SS: How did you become like this, were you born perversely imaginative or have you evolved that way?

LL: I don’t consider my imagination to be perverse in any way – it is what it is, much like the imagination of most artists. I think many, if not all, artists and creative types are – to steal from Lady Gaga – born this way. But imagination also evolves, depending on upbringing and circumstance. So it’s a little of both.

SS: Actually, I meant ‘perversely’ as in the sense of departing from the expected and accepted norms of what is required.

I have recently become interested in Steampunk. It seems to me to be grounded in very solid, quality ideals of workmanship – somewhat like the multitude of artefacts that clutter and inspire its culture. What is central to your interest in it?

LL: Although I love the costumes and designs that are coming out of the steampunk movement, my main interest is novels and short fiction written with elements of steampunk set in fantastical, non-Victorian (and often non-white dominant) cultures and worlds, or steampunk mashups with other genres – such as Caitlin Kittredge’s ‘The Iron Thorn’, which is an excellent Lovecraftian steampunk dark fantasy set in an alternate, industrialized 1950s.

SS: Do you have a favourite story by H.P. Lovecraft, if so, what is it and why?

LL: I don’t have an all-time favourite Lovecraft story – it depends on what I’m writing. Currently my fiction is very Manhattan-based, so I’ve been reading his NYC stories, such as ‘Cool Air’, ‘The Horror at Red Hook’, and ‘He’.

SS: Some of your writing calls Clark Ashton Smith to mind. I imagine you’ve read him, how did his stories strike you?

LL: I must confess that I haven’t read as much of Smith as I probably should – I came to writing rather late in life (after twenty-five years in theatre), so I’m always in the process of playing catch-up. Of the stories I’ve read, though, it’s his use of place, of geology and geography as crucibles of horror, and of past civilizations bleeding their influence into the present that has influenced the last several years of my writing.

SS: Where were you when the planes hit the towers?

LL: I was in Manhattan. That’s as much as I’m willing to say about it – I feel my reaction to what happened is, for now, better addressed through my fiction.

SS: What films and artworks tend to capture your interest?

LL: I’ve always been fascinated and somewhat repelled by museums, and so I spend a lot of time in them, both exploring and writing. I gravitate toward darker images in sculpture and painting, but there’s no one period of artwork that interests me above others – it’s the presentation of it, the prison-like dioramas and curiosity cabinets and displays that interest and inspire me the most. As for films – I have terrible taste. I’ll watch any movie, good or bad – even the SyFy Channel ones. I draw the line at romcoms, though.

SS: The majority of the stories in your collection hold, at their centre, a female character who mentally and physically endures a gauntlet journey on the way to a transformation of one kind or another. To bandy about an old flag - would you agree that your writing, purposefully or not, is strongly feminist, albeit a feral form of feminism?

LL: Well, I do try to write female protagonists who aren’t afraid of discovering and subsequently embracing the feral and monstrous – whatever that might be defined as – within themselves, and to transform/evolve because of or in spite of it. And I try to write about what I like to call the ‘final woman’, whose actions and reactions to horrific circumstances and creatures are much more complicated, more sexual, and less clearly on the good side of ‘good vs. evil’ than the actions and motivations of horror’s traditional ‘final girl’. So, I’d agree that the combination of these aspects would make a good number of my stories feminist – although when I write, I never consciously think during the process, ‘I have to make sure I’m writing a feminist story’.

SS: Can you name three writers who have had the biggest influence on you and why?

LL: As far as influence, I’d say Caitlin R. Kiernan and Jack Kerouac for their very lush and complex prose and unmistakable styles; and – depending on the translator – the group of playwrights who wrote the extant Greek tragedies. As pretentious as it sounds, much of what I learned about writing horror, and handling the nuts and bolts of scenes, plots and characters, began with reading those plays.

SS: You are perusing a lovely old book shop on a lazy weekend. Suddenly you spy an old book that you must have. Which book is it?

LL: An English translation of Ġāyat al-hakīm.

SS: What book do you wish someone would write, or at least attempt to?

LL: I used to wish someone would write the last book in the Dune series, based on the notes Frank Herbert left behind. And then someone did, and it was terrible and I was horrified. So, I don’t make wishes like that anymore.

SS: What is the most unsettling place that you have ever been to?

LL: My father used to take my family on camping trips throughout the Pacific Northwest during the summer. When I was twelve, he drove us into the Olympic Mountain range, to a small lakeside campground with a number of permanent residents who had created a kind of malformed town out of the detritus of nearby abandoned mining and logging camps. We were there for a week, and my sister and I were in a constant state of nameless dread – the entire area was hemmed in by the mountains, so you felt you were stuck at the bottom of a green bowl that was slowly eating away the sky. The few children in the camp were strange, a bit slow, very undereducated, very feral – one girl my age latched onto me, and took me around the various mines and logged areas, but after a sudden and violent confrontation, left me to find my way back to the camp alone. Several of the adults (both men and women) ‘took interest’ in me, and there were some ugly sexual incidents. There were other worse incidents that happened, and a very, very small portion of my experience made its way into the story ‘Omphalos’, but the bulk of it I’m saving for when I turn that story into a novel. Because, I don’t think I can fully confront or explain or understand what happened there without the filter of fiction. It was truly one of the most horrific weeks of my life.

SS: What’s next for you story wise?

LL: I’m working on a horror novel set in Manhattan, and I have several short stories due for various anthologies. I’m also working on the second and third novellas in a series set in an industrialized Lovecraftian Patagonia, of which ‘Her Deepness’ was the first.

SS: You have ascended at a steady rate with your fiction. What are the ultimate goals that you would like to reach with your writings?

LL: I used to have a list of utterly unrealistic goals – Times bestseller, gigantic series under contract, seven-figure sales, lots of awards. Crap like that – things that are absolutely out of my control, and therefore ridiculous to aspire to. I threw the list away two years ago, and made a new one, that doesn’t have much in the way of ultimate goals. I’d simply like to keep writing and publishing horror, and hopefully get a novel or two published, as well as several more collections of short fiction. I think I can do that. Well, I know I can.