MASHED Interview with Calypso Kane.

MASHED is an anthology of 17 sensually sinister stories curated from over 200 submissions from around the world.

Each story is a unique blend of horror, humor, food and sex, resulting in tales that will leave you both scared and slightly turned on, while laughing out loud and contemplating whether or not you should have your next meal.

Stories including:

“A Woman’s Corn” – By J. Donnait
“Charlie’s Chunky Munching Meat” – By Stephen McQuiggan
“Halloween Nosh” – By Brandon Ketchum
“Biscuit: A Love Story” – By Grivante
“Burnt Scrambled Eggs” – By Devon Widmer
“The Disagreeable Dinner” – By Mark Daponte
“Sugar” – By Darla Dimmelle
“The Henry Problem” – By John Grey
“Nibble, Nibble, My Wolf” By – J.L. Boekestein
“The Wrath of the Buttery Bastard-Taters” – By Alex Colvin
“Sauce” – By Steven Carr
“The Care and Feeding of your Personal Demon” – By Maxine Kollar
“P.A.C.D. : The Kitchen of Tomorrow, Today!” – By R.A. Goli
“Arabica” – By Cobalt Jade
“Toilet Manners” – By Eddie Generous
“The Stray” – By Calypso Kane
“The Tall Man in the Hat” – By Nicholas Paschall

Do you like food? Sex? Horror? Humor? Then this book is for you! Guaranteed to leave you scared, aroused and possibly a little hungry.

From the twelfth to the twenty-fourth of June, get inside the minds of twelve of the authors from the anthology. Find out what inspired the stories, what other projects the authors are involved with, and generally get to know the authors better.

Today, get to know more about Calypso Kane and The Stray.

In the age-old first date manner, tell me a bit about yourself.

Thank you for asking, I [REDACTED]

Who has influenced you most as a writer?

My idols are an assembly of Angela Carter, Arthur Machen, H. P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson, and a dash of Gaiman. None of whom I bother to invoke when spinning my smut, but they deserve an honourable mention regardless.

What are your favourite books and why?

My favourite book has to be, Shadowland, by Peter Straub, the only work of his I own. It’s an often overlooked masterwork in terms of blending child adventure, fairy tales, and grotesque adult themes with a brilliant varnish of naked horror pasting them all together. A close runner-up would be Angela Carter’s, The Bloody Chamber anthology, being that it contains the sort of decadence one only expects in consuming gourmet chocolates or reclining on velvet sheets...just after murdering one’s enemies in lavishly visceral fashion. It was one of the earliest volumes to focus on the now-frequent habit of remaking old fairy tales and I’ve yet to come across another collection which produces the same reaction as hers.

When did you realise you wanted to be a writer?

When I realized there were stories I wanted to read and no one had written them. Seeing as no authors felt like reading my mind and taking dictation, I resigned myself to putting the stuff down myself like some sort of barbarian. As luck would have it, there’s a market for supernatural smut, and here I am today.

Do you have any interesting writing quirks?

If I do I haven’t caught on to them. Alert the authorities if you spot any and we’ll get them tagged.

How did you become interested in writing this particular genre?

I’m always interested when one of three things is involved—monsters, erotica, and money.

What was the inspiration behind your MASHED story?

I’ve always found the concept of incubi and succubi unique. As a creature of folklore they seem to be an amalgam of multiple traits. They could be there to bed some poor mortal, they could be there to crouch on your chest and poison you with nightmares, they could be there to try and rut your soul out, they could just be a shade in your mind. Who knows? There are as many potential interpretations for the incubus as there are for vampires or werewolves. What occurred to me was that, like the latter monsters, one of the common themes for the incubus was that they saw humanity as a food source. Sex is mealtime for them and, human beings being what we are, I figured there had to be some flexible individual out there willing to feed such a surreal party on the regular. A more sensual take on the sweet old lady who feeds the homeless cats who flock to her porch.

With over two hundred submissions, what was your reaction upon finding out your story had made the cut?

Stage One: ???

Stage Two: !!!

Stage Three: $$$

Each story is a mix of horror, humour, food, and sex; what kind of reaction should a reader expect to have upon finishing your story – will they be more turned on or terrified?

Yes.

Do you have another writing project in mind or in the making? If so, can you tell us a little about it?

A few, actually. There’s [REDACTED]

Excluding your own, which of the MASHED stories is your favourite?

“Halloween Nosh,” a tale of brevity, love, and grisly bedroom practices.

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