Californian born, Australian raised, world traveled, Rowan Hill puts her doctorate in Applied Linguistics to devastating purpose throughout her tales of science fiction and terror. Author of the A Dark Witch series and damn near too many short stories to count, Hill has most recently published her debut collection, No Fair Maidens From Earth To Mars. I caught up with Hill in between adventures to chat with her about her Journal Stone/Trepidatio publication and asked her to guide us on a tour of the vast and wonderous worlds swirling within her muse and to show us the sights no matter the dangers that await us. Hill was all too eager to oblige as she opens up about the process of collecting stories with strong woman characters and how they cope with absolute isolation, lethal environments, and vicious outcomes despite their best intentions.
Rowan Hill has clearly mastered the subtle art of nuance as she paints landscapes with a broad brush while managing to underlie the landscape with devious revelations so long as we’re willing to lean into the unknown and the uncomfortable. It was a pleasure to ride along with Hill and learn about our chances for survival as we zoom toward oblivion.
(Interview conducted by Rick Hipson)
CEMETERY DANCE: Rowan, it’s such a pleasure to finally be able to chat with you about your writing. By the time I caught up with you at the con in Virginia last year, our brains were both pretty fried, so thanks for writing this collection as an excuse to catch up with you. To kick off our chat, when did you first begin planning on putting together stories for No Fair Maidens From Earth To Mars, and what went into the idea for the title and the type of collection you wanted to publish?
ROWAN HILL: Hi Rick! Yes, by Authorcon day 3, I was so out of it and time and space blurred together, and I’m retroactively sorry for anything I said or did in my con haze.
To answer your question, No Fair Maidens started way back in 2021 (from open submission to publication, the publishing timeline took two years for this collection!). But really, most stories were written long before then. Two or three were driven by individual submission calls throughout the years, but most were intrinsically motivated. I forget the specific story in particular that set “the gathering” in motion, but I do remember looking over my cache of stories and thinking how the same villain (in different forms) appears in many of my sci-fi stories. It takes some imagination from readers, picturing different paths of evolution, but if placed on a timeline, I trust readers are smart enough to Sherlock it out.
As to the title, I wanted something to convey both the feminist theme and timescale of the collection, from the past to distant future. Plus, it just sounded dang cool.
Could you please walk us through your process of determining which stories were fit for this collection, and how you chose which new stories to either include here, or to write specifically for this book?
The process for determining the stories was quite easy, based on my main theme on how strong the female perspective and themes of freedom or the horrors unique to women, and secondary was how prevalent the cosmic horror aspect came through (and bonus points for that villian!). There were a few (“Swarm” and “Void”) that didn’t quite live up to the others with the cosmic horror aspects, but were strong in their own ways for the other themes I wanted, and I think made good jumpy points within the timeline of moving from Earth to Mars.
One of the things I most love about the horror genre — and I think why most others do also — is there are no borders. And, of course, you take the extra distance to demonstrate that the sky is not the limit when there are worlds beyond ours to explore and be terrified by. That said, the collection begins with a very grounded tale which takes place in the dustbowl of America and is told through more of a folk horror lens than anything overtly cosmic. Yet, there is certainly a darker force at work in this story which may not be of this world at all. You had previously mentioned to me you felt “Fruit of Womb” was your strongest story in the bunch. I would love it if you could elaborate on why you feel this way and what you think of my thoughts about this being more of a folk tale and how it fits into the pantheon of your sci-fi collection.
You know, I think I love “Fruit of Womb” so much because of the style of writing I was able to pull from reading Ray Bradbury’s short collection and Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood.” I immersed myself in these prior to writing “Fruit of Womb,” and the ambiguous farm-land location really appealed to me. The idea that every farmer in every county has been through rough times and this could be anywhere in America. I think what makes this folk horror (besides the isolation) is that the land itself is a character and that character harbors secrets. The way the trees talk and the wind whispers. Of course (spoiler alert), the land is given agency through June’s monologuing with herself as an intangible voice she bickers with. When we realize the darker truth, I think that is when it takes on the existential, cosmic horror.
To tell you the truth, the villain in this story is undecided in my mind. Maybe it is the land and the force that inhabits it, but also maybe it is people like June, who keep the cycle going. I like it in the collection to show the sacrifices women go through and the underlying thought that we are all slaves for something bigger than we can understand.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of this book for me is the range you demonstrate. You truly take us on a journey from the heart of the U.S.A, to the middle of Antarctica to the unexplored caverns deep within Mars. While I think you offer a perfect example of how properly executed nuances can elevate a story to greater heights, you also showcase your chops when it comes to straight up terror that is far from requiring any guesswork as to what the danger is. Would you call this varied approach to your story telling as a natural occurrence for you, or did you tune in to this variance specifically to depict a more all-encompassing depiction of what lies beyond our world to better connect the stories within?
Look, I don’t mind admitting it took me a long time to get that “nuance” thing just right in my craft. It’s hard, which is maybe why I am so proud of “Fruit of Womb.” But if you are asking how I can go from the subtle horror of a lump briefly pushing up through the skin of your cheek and then to the overt violence of the sexually transmitted alien parasite wriggling out your eyes? Then that is simply based on what the story needs and what is going to give the most impact. If we are talking of the varied locations around the world? Well, that is an even simpler answer; I’m Australian. You don’t think Australians actually stay in Australia, do you? I write what I know (and besides Mars (one day, maybe!)) I’ve been to a lot of places and always try to bring it into my writing. I am always trying to make the location a character in my stories.
As much as I enjoyed your collection opener, “Fruit of Womb,” for me personally, the stories “Void” and the closing pre-apocalyptic piece “Gods of Mars” resonated especially strong with me. “Void” could and ought to be part of a writing curriculum on how to create the perfect sense of isolated dread. I couldn’t help but imagine you concocting this story from the confines of a sensory deprivation tank while dictating into a microphone. Do you remember writing this story specifically, and the frame of mind and/or your environment as you wrote it? I suppose I’m trying to pinpoint the secret sauce that squeezed this excellent story from you.
Rick, this is the most gassed up I have ever been, and thank you! “Void” was actually written for a specific call that was focused on color, and I remember trying to come up with an original idea. So of course — no color. Wouldn’t life be horrible without color? Could you imagine? And my only thought of where something like this would happen would be sterile environments trying to limit distraction or emotion, and naturally that was space.
As rewarding as it was to read “Fruit of Womb” as a multigenerational piece, it was equally impactful to read “Gods of Mars” and come across a reference to an earlier story in the collection. It gave the final story a definite boost in scope. Was it always your intention to work things out so that the stories came across as it there were told within a connective timeline, or was this a happy accident as you write the final story (which may or may not have been the last one you physically wrote…)?
“Gods of Mars” was terribly different huh? I’m so happy it ties the collection together at the end. While it was a self motivated story that came to me one night, it was a happy accident that it was an evolution of my villain that told an origin story and gave finality to the collection.
Sequentially, the last story written for this collection was “A Better Chimera for the Toxic Workplace” and I believe this is the story that had the most work to do. Pulling in the past chaos of a world in decline, and showing the way forward and the future on Mars. It is also the first story of the collection that I would truly call sci-fi, and of the speculative future, using tropes like bio-engineering and mutations.
In contrast to placing us in the depths of Mars, one of your stories sits us in the cold seat of Antarctica with “Aurora Australis.” In this piece, you really play with our senses of reality by twisting timelines into an unrecognizable, unreliable narrative behind the main storyline. Arguably, the main character in this story is a lone penguin who’s only interaction is with a stranded woman who must figure out a survival plan and quick. This story was surprisingly heartbreaking, and I must ask you, did you happen to have a bad experience with a penguin that you needed to get out of your system in this story?
Ha! That is so interesting you think the main character (protagonist or antagonist??) is the penguin! No, no bad experiences but I’m surprised you found it heartbreaking. On one hand, I was trying to be uplifting about it. It is, in a sense, my version of Groundhog Day. Phil/Angela gets her chance to try again and survive, whether she likes it or not! Something bigger, grander, cosmically inclined, was looking out for her even when she lost hope. I think that is beautiful, if not somewhat intimidating.
To pan out a bit from individual stories in this collection, I recently moderated a panel on folk horror and was surprised that the cosmos are ripe grounds for infusing folk themes into, much like you did with the first pair of stories here. For you personally, why do you feel this two sub=genres work so well when blended, and what is the reward for you-and your readers-when you use the combination to tell a story?
That is an interesting question, and I think it is not so much that folk and cosmic horror mesh well; rather, it is that cosmic horror can be found at the heart of many terrors. Cosmic horror (I believe) is simply a reference to things we don’t understand and out of our realm of knowledge in the universe. Perhaps it serves as a Deus Ex Machina. That beastly terror haunting the woods? Cosmic entity that ripped through a portal. The mysterious lights haunting the skies over the military base? Cosmic doorway experiments? Not to brag, but I’m pretty sure I could do that roll-a-dice system and mash any genre with cosmic horror (that’s how I get my ideas! LOL!).
Going back to the title of this collection, one can easily determine that women are going to play a prominent role throughout, and you do not disappoint in this regard. As the stories play out, we get to see women cast into many roles; we see them as scientists, explorers, as both victims who fight back and as antagonisers forced to respond in kind in hostile environments. Never are they depicted as stumbling final girls as they to often are, though I think we are thankfully seeing a shift in this within at least the horror genre. I think most of us can spot why this is important not only to the genre, but as a more realistic view of strong woman, but did you have any particular goals for how you hope readers feel about your leading women once they’ve read each of the stories here?
Thank you for hitting on this. It is very important to say that this is not a book full of the “Final Girls” we see in horror movies, and readers can see them however they choose. In total, there is only one final girl out for revenge in the collection. Some of these protagonists are very much the villains. Some are stuck in hopeless places and very much suffer without getting their happy ending. Many are victims that don’t get that cathartic retribution we see so often. And that is a message in itself. Sometimes the good guys don’t win and sometimes you have to be a bad guy to get the job done. This is just the world we live in, and sometimes, it is hopeless.
I’ve no doubt that folks are going to be looking up at the stars with a bit more trepidation than they did before diving into No Fair Maidens From Earth To Mars. I know I will. That said, Rowan, what do you hope readers consider when gazing up at the night skies with the knowledge that any one of your stories may not be quite so far fetched and beyond our reach?
Oh geez. Let’s try to get people to buy my book, huh Rick? Leaving people with the sense that maybe their children will die in the water wars is not how I want to sell this collection. I would instead say that it is hard to judge what the future holds. Everything looks bleak right now, and the one thing that gives me hope is that science always moves forward, even if our policies do not. Geothermal energy is on the horizon (but nuclear is making a comeback?). Gene therapy for cancers and diseases has been approved (if you can afford it?). There are so many possibilities! No, we aren’t flying cars yet, but also we aren’t enslaved and farming our organs for profit, so I’ll take the losses of no cool shit and the hope for them one day as long as I can keep my insides inside.
And finally, where in the cosmos can readers find you and keep track of where you may be taking us next? Please feel free to also let us know what you might be working on or publishing next.
At this moment, lots of little things on the horizon, but still looking for that one particular crossroad where the devil and I can sign a more favorable contract for getting the big novel into the hands of a great publisher. Just stalk me on social ’til then.
Above all else, thanks so much for the trip through your muse and into the stars. I am certain none of us will be returning to base — for those lucky enough to return — quite the same way as when we left.
Thanks, Rick! See you at Authorcon in April, yeah! I promise, I’ll be better behaved!
