Meet Stephanie Ellis

Every Friday, we meet a member of the BFS and peer deep into their soul (or, at least, a form they filled out). Want to be featured? Email us: online@britishfantasysociety.org

Name: 
Stephanie Ellis

Which region are you based in? 
Wrexham, North Wales

If you write, which genre: 
Sci-fi, fantasy, horror: My genres tend to be mashups of the above … but all dark

If you don’t write, what do you do?
Read

Are you drawn to any specific SFFH sub-genres? 
Folk horror, gothic horror, post-apocalyptic/sci-fi horror, historical horror

Your influences

Tell us about the book/film/thing that got you into SFFH: What was it? How old were you? What impact did it have on you?

I’ve often said that it was Dickens who took me to the dark side. His stories, even though rooted in genuine human suffering (he was very much a social commentator), gave me a love of that murky side of life … and its villains. This started with his Christmas Books: a two-volume slipcase was given to me at Christmas when I was twelve. Proper versions, not children’s adaptations! 

Those books kept me reading the darker side of literary works, sending me over to the Russian writers: Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn, etc, during my early teens. I suppose I wasn’t happy unless I was reading about someone else’s misery! I have recently returned to Solzhenitsyn, by the way.

How does that early influence show up in your work now?

I think it’s fed into my love of writing villains and giving them an almost likeable element. For example, my unholy trinity of Tommy, Betty, and Fiddler in the Five Turns of the Wheel universe are terrible, really, but they have sense of humour and a certain sense of fun! I do like to write the villain and see things more from their point of view than the one you’re supposed to have sympathy for. It’s also meant that a number of my protagonists don’t tend to have a happy ending.

Where do you draw your creative inspiration from?

It can be from the books I read: they don’t inspire a specific story line, but they always trigger an urge to go away and write my own stories.

When I’m out on a walk, especially when I’m somewhere with a sense of history, the place can generate a sense of atmosphere and that atmosphere demands a story. Age hangs heavy in the air in these places, and you can almost feel the people of the past around you.

(Pictured: Yew trees inspire Steph)

For the post-apocalyptic/sci-fi horror, I pick up on technological advances that have caught my attention and I can see how those could be taken to an awful conclusion.

Historical horror is fed through my love of history, knowledge of my own genealogy and a specific love of three periods: early Norse/Anglo-Saxon, the English Civil War/Commonwealth, and the Victorian eras.

Everything is very organic, characters and ideas pop into my head at random – especially on the cross-trainer in the gym.

Who do you look to as a genre hero? Why?

Terry Pratchett is my hero. I have nearly all his Discworld novels and within his humour, his layers of satire, of pointing out human faults in a gently humorous way is a delight to read. His worldbuilding is second to none and I adore the characters, the way he names them, the situations they get themselves into. For a number of years, I would get his latest book as my Christmas book. It’s a tradition I still miss. A truly great writer.

Your work

You’re stuck in an elevator for 60 seconds with that hero, and they want you to describe your work. Give us the pitch.

Um … I think it would actually be 60 seconds of silence because I’d just be overawed! But okay, I’ll go with my Five Turns books:

The folk horror universe I created in The Five Turns of the Wheel universe is growing monster. It began in a corner of rural England and has moved across the country and up north, taking no prisoners. A people long hidden behind the veil are coming back to us, bringing the Old Gods and their ways – ways which include a lot of ritual and sacrifice and much spilling of blood.

But not all is doom and gloom! A mummers troupe – Tommy, Betty, and Fiddler – direct events. The three always try to have a good time, and whilst Tommy is the MC, the song and music is provided by Fiddler, and Betty entertains with his dances and dresses. Their mission statement tends to be ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die’.

(Pictured above: the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett, who Steph is trying to woo in an elevator.)

What are you working on right now?

A number of projects. A slasher horror novella in verse with Shane Douglas Keene, almost finished. I love what we’ve done with a mixture of free verse, sonnets, murder ballad, limericks and prose poems.

An alternative history set in 1914 at the time World War I was supposed to have broken out. But this is a Napoleonic Britain – we never won at Waterloo, and Winston Churchill is part of the nouveau riche, reclaiming his family’s place in society via the business path (the aristocracy like his sausages). There is murder and mystery and music hall stars. This has been going very slowly as I’ve had to leave it for a bit to get on with so much else.

My Darklings novelette series which I wanted to have scheduled up to December. I’ve almost finished that challenge (of a novelette a month) and just need to write a December story … and create the second omnibus edition!

A novella which I’ve almost finished, loosely based on the idea of the Hunger Tower from Dante’s Inferno.

I do have some other stuff which I need to do, but these are the main occupiers of my time at the moment.

Thinking about all the stories/work you’ve done, what sticks out most in your mind? Why?

That my characters get their hooks into me. I create them and I don’t want to leave them in that one story. It’s why the Five Turns world evolved – I loved writing the characters, the dive into early Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology as well as folklore in general made me want to write more, expand it more. This idea of worldbuilding has also crept into my East End gothic horror. Characters pop as cameos in new stories, and demand another thread.

Where and when do you create/are you at your most creative?

For many years, I only had a corner of the sofa to write. Now I have a desk in a corner of the bedroom. What this has meant is that when I need to write, I can generally write anywhere – I’ve had to learn to adapt to whatever is going on around me.

I’m more disciplined these days and write during the day; it is my job. I used to only get time after work or weekend time when I was doing family stuff. Moving, changing our lifestyle, kids now adult, has given me the time to do that.

But – there’s always a but – when I’m working on a project, I can get tunnel vision and that time can expand into the evening, on to the end of the day when really I should stop!

What’s the best advice you’ve received about creativity?

It was from Joe Lansdale. Don’t get caught up on the word count; just set yourself an amount of time and write. That took a lot of pressure off (though note my comment about tunnel vision above!). Too many say you should aim for x words a day – and that can lead to feeling inadequate if you don’t reach it. He said don’t wait for ideas to come, just start writing even if it’s rubbish. Your ideas will come just by that action … and they do.

What’s your writing soundtrack?

It varies according to what I’m writing. Folk horror tends to be the music of Heilung and Wardrun, pagan folk/amplified history musicians. Post-apocalyptic/sci-fi tends to be the newer Gary Numan and industrial metal: Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Rammstein etc.

Other times it veers from heavy metal to the punk of the late 70s!

The quickfire round

Sci-fi, fantasy or horror?
Horror

Quiet or loud?
Quiet

Dark or light?
Dark

(Pictured: the Welsh-proud writer challenges us to pronounce this one)

Strict lines or genre blend?
Genre blend

Awards or bestseller?
Bestseller

Fiction or non-fiction?
Fiction

Poetry or prose?
Aagh close … prose

Plotter or pantser?
Pantser

Reading or listening?
Reading

Notebook or computer?
Notebook

Favourite SFFH book of all time?
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Last book you read?
Draw You In by Jasper Bark, Volume I

Any SFFH author on auto-buy?
John Ajvide Lindqvist

Favourite podcast?
Inkheist with Rich Duncan and Shane Douglas Keene: books, authors and chaos. Great fun, and the love of genre shines through.

The home stretch

What’s the best thing about being part of the SFFH community?

The feeling that you’re not alone. Writing is an isolated occupation and knowing there are people out there you can ask questions of, sound out, or generally get support from, lessens that feeling.

Time to plug your stuff! Where can we find you and your work? What have you got coming up? Consider this your advertising space.

Before I go into my own work, I want people to know they can find me over at Horror Tree. I prep the weekly Indie Bookshelf Releases post which goes out every Friday. Send me a book cover pic and a link, and it’ll be put up on the shelves for prospective readers to browse! We give priority to charity publications and also include kickstarters and magazines.

Back to me! My website is stephanieellis.org and you’ll find all my books (pictured below) there with links to where to get them. There is a link to my newsletter as well which at the moment is quarterly. 

The big thing for me this year is my new novel, The Barricade, coming out this month from Lycan Valley Press. A post-apocalyptic/sci-fi/horror, it’s a ‘what if the world is supposed to die … but then it doesn’t’ scenario. What happens when the great and the good who had privileged places in an underground complex want to return to the surface and reclaim their old positions of authority – even though they’d left everyone above ground to die. Those above had built a Barricade to prevent this and declared ‘They chose to go below, they can never come out.’ Pre-order is here.

In addition, there are still some Darklings novelettes coming out: folk horror, Norse mythological horror and scifi/horror: Darklings Quick Reads Series – Stephanie Ellis

And there are some short stories, the main recent news being my Norse retelling of how Odin sent Hel to Niflheim. My short story, Cast Down, is to appear in Flame Tree Press’ anthology, Odin.