A Brief EMail Interview With Martel Sardina
October at Twilight Tales has always been something special. This year we’re trying something exciting: a featured reader paired with a themed open mic for each week from now until Halloween!
Martel Sardina writes award-winning short fiction, along with book reviews and other oddities, and she recently edited the anthology Hell In The Heartland for Annihilation Press. She once served as the Money Goddess for Twilight Tales as well, but now is happily…unstructured, in her involvement with us.
Following are Martel’s answers to our interview questions.
Let’s start with the basics, what’s your story called? If you can, please tell us briefly about it.
Martel: The story I’ll be reading, “Desperate Times Call For Cunning Linguists,” is a transgendered love story involving Frankenstein.
What inspired your story, or what inspires you to write?
Martel: I wrote this particular story for an anthology that was looking for gay/lesbian/transgendered horror stories. After a softball game last spring, I was telling my teammates that I needed to come up with a story idea. A few bottles of beer later, I had the seed I needed and wrote the first draft after returning home. I sent it off to Brian Salgado and Mark Wegren (two of my teammates who helped in the brainstorming process) for some feedback. Many thanks to Brian and Mark for their help and willingness to listen to me natter on about various story ideas over the years. They’ve both actually been characters in other stories I’ve written but that’s a story for Red Light Night 
Each week in October features a specific genre, tell us what draws you to the genre featured your particular week (Oct. 27; Monster Bash).
Martel: I grew up on monster stories. As a kid, I watched all of the horror classics (Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi.) I grew up on Svengoolie and thought Berwyn was some magical place where monsters lived. Talk about a let down.
What sorts of books do you find yourself seeking out when walking the aisles of bookstores and libraries?
Martel: I probably read more crime fiction than anything else these days. I read a lot of true crime and other non-fiction related to law enforcement. I like to read case studies that analyze criminal motivations and behaviors. Maybe I’ve been picking the wrong books, but it seems that the crime fiction I’ve been reading is scarier than the horror fiction has been. I feel a bit jaded toward horror these days. Maybe it’s a phase…I hope so.
Any advice you’ve been given as a writer that’s either very good, or very out there that you would like to share with us?
Martel: A ruthless editor is a writer’s best friend. I wrote a poem recently and shared it with a writer friend. He told me that the meat of the poem was the last stanza and that if I cut everything else that came before it, the poem might have more impact. After re-reading the piece, I hated to admit he was right because that meant throwing away more than 3/4 of the original poem. Learning to “kill your children” is hard, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do.
Anything else you’d like to share about your writing or upcoming publications/events?
Martel: My story, “Better Left Unsaid,” will be coming out shortly in the TRAPS! anthology (edited by Scott Goudsward) from DarkHart Press. I am a contributing editor at Dark Scribe Magazine and have lots of book reviews, articles and interviews available to read for free at www.darkscribemagazine.com; I’ll be workshopping a novel at the Borderlands Press Novel Bootcamp in January and will share more about that experience at some future TT event. Oh yeah, I almost forgot…I’m happy to report that I’m headed for merry old England in 2010. I’m going to be hosting/coordinating the reading series at the World Horror Convention 2010 which will be held in Brighton. I’m stoked about that for sure!
We hope you’ll join us on Monday October 27th at Mystic Celt (3443 N. Southport) to hear Martel’s fiction (along with open mic fiction in a Monster Bash theme), and perhaps more discussion!
