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| photo: Libby Bulloff | |
Cherie Priest is the author of two dozen books and novellas, including the horror novel The Toll, the gothic Maplecroft and the Clockwork Century series, beginning with Boneshaker. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and she won the Locus Award for best horror novel. She lives in Seattle, Wash., with her husband and a menagerie of exceedingly photogenic pets. In her new mystery, Grave Reservations (Atria, October 26, 2021), a psychic travel agent teams up with a Seattle PD detective to solve a murder.
On your nightstand now:
The nightstand is presently overflowing, because I haven't had a lot of bandwidth for leisure reading over the last year or two. But I am gradually working my way through The Unidentified by Colin Dickey; I love his nonfiction, especially his weirder leanings--and I often walk away from his books wishing fervently that I'd written them myself. I'm also fortunate enough to have an ARC of The Violence by Delilah Dawson, who is always top notch; and I have Chuck Wendig's new one queued up, The Book of Accidents, which is phenomenal so far.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Anything with any mystery element. My reading was tightly restricted when I was young, but I discovered (and hoarded) Encyclopedia Brown stories and anything Nancy Drew. Later I twigged on to Doyle and Christie, and I read most of their respective canons before I was in high school.
Your top five authors:
In no particular order, Terry Pratchett (especially the Witch novels); Dashiell Hammett (especially the Continental Op stories); Barbara Hambly (her gothics are my comfort reading); Caitlín Kiernan (all of their novels, but Kiernan is also one of the only short story writers I regularly keep up with); and I'm having too much trouble narrowing down another half dozen folks for a fifth. I'd hate to leave anyone out--so let's call number five a wild card spot, eh?
Book you've faked reading:
At the risk of incurring considerable wrath, I've never read any Brontë, Austen or Alcott from cover to cover. I realize that these folks write beloved classics, but I've always bounced right off them--I don't know why, and I wish it were not the case.
Book you're an evangelist for:
God help me if I ever finally shut up about Colin Dickey's Ghostland. I shove it in front of anyone who enjoys or writes ghost stories, and I think it's brilliant.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Any given one of the half dozen editions of Dracula that I own. The prettier and more ridiculous the better. I will not be taking questions at this time.
Book you hid from your parents:
Almost all of them. My parents divorced when I was small, and I lived with my mother; she permitted only Christian fiction and literature in her house. On the upshot, her definition of "literature" was broad enough to include "any author who is dead," so I still got a lot of reading done via my very sneaky father. However, any contemporary fiction of the time--especially genre fiction--was strictly verboten. This was a problem for me, as I was very keen on horror, fantasy and television show tie-ins--particularly anything related to Star Trek or the TV show Beauty and the Beast.
Book that changed your life:
Too many to list, if I'm honest. From a writing standpoint, though, I'll say it was Dracula. I thought I understood something about writing tension and gothic spookiness until I read it and realized that I was still struggling with 101-level skills and was not yet ready for my doctorate in the subject.
Favorite line from a book:
The last line of Grendel by John Gardner: "Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."
Five books you'll never part with:
I've toted a couple dozen boxes of "I can't part with these" books through almost 30 moves--several of which were back and forth across the country. I could never narrow it down to five.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett. Either that, or maybe Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum.