We chat with Gemma Amor about Roots of My Fears, which is an anthology that explores stories of heritage and horror. The tales we grew up on, hometown rumours and legends.
Hi, Gemma! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hello! I’m a Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award nominated author, voice actor, editor and illustrator based in Bristol, in the UK. I was named one of the ‘Writers Shaping Horror’s Next Golden Age’ by Esquire Magazine, and recently featured in Ellen Datlow’s prestigious Best Horror of the Year anthology, Vol. 15 and 17.
I self-published my debut short story collection Cruel Works of Nature in 2018 and went on to release award-nominated, multi-adapted novella Dear Laura and a number of other books including White Pines, Girl on Fire, Six Rooms, Grief is a False God, and These Wounds We Make before signing my first traditional publishing deal for Full Immersion, published by Angry Robot books in 2022.
My forthcoming novel Itch! Is due from Hodder & Stoughton in 2025. An anthology of ancestral horror stories called Roots of my Fears, edited by me, is due from Titan in September 2025. It feels like I’ve come a long way since those early self-pub days!
I also paint book covers, and am the co-creator, writer and voice actor for horror-comedy podcast Calling Darkness, starring Kate Siegel. My short stories feature in a number of horror anthologies in print and have been adapted many times over by the NoSleep Podcast, Pseudopod, Shadows at the Door, Creepy, The Hidden Frequencies and the Grey Rooms podcast. I have also made numerous podcast appearances to date.
A short film I co-wrote called Hidden Mother (2021) was well received at film festivals and I am currently working on my first feature length screenplay. I also illustrates my own works and occasionally narrate audiobooks too, including The Possession Of Natalie Glasgow by Hailey Piper, Full Immersion, and ITCH!
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I’ve been writing my entire life, since I was old enough to understand I needed to do so on a daily basis by starting a diary. I think the act of articulating myself in written form every day helped habitualise me into writing from such a young age I don’t really know any other way, now, and get grumpy if I cannot write, as my thoughts don’t tend to make much sense in my head unless I see them laid out on a page.
I wrote my first ‘novel’ when I was 14, a Lord of the Rings rip-off quest story with elves, women archers, swordsmen and dragons, and had a blast writing it. I remember I drew a dragon on the front cover, laminated the book (it was a lined school exercise book I stole from school) with sticky-back plastic, and gave it to my English teacher at the time, Mr. Haywood. It was a terrible, terrible book, but he read it and gave me real, honest, encouraging feedback that has stayed with me to this day. That was my first true experience of getting something I wrote into the hands of a reader, rather than writing in a diarised manner, where the only audience was me. I was absolutely hooked from that moment on and spent most of my life until 2018 trying, and failing, to complete a novel manuscript. Life got in the way: jobs, travel, socialising, plus I lacked the specific skills to actually complete a long form novel. In 2018 I was unemployed, suffering from post-natal depression and desperate to finish something, anything, after decades of trying, so I began writing short stories in order to enjoy a feeling of completion. My first was accepted and adapted into audio drama form by the NoSleep Podcast, and that was my first real experience of being published. The rest, as they say, is history.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The ladybird book series- specifically the Three Billy Goats Gruff, retold by Vera Southgate, which had a rather terrifying front cover painted by Robert Lumley with three very smug looking goats on the front and the ugliest troll you’ve ever seen to boot. My Nan used to read it to me, and I remember squealing in delight because she would do the most ridiculous troll-voice.
- The one that made you want to become an author: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I am obsessed with interiority and wild spaces and simmering mysteries and complex characters who are not afraid to be unlikeable, sexually coherent and competent. I also love an unreliable narrator and was very drawn to the appeal of writing from a first person perspective as it feels, from a reader perspective, more illicit, more like I have gone back to my diary writing days only now, I am reading someone else’s diary entries, and that can be thrilling to say the least.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: I have just finished reading I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman and will never be the same again. The loneliness, the epic strangeness, the determination to provide no answers to any of the questions that arise and let the reader reach their own conclusions, the tragedy of isolation, all of it…haunting, brilliant, and utterly essential reading.
Roots of My Fears is a new horror anthology featuring 14 authors and edited by you! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Ancestral, Own Voices, diverse, beautiful
What can readers expect?
I’ve long wanted to edit an anthology of horror stories that looked a bit different to some of the others out there. I wanted the focus to be on identity, heritage, different world views and voices, childhood experiences, creepy stories passed down through the generations, traditions, legends, lore, cultural idiosyncrasies, special places, and whether a person felt they belonged or not. I’ve always loved stories written by people who have entirely unique lived experiences to me. I adore that about anthologies: so many ways to tell a story, differently.
It’s also part of why I opened this anthology up to submissions alongside the invitee list. The three stories I ended up accepting (i was supposed to take one but I couldn’t say no) blew my mind and introduced me to three stunning writers I might never have encountered immediately otherwise. The talent pool is wide but often the same characters get rotated on tables of contents, for trad pubbed books especially. I wanted to try and shift the needle a little in that respect and try and make a difference.
I’m proud of the TOC and super proud of the stories within, each one a wee masterpiece in my humble opinion. We have stories from Erika T Wurth, Ai Jiang, Usman T Malik, Adam Nevill, Nuzo Onoh, Premee Mohamed, Gabino Iglesias, Nadia El-Fassi, Ramsey Campbell, V Castro, Hailey Piper, Elena Sichrovsky, Caleb Weinhardt, and Sarah Deacon.
Where did the inspiration for Roots of My Fears come from?
See above.
Can you tell us a bit about the process on editing an anthology?
Ooof that’s a long and very involved question that may drive anyone reading a bit insane so let’s just say I learned a LOT of lessons and it took several years of insanely hard work, wrangling, emailing back and forth, and reading over 450 submissions until my eyes bled. The main thing, I found, was to have spreadsheets for everything and to make sure I stayed laser focussed on the theme as far as humanly possible, and the end result, I think, is a lot more cohesive because of that.
What’s next for you?
I have two books out next year, one a romance-gone-wrong serial killer crime novel called First Date, which is gruesome and gritty and my homage to the works of Mo Hayder, and an equally hard-hitting but more satirical slasher called Happy Hour, which is pitched as Cocktail meets American Psycho but set in 90’s London during it’s clubbing heyday, about a murderous serial killer who is also a cocktail mixer extraordinaire.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
I am leaning heavily into books by women this year and have been devouring Julia Armfield, Ottessa Mosfegh, Daphne du Maruier’s short story collections and am about to launch into LeGuin. I’d like to start the Three Body Problem soon.
