"Carmilla Voiez is more of a
singer than a writer. She tells her compelling story in a hypnotic,
distinctive voice that brings her eerie world vividly to life."
Graham Masterton
While her imagery harks back to the
writings of Clive Barker and H P Lovecraft, her voice is uniquely
female. Starblood was, perhaps, the first true female horror story
ever written, dealing with both sexual violence and the struggle of a
woman trying to make sense of a senseless world.
Basement Beauty leaves the Crowleyesque
world of magic and demons behind and takes us to the city of Glasgow
where a serial killer leaves a trail of victims like statues, while a
group of assassins hunt for a rogue vampire who is kidnapping human
women for his own perverted pleasure. In the midst of this Amalthea
and her friends try to scratch a living while negotiating their way
through everyday sexism and violence. Basement Beauty is being
unleashed on Friday 13th June and there will be a radio show and a
Facebook based party to celebrate this, followed by an interview with
the author on Zombiepalooza radio.
Carmilla grew up on a varied diet of
horror. Her earliest influences as a teenage reader were Graham
Masterton, Brian Lumley and Clive Barker mixed with the romance of
Hammer Horror and the visceral violence of the first wave of video
nasties. Fascinated by the Goth aesthetic and enchanted by threnodies
of eighties Goth and post-punk music she evolved into the creature of
darkness we find today.
Living in North East Scotland, she
finds inspiration in the wildlife, castles and desolate places which
surround her. She lives with her two children by the sea.
Her books are both extraordinarily
personal and universally challenging. As Jef Withonef of Houston
Press once said - "You do not read her books, you survive them."
Signed to Vamptasy Publishing in 2012
three books in the critically acclaimed Starblood Trilogy have been
published both as stand-alone novels and as a complete trilogy and
she is currently working on an erotic-horror anthology called “Bloody
Sexy” and a graphic novel of the first book in the Starblood
series. She has also edited and compiled a collection of
psychological horror from the best new talent in the world of horror
writing "Broken Mirrors, Fractured Minds". Carmilla Voiez
is a name to watch.
You can find Carmilla's full
bibliography at Amazon – http://smarturl.it/CarmillaOnAmazon
her blog can be found at
http://carmillavoiez.wordpress.com
and her Facebook page is at
https://www.facebook.com/Author.Carmilla.Voiez
to find out more about Basment Beauty
check out http://smarturl.it/BasementBeauty
Excerpt from Basement Beauty -
Amalthea
stood outside the unlit entrance to “The Pit” and breathed in the
cool, pre-dawn air. One hand brushed wild curls from her mouth and
tucked them behind her ear. They sprang back across her cheek
immediately, untameable.
As
her skin acclimatised she drew jacket sleeves over her rich,
honey-coloured arms. It was her post-work ritual: the time when she
metamorphosed from a human doing into a human being.
A
movement at the edge of her vision attracted her attention and she
turned towards the shadowy alley where the night club bins were
stored. Her direct gaze didn’t reveal any ghoul, goblin, animal or
person skulking in the darkness, watching and waiting for her to
leave, but her mind created a sinister shape anyway. For the past six
weeks the evening news had continually hinted at unnatural deaths
city-wide and rumours of a modern day Jack the Ripper were rife. Now
every alleyway had become hostile territory and every shadow a
killer, preparing to strike.
With
her meditative moments, of simply being, stolen by fear of the
impenetrable darkness, Amalthea decided to button her coat and get
moving. Home wasn’t far away, a mere ten minute walk and at four am
most of the drunks were already home, sleeping it off, or standing,
unsteadily in taxi queues, waiting for chariots to return them safely
to their beds. In fact, that was one thing that could be said about
fear of the dark - it was good for the economy.
Some
questions and answers
-
Could
you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?
I
am a Goth, a horror writer and an all-round nut-case. I live in
Scotland with my kids and cats and write horror stories from a female
point of view, merrily turning tropes on their head and fucking with
the gender binary one paragraph at a time. Well it keeps me happy.
Who
are some of your favourite authors?
Clive
Barker, Storm Constantine, Sarah Waters, Iain Banks and Haruki
Murakami.
What’s
the most important lesson you have learned about writing?
To
let the creativity flow unhindered when writing the first draft of
anything and worry about editing it later.
What
aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?
I
love editing, but I find it very difficult to know when a story is as
perfect as it’s going to be. I tend to hold onto them for a while,
waiting for the perfect sentence structure to surface.
