One-to-One 25: The horror mind of Cassandra Khaw

I must admit, there was an element of selfishness involved in this podcast. I'm currently doing a creative writing course in my spare time (rather than in my news stories, ho ho) and one of the things I'm struggling with, weird as it is to admit, is the idea that I can write anything. I don't have to be bound by the rules of this world, or any world, or any rules. I can conceive of something totally and utterly new. And that's... I still can't quite wrap my head around it.

But my guest on the podcast today, Cassandra Khaw, has long made their peace with this, producing works of - usually - pitch black horror that I'm not sure I'd have the nerve to imagine. The most famous of their pieces is probably the novella Nothing But Blackened Teeth, which was a USA Today bestseller when it came out roughly a year ago. 

So I wanted to find out from Cassandra, who seems to imagine new stories at the speed other people think of things to eat for dinner, where their ideas came from and how to shape them from there. I also wanted to find out where their life-long love of horror came from - and I was treated to a wonderful real-life Malaysian horror story when I asked.

Cassandra isn't only a horror writer, though. They've written for Eurogamer and now they help write games. They've contributed to games like Fallen London and Sunless Skies and Falcon Age, and more recently were working at Ubisoft Montreal on Hyperspace (and some undisclosed projects) and, to get us right up to date, Gotham Knights. Cassandra's already gone on to two new game projects they're not able to talk about yet.

They sound busy, right? Well, let's not forget their debut collection Breakable Things, coming out on 8th November. We talk about it in this podcast and it sounds great; it revolves around a theme of people pushing back against the world, like a werewolf out for revenge, or mermaids - who were pulled out of the ocean by humans, and impregnated - doing the same. There are some quieter explorations of grief too, including one tale that's personal and close to Cassandra's heart.

They have two other books coming out next year, too. One is a twisted mermaid novella called The Salt Grows Heavy, due May 2023, and the other is a collaboration with Richard Kadrey called The Dead Take the A Train, due March.

"Pathologic workaholic" is how they'd describe themselves, and on this evidence, I'd have to agree! Incidentally, the scary Malaysian film Cassandra mentions at the beginning is Impetigore, and the book recommendation is The Least of My Scars, by Stephen Graham Jones. Oh and apologies for a bit of keyboard clacking at the beginning of the recording - we relocate quickly to a quieter area.

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