Prabha: Lord Zeus

[Music] Hello and welcome to It's a fandom thing. I'm your host, Erin Marlow, and each week I'm joined by a panel of guests to discuss all things fandom and pop culture primarily from a female perspective. You'll find everything from fanfic, to cosplay, to shitscreek, to supernatural, and everything in between. So put on your favorite piece of fandom merch, set aside that fanfic that you're writing about your OTP, and sit back and enjoy this week's episode. [Music] Hello and welcome to this special interview episode of It's a fandom thing. This episode I'm very excited. I just learned about this event for our local Colorado listeners, this Southern Colorado Women in Horror Festival, which I was just like, "Wait a minute, there's a women in horror festival going on." And so I was so excited to hear about this that I reached out to KJ Brantley, who is also an author as well. And I'm very, very excited to have her on the show. So first off, welcome KJ. Thank you so much, Erin. Thanks for having me. Welcome. Thank you so much for being here. And I know this is taking place in Pueblo, and it's this weekend on Saturday, March 28th. And I know everybody's like, "Well, that's so soon, but you can play me because I just found out about it." [Laughter] But I'm sure there will be other events, and we'll talk about that too. But if you want to let everybody know a little bit about what the Women in Horror Festival is. Of course, yes. Thank you. And Erin, it's a little bit on me as well. It was a spur of the moment of then, honestly, and sort of a pilot event. But we are very excited about it. The Soca Women in Horror Festival is a one-day literary horror event. As you mentioned, taking place, March 28th this Saturday. Women's bringing together women writers in the genre, horror genre, and dark fiction, for live, in-depth conversations about what it means to read and write horror from a woman identifying perspective. And so the focus of this event is really on the conversations themselves, but also there are author panels, or I'm sorry, author signings, meet and greets for the in-person guests. But we're not just doing like readings in our panels. We really want to create some space for some honest, thoughtful discussions about the genre and the experiences that shape it. And so, yeah, that's a little bit about it, and I'm excited to dive in more, if you have any questions that are for me. Yeah, and I love that because I think, as someone who's a horror fan, as all our listeners do, that's my favorite genre always has been watched my first horror film, My Baby Sitter Showed Me, Poulter Geister, and I was like five, six years old. Probably too young, but still, and shaped me. And I think still to this day, and I don't know if you agree, there's still a stigma in a way where people don't realize how much women enjoy the genre. Have you found that? Oh, yeah, absolutely. How much we enjoy it, and also that we're capable of having, of enjoying it and being able to write horror as well. But yeah, especially that writing horror, because I think it's so interesting, and I love it, that this is about writing, and books, and novels, and stuff, and you don't always see that when you're going to see a festival. So, I know you're a writer yourself. So, talk a little bit about, what inspired you to first want to even go into this venture, because putting anything like this on is a lot of work. So. I mean, this specific venture itself, like horror is another story. I have similar origin stories that I think many of us have, like you mentioned, being young, and honestly, a lot of it, at least for me, starts out with film. So, that is a big horror influence, but I've always been a reader and drawn to the macabre and Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley and all that. But this specific event was actually inspired by, first of all, March being Women in Horror Month. It's really exciting. Time to obviously celebrate women writing horror, women horror film, and anything related. But also, it was kind of an event that I thought would be a fun event, a way to bring something to Southern Colorado. That is a literary event that we don't really see as much of, as we do in Denver, for example, where you're located near. And it was a combination of wanting to support. There's this amazing bookstore here in public, Colorado, called Analog Books, and they have a really cool bar and an amazing coffee shop. I was like, I thought, first of all, that would be a perfect venue for an in-person spot for this pilot event, to see people even relate to it this topic. And then also, there's this amazing woman author, female author, Gwendolyn Keist, who she's a big, you probably heard of her. If not, she's really supportive. I'm in uplifting of indie horror writers and women in horror. And just she's an amazing influencer as well in the space. And so she was doing some events and really trying to champion women in horror month. So she was also kind of a catalyst for, well, why don't we try to do something grassroots here a little bit of in-person and try to get some diverse voices to come and speak here and pop low. And then also be able to offer this to anyone around the world that they want to hear these conversations and they're interested in it. I love that. And I know that Southern Colorado does get ignored a lot when it comes to that stuff. So I really love that. And I love shouting out independent bookstore too because we desperately need that. And we need to support those organizations as well. So I love that. How did you go about finding authors to take part in the event? Yes, that's a great question. And one part about this, I know you mentioned taking on an event like this. I have a bit of a marketing background, like 20, so years of event management. So it's not like running into a cold. So I, you know, like trying to just pull this off. So I feel like it's a little bit easier to get something like this going when you do have that experience. And during COVID, especially I put on a lot of virtual events. So that helped as far as that goes taken on this endeavor. But, you know, I've been a part of the Horror Writers Association for that probably almost five years now. And I've been really more involved in the Colorado chapter in the past two years, you know, spending a lot of time with these writers and also building my community of writers online. There's an amazing community of horror writers, horror authors online. Not just women, you know, non-binary men that they're really supportive of each other and each other's art. And so they're just a really great community. So it's not, you know, there's not a lot of gatekeeping, I feel like. And so it's been really easy to, you know, just reach out to, you know, some of these women that I see, you know, that I am interested in their perspective, you know, or I really like the work that they're doing. So I tried to just, you know, reach out to women that I thought would really add interesting and interesting perspective to the panels they had, you know, so maybe like a book coming out as well that would be interesting to talk about. And I really want to, you know, balance out the writers that we had so that we could get, you know, a diverse panel of perspectives and voices from, you know, emerging authors who are really talented to, like, rising stars, like CJ Lead, you know, and really try to amplify voices that are also left out, you know, I feel like there may be a lot of people that would want to come and see CJ Lead or Erica T. Worth who is a Colorado author who's an amazing, amazing indigenous author who is really also supportive of, you know, Colorado and supporting Colorado events and also supporting other women as well. So it was great to get her involved. She's part of the, you know, she's part of the network of the Colorado chapter of the Hore Writers Association, all that. So she's, you know, really involved that way. But I wanted to, you know, like make sure that I brought an, you know, an Eric, Eric, Eric, could see worth CJ Lead, Haley Piper, all of these, you know, these bigger anchors, rising stars or stars in the genre and then also pair them up with, you know, it's more emerging and indie authors as well that I thought have amazing work out there that I would love to amplify their voices along with the bigger name in the genre. And they all were excited about it. They, all of these authors, all these women authors were very excited about it. CJ Lead has a book coming out headlights, I believe in June. And it actually takes place all in Colorado, which is really exciting. And there are some like themes of like the, the shine mixed with wolves and the Colorado landscape that it just sounds awesome. I'm about to read that soon. And Eric's Hugh Werff's haunting of Room 904. The setting is in the brown palace, you know, one of the most popular hotels in Denver. So I think that, you know, a lot of these authors were excited. This is kind of an event that I don't really see has been done before, at least in this way. So I think that's a big draw as it's a way to, you know, amplify women's voices in the genre. But then also I think it's that Colorado, you know, there's a lot of East East Coast, West Coast events and not as much here anchored in Colorado, like literary horror events. So yeah, yeah, everyone was really excited about participating and it was hard at all to get these women involved. That's awesome. And I love that it's diverse and it's not just like really highly successful people. And I also appreciate that it's not just like you don't have like just one sub genre, like you even have people at right splatter punk, which if people don't know what that is. If you want to tell people a little bit, I mean, that's like for extreme horror. Yes, it's extreme. It's extreme. I can be really extreme. So if people don't know a little bit about what that is, because I just thought it was interesting to see that there because that's one that. For sure, I think if people think of splatter punk, they don't think women instantly. Oh yeah, that's a very good point. Yes. Even like like slashers as well, you know, like like CJ Lee and she is like if you've read Mave fly, you know, that is a crazy slasher, you know, American psycho. You know, Americana psycho. I'm excited. And you don't, you know, yeah, you don't see people don't typically early some, you know, some people would say that women don't write those things or they don't know that women write those things. And of course they do, you know, and yeah, and that extreme horror. Because we're women, we're not we, Gord D'Amure are just completely driven by our emotions, you know, we have as many well horrific experiences. If not more than maybe cisgender men do, you know, so obviously those real life experiences we have that we can write about, but we're also, you know, capable of. You know, channeling grief, rage, fear, just are going to call the interest into something horrific or darker like just as much as, you know, a man can. Yeah, exactly. And I think too often a lot of society, especially I think, especially it's the heteronormative cisgendered like the roles that, you know, men do this role in women do this role. I think it's a lot of that kind of thinking and I think in some parts it's changing like I know there are people are getting a little bit more voices, but I don't. But I think in the writing world it's not as big or not as strong and that's as far as like getting attention, not that it's not there, but getting the attention. Yeah. And that's still I think, you know, I might be I could be reading into this a little bit myself because I haven't. It's not like anyone has said to me this specifically about this so co-women and horror fest event, but even putting on an event like this, you do see obviously a lot more even in women and horror month. You see a lot more championing of these things or a lot more interest from women, you know, wanting to participate rather than like this cisgender men and I, I am curious like I've pondered about, you know, why, why. That is exactly I mean, I have some hunches, but there still is that thing like this is a few this is a female thing is the woman thing this is a man thing, you know, so it's almost like I still think there is that barrier of oh, this is woman's horror. This isn't horror, you know, like this is a woman's perspective on horror. So why would this be relevant to me. You know, so that's another thing. I think like. The point of these events and the women in horror month is like is trying to push back against that that box. Yeah, no, I totally agree in a little bit going back a little bit to what you were talking about. Women and people who identify as women experiencing their own horror in real life and how I think for me at least that horror is very therapeutic and. A way to really deal with that trauma and I'm not asking you to go into any kind of personal trauma or anything, but do you feel that's the case like with a lot of writing you be the red or even written or anything like that. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why I really think, you know, I think that you should definitely anyone interested in exploring those topics and seeing. How all these different women tell women authors that are going to be on our panels. So one of the panels is why women love horror. Exploring why so many women are drawn to horror in the first place like whether that is catharsis identification like they identify with, you know, the either the monster, the final girl, you know, how is that speak to their own identity, you know, exploring power. Or like is it something more complicated and like dealing with trauma catharsis like the other panel is like the horror of being seen. So. Again, about identity like exposure and survival like it looks at how identity intersects with horror both on the page and in real life and what it means to be like visible vulnerable, you know, both like, you know, even as a as a rising star, for example, in the genre, but also when you're creating art within the genre. So I think that's a question that I think will be really deeply explored in our event, you know, as I mentioned, not just like it's not promoting their books all the will talk about their books for sure, but, you know, exploring those questions because I do see that I do think like for me personally, I think horror is cathartic. I think, you know, it's a way that's why you see that rise in like female rage as a theme and books. It's pushing back on the patriarch and gender normative roles and you know, it's also a way, I think so there's there's that side of it that rebellion against these things. And then yeah, catharsis like my debut novel that's in edits right now. I can't talk about the title or anything yet, but it's exploring like themes of motherhood and the horror of motherhood. Like even like, you know, like see sections and, you know, these this trauma, this real trauma you experience even in giving birth or as a mother, you know, there's a lot of horror dealing with, you know, essay, you know, and I think that can be cathartic for someone to who it's experienced that. Laurel high tower is one of my favorite women authors and she explores grief really well through her like her her re-release of crossroads is coming out in April. And that one, you know, explores grief. So if you've lost someone, you know, I think it's a great it's a great way to explore those emotions that sometimes, you know, people are like, oh, after a certain amount of time, just get over it, you know, but and you're living, you're sitting there living with that those emotions, but yeah, so absolutely I think that and I think that on our panels will be really interesting to see other women authors perspectives on that. Yeah, I love all those panel ideas, by the way, just absolutely all those panels that are coming up, it's just great and wonderful because Yeah, I do, you know, personally, it has been for me very cathartic like watching out of horror and I think you can relate sometimes to both the final person final girl and then like the monster at the same time. I think there can be times when you do and especially I think if you feel like you don't fit in quote unquote fit into the normal world or whatever. 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Taxes and fees extra, see MittMobile for details. What other events do you have coming up like that you're planning? I know there's something like with camping, right? Like a camping event coming up. So our presenting sponsor is Creepaway Camp. And that's put on by Broom Book and Candle. And you should check them out on Instagram. They have a website as well. BroomBookCancel.com. And I think that's also the Instagram handle as well. But Amanda Schaefer, she runs that and she is putting on this amazing event Creepaway Camp. It's at the end of June. And I'll be going to that as well. I'm representing myself as well as the SoCo Women in Horror Fest. Because we do plan to do this again next year at a bigger scale and more in-person authors and events. But guess Creepaway Camp will be in Colorado Springs. It'll be for four days, three nights. You get to camp in Yurt's. They have lodging and then food. And yeah, it's like pretty pretty cool. Kind of sort of an adult summer camp for horror fans. And if you're like me, I actually did, you know, I wasn't the more athletic type. So I'd probably be the one watching the games, but you can participate in the really cool. Really cool games that they have going on during time. And then there'll be chances to buy books like a book fair going on some vendors. And then at the end of each night hosted by the talk-scared podcast with Nick Roberts. He is, he and the other authors, it'll be Rachel Harrison, Nat Cassidy, RJ Joseph, just CJ Lead. And like so many other amazing authors in person at this event will be, you know, telling the campfire stories. So if you can imagine professional horror authors telling your ghost stories, a visit adult camp. Sounds pretty amazing to me. Yeah, with that event though, partnering with the Soko Women in Horror Fest. If you purchase a registration to, we're sold out of the in person, but if you purchase a registration for the livestream, you'll be entered to when it give away. Or entered into a giveaway to win a free registration for the entire camp, including lodging and meals and all that, which is honestly and your odds are still, you know, pretty good. I think if you enter for that right now and then you also get a 15% discount to creep away camp as well. So if you want to purchase your tickets now to make sure that it doesn't sell out, you can also, you know, purchase your registration creep away camp for 15% off the price. And it is for the whole, you know, four days or nights. It's a value of about $1,300. So that's a nice savings there and also a nice chance to win. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. And I love that you're already planning to expand this event and into next year or two and also making it larger. So are you looking at like possibly doing it like over a full weekend then? Yeah, absolutely. I was actually surprised by the interest taken into this event, like the attention and the interest was, I thought people would be interested. Obviously, that's why to, you know, decide to organize it. It was like this would be a cool event, but just the amount of interest made me realize, you know, that there really is a demand for it and that we could really do a lot more with it. So for next year, I definitely think it'll be, you know, a weekend, two day events rather than just the one day and, you know, plan to start planning after this one is finished and we wrap this one up. I definitely think, you know, planning to have more, more in-person authors, maybe some film makers and screenwriters, but definitely still trying to focus on the literary aspect the most. You know, and bringing in maybe some vendors and some really cool, maybe a keynote speaker or two. Awesome. Well, that's, that is so exciting. Really, really just really exciting. And I know people that would love this, people that love literature as well, just would be like, just would eat this up. So I really, really, really wish you so much success with this. And I know you can't talk about your novel, but I wish you success with that as well. But I did want to know, because it's one of my favorite things to ask anybody and as much as you want to share through planning this event or even meeting people or anything like that. What did you learn about yourself as like an artist or even like a lover of horror or anything like that? Oh, that's it. So in planning this event or within this event specifically, would you say? Yeah. And whatever you feel comfortable sharing, you don't have to get too personal, whatever you feel comfortable with. You know, I think one thing that I really, you know, because I'm an emerging artist author myself, I'm, you know, I don't even have my book out yet. I think something that I learned a lot more about was balancing working on your art and having to market that art. So even, and then, you know, like I've had to complete edits this week to turn into my developmental editor and just balancing that, you know, to work on my art and getting my book out into the world as well. So putting on this event and marketing it and then still trying to market myself as well and network with people. And so just, you know, admiring, I've seen Clay McCloud Chapman. I know we're plugging women this month, but I love Clay McCloud Chapman. I think he's so talented. I love his work and his humor as well, but he's posted a lot about balancing that, you know, balancing, balancing just what I talked about and being, you know, how do you, you know, especially as you grow, like even the attention that this event has gotten, you know, how do you balance all of that, you know, while also still, you know, maintaining your own sense of self and your own, your own piece and then also being able to work on your art with fidelity as well. So I suppose I just learned that that is a challenge that I'm going to have to, you know, face if I want to bring my, my baby out to the world, my book. And yeah, just start thinking about how I'm going to approach that now. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. And KJ, if you want to just let everybody know where they can find out information, where they can follow you to keep tabs on like your upcoming novel and everything. Absolutely. So yes, you can find me on Instagram, mostly, and threads at at author KJ, Brantley, BR, ATL, EY. And you can also find my event on Instagram at at women in horror festival co. And yeah, that's where you can find me for now. I'm working on updating my website. So yeah, feel free to DM me and follow me to find out more about my upcoming novel as well as all the latest news on the women in horror fest. If you want to register for the SoCo Women in Horror Fest, there's only a few more days left for this year, but you can still register with the live stream and that the link is in the bio on the Instagram, but you can also go to analog, web, low, pu, e BLO dot com. And there is a page there for the event page to sign up. So yeah, please join us there. You'd love to welcome you into these amazing conversations with these amazing, like talented women in horror. So thank you. Thanks, Aaron. Thank you. Wonderful. And I will put a link in the show notes everybody. So you can click there. Easy access there too. So thank you again, KJ. I really appreciate you speaking with me. And once again, I wish you nothing but the best for this. I think it's amazing. And so thank you so much. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful night. Thank you again to KJ for sitting down and speaking with me about the upcoming SoCo Women in Horror Festival. Once again, please click the link in the show notes to find out more information. Go give KJ and the SoCo Women in Horror Festival a follow on Instagram as well. If you would like to be a potential interview guest on the show, head on over to our website. It's a fan. I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you again for listening and thank you again to KJ. And I hope everybody has a good day. Take care of yourselves. Thank you. [MUSIC]