Featured Interview With Stuart Tudor
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in South Africa, spending most of my life in the beautiful city of Cape Town. I am not there now, spending my current years along the West Coast. I have two cats named Sparrow and Felix respectively. Sparrow is my beloved stalker who would die of a broken heart if I went on holiday. Felix is almost a wild animal but he is sometimes adorable.
Max is loyal to a fault and I love him like any man would to their dog. What can I say, I love animals.
I am currently a university student studying economics at the University of London and I work multiple part-time jobs to help fund my writing dream.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I started writing when I was a child. I fell in love with stories ever since my dad read The Hobbit and Watership Down to me. Those two incidents have remained one of my fondest childhood memories. I started writing on and off since then, writing my first novel in my late teens. It was a fantasy story set in my original world and it was bad. I do want to go back to my fantasy setting as I have had fun worldbuilding it. At that point, I wrote two short stories as well, which are also bad along with some bad poetry.
I knew I needed to practice, and get feedback more frequently, so I came up with the idea of creating a horror anthology. This would become Eight Nightmares, a collection of short and novella-length horrors, three of eight are out now. The fourth: Our Broken World is in the sixth draft which is currently being beta read (hopefully) soon. I am looking forward
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
There are too many favorite authors for me to list here. Aside from classic authors like Mary Shelley, Margret Atwood, Gabriel García Márquez, Poe, Lovecraft, and Shakespeare. I also love more modern authors like Alen Moore, Kentaro Miura, Andy Weir, and Frank Herbert. I wish I could list and talk about all of them (don’t get me started on Tolkien) but there isn’t enough time lol.
I normally enjoy reading speculative fiction, so fantasy, science fiction, and horror among other aspects of the umbrella term. I love the fantastical and the dark, and I want to see what contemporaries can offer me along with what I can provide myself to the world. I want to be taken to a whole new world, the real world is boring.
I would say that the authors mentioned in the first paragraph are major inspirations, but inspiration can come from several places, from video games like Silent Hill, Bloodborne, or SOMA to movies like Jacob’s Ladder or Indiana Jones. I have also been enjoying manga recently, like Berserk or Uzumaki, I have been wanting to explore what non-western countries can offer for art, I can enjoy something from a unique perspective.
I should also mention some of the negative influences that push me to be better. One of my major motives for writing was when one of the writers for Game of Thrones- David Benioff said themes are for eighth-grade book reports. I am letting my anger at that attitude fuel my one-sided vendetta to prove him wrong. I know it is silly, but spite can be a great motivator.
I also follow the advice of Alan Moore about reading great and terrible books, which has led me to read rubbish like Empress Theresa because it is a great learning moment for me.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
So my latest book is the third entry in the Eight Nightmares Anthology is Black Masquerade. It’s a novella set in 1929 where a group of characters host an engagement party for our protagonist Barbara. She is due to marry a Texas oil baren Dennis, but the party turns for the worst when a specter with dire warnings for the future invades the party. Barbara then learns of what history has in store for her and her friends.
Barbara herself was a fun character to write about, she had to be strong but also within the confines of her gender at the time. She also had to be motivated and relatable, something that proved to be rather difficult when writing elite characters. She came from nothing, rising to become the heiress of a manufacturing company during WW1, she knows suffering and wants to avoid it at all costs. But the specter might force her to admit that you can’t always avoid suffering.
I have been a big fan of gothic horror since high school and this is my attempt at it. Big inspiration from Poe as I would imagine him viewing history unfolding. Those who read Black Masquerade should be able to pick up which Poe stories I used as bluepoint tee hee.
This story took me almost a year to complete, primarily due to other obligations and drawn-out beta reading progress standards to hunting down beta readers online. It is a slow, tedious, often expensive business, but well worth seeing it published and even sometimes reviewed
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