What’s the most improbable but true thing about you?
I’ve been living in CT for more than a year but still don’t have my driver’s license.


Why did you choose to submit to Horror Over the Handlebars?
I like stories that are at least a little bit about stories. Horror Over the Handlebars does this on a genre level — when you read these stories, you think about what inspired them, whether that’s a concrete set of stories or a hazy set of images and symbols (“kids on bikes,” suburban towns with dark secrets, the 1980s).


Tell us a little about your story, “Fluke” and its genesis.
I didn’t really have the childhood that’s described in a lot of these stories. I missed my “It”/“Stand by Me”/“Stranger Things”/etc. window by being born after 2000. I’m even too young for my main characters, who are in middle school roughly around the time that I was a baby. But I wanted to use my lack of familiarity with those signifiers of nostalgia as a springboard: what does “nostalgic horror” look like after the heyday of kids on bikes? Especially with the new dangers presented by the internet of scams and catfishing and NSFL content — I chose the year 2000 as my setting because it was a year after Columbine, when the basement tapes were circulating, when the internet was still this sort of Wild West that hadn’t yet been taken over by corporate interests. I wrote “Fluke” as a response to the hallmarks of the genre, using “It” as a sort of ur-text by which Delilah and Keze measure themselves and their own experiences.


Tell us about “Many Deaths Before Dying” in Horror Over the Handlebars and what you liked about it.
“Many Deaths Before Dying” is one of those stories that you read in an English class or something and it screws you up for a long time. I’m partial to stories that deal in ambiguity, the unknown and the unknowable, especially with horror — understanding and resolving something is a way of making it less scary (and, usually, less interesting). The mood of "Many Deaths" was deeply unsettling all the way up to the end, and the speculative element was a great vehicle for what the anthology itself is grappling with: the feeling of nostalgia itself and the horror underneath its surface; that you can return to some semblance of childhood if you have the right signifiers to surround yourself with, whether that's your favorite video game from when you were a kid or the mysterious crystalline pool that your childhood friends all went into and never came out of, and it will feel good or even safe, and it will be very, very bad for you.


If you could time travel, where would you go, what would you do, and why would you do that?
10-15 years ago. I would want to see how I would process the same events if I were to experience them at a different age. In 2010 I cared about Silly Bandz and the new Pokémon game, so what would be different about my life if I were to live the same year but at the age of 23?


Who would you bring back from the dead for one hour and what would you do with them?
Camille Desmoulins. I’m reading Hilary Mantel’s book A Place of Greater Safety right now and I know he’d have the craziest gossip about pre-Revolution Paris society.


What’s your favorite piece of art? Could be music, writing, sculpture, painting...
The Wicker Man (1973) and its associated soundtrack. I feel like everyone has that "pet" piece of art that's not necessarily the best or most mind-blowing thing they've ever experienced, but it feels the most like theirs, like they understand it or it understands them, and that's the original Wicker Man movie for me.


What are you most proud of creating?
A published work. I've been writing for a while but just for myself. I've never actually had any of my original work in a book or anything like that.


What’s next on your literary horizon?
Besides reviews and shorter pieces here and there, I’m working on a novella.


Where can readers connect with you online?
Find me at https://joerussellwrites.neocities.org/.