| Fran Friel Interview |
| by AJ Brown |
Only $15.95 for 280 pages of heart-stopping horror, dark fantasy and powerful writing, this
anthology has it all: novellas, poetry, flash fiction and short stories. Fran Friel's work flows
from pure horror to dark fantasy, and stories will surprise the reader with their emotional
content. Only a master storyteller has the confidence to write a horror story in which
heartstrings are tugged while simultaneously filling the mind with fear.
This interview is ironic. The interviewer has just been "recommended" to receive a Bram
Stoker (he needs two more nominations for it to become official), and Fran Friel is a Bram
Stoker Finalist. There is enough talent on this webpage to set the world on fire.
Liquid Imagination is proud, honored and EXCITED!!!
anthology has it all: novellas, poetry, flash fiction and short stories. Fran Friel's work flows
from pure horror to dark fantasy, and stories will surprise the reader with their emotional
content. Only a master storyteller has the confidence to write a horror story in which
heartstrings are tugged while simultaneously filling the mind with fear.
This interview is ironic. The interviewer has just been "recommended" to receive a Bram
Stoker (he needs two more nominations for it to become official), and Fran Friel is a Bram
Stoker Finalist. There is enough talent on this webpage to set the world on fire.
Liquid Imagination is proud, honored and EXCITED!!!
We all strive for something in life. Whether it is fame, fortune, love and/or happiness, we strive
for something. Even those folks who say they don’t really care if they make something of
themselves strive at something. It may be just being a couch potato and doing as little as
humanly possible, but they still have to try to do as little as possible.
One thing I have strived for in the last two plus years is to become a better writer. I want
people to like my work. But, more so, I want to be happy with my growth as a writer and I want
to constantly see improvement. Rejections are a constant reminder that I can always be
better, so I keep reaching, striving for that.
One of the ways I have found that helps me to grow as a writer is by reading other writers.
King is the master of horror but there is also those who paved the way for him. Folks like Poe,
Hemingway, Dickens, Perkins, Shelley and so on. Each of these writers and many more has
something to offer someone wanting to learn how to become a better writer.
But, wait, it’s not just those guys and gals that can offer us great insight into the world of
writing. It’s also some of the guys and gals in the small press that have great little nuggets to
offer. Have you ever read an Ian Rogers story? If not, you need to. The guy has talent. How
about Dan Naden? You ever hear of this fine writer? If not, look him up. There are so many
more I can go on about and why but there is one I would like to focus on for a moment or ten.
Her name is Fran Friel.
Yes, Fran Friel. She’s one of those writers who you can learn from. But, wait. Fran is a bit
deceptive. How, you asks? Simple. She is sweet and loving and caring and kind. And she
wrote Mama’s Boy. Uh-huh. That’s right. You could say she is the cookie cutter mother out of
an old 50’s television show where the mother is smart, sweet and saintly. But, open up her
collection, Mama’s Boys and Other Dark Tales, and you get a whole different perspective of
her.
I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know Fran and become good friends with her and I can tell
you that she is just as she appears: sweet, loving, caring, fun and easy to talk to. I bet she
makes great cookies too.
I could go on and on about Fran but why do that when I can let her do it for me? Dear
Readers, I give you my good friend and Bram Stoker nominated, Fran Friel.
AJ: Fran, things have really taken off for you since your Stoker nomination for Mama’s Boy.
Tell us what’s been going on since then?
FF: Hello, AJ. It’s great to be here. Chatting with you is always a pleasure and one I don’t get
to do as often as I’d like. I guess our last interview, your famous NiNe QuestioNs series, was
just after the Stoker nomination, and yes, a few nice things have happened since then. I’ve
moved to the beach with my family, which has been a wonderful boost to our lives, as well as
to my work. It’s hard to stay stuck for long when the sea is just a stroll across the street.
Another nice thing that has occurred this year is the publishing of my fiction collection, Mama’s
Boy and Other Dark Tales. As the title suggests, the original Mama’s Boy novella has been
included in a collection. Apex Publications launched the book in June at Hypericon in
Nashville and so far the collection is being well-received.
It was a long time in the making, with a lot of the material in the book written just for the Apex
release, in fact, besides the short stories and flash fiction, it includes three new novellas (some
would call them novelettes), “Beach of Dreams,” “The Sea Orphan” and “Fine Print.” The last
one was originally published in part at the Horror Library, but it was re-written and expanded
substantially for the collection. Folks seem to be glad I finally finished it. I got a lot of emails
asking me for the conclusion when it first appeared as a three-part series. I felt bad for leaving
people hanging, so it’s particularly satisfying to have completed “Fine Print” to make those
readers happy. So far, so good.
AJ: Has being nominated for a Stoker changed your views on writing? Has it put more
pressure on you to produce another piece like Mama’s Boy?
FF: I don’t think being nominated changed my views on writing, but getting that kind of
exposure so early in my career did cause me to feel a bit of pressure to make the follow-up to
Mama’s Boy something worthy of the honor. Of course, the pressure was all self-imposed. I
suspect no one expected anything in particular, but I still felt a bit stifled. My mom died around
the same time frame, followed by a big move for my family, plus household renovations, so it
took me a good year to get my writing chops back. It’s hard to be patient with oneself in that
situation, but I think I’ve made it to the other side. I’ve finally found my mojo again, or perhaps
it was just an illusion that I ever had it. But since I’m in the business of illusion, I guess
whatever works is fair game.
AJ: How did you and Jason Sizemore (Apex Publications) come to work together on your
collection, Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales?
FF: I’ve been a long-time fan of Jason’s magazine, Apex Digest, so I’ve been admiring the
lovely Mister Sizemore from afar for sometime. In fact, it was one of my writing goals to be
published in his magazine. Eventually, I got to know Jason on the genre message boards, and
when Mama’s Boy was originally published he was a big supporter of the book. So when the
original limited edition printing was sold-out by Insidious Publications, Jason and I met up at
the World Horror Convention in Toronto and we danced a little publisher/author tango over
lunch and found ourselves publishing partners in crime. After a lot of work and patience on
both of our parts, Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales was born.
AJ: I’ve heard good things about Jason. What was it like to work with him?
FF: Jason is one of the hardest working guys in the business. He has a job and a young
family, and yet he publishes multiple titles for Apex each year, he promotes his writers and he
maintains great content for Apex Digest every week. Frankly, I don’t know how he does it. I’d
be a blob of goo in a corner of my office with his schedule.
He’s also the kind of publisher that treats his writers like family, working hard to support them
and making sure their work gets notice. I’m privileged to know Jason and lucky to be working
with him. Our friendship is one of the best things to come of my writing the MB collection.
Besides being a great guy, Jason publishes some rocking titles. The man has an amazing eye
for a fantastic story and fine writing. I love everything he’s published. Seriously.
AJ: Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales is your first collection of short stories. It has a little bit
of everything in it. Can you walk us through the process of writing and picking the stories for
this collection?
That should be an easy question to answer, but the whole process is a bit elusive for me. I’d
like to say that I had some grand plan and that I knew what I was doing, but it just isn’t so.
Much of what I do is instinct or just dumb luck. It took me ages to get started on the collection
because I didn’t have a clue where to go with it. I didn’t have a lot of published work to choose
from, so it was necessary to write quite a bit of new material.
Part of the problem was that Mama’s Boy was a pretty extreme story and I wasn’t sure that was
the kind of thing I was going to be able to write again, or wanted to write for that matter. I didn’t
set out to write that type of story the first time around. Generally, I just get a story idea and it
has a life and a genre calling of its own, but the problem was that I knew folks were expecting
something at least similar to MB, so I got kind of stuck. Add to that moving house and my mom’
s passing and I was very stuck. But I’m a deadline kind of gal, so when the deadline loomed
large, I got writing and slammed out most of the stories in the book in a couple of months. It
was madness, but I soon realized that during all those lost months of upheaval in my life, my
writer’s mind was still clicking away under the surface.
Doing a bunch of flash fiction prompts over those months with you and the wild dog flashers at
the Horror Library was an enormous help, as well. It eventually shook the cobwebs out of my
head and got the juices flowing. I’m forever grateful to you and the other writers for that
important lift.
AJ: I have two favorites from this collection that I have read on several occasions. The first of
these is one of the anchor stories, in my opinion: The Sea Orphan. Where did the idea for
this come from?
FF: I’m always a little embarrassed to admit that The Sea Orphan came from a failed attempt
at writing a story for a pirate anthology. The potential paycheck was the pull for my attempt,
but since I knew next to nothing about pirates except for “Pirates of the Caribbean,” I had a
problem, but my pirate-loving husband happily stepped in as my tutor. His plan was
comprehensive, to say the least. My first reading of Treasure Island (LOVED it, by the way)
was followed by weeks of Errol Flynn movies and online research into trade routes, the ships
of the era, and the weapons, language and habits of pirates, Ultimately, I missed the danged
deadline, but I had a good start for a story. I left it unfinished since I couldn’t conceive of a
market for pirate stories opening up anytime soon, plus I had other deadlines to meet, but I
knew I’d come back to the story eventually. It was one of those pieces that pulls at you to be
completed.
When the collection opportunity came along, I debated whether a pirate story would fit in, but I
figured that heck, it was my collection, so why not, right? I’m glad I included it, especially since
it seems to be one of the favorites.
The idea itself for the story came in one of those crazy mind flashes. It appeared like a
snapshot in my mind, and all I saw was a heavy wool coat draped over a sea chest. Writing
the story became discovering what the picture had to tell me.
AJ: While reading The Sea Orphan I got the impression you had a lot of fun writing it. Is that
the case?
FF: There’s always an element of fun for me in writing a story. In this one, the fun was in
discovering the story, watching it unfold for me. Who owned the coat? Where were they in the
world? And why was that coat so important? But it was a tough story to write, in that I was
trying my best to be true to the period, true to the characters’ lives and to at least act like I
knew what I was talking about when it came to the life on board a pirate ship.
I really loved the character of Will Pennycock, and writing a story for him was a privilege. As
some folks have suggested, I will indeed come back and write for him again someday.
AJ: My other favorite from this collection is the flash piece, Orange and Golden. After I read it
the first time I actually had to put the book down and take a deep breath. It was so heart
wrenching. What was the inspiration for this story?
FF: I wept through the entire writing of that story. It was a piece that I had to write for my own
sanity, as a release of grief. Watching the tragedy of Katrina unfold throughout the Gulf coast
states was wrenching for me, like it was for everyone. I shed a lot of tears watching the news,
but one image in particular ripped my heart out. A young man who had lost everything was
one of the many people living under the overpass in New Orleans. A group of wonderful
people sought him out and reunited him with his dog.
I never really saw the young man’s face because he buried it in the thick fur of his dog’s strong
neck and just sobbed, endlessly sobbed. I love my dog like a sister and I couldn’t imagine how
painful it must have been for this man to leave his friend behind, probably to die or at the very
least to be lost forever. In contemplating this man’s painful decision for survival, my heart
broke again and again. It was the image for me that brought all the sorrow of that horrible
event to bear. I had to write that story to witness for that man, and for all those suffering
people, and I wrote it to ease the pain in my own heart. It was the most intense piece of writing
I’ve ever done.
AJ: You followed up Orange and Golden with another somewhat sad piece, Under the Dryer,
making the collection roll from one story to another story as if each one were a piece to an
intricate puzzle. How did you and Jason go about choosing the order for the stories to make
the collection flow the way it did?
FF: Like I said before, much of what happened with the coming together of this collection of
stories was luck. Jason didn’t reject a single story that I submitted, which amazed me. And
when it came time to create the order, our publishing deadline was looming large and I was too
close to the work to see what needed to go where, so Jason put the task to the very talented
editor, Deb Taber. My only request was to put “Mama’s Boy” last in the line-up, then Deb
came up with the rest of the list, complete with brilliant reasons for each placement.
I think this is a special talent (kind of like a great book DJ), and I’m indebted to Deb for her
insight, and to Jason for having such a great lady on staff and trusting her to do a fine job.
AJ: Just recently Douglas Clegg chose you to mentor. How did that make you feel? How has
the mentoring been going?
FF: I kind of lost my mind, to be honest. I was excited about Doug’s program for giving back to
the writing community (mentoring, donating proceeds for youth reading programs, scholarships
for writing workshops, etc) but I had no idea that I would be the person he chose to mentor.
This opportunity is nothing short of a blessing, a little miracle in my life.
Doug is a best selling novelist and he really knows his stuff, both the writing and the business
of publishing. We’ve been working together for a couple of weeks now, and he’s simply
amazing. I’ve already made major strides in my writing process and no doubt he’ll make sure I
keep moving forward. I can’t thank him enough for giving me this extraordinary gift.
AJ: With Clegg being such a good writer, do you find yourself in awe of his talent when going
through the mentoring process?
FF: Doug is not only a great writer, he’s an absolutely brilliant guy. He’s so darn smart in so
many ways that, yes indeed, I’m in awe. I’m just hoping some of that smart vibe rubs off on me
even just a little.
AJ: So, now that you’ve got the collection out, what can we expect from Fran Friel in the
future?
FF: Well, that’s what Doug and I are working on. The mentorship is all about producing a
good novel. Doug is putting me through my paces so I’m hard at it and hope to have
something yummy for publishers to have a look at next year. The project I’m working on is
both exciting and scary for me. For some reason, it always seems that I have to step out of my
comfort zone with each new project. That’s not by design since I’d be happy to be comfortable
occasionally, but it just always seems to work out that way. This novel project is certainly
making me stretch my writing muscles, but it’s worth the effort. I hope the readers will agree.
AJ: I have to touch on this for a second: How do you react when you someone writes that you
are a sweet and kind woman but then you write something like Mama’s Boy or Fine Print and
you completely shock them?
Frankly, I get a kick out it and I think a little harmless shock is a good thing. It keeps people
guessing and perhaps helps them to consider reading “outside the box” in the future. And as a
writer (and a person), it’s also good not to create self-imposed limits, so getting that reaction
from my readers is a good indicator that I’m happily breaking the molds that define me.
AJ: Any chance you'll star in one of your stories? You know, a sweet and unassuming woman
with a darker side strikes terror in the hearts of little children in her neighborhood, type of thing?
FF: Hmm…sounds like a great idea, but I think you should write it, AJ. Feels like you’ve got a
hankering to do some literary damage of the best kind.
AJ: Thank you for your time, Fran and I wish you more success in the future.
FF: It’s been a joy, AJ. Thank you for your thoughtful questions and for your always oh-so-
fine company. I can’t wait to see my dark twin in one of your fabulous stories someday soon.
In closing, I have often said that horror writers are like any other people. They can be a school
teacher, a policeman, a stay at home mom, a computer programmer, a single father of three
young boys, someone who works in human resources, an Army veteran or a doctor. Horror
writers have to make a living and you would be surprised at how many average people write
the darker tales. This is never truer than with Fran Friel—to meet her, you would never know
that she could have written Mama's Boy.
Thank you for coming along for the ride. Take care and write on.
for something. Even those folks who say they don’t really care if they make something of
themselves strive at something. It may be just being a couch potato and doing as little as
humanly possible, but they still have to try to do as little as possible.
One thing I have strived for in the last two plus years is to become a better writer. I want
people to like my work. But, more so, I want to be happy with my growth as a writer and I want
to constantly see improvement. Rejections are a constant reminder that I can always be
better, so I keep reaching, striving for that.
One of the ways I have found that helps me to grow as a writer is by reading other writers.
King is the master of horror but there is also those who paved the way for him. Folks like Poe,
Hemingway, Dickens, Perkins, Shelley and so on. Each of these writers and many more has
something to offer someone wanting to learn how to become a better writer.
But, wait, it’s not just those guys and gals that can offer us great insight into the world of
writing. It’s also some of the guys and gals in the small press that have great little nuggets to
offer. Have you ever read an Ian Rogers story? If not, you need to. The guy has talent. How
about Dan Naden? You ever hear of this fine writer? If not, look him up. There are so many
more I can go on about and why but there is one I would like to focus on for a moment or ten.
Her name is Fran Friel.
Yes, Fran Friel. She’s one of those writers who you can learn from. But, wait. Fran is a bit
deceptive. How, you asks? Simple. She is sweet and loving and caring and kind. And she
wrote Mama’s Boy. Uh-huh. That’s right. You could say she is the cookie cutter mother out of
an old 50’s television show where the mother is smart, sweet and saintly. But, open up her
collection, Mama’s Boys and Other Dark Tales, and you get a whole different perspective of
her.
I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know Fran and become good friends with her and I can tell
you that she is just as she appears: sweet, loving, caring, fun and easy to talk to. I bet she
makes great cookies too.
I could go on and on about Fran but why do that when I can let her do it for me? Dear
Readers, I give you my good friend and Bram Stoker nominated, Fran Friel.
AJ: Fran, things have really taken off for you since your Stoker nomination for Mama’s Boy.
Tell us what’s been going on since then?
FF: Hello, AJ. It’s great to be here. Chatting with you is always a pleasure and one I don’t get
to do as often as I’d like. I guess our last interview, your famous NiNe QuestioNs series, was
just after the Stoker nomination, and yes, a few nice things have happened since then. I’ve
moved to the beach with my family, which has been a wonderful boost to our lives, as well as
to my work. It’s hard to stay stuck for long when the sea is just a stroll across the street.
Another nice thing that has occurred this year is the publishing of my fiction collection, Mama’s
Boy and Other Dark Tales. As the title suggests, the original Mama’s Boy novella has been
included in a collection. Apex Publications launched the book in June at Hypericon in
Nashville and so far the collection is being well-received.
It was a long time in the making, with a lot of the material in the book written just for the Apex
release, in fact, besides the short stories and flash fiction, it includes three new novellas (some
would call them novelettes), “Beach of Dreams,” “The Sea Orphan” and “Fine Print.” The last
one was originally published in part at the Horror Library, but it was re-written and expanded
substantially for the collection. Folks seem to be glad I finally finished it. I got a lot of emails
asking me for the conclusion when it first appeared as a three-part series. I felt bad for leaving
people hanging, so it’s particularly satisfying to have completed “Fine Print” to make those
readers happy. So far, so good.
AJ: Has being nominated for a Stoker changed your views on writing? Has it put more
pressure on you to produce another piece like Mama’s Boy?
FF: I don’t think being nominated changed my views on writing, but getting that kind of
exposure so early in my career did cause me to feel a bit of pressure to make the follow-up to
Mama’s Boy something worthy of the honor. Of course, the pressure was all self-imposed. I
suspect no one expected anything in particular, but I still felt a bit stifled. My mom died around
the same time frame, followed by a big move for my family, plus household renovations, so it
took me a good year to get my writing chops back. It’s hard to be patient with oneself in that
situation, but I think I’ve made it to the other side. I’ve finally found my mojo again, or perhaps
it was just an illusion that I ever had it. But since I’m in the business of illusion, I guess
whatever works is fair game.
AJ: How did you and Jason Sizemore (Apex Publications) come to work together on your
collection, Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales?
FF: I’ve been a long-time fan of Jason’s magazine, Apex Digest, so I’ve been admiring the
lovely Mister Sizemore from afar for sometime. In fact, it was one of my writing goals to be
published in his magazine. Eventually, I got to know Jason on the genre message boards, and
when Mama’s Boy was originally published he was a big supporter of the book. So when the
original limited edition printing was sold-out by Insidious Publications, Jason and I met up at
the World Horror Convention in Toronto and we danced a little publisher/author tango over
lunch and found ourselves publishing partners in crime. After a lot of work and patience on
both of our parts, Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales was born.
AJ: I’ve heard good things about Jason. What was it like to work with him?
FF: Jason is one of the hardest working guys in the business. He has a job and a young
family, and yet he publishes multiple titles for Apex each year, he promotes his writers and he
maintains great content for Apex Digest every week. Frankly, I don’t know how he does it. I’d
be a blob of goo in a corner of my office with his schedule.
He’s also the kind of publisher that treats his writers like family, working hard to support them
and making sure their work gets notice. I’m privileged to know Jason and lucky to be working
with him. Our friendship is one of the best things to come of my writing the MB collection.
Besides being a great guy, Jason publishes some rocking titles. The man has an amazing eye
for a fantastic story and fine writing. I love everything he’s published. Seriously.
AJ: Mama’s Boy and Other Dark Tales is your first collection of short stories. It has a little bit
of everything in it. Can you walk us through the process of writing and picking the stories for
this collection?
That should be an easy question to answer, but the whole process is a bit elusive for me. I’d
like to say that I had some grand plan and that I knew what I was doing, but it just isn’t so.
Much of what I do is instinct or just dumb luck. It took me ages to get started on the collection
because I didn’t have a clue where to go with it. I didn’t have a lot of published work to choose
from, so it was necessary to write quite a bit of new material.
Part of the problem was that Mama’s Boy was a pretty extreme story and I wasn’t sure that was
the kind of thing I was going to be able to write again, or wanted to write for that matter. I didn’t
set out to write that type of story the first time around. Generally, I just get a story idea and it
has a life and a genre calling of its own, but the problem was that I knew folks were expecting
something at least similar to MB, so I got kind of stuck. Add to that moving house and my mom’
s passing and I was very stuck. But I’m a deadline kind of gal, so when the deadline loomed
large, I got writing and slammed out most of the stories in the book in a couple of months. It
was madness, but I soon realized that during all those lost months of upheaval in my life, my
writer’s mind was still clicking away under the surface.
Doing a bunch of flash fiction prompts over those months with you and the wild dog flashers at
the Horror Library was an enormous help, as well. It eventually shook the cobwebs out of my
head and got the juices flowing. I’m forever grateful to you and the other writers for that
important lift.
AJ: I have two favorites from this collection that I have read on several occasions. The first of
these is one of the anchor stories, in my opinion: The Sea Orphan. Where did the idea for
this come from?
FF: I’m always a little embarrassed to admit that The Sea Orphan came from a failed attempt
at writing a story for a pirate anthology. The potential paycheck was the pull for my attempt,
but since I knew next to nothing about pirates except for “Pirates of the Caribbean,” I had a
problem, but my pirate-loving husband happily stepped in as my tutor. His plan was
comprehensive, to say the least. My first reading of Treasure Island (LOVED it, by the way)
was followed by weeks of Errol Flynn movies and online research into trade routes, the ships
of the era, and the weapons, language and habits of pirates, Ultimately, I missed the danged
deadline, but I had a good start for a story. I left it unfinished since I couldn’t conceive of a
market for pirate stories opening up anytime soon, plus I had other deadlines to meet, but I
knew I’d come back to the story eventually. It was one of those pieces that pulls at you to be
completed.
When the collection opportunity came along, I debated whether a pirate story would fit in, but I
figured that heck, it was my collection, so why not, right? I’m glad I included it, especially since
it seems to be one of the favorites.
The idea itself for the story came in one of those crazy mind flashes. It appeared like a
snapshot in my mind, and all I saw was a heavy wool coat draped over a sea chest. Writing
the story became discovering what the picture had to tell me.
AJ: While reading The Sea Orphan I got the impression you had a lot of fun writing it. Is that
the case?
FF: There’s always an element of fun for me in writing a story. In this one, the fun was in
discovering the story, watching it unfold for me. Who owned the coat? Where were they in the
world? And why was that coat so important? But it was a tough story to write, in that I was
trying my best to be true to the period, true to the characters’ lives and to at least act like I
knew what I was talking about when it came to the life on board a pirate ship.
I really loved the character of Will Pennycock, and writing a story for him was a privilege. As
some folks have suggested, I will indeed come back and write for him again someday.
AJ: My other favorite from this collection is the flash piece, Orange and Golden. After I read it
the first time I actually had to put the book down and take a deep breath. It was so heart
wrenching. What was the inspiration for this story?
FF: I wept through the entire writing of that story. It was a piece that I had to write for my own
sanity, as a release of grief. Watching the tragedy of Katrina unfold throughout the Gulf coast
states was wrenching for me, like it was for everyone. I shed a lot of tears watching the news,
but one image in particular ripped my heart out. A young man who had lost everything was
one of the many people living under the overpass in New Orleans. A group of wonderful
people sought him out and reunited him with his dog.
I never really saw the young man’s face because he buried it in the thick fur of his dog’s strong
neck and just sobbed, endlessly sobbed. I love my dog like a sister and I couldn’t imagine how
painful it must have been for this man to leave his friend behind, probably to die or at the very
least to be lost forever. In contemplating this man’s painful decision for survival, my heart
broke again and again. It was the image for me that brought all the sorrow of that horrible
event to bear. I had to write that story to witness for that man, and for all those suffering
people, and I wrote it to ease the pain in my own heart. It was the most intense piece of writing
I’ve ever done.
AJ: You followed up Orange and Golden with another somewhat sad piece, Under the Dryer,
making the collection roll from one story to another story as if each one were a piece to an
intricate puzzle. How did you and Jason go about choosing the order for the stories to make
the collection flow the way it did?
FF: Like I said before, much of what happened with the coming together of this collection of
stories was luck. Jason didn’t reject a single story that I submitted, which amazed me. And
when it came time to create the order, our publishing deadline was looming large and I was too
close to the work to see what needed to go where, so Jason put the task to the very talented
editor, Deb Taber. My only request was to put “Mama’s Boy” last in the line-up, then Deb
came up with the rest of the list, complete with brilliant reasons for each placement.
I think this is a special talent (kind of like a great book DJ), and I’m indebted to Deb for her
insight, and to Jason for having such a great lady on staff and trusting her to do a fine job.
AJ: Just recently Douglas Clegg chose you to mentor. How did that make you feel? How has
the mentoring been going?
FF: I kind of lost my mind, to be honest. I was excited about Doug’s program for giving back to
the writing community (mentoring, donating proceeds for youth reading programs, scholarships
for writing workshops, etc) but I had no idea that I would be the person he chose to mentor.
This opportunity is nothing short of a blessing, a little miracle in my life.
Doug is a best selling novelist and he really knows his stuff, both the writing and the business
of publishing. We’ve been working together for a couple of weeks now, and he’s simply
amazing. I’ve already made major strides in my writing process and no doubt he’ll make sure I
keep moving forward. I can’t thank him enough for giving me this extraordinary gift.
AJ: With Clegg being such a good writer, do you find yourself in awe of his talent when going
through the mentoring process?
FF: Doug is not only a great writer, he’s an absolutely brilliant guy. He’s so darn smart in so
many ways that, yes indeed, I’m in awe. I’m just hoping some of that smart vibe rubs off on me
even just a little.
AJ: So, now that you’ve got the collection out, what can we expect from Fran Friel in the
future?
FF: Well, that’s what Doug and I are working on. The mentorship is all about producing a
good novel. Doug is putting me through my paces so I’m hard at it and hope to have
something yummy for publishers to have a look at next year. The project I’m working on is
both exciting and scary for me. For some reason, it always seems that I have to step out of my
comfort zone with each new project. That’s not by design since I’d be happy to be comfortable
occasionally, but it just always seems to work out that way. This novel project is certainly
making me stretch my writing muscles, but it’s worth the effort. I hope the readers will agree.
AJ: I have to touch on this for a second: How do you react when you someone writes that you
are a sweet and kind woman but then you write something like Mama’s Boy or Fine Print and
you completely shock them?
Frankly, I get a kick out it and I think a little harmless shock is a good thing. It keeps people
guessing and perhaps helps them to consider reading “outside the box” in the future. And as a
writer (and a person), it’s also good not to create self-imposed limits, so getting that reaction
from my readers is a good indicator that I’m happily breaking the molds that define me.
AJ: Any chance you'll star in one of your stories? You know, a sweet and unassuming woman
with a darker side strikes terror in the hearts of little children in her neighborhood, type of thing?
FF: Hmm…sounds like a great idea, but I think you should write it, AJ. Feels like you’ve got a
hankering to do some literary damage of the best kind.
AJ: Thank you for your time, Fran and I wish you more success in the future.
FF: It’s been a joy, AJ. Thank you for your thoughtful questions and for your always oh-so-
fine company. I can’t wait to see my dark twin in one of your fabulous stories someday soon.
In closing, I have often said that horror writers are like any other people. They can be a school
teacher, a policeman, a stay at home mom, a computer programmer, a single father of three
young boys, someone who works in human resources, an Army veteran or a doctor. Horror
writers have to make a living and you would be surprised at how many average people write
the darker tales. This is never truer than with Fran Friel—to meet her, you would never know
that she could have written Mama's Boy.
Thank you for coming along for the ride. Take care and write on.
