Interview with award-winning horror author, Deborah Sheldon
Composed By Robyn O’Sullivan
Deborah Sheldon is an award-winning author of all things horror, in all possible manifestations. Sheldon’s writing is suspenseful, rigorous and intelligent. Her books are page-turners that fully engage the gamut of horror readers, from newbies to cynics. The hallmarks of her writing are well-devised plots, fully-developed characters, and the ability to cross genres seamlessly – as evidenced in her latest release, Man-Beast (Severed Press), a gruesome creature feature set within a historical story. Recently, I sat down with Deb to chat about the nitty-gritties of this action-horror novella.
Taylor’s Travelling Troupe of boxers has set up its tent at an isolated sheep station: bored farmers always bet to excess. Headlining the bare-knuckle fighters is Bluey, marketed as ‘The Man-Beast’, a Sasquatch-like monster, chained and kept drunk enough to fight punters without killing them. But the troupe has returned to where Bluey was first captured. Recognising the mountains, he calls again and again. And when his call is answered, all hell breaks loose.
Robyn O’Sullivan: What prompted you to write Man-Beast?
Deborah Sheldon: I’ve written twice before about the yowie – in a short story and a ballad – and wanted to explore this mythical Aussie creature in greater depth. When it comes to writing creature-feature stories, I naturally turn to Australian fauna for inspiration since I’m Australian. My novel Devil Dragon (Severed Press) is about a colossal reptile that used to roam our bushland during the Mega Fauna age. My novella Thylacines (Severed Press) features genetically engineered versions of the Tasmanian tiger, a wild dog hunted to extinction in the 1930s. My award-winning collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories (IFWG Publishing Australia) includes “Species Endangered” where the monster is a giant cassowary, an actual modern-day bird. I like to document the particulars of my country!
RO’S: During your research on yowies, what details stood out for you?
DS: Most cultures around the world have a ‘hairy hominid’ cryptid, and Australia is no exception. The yowie – as it’s commonly called these days – is similar to the Sasquatch, such as Bigfoot and the Abominable Snowman, in that it’s a mysterious gorilla-like creature. The yowie lives in the remote Australian bush, smells like rotten eggs, and stands around 12 feet tall. While timid and retiring, it can be violent when provoked. To this day, there are plenty of reported sightings and yowie hunters are determined to prove the monster is real. After all, the mountain gorilla was thought to be a cryptid until classified as a species in 1902. Who knows what creatures might be living in the vastness of the Australian Outback?
RO’S: Man-Beast is set roughly one hundred years ago. Any particular reason?
DS: After deciding to write a novella about the yowie, I made two important choices to help my story stand out from the crowd of Bigfoot fiction. Firstly, the monster wouldn’t be a mysterious cryptid, but an accepted animal in Australia’s fauna like the kangaroo, wombat or crocodile. Secondly, my story would be set in the early twentieth century, meaning my characters would be bereft of modern technology such as mobile phones, GPS, the Internet, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and semi-automatic weapons – making them much more vulnerable to danger.
RO’S: A yowie and a boxing troupe might seem strange bedfellows for a plot. How did you decide to combine these two?
DS: Early in the twentieth century, travelling boxing troupes were a feature of Australia’s agricultural life. Troupes followed the calendar of agricultural shows and made a lot of money from gambling. I first heard about these boxing troupes back in the 1980s when I was a young woman in university. The concept fascinated me. At the time, I planned to make a documentary or perhaps write a book. Other projects – and life concerns – overtook me. It wasn’t until Man-Beast that I was finally able to revisit my interest in boxing troupes and work it into an action-adventure horror story.
RO’S: Your story is about a yowie, yet you refer to it as ‘Yahoo-Devil-Devil’ in the book. Why did you change the name?
DS: Since 1995, ‘yowie’ is known throughout Australia as a type of chocolate confectionary marketed to children. Whoops, not exactly scary! So instead, I chose one of the names popular at the start of the twentieth century: Yahoo-Devil-Devil. I felt the term held menace and mystique. Other names included Indigenous Ape and Hairy Man.
RO’S: Did you have a theme in mind when you began writing the book, or did that develop as the story progressed
DS: Thematically, abuse-for-profit was always going to be one of my preoccupations for Man-Beast. The human boxers are paid a pittance. They sleep on the ground of the boxing tent. The captured Yahoo-Devil-Devil, Bluey, imprisoned and trained to perform on command, hopefully draws sympathy too. While Bluey is a brutal monster, I wanted the reader to feel conflicted in their loyalties between him and the human characters. Fingers crossed; I’ve succeeded.
RO’S: Do you plan your books, or are you a ‘seat-of-your-pants’ writer?
DS: To a greater or lesser extent, I always write outlines for my stories so that I don’t spin in pointless circles for ages and then give up. My outlines are usually just a series of dot points that include the way-stations and ending. I wrote a vague outline for Man-Beast, but the story quickly evolved above and beyond it. Once I superseded the outline, I found myself constantly backed into corners. I often needed to ‘sleep on it’ to solve a plot point. The final act of Man-Beast is nothing like my planned ending. While I’m a devotee of the outline, my advice to fledgeling writers is: Don’t be scared to stray – in some cases, far away! – from your map because you’ll get there, given enough persistence and inspiration.
Man-Beast
Taylor’s Travelling Troupe of boxers has set up its tent at an isolated sheep station: bored farmers always bet to excess. Headlining the bare-knuckle fighters is Bluey, marketed as ‘The Man-Beast’, a Sasquatch-like monster, chained and kept drunk enough to fight punters without killing them. But the troupe has returned to where Bluey was first captured. Recognising the mountains, he calls again and again. And when his call is answered, all hell breaks loose.
You can buy Man-Beast from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Deborah Sheldon
Deborah Sheldon is an award-winning author from Melbourne, Australia. She writes short stories, novellas and novels across the darker spectrum of horror, crime and noir. Her award-nominated titles include the novels Body Farm Z, Contrition and Devil Dragon; the novella Thylacines; and the collection Figments and Fragments: Dark Stories.
Her collection Perfect Little Stitches and Other Stories won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Collected Work’ Award, was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award and longlisted for a Bram Stoker. Deb’s short fiction has appeared in many well-respected magazines such as Aurealis, Midnight Echo, Andromeda Spaceways, and Dimension6. Her fiction has also been shortlisted for numerous Australian Shadows Awards and Aurealis Awards, and included in various ‘best of’ anthologies such as Year’s Best Hardcore Horror.
As editor of the 2019 edition of Midnight Echo, Deb won the Australian Shadows ‘Best Edited Work’ Award. Her anthology Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies is a flagship 2021 title for IFWG Publishing Australia.
Deb’s other credits include TV scripts such as Neighbours, feature articles for Australian, US and UK magazines, non-fiction books (Reed Books, Random House), stage plays, and award-winning medical writing.
Visit her at www.deborahsheldon.wordpress.com
Deborah’s Amazon Author Page Can Be Found HERE
Robyn O’Sullivan
Robyn O’Sullivan is a professional writer and editor, living on the beautiful Bass coast of Victoria, Australia. Her published works include a novella Topsy Turvy, and the collections Getting a Life and Everything’s All Right, which were released by the award-winning Ginninderra Press. Robyn has written 40+ non-fiction educational books for children that have been distributed around the world including Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand and China. Other credits include creative non-fiction pieces in magazines such as Quadrant, and short stories in anthologies such as Guilty Pleasures and Other Dark Delights, the award-winning Midnight Echo 14, and Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies. Her short story “A Tale of the Ainu” was produced by the Night’s End podcast. Currently, Robyn is focused on writing short fiction and memoir. See more of her work at www.robynosullivan.com
Leave a Reply