Cherie Priest

I was born in Tampa, Florida, down the street from the stadium in 1975 — the same year that gave us Saturday Night Live and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, so I consider myself in good company. I have a B.A. in English from Southern Adventist University, here noted because it embarrasses them to share a paragraph with Tim Curry in drag; and I also have an M.A. in Rhetoric (composition/critical theory) from the University of Tennessee, which couldn’t care less.

In addition to novels, I write for magazines and websites, composing everything from product copy for power tools to interviews and movie reviews. You can find a mostly proper bibliography over here.

For my day job, I serve as an associate editor with Subterranean Press.

In March of 2006 I married my long-time significant other, Aric; and together with our fat black cat named Spain (as in, “I claim this land for–”), we moved to Seattle shortly after the wedding. Seattle is very different from the southeast. I’m still getting accustomed to it.

Recently I bought a small blue fish and named her “Merrimack.” We call her “Ginny” for short, but people in the Pacific Northwest tend not to get that joke.

The rest of this FAQ has been cobbled together from questions submitted to my LiveJournal.

What do you look like? See right. I’m petite with short blue hair (at the moment). I have two tattoos, nine piercings, a big mouth (literally), comically flat feet, and godawful vision. I’m in my mid-thirties and I have recently discovered hats.

How did you become a writer? I wrote. I started writing novels when I was twelve — and they were terrible. It took me about ten years to produce anything worth reading, but now I seem to be on my way to something like a proper career.

A lot of your stuff is set in Tennessee or Florida. Where exactly are you from? The short answer is that I was born in Tampa, Florida; but when I was about 5 my parents divorced and I began moving all over the place. I more or less grew up in Florida (Orlando and later the Gulf Coast area), but I’ve also lived in Texas (4 years), Chicago (3 years), Fort Knox, some small towns in Indiana, and most recently, the Chattanooga, TN area (12 years). Meanwhile, during most of my formative years my dad was in the military — and I spent every summer with him. Therefore I also spent significant chunks of time in Colorado and Virginia. At present, I live in Seattle, Washington, because that’s where Amazon.com is and that’s where my husband used to work, though now he is the co-owner of a coffee shop and roastery here in town — Fremont Coffee and Tea.

How did you find your agent? As is so often the case, the Catch 22 of publishing held true — it’s always easier to get an agent once you’ve published a book, and it’s always easier to publish a book once you’ve got an agent. My first agent, Lantz Powell, approached me after a reading at a university writer’s guild meeting; and a month or so later, I signed with him. However, my career needs grew exponentially in a rather short period of time, so back in June of 2006 I signed with Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Agency. Jennifer specializes in genre fiction — and I am terribly happy about joining her stable of writers, though Lantz and I remain on friendly terms, and he still represents the Eden Moore novels.

Fave horror authors/influences: The first “horror” I ever read was a “Complete Tales and Works” of Edgar Allen Poe. Read it cover-to-cover. I was about twelve. After that I typically read horror authors who are considered “literature” or “classics” (read: dead, and therefore somehow more virtuous than Carolyn Keene). This is due in large part to the fact that my mother forbade any interesting (supernatural) fiction in any form except for the Bible. I wasn’t even allowed to watch Scooby-Doo. That having been said, I read a lot of Algernon Blackwood, Joseph Sheriden LeFanu, F. Marion Crawford, and the like.

I also cut my literary teeth on mysteries — again, the more old-school varieties. I’ve read every Sherlock Holmes story Doyle ever wrote (including the sort-of sucky ones with Holmes-as-narrator), I’ve consumed enough Agatha Christie to choke a horse, and Dash Hammett’s Continental Op is one of my heroes. I don’t read a lot of horror anymore (except for the books I review), but I’ve got a soft spot for zombies, southern gothica, and vampire stories. Nothing LKH has ever written holds a candle to Anne Rice’s original vampire chronicles.

Once I got old enough to have my own Blockbuster card, I tore through Alfred Hitchcock’s canon and consider his best films an influence as well; however, my whole-hearted adoration of the director does not prevent me from finding Vertigo, Psycho, and Notorious really boring. At present, I’m rather in awe of M. Night Shyamalan and Guillermo del Toro.

I love, love, love survival horror video games, including (but not limited to) such fine franchises as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. [Edit: Bioshock ruled.]

Are your stories related? Common characters, common places, etc? When I signed a 3-book deal with TOR a few years ago, they specified 2 sequels to Four and Twenty Blackbirds. That’s great, though — I really love writing Eden as a POV. But when this trilogy is finished, I’ll be moving on to other projects … at least for awhile. Dreadful Skin (from Subterranean, March 2007) is a bit of Victoriana set in the American south and west; Fathom (Tor, 2008) is set in Florida; and The Boneshaker takes place in the 19th century Pacific Northwest. I’ve also got a young adult project cooking — and that one will feature a bunch of kids in Seattle. So except for these first three books, no, the rest aren’t going to be related.

Where did you go to school? I graduated from Forest Lake Academy in 1993, and then took a year off before college (long story). Then, in a fit of protracted insanity, I attended Southern Adventist University, from whence I graduated in 1998 with a B.A. in English. The logical result of this decision is that I now owe more money to the government than I am ever likely to earn in any given year of my professional life. At any rate, because I had not yet won the lottery, sold the movie rights to a novel, or even settled on any sort of life-direction … I went on to The University of Tennessee (at Chattanooga, TN) , where I stalled my entry to the real world by spending 3 years on an M.A. in Rhetoric.

What exactly do you study to get a degree in Rhetoric? People ask me this all the time, and the answer is, “a whole bunch of stuff.” Mostly, truth to tell, it’s just a professional writing degree that was aimed at forcing me to accept poor-paying contract slave labor with no upward mobility and terrible benefits teach freshman comp. I seem to recall coursework on things such as research methods of bibliography, educational theory, creative nonfiction, and a few writing workshops that were the bane of my existence. Some people love workshops and get a lot out of them. I hate them, and wind up wanting to kill everyone.

Do you have someplace where you’ve got all your movie reviews gathered together? Yes, but I cunningly disguised that place on my main LJ page, hiding it beneath a link that says Movie Reviews.

Didn’t you write those poems that were spammed all over the place awhile back? The one about Dr. Seuss, and some silly Lord of the Rings things along the same lines? Yes. I had too much free time. Go here to find all of those collected together. P.S., this one is my personal favorite.