Emma E. Murray (she/her) explores the dark side of humanity in her fiction.
Her work includes Crushing Snails and When the Devil.
When she isn’t writing, she loves making up fantastical worlds with her daughter, playing D&D and retro video games, and hiking.
You can find out more at her website EmmaEMurray.com
Author Links:
Website: EmmaEMurray.com
IG: @emmaemurray_
Threads: @emmamurray_
Bsky: @emmaemurray.bsky.social
Preorder The Drowning Machine: undertakerbooks.com/products/the-drowning-machine
Shoot Me In The Face On A Beautiful Day: Add to Goodreads
Can you talk us through the process of ordering the collection The Drowning Machine and Other Obsessions, and the selection of the stories in each section?
I’d say the three sections are basically divided into parenthood, naivety/loss of innocence, and obsessions, but besides ordering it in that way, there is also a flow from horror involving the earliest years of life to childhood to adolescence, and finally, to old age and the horrors of looking back with regret and even dementia.
This flow through a lifetime helps pull the three sections together, with echoes of details and themes appearing throughout the collection, tying certain stories together in a way and building a cohesion so it reads like one piece instead of a bunch of individual stories just set next to each other.
What leads you to write about the themes in the collection – obsession and grief in particular, and the different facets of these?
This collection was very much inspired by my struggles with OCD. By delving into my worst fears and intrusive thoughts, I was able to not only explore the horror and sorrow of these experiences, but it was also very cathartic to really dig my nails into those thoughts and work through some of the emotions connected to them.
What about short fiction led you to choose this form as the vehicle for your stories and themes? Do you think any stories would work in other formats?
I love short stories! I love reading them, writing them, everything! I think they have this way of being able to hit a topic in this intense way that longer works might struggle with; however, I did recently finish a folk horror novel that is essentially an expanded version of the ideas and some of the characters in one of the stories, so I needed to get a little deeper into that. So I do think some of these themes and even storylines could work in other formats, particularly short film. I’d love to see one or more of these stories made into a short film someday.
Your latest book Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day is also coming out soon! Will there be themes within the book that readers will recognise as being part of your ‘author brand’ (or recognise from the short story collection)?
Yes, it’ll be out August 26, which feels both far away and very soon. Any readers familiar with my previous work will certainly see the familiar themes of grief, motherhood, and realistic yet extreme violence in this novel, which are all 100% part of my “author brand”
What inspired Shoot Me in the Face on a Beautiful Day, and what can readers expect from this book?
I had two main inspirations for this novel. The first being my biggest fear: home invasion. I’ve really wanted to write some terrifying home invasion killer scenes for a long time, and when the ideas for this book started to come together, I realized I finally had the story to dig into those darkest fears. The second inspiration was that I’m a survivor of domestic violence and I wanted to write a story about the complicated nature of those relationships. Those two ideas came together in this very unsettling novel that follows dual storylines about these ideas that come together in some shocking ways.
Do you have any themes or ideas you want to explore further? What’s next for your writing?
I am forever obsessed with exploring the psychology of grief, cruelty, and people pushed to their limit, so you’ll definitely find that in all my work. As for what’s next, I have a folk horror novel going on submission very soon and I’m drafting another horror novel that pushes into taboos to better understand them, this one about family dynamics and murder, so hopefully both of those will be out in the near future!
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