On Writing:
Q: When you tell a story through an unusual format, for example, a memo, recipe, resignation letter, do you decide on the form first or do you find the story demands that form? Speaking to writers who have never experimented with structure before and want to, where would you suggest they begin?
A: “Most of my ideas come to me in the format that I want to write in. I find myself often writing based on the Greek myths in letter form, maybe because the Greek religion was so personal and interventionist. A lot of my stories comes to me as rants, and I may overlay that on some more palatable format like a letter or a cooking show. Many of the recipes have occurred as such to further the social commentary, such as my Recipe for a Facebook Rant.
If you are interested in considering alternate forms, think about what form might suit what you want to convey. Might this character or story prefer to be presented as a cooking show, or in a letter or answering machine message? Often the character will have a sense of where their voice will best come through. Also think about how you want to engage the readership. Do you want them to be an active or passive participant? Do you want to address them directly? This is where letters tend to fit well, where you are forcing the readership to become a part of the story.”
Q: You’ve experimented with intentional misspellings, unusual structures, and meta forms. What writing ‘rule’ do you most enjoy breaking? What would you say to a newer writer curious about rule-breaking?
A: “I don’t know that I think to myself, “I’m gonna break some rules, tee hee.” I think it is more a matter of what the story or poem would benefit from. A lot of this is done to further character voice. I might think to myself, “how would I express this sentiment if language were not a barrier?” Sometimes the form dictates what rules are broken. My glitch poetry is often my inner monologue used as though it were an autofill function – I will write stream of consciousness with words following others based on where my mind leads me. This may work as is without editing, or it may require some serious revisitation to pull it back together, that depends largely on what mood I’m trying to convey and how organic I can be with it.
I think if you are interested in breaking rules or experimenting with form, the best thing you can do as a writer is give yourself permission to do so. You have to be confident in this or it won’t work, you’ll lose yourself in the attempt. One way to let go of your own inherent biases and anxiety about what you are doing possibly being subpar is to not attach too much to the end result at first and just play. So what if you write something terrible? No one else has to see it. Mess around with it, get muddy with the words like you are wallowing into them and looking at them up close in new ways. And remember that nothing is perfect immediately, that is an unrealistic expectation. Your early attempts may not be what you want them to, and that’s okay. Self-censorship will be the devil of this kind of experimentation every time.
If you want a more formal means to start out, to have some kind of plan, erasure poetry is a wonderful way to look at existing text anew. Pick out words from some preexisting content that stick out to you and think about how you might rearrange them. Block out everything that doesn’t fit. Use photocopies if you don’t want to write directly on existing pages. If you want to seek publication for this kind of work, it is best to stick to things in the public domain, but I find the exercise more fun with older work anyway, because you can make it speak to things happening currently in unexpected ways.“
On Horror:
Q: When you watch or read horror, do you see the monster as the true villain or more so the messenger or metaphor for something uncomfortable the character(s) refuse to confront? What about in your own writing?
A: “I never naturally write to traditional concepts of hero or villain. I typically find that these roles are highly limited and often exist as a matter of perception, as in who got to write the history books when all is said and done (and thusly vilify or other whomever they dominated). Sometimes my so-called monsters may be direct metaphors but often I try to think about everything as though it is its own being with its own motivations. (See, I even have difficulties typing out the word monster because I don’t really see most of them as such.) The monsters’ motivations may seem evil to those who doesn’t share them, as well as to society at large, and maybe even rightly so if they inflict unnecessary pain on others. But too many monsters written as such fall flat to me. They do things that don’t make sense based on what they seem to be motivated by, or by what they need to survive and what they seek to feel fulfilled. I think about our relationship with them as more an issue of miscommunication and our inability to really understand the driving forces behind their reasoning. Some of my writing becomes metaphor for deeper human relationships and emotions in this. Especially grief. I write a lot as an expression or manifestation of grief.”
Q: If horror could only exist in one unusual format, for example, an instruction manual, a complaint email, which do you think would be the most unsettling? And why?
A: “I cannot imagine limiting things to only one form like this. Different stories unsettle in different ways. I just wrote an introduction to a chain letter for the rerelease of Tales of Blood and Roses, and it is pretty perturbing. I didn’t even include the chain letter instructions; it is scarier without them. To write really unsettling horror, you can’t reveal your whole hand. I wrote a piece simply titled Kevin as a found therapy diary, presented as if I stumbled into it in a Walmart parking lot. For what that was, a tale of a brain worm possession, it created a pretty strong sense of unease as well.
If you are going for unsettling, I think it really depends on what you can do to make your story feel more real, to encourage the reader to suspend disbelief and question whether or not this might have happened or be able to happen. In my story Teething for the upcoming Let the Right One Simmer horror cookbook anthology, I considered those creepy tooth-falling out dreams we all have, and then ramped that up a notch by questioning where one reality ends and another begins. When you start with inherently universal themes like known nightmares so many have had, you already have that connection with your readers, wherein they can see themselves in that situation because they have some experience with it already. The scariest things are often those that edge up to things we can all relate to and then twist them ever so slightly, to beg the question of “what if?” “
Fanning the Embers
Q: Is it an author’s job to be likable?
A: “I gave up on the popularity contest in my art long before I became a writer. It wasn’t working, I just don’t play that game well. I get it. I’m weird. I think about things weird. I approach things weird. I don’t look at the world like anyone else; this has been pointed out to me time and again and it took me a long time to become okay with it. I grew up before there was more understanding of neurodivergence so I had to muddle through and figure things out on my own. I wasted too much of my childhood trying to be normal, at this point it isn’t worth it. I’d rather just be me, take it or leave it. I’m too old to spend that much time trying to impress people. It is exhausting, and encourages me to belittle what I do have to offer, my own unique perspective on life. The world would be pretty boring if we were all the same.
The strongest writing is often not likable in my opinion, it’s that stuff that sits with you later, that makes you think about or see things differently and that you can’t get out of your head, even months afterwards. That is the biggest strength of writing and art, we can help people to see things they would rather not be made aware of, such as others’ suffering or reevaluating taboos. This can help bridge the gap between ideologies and fight our tendency to other those who aren’t like us or who we have little exposure to.
That said, if you are trying to sell work for money, the best way to do so is to make stuff people want to buy. There really isn’t an alternative to that. If you are lucky, it will be something you want to make and not something that kills your heart a little bit every time you do it. Those individuals are truly blessed in that they are the select few who get to work at what they love (for all that there is still a lot of tagalong stuff that is just drudgery, like paperwork, contracts, legalese, promo, etc.)”
Author/Bio/Story:
Q: Bloody Mary Bottoms Up reimagines a familiar urban legend in a surprisingly chaotic way. What interested you in taking a figure people usually fear and placing her in such an unsuspected role? Was there a reason you picked Bloody Mary specifically?
A: “To be honest, this evolved as the recipe first. I use Bloody Mary Mix as a starter in a lot of stew recipes, including my jambalaya recipe from book 2 of my Witch Hayzelle series: Sup Sup Suppertime. So, it made sense to make Bloody Mary a central figure in a story to go with one of those recipes.
I am intrigued by how the Bloody Mary myth has changed over time, and by the idea of her being conjured by a gaggle of girls at summer camp. I remember doing this as a kid, with the older campers using the exercise, the chanting and the mirror and the darkness, to terrify the younger ones. It’s kind of a summer camp rite of passage. But again, I like to think about monsters differently, and in this particular story, I wanted to play Bloody Mary as the victim, the over-confident immortal who overextended herself and then was surprised by being led on. As written, she’d be kind of easy to dupe that way. I have also written her into another story with a vampire as a redemption arc for both of them. And she appears in the Witch Hayzelle coloring book as a human manifestation within the cocktail (because I wanted to make the olives her eyes). I kind of love the character aa a representation of female coming of age, I don’t think she is explored in enough nuance.”
Q: Let’s talk about Teething. Dreams about losing teeth are unsettling and strangely universal. To make it even more realistic, I understand you might have reached out to someone who works in dentistry (or something akin to the profession)? What, if anything, in your research did you discover about teeth that surprised you or aided you in making your story so disturbing?
A: “My father was a dentist so I wasn’t unfamiliar with the knowledge base. But I think it good to research details, it helps provide a sense of grounding for your stories and makes them more realistic. I wanted to refer to the tooth terminology correctly to make whatever is happening seem even more real, and thus more disconcerting. My friend, who is a dentist by trade and an editor and artist on the side, had some excellent suggestions about terminology I hadn’t thought of, based on terms used in dental practice. Like I knew a hole where there had once been a tooth is called a socket, but that knowledge was not at the forefront of my mind when I wrote about them. Those details make a difference. I had been using a map of the mouth so I could name specific teeth and add more vivid detail, but the specificity of the other language enhances the story as an overall as well. It helps with the suspension of disbelief, you can see yourself having that conversation with your own dentist.”
More About Jennifer Weigel:
“I am a visual artist as well as a writer and have been involved in countless projects running the gamut from performance art to poetry open mic to painting to jewelry, not to mention various styles of writing from horror to RPG fantasy to poetry and even erotica (under my horrorotica pseudonym Penny Blood). Most of my work has something to say beyond genre, often as social commentary or to work through personal struggles. I am always making something new, so check the website or the newsreel blog to get a sense of what I have going on. Anything I have written that is still available to read is listed in the To Read section of my site, under Writing.
A couple of fellow writers and I are going to be embarking on a new horror website like the old Haunted MTL site I was a part of from 2020 – 2025. We are calling it Weird Wyrlds. I am going to be adding all kinds of creative content: poetry, stories, art, zines, etc. It will have a soft release on Friday March 13, 2026. It’s meant just as an outlet for some of us from the old site who missed having a place to post our work, and I am glad to be a part of it. We may open for subs in the future but we are starting small, just having fun.”
Website: https://jenniferweigelart.com/
Newsreel blog: https://jenniferweigelnews.blogspot.com/
Weird Wyrlds: https://weirdwyrlds.com/