Luc Diamant and the Horror Game
Photo credit: “Lockett Meadow” by Deborah Lee Soltesz, 2017. This image has been dedicated to the public domain by its creator.
To get us started, would you be willing to describe your relationship with the horror genre? How did you become acquainted with the genre as a reader and a writer? What does horror mean to you personally?
I think for me, horror is often a game. Don’t get me wrong, horror can do as many literary things as any other genre. But it’s also more interactive than any other genre. You don’t wait for the right time of day to read Jane Austen.
I was never accidentally exposed to horror as a child and I’ve always been the type of person who can stop being scared at will. So it’s fun for me to play with, especially in a social setting. When writing horror, I tend to have one of the people I like to watch scary movies with in mind.
I avoid horror that feels very heavy. I’ve never been good at handling really sad stories, so I’m not the target audience for things like It Comes at Night or A Tale of Two Sisters.
I adore so many things about “A Cautionary Tale.” I love its willingness to play with the “meta” of horror tropes, toying with the reader’s expectations as the story unfolds. I also love its concise language, which makes it infinitely rereadable. How did this story come to you? Does it come from a particular inspiration, or was it more spontaneous?
First of all, those are wonderful compliments, thank you!
You know, I can’t remember the initial spark for “A Cautionary Tale.” I do remember it coming to me in a rush once I started. I had been about to fall asleep, already past my usual bedtime, but I dragged my laptop into bed and spent the next half hour letting the story write itself. It needed very little revision the next day when I was awake.
You seem to tell this story in the voice of unspecified monsters or ghosts—the beings who are the true inhabitants of the story’s house setting. Why did you tell the story from that perspective?
They kind of just showed up.
People often warn writers away from second person, saying it comes across as forced. I don’t necessarily agree with that—writers tend to use whatever voice feels most natural for the story. But I did start thinking about second person stories where the perspective makes sense from a narrative point of view, not just a stylistic one. There are two main ways to do that: have a character narrate to another character (which arguably makes the narration first person), or address the reader directly. I liked the latter option a lot and started writing that way, only to realize halfway in that I had been doing both techniques all along. The point where you find out as a reader that there’s a “we” is pretty much where I found out, too.
Since “A Cautionary Tale” seems to be rooted in your fondness and sympathy for monsters, do you have a favorite monster that you often find yourself thinking about? What draws you to that monster?
I don’t have one favorite monster, but I have a favorite type of monster: intelligent and operating on a small scale. I can enjoy zombies, sharks, and Eldritch gods well enough, but the monsters that really catch my attention are the ones who know exactly what they are doing and have it out for the protagonist personally. Bonus points if there’s something eerily seductive about them and/or they feel confident enough to play with their food before eating it. The It from It Follows, the deadites from Evil Dead, Hannibal … you get the idea.
Is there anything else you want your reader to know about “A Cautionary Tale”? What does this story mean to you personally?
More than anything else, this story is a love letter to Neil Gaiman’s tiny story “Shadder.”
Shifting gears a little, what piece of writing advice would you give to a writer who’s just starting out?
Write it badly. You don’t always have to write it badly before you can write it well, but pretty often you do and it’s really worth doing.
Also, if you can’t figure out if you’re an outliner or a discovery writer, try Randy Ingmarsen’s Snowflake Method or Jennifer Nash’s Inside Outline.
What are you reading right now, or what upcoming things are you excited for?
I’ve just started listening to Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat, narrated by Christian Coulson. It’s the sequel to Dark Rise, which I highly recommend if you like YA dark fantasy that does things differently than you’re used to.
Do you have any forthcoming works readers should look for, or works in progress you want to share? Where can we find you?
I have a horror story coming out in January 2024 in Brigids Gate Press’s Scissor Sisters: 21 Tales of Sapphic Villains, edited by Rae Knowles and April Yates. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter as @lucdaniel94, or you can find a list of all my published and forthcoming writing at linktr.ee/lucdiamant.
Luc Diamant (he/him) is a writer from Amsterdam, where he lives with his partner and child and their imaginary pets. By day, he works as a literacy coordinator. He has writing out or forthcoming in Small Wonders, Canthius, and Tales to Terrify, among others. When not writing, he enjoys spending time with his family, watching the plants on his balcony grow, and thinking about lemurs.
