Kristin Dearborn’s a straight shooter: “It’s gotta be fun—and not stupid.”
Originally from Maine and now in Vermont (much to the chagrin of fellow Mainers, I’m sure), Kristin is a New Englander through and through, even though her stories are often inspired by travels along the southern half of the East Coast.
Kristin has been writing—as you’ll read below—her entire life, and publishing for well over a decade now. Her latest novel, Faith of Dawn, is due out from Cemetery Dance on February 15th. (I don’t have to tell you, dear, enlightened reader, how helpful preorders are for your favorite novelists—go grab it!)
There are a few things you can reliably expect from a Dearborn novel: complex characters, with relationships that go in directions you’d never expect; an ensemble that pulls the action in multiple, high-tension directions; genuine human empathy; and, of course, terrifying monsters.
In this interview, we talk about Kristin’s youthful writing in Maine and the shadow cast by that great grandpappy of horror Stephen King; creature features, and why they make a great vehicle for all kinds of horror; the difficulties of categorizing subgenres; and, of course, we get to the nitty-gritty of Kristin’s approach to writing, from idea (hint: it’s usually Florida) to revision.
You can follow Kristin at her website and on Instagram. Now, please enjoy my interview with Kristin Dearborn.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Kristin Dearborn: I just did my first ever CrossFit workout.
Noah Lloyd: A good thing to do right before an interview.
KD: Ready to think about literature.
I do want to introduce the third member of our interview today, who is going to be as obnoxious as he can be. He’s a giant pest.
[Dearborn holds up a very cute ash-colored cat.]
NL: To dive right in—and given the cat, this may be an erroneous question, but—why is the creature feature your favorite genre?
KD: It manages to be a combination of ridiculous and terrifying. And I feel like that dichotomy of campy-but-scary is my favorite. The movie Willow Creek comes to mind, which is Bobcat Goldthwait’s horror movie. It’s a found footage Bigfoot film.
Most of the movie’s a little bit goofy, unbelievable. But then there’s this one scene stuck in the middle, which is these two characters in a tent. And there’s something outside the tent, and you don’t know what it is.
One of the only times where I have had to pause a horror movie.
And the movie isn’t… I don’t want to say it’s not good, but I didn’t love the whole movie. But that one scene…
So just the fact that creature features can take all of these different elements. The Host, the South Korean monster movie, had so many different tonal shifts and different things going on in it. The characters go from laughing to screaming to having real, deep grief about lost family members. Creature features can take us anywhere and everywhere.
NL: I’ve been thinking about this a lot—partly because I’m a heavy metal fan, and the argument about subgenres within heavy metal is unending. Similarly in horror, as you’re saying, the creature feature can take on all of these aspects of other subgenres, too.
Do you think part of that is just because horror subgenres are so porous, or is there something more precise about having a monster at the center of the movie?
I think you need the running and the screaming to make it a creature feature.
KD: So, the cat is in a cardboard box with a paper bag…
NL: No one else is ever going to hear this. I’m the only one who has to deal with the transcript. [But I never said they wouldn’t read it!]
KD: I guess another question—that I’m asking myself—is, “What even is a creature feature?” Is it any movie with a monster? How are we even defining creature feature? Do you know if there is an agreed-upon definition?
NL: Well, I think that’s one of the things about subgenres, like… like Alien. One of my favorite films of all time—it’s a creature feature, right? It’s in the title. But it’s also a slasher.
KD: And a haunted house.
NL: And it’s a haunted house.
KD: The argument could be made in so many directions. I can defend Jurassic Park as a horror movie till I’m blue in the face.
NL: So what’s your definition of a creature feature?
KD: I think I’m going to hearken back to Jurassic Park and refer to the running and the screaming. I think you need the running and the screaming to make it a creature feature.
NL: You know that’s gonna be a pullquote. [And it is!]
Let’s back up a little bit. How did you catch the writing bug? Not even the horror bug, but the writing bug.
KD: I have been writing since I was too little to actually write. I would dictate stories to my mother, and I would illustrate them.
My parents are big readers. We always had books around the house. I remember my dad reading The Last of the Mohicans—when I did not understand what was going on—but I just remember being present, him reading out loud.
And my mom, I don’t know if she is still so much, but she was a pretty big horror fan. Stephen King was always around in our house. I can remember finding in the attic boxes of of old horror paperbacks from the late seventies, Harvest Home, and… why am I not remembering anything else that’s in those boxes?
But it was magical. Not to keep coming back to Jurassic Park, but when that came out, I think I was 11, and my mom got my dad the book for Christmas. We all read the book, and then we all went to see the movie together. [There aren’t] a lot of things that I remember us doing as a family. Jurassic Park is the thing.
From reading to just always having books around to making my own stories—I have pictures of me at various ages with a notebook. It’s always been a part of me.
NL: Do you remember some of those earliest stories? Any of those plots?
KD: There were a lot of talking dogs—
NL: Word.
KD: —there was a lot of copyright infringement.
NL: Fan fiction is what we like to call it.
KD: Yes. I remember doing a giant mashup with the dog Charlie from All Dogs Go to Heaven and Dodger from Oliver & Company, and Rin Tin Tin was there, I think… So yeah, there were a lot of dogs. Flying dogs, talking dogs…
I remember a friend of mine and I wrote a story about a killer who used a cantaloupe spoon as the weapon of choice. And my cousin and I wrote and illustrated a version of it—it was like a mash up of a bunch of urban legends. I just remember the lurid illustration of the corpse hanging over the car, dripping blood, drip, drip, drip, on the roof of the car.
My cousin’s mom was not quite as into horror—there was a raised eyebrow.
[But] I have always felt very supported as a horror author.
I went to the university of Maine and studied writing, and they’re not allowed to say bad things about genre fiction, because all of the University of Maine’s money comes from Stephen King. So I never had that experience in my undergrad of being pushed away from genre.
And then I went to Seton Hill in Pennsylvania—not to be confused with Seton Hall—which has the “writing popular fiction” MFA program, where Mike Arnzen teaches, Tim Waggoner was there when I was there. Gary Braunbeck, Lucy Snyder was part of that program when I was there. So lots of super cool folks encouraging me to do awesome things with genre.
NL: In undergrad, you double majored in theater. Other than strictly storytelling, what drew you to the theater, and do you think that it’s had an influence on your writing?
KD: I focused on lighting design and stage management. I did a little bit of playwriting. I did the minimal acting that they would let me get away with. They do not let you get a theater degree without taking any acting classes. But the mechanics and the lighting I have always loved. Bright, loud colors and spectacle. I love spectacle.
So that was a way to build spectacle in a different way. A visual spectacle.
NL: Spectacle seems to tie into creature features, too. Would you ever do anything in the theater again? Do you have any story ideas that would ever wind up on the stage?
KD: I don’t know. I went to a ten-minute play festival written by Vermont playwrights last year, and it didn’t immediately spark any ideas… but I did think it would be fun to write something and see if they take it.
But I got really burnt out with theater. I came to Vermont for a job, working for a lighting production house, and with the crazy hours and things… I flamed out pretty hard.
NL: You grew up in Maine and then moved to Vermont—how do you feel about leaving the King’s hometown?
KD: Yeah… he was my graduation speaker.
NL: Of course he was.
KD: The theme of the speech that he gave was that he wanted us to stay in Maine. So part of me does feel like I betrayed him, but I also couldn’t find a job in Maine. This was 2005 that I graduated from college.
So—sorry Uncle Steve.
“Oh, I’m three miles away from the parking area. And that’s an alligator that’s looking at me.”
NL: Let’s turn to the craft portion of the interview. I don’t want to ask, “where do you get your ideas?” But what is the experience, for you, of an idea cropping to the surface?
KD: So [the imminently forthcoming] Faith of Dawn. I was in Florida [with my] back-then partner, now ex-partner. We were visiting his parents and driving past the Ocala National Forest. And his mother made a comment like, “Oh, there’s bad people there. A lot of people go missing there. It’s not a good place.”
And that piqued my interest. So I was doing all of this Googling, and I couldn’t find anything to support her statements. But the idea was planted, and I’ve been a little bit obsessed with the national forest ever since. I went down a few years ago and stayed at an AirBnB and wandered around in the forest. It is some of the most beautiful scenery that I’ve ever been to. It’s so different than New England. There’s a lot of these crystal clear springs bubbling up from the ground.
[In the forest,] I was like, “Oh, I’m three miles away from the parking area. And that’s an alligator that’s looking at me.”
That was kind of a humbling experience, because I don’t really think about the the big wild predators in New England as being scary. Bears and coyotes, I guess? Those aren’t scary.
Alligators are different.
And then Amazing Alligator Girl came from an airboat ride—
NL: Was it on that same trip?
KD: It was a different trip. Every time I go to Florida—my muse. Florida speaks to my muse. My novel Stolen Away was also half a Florida novel, and I started writing it while I was in Florida.
I don’t know what it is, but every time I go down there—ding.
My aunt pulled me aside at Thanksgiving and said, “You need to write a sequel” [to Amazing Alligator Girl.] It would have to do with all of those giant pythons that are roaming around the Everglades.
I’ve never been a sequel person, but she might be right. They would be bigger and meaner than in real life, because of course.
NL: For Woman in White, you’ve mentioned that you had a friend who worked at a—was it a morgue?
KD: She works for the Maine State Crime Lab. It is my best friend’s little sister. I was seven when she was born, and I wrote a story about her being born.
So she works for the Maine State Crime Lab and was able to take us on a behind the scenes tour—and that’s what got my brain working for [Woman in White].
NL: It sounds like you’re really invested in taking something that exists in the real world and finding something new to do with it.
KD: Yes, definitely. I love playing with the real world. I have no real interest in creating a fantasy world. I like reality to do most of my worldbuilding for me so that I can focus on the subversions.
NL: What are what are some of the things you’re thinking about in the very first stages of a project? And then, do you outline, just jump into it…?
KD: There’s no thinking. When we were visiting the Villages [a Florida retirement community], we had a whole bunch of flight delays. It was ridiculous. We got to his parents’ house and my partner was like, “I think I need to take a nap.”
I just sat down and started banging out the first scene.
It’s no longer in the book—one of the characters that I wrote in that first scene never made it to the final draft—but I was just like—ding!—and I’m off. That’s the way it is for everything. And I can’t force it. It’s very hard to [force it].
My story “The Red Hike,” that I wrote for Ed Kurtz’s In the Cold, Cold Ground—he gave me the prompt, “Horror story, Vermont, go.” It took me a really long time to land on something. And I’m happy with the story I wrote, but that was a more challenging exercise than just writing whatever I feel like.
NL: I’m really interested, then, to hear what your revision process is like. How do you approach revision?
KD: I approach revisions with a flame thrower.
NL: What does that mean? I need specifics.
KD: Yeah—I write pretty rough first drafts. I don’t even remember characters’ names sometimes. And I’ll just do all caps [in moments] where I don’t remember what I’m talking about. The timelines are nonsensical. I often will change train tracks halfway through.
The project I’m working on right now: I am 86,000 words in. It’s not done, but I got stuck at the end, so I’m starting the rewrite process now. I’ve just gone back to the beginning and I’m working my way through, and, conceivably by the time I get to the part where I’ve been stuck, I’ll have figured something out.
I have to do my thinking with a pen.
NL: I’m going to keep needling at this. What does it physically look like when you’re in the rewriting process? You’ve done the first draft. Do you have two documents open? What does it actually look like?
KD: Hang on, I can show you.
[She disappears for a moment into the dark recesses of her house, leaving the video in the deranged control of her ash-colored cat, but soon returns brandishing a journal…]
NL: You are a manuscript writer.
KD: I have to scribble on the paper and then make a bunch of notes in the notebook. I have to do my thinking with a pen. The hard thinking has to be done with a pen, the easy thinking… [Pantomimes frantic keyboarding] …and then going back through and reworking it through the manuscript. And I have to go through the whole thing.
NL: For being only 30,000 words, Amazing Alligator Girl has such a cast of characters. How do you go about handling such a large cast and making sure, one, that everyone is well-drawn, and two, that readers aren’t confused?
KD: I spend a lot of time thinking about Stephen King.
I figured out that he just takes one setting and traps his characters, and that’s almost every one of his books—I don’t want to say single location, but there’s some element of characters being trapped.
And if you think about playwriting—so I guess this does come back—it’s more powerful when you’ve got a single time and place [instead of], “We’re over here now, we’re over here, now we’re up here.” And I thought that that airboat ride would be a really fun “place” to play with. Who are we sticking on this airboat and how are they going to make it through the night in the swamp?
Some other characters do come along, but that was my main goal: one night, one airboat, a cast of characters and alligator mayhem.
NL: Aristotle’s alligators.
KD: I’m pretty sure “alligator mayhem” was one of the unities.
NL: In all of this, what do you find that you struggle with the most in the process?
KD: I get very frustrated when I can’t make the plot work, or when I have a cool idea but I can’t justify it. I have scrapped entire projects because I haven’t been able to figure out, like, “Why wouldn’t character A just kill character B?” Done. Game over.
…one night, one airboat, a cast of characters and alligator mayhem.
Or my first novel, Trinity, I feel like there’s a hole in the book where things don’t make sense, and I can’t figure out how to make it make sense in a way that I’m excited about. So, as of right now, Trinity will not be seeing the light of day again. [Well, unless you follow that Amazon link.]
Perhaps someday I’ll figure out the hole in the book and just solidify that plot.
That’s where I got stuck in the project that I’m working on now. I had a cool setpiece and I had some cool things going on, but I could feel myself slowing down, because [the characters’] reasons for being there were stupid.
I like the characters, too. But they were in an abandoned mineshaft while the town is flooding, and they did not have a good reason to be there. I had them leave and come back and I was like, “No, no, no, no, no.”
So—starting at the beginning. Gotta get them in the mineshaft one way or the other. It’s gotta be fun—and not stupid.
NL: Do you have a daily “practice,” for lack of a better word? King, famously, 2,000 words a day. Do you have something similar, or is it more, “Okay, now I’ve got my idea, and I’m going to plunge in for awhile until I surface”?
KD: It’s more the latter. I try to get up at six and spend an hour writing. I do have a full-time job, and I have pets and hobbies and all that good stuff, and making time to write certainly is easier when the ideas are flowing, than when the ideas are not flowing.
I got my certified financial planner designation earlier this year. While I was studying for it, I told myself that I was not allowed to write creatively. It was forbidden, not allowed. And the day after I passed the test, I started writing. I have written so much this year. That worked really well, not letting myself write, and making ideas stay bottled up.
It’s gotta be fun—and not stupid.
NL: You’re very active in the horror community. Let’s go back, almost to the beginning. Trinity came out in, what, 2012?
KD: And that came about because Tim Waggoner was my mentor in grad school. He said to somebody at DarkFuse, “Check this out.”
NL: Networking has a bad connotation for some people. But you’ve been around the industry for ten years. More than that, probably, with short story publishing. What have you learned just by being hooked into the community?
KD: The grad school program that I chose rocket projected my networking, just because of the nature of the program. And they do that intentionally, because they want us to be meeting writers in our genres. Local writers in the Pennsylvania area would come, writers who knew writers affiliated with the program. There was always a big book signing.
There would be readings for people outside of the program and alumni of the program. From there you start meeting people in the Horror Writers Association, you start meeting people in the New England Horror Writers, you start going to conferences. It was people that I met at Seton Hill that got me going to [the conventions] NECon, going to World Horror.
Back then it was with a pack of my grad school people, and we still kind of clumped together at StokerCon. I’m a social butterfly, but I’m also kind of shy. So I like my little clump of people that I can roam around with.
NL: Beyond professional connections, what have you gained on a personal level from being so enmeshed in the horror community?
KD: I am much closer to my grad school friends than any of my undergrad friends.
Public speaking. The opportunity to talk on panels, things like that. In my financial advisor career, it doesn’t really bother me to speak in front of people. I do feel more confident talking about monsters, but an IRA is just another kind of monster.
NL: Capitalism is the real monster.
KD: Oh, man. I could go down that tangent. My forthcomingist release—it kind of snuck out. It’s coming out tomorrow [That would be 12/19/2023.] from Crossroad Press, called Downlines, and it’s about multilevel marketing schemes and lizard people and capitalism as the real monster.
NL: NL: Faith of Dawn is coming out from—I was about to call it “Cemetery Gates.” That’s not what it is. Cemetery Dance. What can you tell us about it? What’s the elevator pitch?
KD: The elevator pitch is that a physically and emotionally damaged Afghanistan veteran’s marriage is falling apart, and she returns to her hometown in Florida to solve a high profile disappearance case, because she feels like she needs to prove something. She winds up getting sucked into suicide cults and skunk apes and betrayal on levels that she could not fathom.
NL: Where did those characters come from? You know, if you get the idea that you’re going to write a story about suicide cults and skunk apes in Florida, how does the emotionally damaged Afghanistan veteran come to you?
KD: Looking at some friends going through a breakup, and then thinking about some of my own breakups. The physical issues that the character has—that Amanda Lane has—are kind of an embodiment of the emotional issues.
For me, I was writing through some relationship issues. It’s interesting because, even in the couple of years since I’ve written the book, I find that her thinking in the beginning is very simplistic and not very evolved. And there’s a whole other arc of her and her relationship throughout this book that means a great deal to me.
I mean, there are things exploding, there’s monsters, there’s all of these other things. But her growth thread through the book, I think, is something kind of special.
NL: Maybe we can turn toward some lighter fare before we get into the lightning round. Is there a certain piece of media—other than Jurassic Park—that you find yourself returning to when you’re looking for inspiration or motivation, or even just comfort food?
KD: The Thing and Alien are always—
NL: I knew we were friends.
KD: —there for me. Piranha. I did not watch Piranha 3-DD because that just seemed like it was crossing some arbitrary line.
I love when horror and humor can perfectly mesh together, like The Lost Boys. That’s a very funny movie, but it’s also got some really scary scenes in it. That’s a favorite.
Stephen King. [Big surprise.] I can read any of his books a million times. I haven’t read all of them, but I’m pretty darn close. Those are the big ones.
NL: You’re not only a financial planner and a novelist, but you have hobbies. What are some of your hobbies?
KD: I like motorcycles, and I like hiking. I have hiked all of the 4,000-foot peaks in New Hampshire, of which there are 48. There are 67 high peaks in New England—I have three left, and they’re all in Maine. Over in the Adirondacks, there are 46, and I’ve done five of those. Just getting started.
And my creatures, my little fuzzy buddies.
NL: Let’s jump into the lightning round. Favorite cocktail, mocktail, or other beverage.
KD: Anything with orange juice. Tequila sunrise, screwdriver, amaretto and orange juice. If it’s got orange juice in it, I will drink it.
NL: You really are a Floridian.
Alien or Aliens?
KD: Are you asking which is better or which is more fun?
NL: I’m asking Alien or Aliens? [I refuse to back down from this question.]
KD: …Aliens?
NL: Do you want to expound on on why you’ve gone with Aliens over the the objectively better film Alien?
KD: Because it’s more fun. Alien is intense and it’s serious. I first tried to read the novelization when I was in middle school—I was not allowed to watch horror, but I had an adult library card and nothing was off limits.
I was like, “This is going to be the scariest thing ever.” I was so bored and did not even get to the alien part. The movie is a slow burn, and it takes a while to get to the alien, and I’m more “Explosions!” and action horror.
Aliens is not a slow burn. It’s a James Cameron action movie. And Bill Paxton’s got his witty lines, and there’s banter, and Paul Reiser is at his most punchable, and then you’ve got the queen. It’s spectacle.
NL: If someone told you you had to memorize an entire novel word for word, which novel would you pick?
KD: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.
NL: Why?
KD: I’ve read it a lot. It might be my favorite book, and it’s on the shorter side.
NL: Most underrated or sadly forgotten TV show. For a for a left turn.
KD: Get Smart. Has that been forgotten?
NL: Well, I would be shocked if Gen Zers knew anything about Get Smart. I feel like our parents would have introduced us to Get Smart, but it’s at the level where people of our generation have probably not shown their kids.
Okay, last question. Tell us about one thing we haven’t talked about yet today that lives rent free in your brain.
KD: The serious answer would be that most of my work has a feminist, domestic violence and assault theme running through it, because I think that’s the scariest thing there is. It’s scarier than murder—after you get murdered, you don’t have to live with the aftermath of being murdered.
If we want a more fun answer, I spend a lot of time thinking about rally cars and watching rally car videos on YouTube.
NL: Rally cars and domestic abuse. [Could’ve been an alternate title to this interview, TBH.]
[Kristin and I then spent 10+ minutes just shooting the shit, until I, like a total beginner interviewer—]
Oh shit! We’re back in interview mode. When does Faith of Dawn come out and where can people find it?
KD: It comes out on February 15, 2024, and there is a link to preorder it at Cemetery Dance.
It’s going to be one of their book club books, so anybody who signs up for their book club is going to get a copy. And I think Thunderstorm Books is doing a hardcover. That would be my third Thunderstorm hardcover. They’re the best to work with.
NL: Kristin, thank you so much!
KD: Thank you.
Noah Lloyd 