Extry! Extry! Debra Castaneda…Read All About It!

Debra Castaneda is an award-winning horror and dark fiction author, and she also has experience in the TV and radio journalism industry! When not writing her next novel, she enjoys rediscovering the Mexican dishes of her childhood and texting her two daughters about her latest binge-watch (any recs? I’m always up for a good binge!).

I was lucky enough to get an interview with Debra and she shared her writing process, the genre she’s most interested in trying, and a sneak peek at her next release!

Q: Who has been your biggest supporter(s) throughout your writing career?

A: My husband, Jim. We met at a TV station in Salt Lake City. Back then, I was just starting out as a news producer. There weren’t that many women in those roles and it was challenging. He was my emotional support husband back then, just as he is today.

Q: Where do you draw inspiration from in your work?

A: From Mexican folklore, or folk horror, the stories my grandmother told me as a child and from the environmental news stories that grab my attention. Plus our own experience of the effects of climate change in our town on the central coast of California.

Q: What does it mean to you to be an author?

A: This may be hard to believe, but it’s true! It’s possible I never finished a single sentence in my home when I was growing up. I was constantly interrupted, especially by my father. Writing books gives me the voice I never had back then. To say what I want, how I want, for as long as I want.

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 absolutely love the research phase. It’s where I get so many specific ideas for how to pull the story together, all suggested by facts I learn along the way. I write an outline, brief character sketches, and then set a deadline and a daily word count goal to get a first draft done by the deadline. Each day, I begin by jotting down what I want to accomplish in that session. Nothing elaborate. Just bullet points. And then I clamp on my headphones and listen to Brain.fm. It’s customized music that helps me focus. It’s been a gamechanger!

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’ve never written a haunted house story, but it’s something I’d love to try one of these days. While I enjoy a good demonic possession story, I can’t imagine what I could add to the genre that hasn’t already been done.

Q: What has been the hardest part of your career as an author so far?

A: There’s a huge learning curve to publishing one’s own books. That’s something I decided to do from the outset. I like the control it gives me. But there’s always the feeling there is something more to do, more to learn, and the publishing industry is constantly changing. I need to monitor it closely while acknowledging I can’t possibly push every button and pull every lever. That’s my problem. When I learn about something new, I want to do it right then and there and it causes unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Q: What do you consider to be your greatest strength and weakness as an author?

A: My strength is my butt glue. Working in news gave me the discipline to keep my butt in the chair until the work is done. My biggest weakness is I lack the patience to properly describe the environment in my first drafts. Which is funny, considering that so many of my stories are eco horror. In first drafts, I write sentences like “the big green tree” and “that gray rock.” Then I go back and think how to make it more interesting. Those revisions are mentally taxing, but in the end, very rewarding.

Q: Who is on your radar as someone you’d love to work with?

A: I enjoy working with my talented cover designer and brilliant editor, but to be perfectly honest, I’d never collaborate with another author. It’s just my personality type. I can’t imagine inflicting my process on someone else or putting up with theirs. To borrow a line from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, “I’m a loner, Dottie.”

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: It used to hold me back. I loved my dad, but he had a traumatic upbringing, and he was a very negative guy. I heard a lot of “who do you think you are?” growing up when I exerted myself. It took many years to get past that. Working in the news business gave me confidence. Eventually, I stopped caring about what anyone else said. I don’t have time for negativity, online or in real life. It eats up too much precious energy and there’s only so much to go around.

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: Respect the desire to write. Carve out the time to do it, even if it’s thirty minutes a day. If you wrote 250 words a day for 300 days, you’d have a 75,000-word first draft. You can do this! That said, if you can’t because life is crushing you from all sides, don’t let that get you down. It happened to me. For years, I had the responsibility of ailing parents and children, and I simply couldn’t do it. Your time will come. You just may need to wait until some of life’s pressures have lifted. Some people start writing later in their lives, like me, and I’m here to normalize that! As for writing “outside of the norm,” I say write whatever the hell you want. There are probably readers out there just looking for the sort of story only you can write.

Debra has read a lot of great books this year, but the one that stood out the most was Eynhallow by Tim McGregor. “It has all the stuff I love: a remote, windswept island, a strong, quirky woman as the main character, and a mystery involving the arrival of a brooding stranger named Dr. Frankenstein.”

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