Whenever I start a new project, I tend to home in on either a character or a concept to work characters around. In this case, the idea that culminated into Undead Folk was one that I’d had kicking around my head for a year or two. At first, I had the idea of writing a short story collection with an over-arcing tale of a woman in search of revenge who had brought a dead fox back to life to serve as her companion. The tales in between each of the main stories would all be related in some way.
As I fell into working on other projects, I thought more about how I was going to achieve this one and exactly what short stories would intersect with the main narrative. My strengths as a writer have been mainly in writing novels, but in the last few years, I’ve played with writing and publishing novelettes and novellas in The Wild Oblivion series and grew to love this length for its concise storytelling and ability to be read within a short amount of time.
When I finished writing my currently subbed book, Sorrow Eater, I knew I wanted to take on something shorter but still stay within the realm of grief horror. I had realized over the course of writing Sorrow Eater that all of my books contain grief. All of my books hold a component of characters who wish they had more time with their loved ones who are now gone. This stems from feelings I’ve had over having lost friends or family and not having had the opportunity or time to get to know them better, to experience more memories with them.
The idea to write just the story of the woman on the railroad tracks as a stand alone story sprung to me as what I had to do next. I had been looking to publish something quick and short in order to have more new books to offer at this year’s Scares That Care Author-Con III, and decided that this book was going to be the one.
In hindsight: this idea was extremely reckless. I leapt into it in February by making the cover first. With no story written and only a concept in my head, I browsed royalty free stock photo websites until I found all the elements I wanted and then played in Adobe Photoshop Elements for a day until I had something that I was proud of. This is a level of art manipulation I haven’t played with before: merging a photo of a fox skull into a real fox and a photo of bone into its leg, adding blood spatter and more. I LOVED doing this one. I had a moment where I was trying to decide what color to make the sky and had three options: red, orange, and violet. The orange stuck.
I had a cover and no story written. But I knew it in my head. I could see all the elements of it like watching a movie. It was short. It was brutal. It was as sad as hell. And it took me about a week to write it. Another week to hone the language, to whittle it down so that it felt exact. Another couple weeks to format it into hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats. Another few weeks to make sure all of those files would upload to Ingram and not be rejected for alignment issues (they were very picky about the spine on the cover).
I make this sound as though I just ejected it out of my brain like the seat of a jet before it crashes into a mountainside. A lot of care and consideration went into how I portrayed these characters and their story. “Janet” is standoffish: a woman who doesn’t want connections, doesn’t want other people slowing her down but can’t deny the basic need to have someone nearby. With a little bit of herbal necromancy, she brings back dead animals by putting copies of human souls into them. In this book, her latest triumph is a dead fox that she finds on her way back to her old home.
Janet was inspired by a lot of me and a lot of lone strong female characters I’ve read and watched in various dystopian or apocalyptic media. I even took inspiration from previous characters I’ve written. There’s a bit of Liz in her, too. Writing Janet was natural and hard at the same time because Janet is the one who has lived, the one who has to grapple with her grief and how she’s distanced herself from it for so long.
Amos was the character that required more research and more time to execute just perfectly. I knew I wanted the undead fox to have a voice and a comedic one at that. He wasn’t going to be just any old guy: he was going to be charming, annoying, and loveable. I wanted him to exude this “dad” vibe immediately and reverted to taking inspiration from a film that I absolutely adore the parental figures of: Easy A.
Random, I know. But Stanley Tucci is my muse as of late because he’s an incredibly well-rounded actor. I re-watched scenes from Easy A and a little grief film called Supernova, which was also a huge inspiration when it came to Amos’s character. I’m the kind of writer that not only can see what is happening in the scene but can also hear the characters speak. Dialogue is one of my favorite things to craft in stories and making sure that Janet and Amos had believable dialogue was at the forefront of my objectives.
Everything else, like I said, fell into place once my two characters were solidified.
Music is another one of my big inspirations while I write stories. Typically, I’ve found that non-lyric music (either ambient, classical, or soundtrack scores) are my best companions while writing because I’m not getting distracted by lyrics. This particular project was inspired mainly by two different artists: Fleetwood Mac and Jose Gonzalez.
Fleetwood Mac is a band that I’ve been listening to more and more over the last year and a half. I had, of course, listened to them growing up but I had never paid as much attention to them as I should have. Stevie Nicks’ voice conjures a lot of earthly imagery for me, particularly of rural locales, of magic, of nature. I think the inclusion of magic in this book is because of her (and maybe that cameo I saw of her in American Horror Story: Coven). It made me long for the nostalgia of witchy classics such as Practical Magic in terms of atmosphere.
Similarly, Jose Gonzalez’s music has a vastness to it that I love. How can something be so full of emotion and also feel so desolate? A number of his songs made it onto my unofficial soundtrack because almost everything he sings feels appropriately sad and perfect for this dystopian drought I created in the book. It might not have been a drought without Gonzalez’s music because there is something very airy and bare about his style. When I first conceptualized the book, I’d wanted to include lots of ponds and swamps but instead, it ended up being a dried up wasteland. When I listen to songs like “Deadweight on Velveteen” and “Far Away”, I picture deserts. Not sure why. (Far Away was used in the soundtrack for Red Dead Redemption…so maybe that?)
Last but not least, the trek on a railroad was inspired by a few very weird ideas that I’ve held onto for sometime. First: The Journey of Natty Gan. A very underrated Disney film about a girl drifter who rides the rails and tries to reunite with her dad. I have loved this film for a very long time and really wanted to play with the concept in a story.
Second: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. This book is a dark and lonely story of a father and son journeying in search of hope and it is one of the bleakest books I’ve read. But there’s so much in that bleakness that I loved and I really wanted to imbue those qualities into Undead Folk from McCarthy’s spare writing style.
Thirdly: the 90’s film Dennis the Menace. I know. What? Why that? Drifters on railroads. The idea that a person could just hop off a train and saunter into quiet little town, live down by a bridge on the river’s edge (not in a van—sorry Chris Farley fans) was always this very consuming thought to me. It has clearly stuck with me for many years.
Lastly, when you read this book, there is a manila folder. Some early readers have reached out to me about the significance of the folder. It’s a teaser. I love this world. I love these characters. Could we see more of this world in the future? Maybe. For now, I want you to read this story and feel whatever you feel. I appreciate you for giving it a try. Tell your friends. Give it a share. This is one of my most personal pieces to date and I’m already humbled by the amount of love it has received so far. Thank you all so much.
You can order copies from your favorite places here.
Until release day,
Kat