podcastle.
In March 2023, she produced her collaborative sci-fi musical, Ballads
from a Distant Star, at New York City’s Arts on Site. (Find her music at
Bandcamp under Brimstone Rhine.)
Forthcoming from Outland Entertainment is the GM-less TTRPG Negocios
Infernales (“the Spanish Inquisition… INTERRUPTED by aliens!”),
co-designed with her husband, writer and game-designer Carlos
Hernandez. Find her website and Substack newsletter via her Linktree or try “csecooney” on
various social media platforms.
Other Weird and Beautiful Interviews #Weird Beauty Interviews on Black Gate:
- Darrel
Schweitzer THE
BEAUTY IN HORROR AND SADNESS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DARRELL SCHWEITZER 2018
- Sebastian
Jones THE
BEAUTY IN LIFE AND DEATH: AN INTERVIEW WITH SEBASTIAN JONES 2018
- Charles
Gramlich THE
BEAUTIFUL AND THE REPELLENT: AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES A. GRAMLICH
2019
- Anna
Smith Spark DISGUST
AND DESIRE: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANNA SMITH SPARK 2019
- Carol
Berg ACCESSIBLE
DARK FANTASY: AN INTERVIEW WITH CAROL BERG 2019
- Byron
Leavitt GOD,
DARKNESS, & WONDER: AN INTERVIEW WITH BYRON LEAVITT 2021
- Philip
Emery THE
AESTHETICS OF SWORD & SORCERY: AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP EMERY 2021
- C.
Dean Andersson DEAN
ANDERSSON TRIBUTE INTERVIEW AND TOUR GUIDE OF HEL: BLOODSONG AND FREEDOM! (2021
repost of 2014)
- Jason
Ray Carney SUBLIME,
CRUEL BEAUTY: AN INTERVIEW WITH JASON RAY CARNEY(2021)
- Stephen
Leigh IMMORTAL
MUSE BY STEPHEN LEIGH: REVIEW, INTERVIEW, AND PRELUDE TO A SECRET CHAPTER(2021)
- John
C. Hocking BEAUTIFUL
PLAGUES: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN C. HOCKING (2022)
- Matt
Stern BEAUTIFUL
AND REPULSIVE BUTTERFLIES: AN INTERVIEW WITH M. STERN(2022)
- Joe
Bonadonna MAKING
WEIRD FICTION FUN: GRILLING DORGO THE DOWSER! 2022
- C.S.
Friedman. BEAUTY
AND NIGHTMARES ON ALIENS WORLDS: INTERVIEWING C. S. FRIEDMAN2023
- John R
Fultz BEAUTIFUL
DARK
WORLDS: AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN R. FULTZ(reboot of 2017 interview)
- John R
Fultz, THE
REVELATIONS OF ZANGBY JOHN R. FULTZ: READ THE FOREWORD AND
INTERVIEW (2023)
- Robert
Allen Lupton (2024) https://www.blackgate.com/2024/05/26/horror-and-beauty-in-edgar-rice-burroughs-work-an-interview-with-robert-allen-lupton/
- C.S.E.
Cooney (2025) You are here!
- Interviews
prior 2018 (i.e., with Janet E. Morris, Richard Lee Byers,
Aliya Whitely …and many more) are on S.E. Lindberg’s
website
SE Bio, aka Bu
S.E. Lindberg is a Managing Editor at Black Gate, regularly reviewing books
and interviewing
authors on the topic of “Beauty & Art in Weird-Fantasy Fiction.”
He is also the lead moderator of the Goodreads
Sword & Sorcery Group and an intern for Tales from the Magician’s Skull magazine. As
for crafting stories, he has contributed eight entries across Perseid
Press’s Heroes
in Hell and Heroika series,
and has an entry in Weirdbook Annual #3: Zombies. He
independently publishes novels under the banner Dyscrasia
Fiction; short
stories of Dyscrasia Fiction have appeared in Whetstone, Swords & Sorcery online
magazine, Rogues In the House Podcast’s A Book of Blades Vol I and
Vol II, DMR’s Terra Incognita, and the
9th issue of Tales From the Magician’s Skull.
