NAME: Donna Taylor
CREATIVE FIELD: Author
WEBSITE: authordonnataylor.com
AUTHOR LINKS:
Instagram & Threads: @authordonnataylor
AUTHOR BIO:
Donna Taylor is an award-winning horror author who looks at all things scary as something comforting. Her first love is young adult horror, the product of years of Fear Street, Nightmare Hall, and more Christopher Pike than she can shake a Ouija board at.
When reading one of her books, you are promised something assuredly creepy, a little bit spooky, and may make you laugh at inappropriate times.
INTERVIEW
What got you into horror to begin with – what’s your core Horror memory?
I’m not sure I have a core horror memory! My parents tell me the story of how they found me hiding in my closet after watching Poltergeist when I was 5, crying about how the skeletons were going to get me. But I don’t remember that! For me, horror has always been there. I’ve always been attracted to the dark and creepy. I gravitated to those sections of the bookstore.
My friends and I used to read ghost stories to each other at recess.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? was a Saturday night requirement.
Maybe it does all root back to that Poltergeist moment. Maybe it irrevocably altered by DNA to attract me to horror instead of repelling me from it.
Do you have a favourite horror subgenre (or more than one) and if so, what is it? What/Who are your favourite books/films/podcasts/artists/creatives working in that subgenre?
Horror comedy followed closely by teen slashers.
Vampires vs the Bronx, The Babysitter, and Tucker and Dale vs Evil are some of my favorite horror comedy movies.
More recent teen slashers like the Fear Street trilogy and the remake of Black Christmas are all stellar modern teen slashers.
As far as authors moving within the teen slasher subgenre, I love what Sylvester Barzey is putting out, Camp Lanier specifically. Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch by Codie Crowley has a “good for her” ring with her kills. Kalynn Bayron’s You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight is peak teen slasher, and Wendy Dalrymple’s My Birthday Party Demon series combined my favorite things about nostalgic horror and horror comedy into one neat little package.
What is the horror project of your heart – perhaps something you’ve already got out there, something you’re working on now, or something you’d like to do?
My San Nico Slayers series!
It’s inspired by The Lost Boys, my first vampire love and a movie that has stuck with me since I first saw it 30+ years ago, and nods to books like Fear Street in the camp and dry humor I’m trying to embody.
I’m extremely lucky in that I get to publish this series in a YA horror renaissance, but when I first started writing it, part of the reason it came about is because YA horror had really disappeared from the shelves. I’m in part talking about Fear Street-style books, but I’m also talking about books like Hillary Monahan’s Bloody Mary series, Simon Holt’s The Devouring series, and Lori Faria Stolarz’s Blue is for Nightmares series.
The market retracted on horror like this for a solid decade before it started trickling back in, and then really started gaining steam. Now, not only does my series full of slasher-style, nostalgic horror have a place in the market, it’s surrounded by like minds reading and writing similar throwback books. I get to publish these books of my heart in a market that’s salivating for books just like it, and that fills me with so much love.
Which 5 horror books can you not stop thinking about, or have influenced you most in some way? (If not books, you can pick 5 films, 5 pieces of art, 5 songs… or mix & match!)
The Lost Boys has a permanent apartment in my head. So much of what I write stems from that style of storytelling, of feeling, of vampires, I would be remiss if it wasn’t at the top of my list.
Session 9 is another movie that holds a permanent place in my heart. So stylistically different from everything I’ve mentioned so far, it plays with one of my favorite horror tropes: is it real or is it just in your head? I experiment with this much more under my adult pen name (Rian Adara) when I toy with the gothic more, but I’ve incorporated it into this writing as well. I love toeing that line between reality and the supernatural and really making sure to keep the reader guessing and on their toes.
The Watchers series by Veronica Wolff was one of my favorite (if not my full favorite) vampire series to come out of the big vampire craze in the mid-00s and post-Twilight. While it still had that romance element and the fantasy of boarding school, it was much more Hunger Games (before Hunger Games) in its fight to the death mentality. The brutality of the storytelling is what keeps me recommending it to this day.
Libba Bray’s The Diviners series is basically goal-level writing for me. A YA, historical, supernatural, horror series that centers a group of teens with with supernatural powers being hunted by a dark force, it combines exquisite writing with deep, dark scares that kept me coming back for more.
I’m going to cheat for my last one and give you two podcasts: You’re Wrong About and American Hysteria. These really exist more as a Venn diagram in my head, and while neither are explicitly horror, both have covered topics like the Satanic Panic, cults, and urban legends that have provided me with endless story fodder. My next book I’m going to write when the San Nico Slayers series is done was inspired by an old tale of Halloween mischief they told.
If you had to describe the tones and themes of your own work in terms of movies, books, songs, or art, what would you choose and why?
Stranger Things really hits home for my San Nico Slayers series when it comes to friend groups and found family.
Misfits finding each other along with the monsters under the bed and fighting them together. It also touches on parental intrusion, parents operating with good intentions that backfire, or absentee parents, forcing the kids to solve problems on their own with the help of maybe one adult figure who can get past their own nonsense long enough to do so.
And finally, it plays with the burden of bureaucracy. There is bureaucracy that can be “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and bureaucracy that actively works against you to shoot themselves in the foot because they are hamstrung by said bureaucracy. That’s a more subtle theme of Stranger Things and it’s a subtle theme in mine despite the more insistent presence in both.
Introduce us to something you’ve created, and pitch it to the audience!
Blood on the Boardwalk is the first book in my San Nico Slayers series, chock full of horror nostalgia, Fear Street love, and a slight Lost Boys obsession!
Jenna is convinced monsters aren’t real, until one starts killing people in her small beach town, then sets his fangs on her. Even worse, in order to kill him, she’s going to have to team up with her worst enemy: her former best friend, Georgie. As if Jenna’s life doesn’t suck enough.