Shannon Lawrence adds to the line-up of featured writers celebrating Women in Horror Month and the second annual Bloody Valentine with a reading of her Valentine’s/Lupercalia story “Blind Date.” “If you’ve never heard of Lupercalia, I recommend looking it up. Quite the naughty holiday,” says Lawrence.
Readers can find “Blind Date” in the holiday collection Happy Ghoulidays, which features stories ranging from Thanksgiving to Valentine’s, and everything in between. Lawrence also recommend her Yule story “In Flames Reborn” or her sorority power, Christmas story “Deck the Halls with Guts and Madness.” Both are included in Happy Ghoulidays.
When asked why she writes horror, Lawrence says, “I love it, and I take great pleasure in freaking people out. You can ask my younger siblings. Or my children. Or my husband. Just ask anyone, really. After a lifetime of reading horror, it’s only natural I’d write in that genre.
“As a pre-teen, it was all ghosts all the time, devouring books on the ghosts of D.C. and the Civil War (I lived in Maryland at the time). As a teen, it was all about true crime and trying to understand how abominations like serial killers came to be (I still can’t say I understand them, but maybe I’m a little closer). Mixed in there somewhere was a fascination with cryptids and mythological creatures. After having survived both a serial killer’s attempt to get my mother while I was in the car and several kidnapping attempts, there’s something cathartic to seeing what could have happened and knowing that instead I survived, both because my mom was savvy and because I was. It’s all downhill on the adrenaline train after it happens in real life.”
In 2020, Lawrence released Happy Ghoulidays and Bruised Souls & Other Torments. In 2021, she is planning to finish her horror comedy novel about killer squirrels, as well as a couple nonfiction books she currently working on. In addition, publishers are looking at her Myth Stalker series, so fingers crossed! In addition, readers can sign up for the newsletter on her website: www.thewarriormuse.com.
You can find more about Shannon Lawrence at her website: http://thewarriormuse.com/.
A few of her stories can also be found online including “Dearest” and “The Rejection.”
HWA Colorado 