Candace Nola is a multiple award-winning author, editor, and publisher. She writes poetry, horror, dark fantasy, and extreme horror content. Books include Breach, Beyond the Breach, Hank Flynn, Bishop, Earth vs The Lava Spiders, The Unicorn Killer, Unmasked, The Vet, and Desperate Wishes. Her short stories can be found in The Baker’s Dozen anthology, Second-Hand Creeps, American Cannibal, Just A Girl, The Horror Collection: Lost Edition, and Exactly the Wrong Things and many more.
She is the creator of Uncomfortably Dark Horror, which focuses primarily on promoting indie horror authors and small presses with weekly book reviews, interviews, and special features. Uncomfortably Dark Horror stands behind its mission to “bring you the best in horror, one uncomfortably dark page at a time.” Let’s talk about it!
Q: Who has been your biggest supporter(s) throughout your writing career?
A: My children and my mom have been my support system throughout my career.
Q: Where do you draw inspiration from in your work?
A: My inspiration comes from life in general, from my kids, my experiences, from other authors and how they write and interpret different themes and concepts in their stories.
Q: What does it mean to you to be an author?
A: For me, this is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, so it’s the culmination of a life-long dream.
Q: What is your writing process like? Do you listen to certain music, snack, make loads of phone notes when inspiration randomly strikes?
A: I write whenever I can and however I can. I have a full-time job, so my time is limited. I write on an app on my phone. I set time aside every evening to write. I don’t really have any writing rituals other than needing a really cold drink, normally water or iced tea, beside me if I’m writing at my desk.
Q: Is there a genre or subgenre that you want to explore that you haven’t yet? Conversely, are there any that you’ll never write?
A: I’ll stick to horror and all of its subgenres. Fantasy is another likely option at some point. I don’t see myself writing romance ever.
Q: What has been the hardest part of your career as an author so far?
A: Learning the various marketing and promoting techniques and finding enough time to employ them on a routine basis.
Q: What do you consider to be your greatest strength and weakness as an author?
A: For my strength, not afraid to push boundaries, and I’m constantly learning ways to improve my craft. Weakness, I can’t say that I have one as yet, since I always look for ways to learn more. I would imagine that my refusal to learn at some point would be a weakness.
Q: Who is on your radar as someone you’d love to work with?
A: At the moment, no one other than the uber-elite, which we all know is a pipe-dream. I work better alone, though I do have some collabs going on now and a couple more planned.
Q: At some point in our lives, we’ve all heard the negative comments: “You’re not good enough.” “you’ll never make it.” “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” “You don’t belong.” How do you move forward when faced with negativity?
A: I’ve heard that all of my life. Just keep working and prove them wrong.
Q: What advice would you give to women who are wanting to write, especially if it’s something others might perceive as “outside of the norm”?
A: Write it anyway. Write often, write brutally, write the savage truth and your anger, and your experiences. Write the stories that only you can tell because there is someone out there that needs to read it.
Candace has a few releases in the works, including Bishop 3 with co-author, M. Ennenbach, Hank Flynn 2: The Return, a collection coming this summer from Death’s Head Press, and several more novellas.
Her favourite book that she’s read so far this year is The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste as it’s one of the most original and imaginative ghost stories she’s ever read.
Check out Candace’s website and follow her on Instagram to stay updated on her releases!
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