We’ve got a treat today! I recently read Richard Beauchamp’s new short story collection, Horror in the Highlands, and when I asked if he might stop by and answer some questions about it here, he said yes! If you’re familiar with this blog, you’ll have also checked out Richard’s previous interview years ago about his short story in Negative Space: An Anthology of Survival Horror from Dark Peninsula Press.
Here’s my brief review of Horror in the Highlands:
Have you ever wandered deep into the woods and wondered if maybe you’d crossed into a place beyond reality? Have you heard trees whisper in the dark; heard a brook laugh at your insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe? Have you ever stood on a quiet road through the woods and felt something watching you back? Then Horror in the Hills is going to be right up your alley. Richard Beauchamp has a gift for building eerie atmosphere and stomach-churning revulsion, and he uses both to weave his dark and haunting tales in this collection. My personal favorites were “The Howler,” “Old Winona,” “Dirty Thirty,” and the pairing of the starting and ending stories: “Blight at Bull’s Gap” and “Viridian,” which brings the reader back in a beautifully warped circle. What’s more, however, is that throughout these dark and mesmerizing stories, I could sense the deep love and affection that Beauchamp has for the Ozarks, for their sylvan beauty and the scabrous remnants of expired industries. This collection will leave a lovely paradox in your mind: both a desire to visit these ancient wilds, and a deep terror if you do, these eldritch spaces will never let you go.
-O-
Welcome, Richard! Thank you again for participating! I really enjoyed HORROR IN THE HIGHLANDS, and one of the things that stuck out to me in particular—amid all the eldritch horrors, of course!—was a sense of how much you love the Ozarks. Could you share a little more about your personal relationship to the area and what motivated you to set the collection here?
I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed the collection, Maggie. Horror In the Highlands definitely has some strong themes, among them is a definitive regional connection to the area in which they’re set, the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks.
I’ve lived in southeast Missouri for most of my life, and while I’ve travelled the country and even been abroad a few times, something about the tranquility and understated beauty of the Ozark mountains has always called to me, and I feel the most centered among the hills and valleys I know so well. I am an avid outdoorsman, and one of the main ways I “recharge” and reset my internal clock often involves multiday camping trips to the places where many of these stories are set.
Also, I’ve found there’s a certain sense of verisimilitude when reading regional fiction writers whose work is set in their home turf. No one can write about East Texas the way Joe Lansdale can. No one can capture the subtle nuance of the Georgia wilds the way Flannery O’ Conner can. Other than Daniel Woodrell (who is a fantastic writer and one of my biggest influences) the Ozarks doesn’t have that many regional writers who’ve laid down stakes in this rocky, peach colored soil. I’m hoping to have done this often ignored region some justice.
Myths and legends play a large roll in HitH. Do you have a personal favorite myth/legend (included in the collection or not) that you find yourself drawn to over and over? What about it resonates with you particularly?
I do. “The Howler”, a story in HiTH, is based off the one unique cryptid the Ozarks can lay claim too, the “Ozark Howler” (We also have MoMo, or the Missouri monster, but that supposedly stinky feller is basically a bigfoot offshoot).
The howler stands alone among other US cryptids in that it is an amalgamation of ram, puma, and bear, a shaggy horned beast whose clarion call differs depending on which neck of the woods you’re pokin’ around in and who you’re asking. Some say it sounds like an elk bugle mixed with the scream of a man, others say it’s more akin to a hyena cackle. Either way, the howler’s lore is rich and spans back hundreds of years, with such historical figures as Daniel Boone claiming to have encountered the beast during the wild frontier days.
I noticed that the first and last stories of the collection, “The Blight at Bull’s Gap” and “Veridian,” echo each other in some key ways. I’m assuming that was intentional, as bookends for the collection, but what other considerations did you have to take in choosing the order of the stories?
It was indeed intentional. Funny enough, “Veridian” started off as a totally different story, unconnected to “Blight At Bull’s Gap”. It’d been a trunk story for a long time, and it wasn’t until I’d written The Blight At Bull’s Gap that I saw a way to elevate “Veridian” from your run of the mill “Guy meets inbred hillbillies in the woods” tale to something deeper, in that the horror that the protagonist encounters in Veridian is directly tied to the generational curse we encounter in BaBG.
Other considerations for order include things such as length, intensity, and pacing. For instance, I put “God In the Holler” right after Blight at Bull’s Gap, because it’s a shorter story, isn’t nearly as heavy as Blight (which almost veers into splatterpunk territory in some parts) and in general is a lighter read, even if it is tragic. I try and keep the reader guessing and keep the pacing fresh, and mimic the things I find appealing about story placement in other collections I’ve read.
I’m always curious when speaking to an author regarding a collection, and realizing it’s like asking which of your kids you like best, but do you have a favorite story, or one story that you’re particularly proud of?
If I had to narrow it down, I would say it would probably be “God In The Holler”. That story is one of my most personal, in that it was written as a coping mechanism when I found out my father had cancer. It was my first time ever being confronted with the mortality of a parent. My dad is a tough, salt of the earth man who never gets sick, never had to go the doctor, etc. He was, in my mind, invincible, so when the diagnosis came, I felt like my world had exploded. “God In The Holler” was one of the few times I ‘bled onto the page’ as the late Jack Ketchum would say, and it was my way of confronting the idea of how far someone would go to save a loved one. I wrote it in a sort of feverish fugue state, and I honestly wasn’t even planning on putting it in the collection until I revisited the story a few months later, and with my dad eventually whooping cancer’s ass and things returning somewhat to normal, I felt I could include it in the collection without it being too morbidly meta.
As a writer of horror, what makes a story scary in your opinion? Do you have any particular horror tropes or themes that you’re particularly drawn to? Any that you avidly avoid?
Hmmm, that’s a tough one. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been “scared” by reading since I was kid. But I can still feel the tension and dread of a well crafted story, and I think the way to make that tension the most impactful (to me, anyway) is by making characters I truly connect to, and then putting them in situations where I don’t know if they’ll make it out alive (looking at you, George RR Martin). Character driven fiction has always put me the most in tune with emotions such as fear, suspense and dread. I can’t really think of any specific tropes I’m drawn too, but I will say, ones I tend to avoid is rape and SA being present and vividly described when it serves no purpose to the story. I normally never include SA scenes in my fiction, and Blight at Bull’s Gap was the first time I ever included a rape scene in a story. It was a tough call having that in there given the subject matter, but I feel that, given the story’s heavy themes about generational trauma and racism, and the rape serving as a catalyst for the antagonist’s transformation, I felt it was necessary to include to really hammer home the cruel potential of man (and men specifically).
Everyone likes to ask, “Where do you get your ideas,” but I’m more curious in what you do after you get an idea. How do you develop that initial kernel into a full-blown story? Do you have certain things you hold in mind before you being writing?
So, spoiler alert, I live in a pretty rural area, and within ten minutes of my house are a vast network of country backroads I’ve driven so much I know them like the back of my hand, and can sort of slip into a trance state while driving them. Often times, when a story comes to me, it comes a bit like a slightly unearthed fossil. There’ll be a bone here, an ossified piece of mandible there, and the way I brush off the dirt and uncover the rest of the skeleton is by driving and thinking. I normally don’t listen to music or the radio when I drive, I tend to commute in silence and for some reason, the feeling of being in motion and letting my body focus on driving lets my mind untether, a sort of switch is flipped, and my imagination can drift and snatch ideas out of the ephemera of my subconscious. I can’t just sit in a chair and plot, it has to be driving (or, if weather permits, going for a walk). Sometimes, if it’s a short story idea, the whole thing might slam into me while I’m driving along those backroads, but if it’s a novel/long fiction idea, I tend to do a hybrid of pantsing and plotting.
I can never stick to an outline if it’s a longer story because the story changes as the characters are fleshed out, and I’ve frustrated myself over and over again trying to adhere to a rigid outline, so what I tend to do is figure out a general direction my story is going, try and outline three or four chapters ahead, let my character’s motivation’s see me through those chapters, and then do my little driving trick to figure out where things will go next. It’s not the most efficient way to write stories, but it works for me!
Outside of writing, do you have any passion hobbies you enjoy engaging with? How do they impact your writing, if at all?
So, as I mentioned before, I am an avid outdoorsman. I like to hunt, fish, camp, and hike, and I feel like my connection to the natural world around me definitely informs and influences my writing, as many of my stories take place in the wilderness or rural areas, with characters often trying to survive and deal with the natural elements they are forced to endure.
On the flipside, I am also a musician, though I don’t really know if this constitutes a hobby since it’s what I do for a living, but it definitely is a passion of mine besides writing. Though I don’t explore it as much as the nature and wilderness elements, I occasionally will draw on my experiences as a recording and touring musician as fiction fodder for some of my stories.
Writers are often prolific readers, and I’m always looking for new things to read myself, so one thing I love asking in these interviews is: What is your favorite non-fiction book? What work of fiction has recently impressed you?
There are two non-fiction books I hold near and dear to my heart: Vance Randolph’s ‘Dispatches From the Ozarks’, which dives deep into the culture and unique dialect of our area, and ‘The Indifferent Stars Above’ by Daniel Brown, which tells the saga of the Donner Party, and my god, it has to be one of the most horrifying and visceral books I’ve ever read.
Fiction wise, I’ve recently gotten into Joyce Carol Oates’ short story collections, and have been blown away by the brevity of her story telling style. “Haunted” has to be one of the most unique collections of stories I’ve ever read, and I strongly advise anyone who likes experimental story telling and southern gothic flavoring to read her vast catalog of fiction.
What’s next for you? Any projects you’re especially excited about that we should keep an eye out for?
Well, I am currently in the middle of revisions for two novels that will becoming out later this year. ‘THRALL’ draws heavily on my experiences as a touring musician and takes place in the fictional town of Carter Missouri. Grendel Press plans on releasing that one in October. My other novel, ‘…And They Will Suffer’ is a strange historical horror novel set during the civil war, and is really three interconnected novellas dressed up in a trench coat and pretending to be a novel. Anatolian Press is handling that one, and the release for that is TBA, but we’re hoping for a winter 2024 or early 2025 release. Between those, I’ll be juggling some anthology releases and writing short stories for a few up coming submission calls.
Thank you so much for stopping by and giving us a little insight into your writing and process!
-O-
Richard Beauchamp’s short horror and speculative fiction have appeared in numerous publications such as Negative Space: An Anthology of Survival Horror, Night Terrors, and SNAFU, and his work has been compiled in several collections, including Black Tongue and Other Anomalies, Horror in the Highlands, and Triptych: Three Tales of Frontier Horror. To learn more about him and his upcoming projects, visit his website at richardbeauchampauthor.com or follow him on Instagram at r_b_author.