An Interview with Splatterpunk Award Winning Horror Author Kristopher Triana

Kris at Otherland

Horror and crime author Kristopher Triana was in Germany last week to join the big horror weekend of publisher Festa in their offices in Leipzig and extended his stay to visit Berlin. The writer of award-winning novels like Full Brutal, The Night Stockers, or the wildly popular Gone to See The River Man was kind enough to accept a little interview with Protean Depravity. Enjoy!

 

Inci: First off, congratulations for winning the 2022 Splatterpunk Award for The Night Stockers which you wrote together with fellow horror author Ryan Harding. The horror comedy follows two neighboring supermarkets, “Freshway” versus the Satanist “Devil’s Food”, one of which will attempt to literally eliminate the competition. You already do explain it in your foreword, but could you briefly tell for anyone who hasn’t yet bought the book how the idea came about and how it was to write a book in a collaboration, especially with someone who is your friend?

Kris: I worked for several different grocery stores over the years, and honestly, it was a miserable profession. It’s hard for those who have never worked retail to understand just how brutal it is to be screamed at by entitled customers all day long. Any idiot off the street can come into your workplace and bully you, and you just have to smile and take it. So, I knew a grocery store would make the perfect setting for a horror story, and I toyed with the idea for years. For some time I had known Ryan Harding virtually, but we finally met in person in 2019 at Killercon in Austin, Texas. We wanted to work on a project together, and so I pitched him the grocery store setting only to find out he had worked in grocery stores too! Since the book is a horror comedy, we spent most of the time trying to make each other laugh or gross each other out while writing it, and I think that comes through in the novel.

I: During our meeting at the Otherland Bookstore you roughly divided your writing into three or four various subgenres within horror; extreme, crime with a touch of horror, horror comedy… What do you read yourself to reach such a broad variety of genre, what are your influences? And what does horror mean to you?

K: I do read a wide variety, though horror and crime fiction will always be my favorite genres. But it is important for writers to read outside of their comfort zones, to read genres they normally wouldn’t care about, and it is especially important to read works by authors from other countries and different backgrounds. And to me, writing horror is utilizing the imagination to vent the pain of our deepest traumas and fears.

I: There is a quite organic bond between music and horror, or rather a special place of music within the literary genre horror which isn’t much the case for other speculative genres. You too make extensive use of music and various music related subcultures in your work, like the enmity between metalheads and grunge listeners in Night Stockers or the importance of American Folk Music in Riverman.  Could you elaborate the place of that in your work? How and why do you incorporate music into your writing?

K: Music has always been imagination fuel. I make playlists for nearly every book I work on. It helps get me into the right headspace for the story. In some cases, music plays a major role in the story itself, as is the case with Gone to See the River Man. That story is deeply immersed in (and inspired by) the history of Delta blues music. And then, some books have a certain vibe that can be paired nicely with certain songs. The Night Stockers is very much a tribute to death metal music, which Ryan and I both grew up loving, and it is just as gory and over-the-top as many of the songs from bands like Cannibal Corpse and Deicide.

I: As far as I understand you don’t use supernatural elements in your horror. Are there any challenges to that? As human depravity seems finite at some point?

K: Actually, I do use supernatural elements. It just depends on what the story calls for. Some of my work takes place in a real-world setting, whereas others incorporate ghosts, black magic, werewolves, or otherworldly elements. But human depravity is often the base for my horrors, yes.

I: Please, tell us a little about your upcoming book The Prettiest Girl in the Grave which has its US publication this week, actually - May 12th. Sounds really exciting!

K: Thank you. The Prettiest Girl in the Grave is a claustrophobic horror story about a group of goth girls who go to a graveyard to play a sort of Bloody Mary-like game, only to get lost in the forgotten catacombs beneath the cemetery. I was actually inspired by my visit to the Paris catacombs. I wanted to recapture the constant feeling of dread places like that so easily create. It’s a more conventional horror story too—it isn’t loaded with blood and guts like some of my other work. The horror relies more on emotion. I think it will really appeal to fans of Gone to See the River Man.

I: Is there anything else you’d like to tell your readers, especially the ones here in Germany? Shoot!

K: I just returned from Germany and am already thinking about coming back! I loved my time in Leipzig and Berlin and am so grateful for everyone’s hospitality, particular the good people at Festa Verlag and Otherland Bookstore. It was so great to meet so many of my German fans. Thank you to all of my readers all over the globe. You keep reading my scary stories, and I’ll keep writing them!

It’s been sincerely a lot of fun and a pleasure to meet you here in Berlin and to chat with you, Kris. All the best for the publication of your new book!