Interview With Award-Winning Author Deborah Sheldon
By Robyn O’Sullivan
The newest release from award-winning horror author Deborah Sheldon is a collection of short stories under the title Liminal Spaces. Sheldon is a masterful writer, combining fascinating characters with gripping plots. Her narratives are engaging, well-paced and absorbing; often beguiling and always unputdownable. Her new collection encompasses all of this, and more. She never fails to surprise and delight! I recently caught up with Deborah to talk about the evocatively titled Liminal Spaces: Horror Stories.
Transitions occur in a liminal space. The familiar is gone. The unknown lies ahead and with it, terrible possibilities.
Award-winning author Deborah Sheldon explores liminal spaces in this collection of dark, unsettling fiction. Her characters teeter on frightening thresholds with no way back.
Liminal Spaces includes Sheldon’s award-nominated tales “For Weirdless Days and Weary Nights”, “All the Stars in Her Eyes” and Barralang, “Pop. 63”, plus original and unpublished fiction.
You can buy Liminal Spaces From Amazon UK & Amazon US
Robyn O’Sullivan: Readers are always interested in this question: is there an initial stimulus or inspiration that drives an author to write a book?
Deborah Sheldon: From a technical point of view, the inspiration for Liminal Spaces was my love for the short story format. Thematically, however, inspiration sprang from feelings about my medical condition. After decades of deteriorating health and mobility, I was finally diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Finding out that my condition is both incurable and progressive has been a challenge, to say the least. Starting in 2019, I found myself writing stories about characters who are trapped in limbo and confronted with futures that are uncertain and potentially threatening. Once I recognised the common thread, I leaned into it and started building stories around the idea of a liminal space. From a writerly standpoint, examining the moment when a character leaves their familiar life behind is bracing. It offers lots of opportunities for dark, psychological exploration.
ROS: Is it important to organise the stories in a collection or should the order of presentation be random?
DS: Oh, I spend a ridiculous amount of time agonising over story order! For me, story order is critical to a collection’s ebb and flow, which in turn influence a reader’s experience. My technique is to use index cards. Each story gets a card, and I write down subgenre, POV, word count, tense (past or present) and style. Then I commandeer our dining table – sometimes for weeks – and lay out the cards. For my first pass, I try to simply contrast the stories to surprise the reader. Next, I rearrange for mood. Then I keep fiddling until I’m sure of the collection’s overall emotional tempo.
I used this technique when I was editing both Midnight Echo 14 (Australasian Horror Writers Association) and my anthology Spawn: Weird Horror Tales About Pregnancy, Birth and Babies (IFWG Publishing Australia). It’s a laborious process, sure, but I’m pernickety by nature.
ROS: What do you think is more important in the creation of an engaging narrative: the characters or the plot?
DS: That’s a tricky question, because to me, character and plot are two sides of the same coin. One can’t exist without the other because a story’s plot points depend on the characters’ emotions, decisions and actions.
As far as story ideas are concerned, sometimes the plot bubbles up first; other times a character takes centre stage. In “Molly, Dearest Molly” I wanted to explore the use of mind-altering drugs in PTSD therapy while incorporating a central image that had come to me by way of a nightmare. In “The House Across the Road”, I began with a character who is aggravated by the unusual activities of her neighbours, which meant I had to construct the plot around her observations, reactions and preoccupations.
In other cases, I set out to explore a technique. For example, “The Coach from Castlemaine” was inspired by my desire to write a story in the form of a bush ballad.
ROS: Is there a person or force that acts as the muse to your creative endeavours?
DS: My muse is a demanding bitch called Discipline. I work every second day and my routine is sacrosanct. That said, I don’t always write creatively on work days; sometimes, I’m busy with marketing, promotion, mentoring, workshopping, or email queries. But when I’m writing, I turn up and get started without dilly-dallying. Typically, I set the mood by reading over and editing what I last wrote. By the time I’ve revised, my mind (or muse?) is warmed up and ready to run. I write until my energy flags. Sometimes that’s just a couple of hours. Other times, it’s all day.
ROS: What’s the biggest trap aspiring writers should avoid?
DS: Trying to pen “The Great [fill-in-the-blank] Novel”. In itself, this dream tends to create nothing but writer’s block. Yes, of course, every writer wants to produce a game-changing manuscript. But here are some bitter truths…
Good writers are a dime a dozen. Sorry! There are plenty of great writers too; some of them geniuses. And yet the marketplace is saturated, and contains plenty of lousy stories. Which means that even if your story is brilliantly written, there’s no guarantee it will be either published or noticed by readers. The industry is a crap shoot that depends more on luck than talent. Am I being cruel? Maybe. But cruel to be kind.
My advice: write because you have to. Because you love it. Because you can’t imagine life without it. Forget fame, fortune, being able to pay your weekly rent with royalties or, hell, even being able to buy a cup of coffee. The profit margins are too thin these days for champagne and caviar. Celebrate every achievement, no matter how small. Don’t downplay a contract or credit just because it’s not a blip on the world stage. Otherwise, you’ll miss experiencing – and enjoying – your own successes.
ROS: When readers choose a genre, they have expectations. Do you rigidly follow the tropes or do you favour some originality?
DS: There are certain genres, like westerns and romance, where tropes are paramount. For example, what kind of romance would end with the heroine and hero getting divorced?
Horror is its own beast. There are many subgenres and even these can be mashed together, or blended with other genres, to create something new. I believe that horror fans always want certain things – to feel uneasy, scared, shocked or even nauseated – but also crave the surprise of the unexpected. They’ve read it all and are easily bored. Catering to such a sophisticated audience is a balancing act. You have to offer homage to the established tropes, yet extend the story into strange territory. It’s an exciting challenge for a writer.
In Liminal Spaces, I explored a variety of subgenres new to me, including phantasmagorical and sci-fi. Out of all my collections, I think this one has the greatest spread. My aim is that Liminal Spaces comes across like an anthology by different writers.
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 was 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
Liminal Spaces
Transitions occur in a liminal space. The familiar is gone. The unknown lies ahead and with it, terrible possibilities.
Award-winning author Deborah Sheldon explores liminal spaces in this collection of dark, unsettling fiction. Her characters teeter on frightening thresholds with no way back.
Liminal Spaces includes Sheldon’s award-nominated tales “For Weirdless Days and Weary Nights”, “All the Stars in Her Eyes” and Barralang, “Pop. 63”, plus original and unpublished fiction.
You can buy Liminal Spaces From Amazon UK & Amazon US
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
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