Red Inside by Bridgett Nelson
Threat Pose Press (July 2024)
The Synopsis
From the morally corrupt, yet oddly sweet, mind of Bridgett Nelson, the Splatterpunk Award-winning author of A Bouquet of Viscera and What the Fuck Was That?, comes a brand new tale of blood-spattered horror.
Bethany can’t wait for the end of her hospital shift — four glorious days of relaxation await. Secretly, she’s most excited about the fun-filled nights reveling in an unexpected flirtation with her co-worker, Michelle. Thoughts of her long, cozy weekend vanish, however, when Francisco Delgado is admitted to her floor from the emergency room. Delgado, a man who came into contact with an unknown arachnid species in South America, and who now has something…squirming…beneath his skin.
Initially a medical curiosity, the case rapidly turns into a full-on body horror nightmare…one with eight legs, a deadly set of fangs, and the ability to spread through the hospital at a terrifying pace. Trapped inside the building under a rifle-enforced quarantine, Bethany, Michelle, and the rest of the staff must do whatever it takes to survive the grisly night, defending their patients against an unstoppable menace…one who seeks out the weakest prey.
We’re all red inside, and tonight the proof will be splashed all over the hospital corridors.
Bridgett Nelson’s mother wonders when she will mend her wicked ways and write something nice. Red Inside is not that book.
(Interview conducted by Rick Hipson)
CEMETERY DANCE: Thanks so much for taking the time to let me pick your brain for this column. I‘ll try not to pick more than anyone reading this can reasonably chew.
As we all know, Bridgett, the most common advice most writers get is to write what you know. Judging by your previous three short story collections (A Bouquet of Viscera, What The Fuck Was That?, Sweet and Sour) and several others within many fine anthologies, clearly what you know is how to psychologically fuck up readers with your unique blend of personal trauma-laced terror tales. When did you first realize these are the stories you have to tell, and what gave you the confidence to start amassing as many of them as you could?
BRIGDETT NELSON: Folks probably think, based on the stories I write, that I had a seriously screwy childhood, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I had the storybook upbringing…mostly. Looking back, there were probably a few things that happened in my life which shaped the stories I tell today. One is the fellow student who has stalked me intermittently since middle school, and the other is my aunt’s brutal murder at the hands of her husband. Mix in my nursing background, my love of horror and big plot twists, and my belief that human monsters are far scarier than their supernatural counterparts, and these stories just sort of flow out of me. It has never been a conscious thing.
You used to be a registered nurse working in an operating room where bodily fluids and a person’s worst day ever is no doubt the normalcy of the day. How might this early career choice have informed your writing journey, and how you currently view the horror genre as a way of entertainment?
I started my nursing career working on a renal/urology/peritoneal dialysis/kidney transplant floor. End-stage kidney patients tend to be extremely unwell when admitted to the hospital. It was a tough floor, but I learned a lot there. I believe the years I spent working with those patients very much shaped the person I am today. I then moved to a step-down cardiac unit, which included open heart surgical patients, and required me to be very proficient in reading telemetry. From there, I went to the operating room, where leg amputations and the discovery of inoperable malignant tumors were par for the course. I had some truly heartbreaking moments throughout my career. Every single shift, it seemed I was staring death in the face…or at least trying combat it. To say that hasn’t affected my writing to some degree would be total bullshit. I think that’s also the reason body horror appeals to me on a very basic level. There is nothing more horrific than having your body turn against you and feeling as though you’ve lost all control over not only your health, but your very life.
As a prelude to my next question, I must admit I don’t buy into the whole overnight success story thing, particularly when it comes to the writing community. That said, it does seem like you came out of nowhere with A Bouquet of Viscera and knocked many of us on our asses while simultaneously making us feel as though you have always been here. Do you mind taking us on a bit of a trip down memory lane and fill us in on what transpired pre-Bouquet, your trials and tribulations as a writer, until eventually bursting out of the proverbial gates with your first collection?
Sure! Memory lane is fun.
I’ve always loved writing. I wrote songs and plays and crazy stories as a kid, and various columns for my high school and college newspapers. I even wrote for my hometown journal. I would have loved to major in creative writing, or even journalism, in college, but my dad quickly nixed that idea. He wanted me to choose a major that would allow me to find a good-paying job no matter where in the country I lived. I’d always loved anatomy and physiology, so I decided to go to nursing school.
Fast forward lots and lots of years. I was now married, a mom to two children –– one with autism — and I was unexpectedly homeschooling them. I had neither written, nor thought about writing for more than a decade. Then, in 2020, when we were all housebound, I was asked to be an intern for a newly formed Indie publishing company, Sinister Smile Press. I was promoted quickly and became their acquisitions editor, among other things. In the interim, the two owners encouraged me to write. I did, submitting stories to various anthologies, and doing quite well.
Jeff Strand was asked to write the foreword for an SSP anthology, which happened to include one of my stories, and we became fast friends. About a year later, Jeff asked how many stories I’d written that I currently had the rights too. I hadn’t given it a single thought until then, but doing some quick math, I discovered I had about 65,000 words, which didn’t include a novelette I had nearly finished. That novelette was called “Jinx.”
One night, my friend Richard Dansky and I were brainstorming ideas for a collection title. I told him I wanted the word “viscera” included, but that I also wanted it to be feminine. Seconds later, he suggested, A Bouquet of Viscera and my heart stopped. It was PERFECT.
The cover (by Lynne Hansen) was gorgeous and macabre, and Todd Keisling did the most stunning interior formatting with thematic borders around all the pages, which has since become a signature look for my books. Ronald Kelly, whom I’d met at Scares That Care in the summer of 2021 and immediately bonded with, agreed to write the foreword.
When I did the cover reveal, it went viral on Twitter, and it was just simply the right book at the right time, I guess. When it released, the stories seemed to resonate with folks, it got a lot of attention, and ultimately ended up winning two Splatterpunk Awards.
Not sure lightning can strike twice like that.
I always thought it was kind frigging genius, albeit brave as hell, to release not one, but two collections simultaneously, yet you managed to pair them as a complimentary reading experience for those happy to double dip their support in your work. When did the idea of publishing both What The Fuck Was That? and Sweet and Sour come together for you? And, if I may double dip this question, did the end (and continuing?) results harvest what you hoped they would?
Unsurprisingly, Jeff Strand is involved in this story too. We were driving to some convention, which I’m blanking on now, and I was glum because a contract I’d signed for three chapbooks had fallen through when the press I was working with suddenly switched ownership.
I mentioned to Jeff that one of the stories I’d written for the chapbooks was kind of sweet, one was more erotic, and the other was pure extreme horror, but that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them now.
He said, “Put them in a collection and call it Sweet, Sour, & Spicy. I loved that idea so much! It was fun and playful and demented, and it felt right.
In the meantime, the rights to two other stories had reverted to me, and I’d nearly completed a story called, “Belong.” Unfortunately, none of those stories really fit with the theme of SS&S, so Jeff suggested releasing two, three-story collections on the same day.
I’d seen Evil Dead: The Musical a few months previously, and my favorite song was called, “What the Fuck Was That?” It seemed like the perfect title for the second collection, so I ran with it.
The books did incredibly well, even better than Bouquet when it debuted. In fact, What The Fuck Was That? remained a bestseller for over a week on Amazon, and direct sales were phenomenal.
I have some really cool readers.
My only regret with those two books is how much more attention WTFWT? received than SS&S. I liked the stories in SS&S better, but I think having “fuck” in the title definitely drew more attention to that collection.
The cool thing is you can now get both collections in one gorgeous book called Poisoned Pink.
Alright, this far into our interview I can hear people yelling at me to ask about the thing that brought us all here in the first place. Of course, I’m taking about Red Inside, your debut novella and biggest singular story you’ve written to date. How long has this book been in the works and how long did it take to eventually arrive at its final, published form?
I knew I needed to get something new out. I wrote constantly last year, but it was endless short stories for various anthology invites (I think fourteen). Between that and conventions and regular life, I had very little time to do anything else.
I had a very general idea for a novella and started working on it last December. But after so many huge life changes (a divorce and a move halfway across the country), I needed time to decompress and find my footing. Writing was impossible. I added a little bit to the manuscript here and there, but it went nowhere until this past May. Every day I’d wake up and talk through the story points I wanted to hit with Jeff. He kept me focused and motivated. I ended up writing almost the entire 35,000 word novella in two weeks! Not going to lie, I was damn proud of myself.
Did you find your approach as far as any outlining or note taking or whatever preparation you might typically take when writing a short story to differ much from the way you approached and executed your novella?
This is an interesting question, because before I started getting anthology invites and having hard deadlines, I simply let the story take me where it wanted. Then I’d tweak and play with it until I was absolutely satisfied with the finished product. I was 100% pantser in those days.
Presently, I don’t have that luxury. While I’ll never be an outliner — I feel it stifles me creatively — to meet my deadlines, I do need a general idea of the overall premise and some key points to keep me on track. I’ll be honest, my stories rarely end how I expect they will. When I get to the conclusion, the route I take is nothing more than a gut feeling.
All this to say…I had a very general premise going into Red Inside, yet pantsed my ass off through most of the specifics. I guess that makes me a moderate pantser?
Considering your background as a short story writer who has published not only incredible short stories collections, but has also been included in some of the most successful anthologies of the past few years, was writing Red Inside at all like getting to pay in a bigger sandbox where you get to really lean into your most ambitious ideas? I would love to hear how your new playing field attributed to the way you may have altered the story you got to tell this time out.
So, you might have noticed, many of the stories in my collections aren’t short stories. By word count, they fall into the novelette category. The shortest story I’ve ever written is 2700 words (“Going Deep” in Dead & Bloated by The Evil Cookie Publishing). I don’t think I could do flash fiction, even if my life was on the line, but going from novelette to novella wasn’t that different. Sure, I stressed. I wondered if there was too much exposition, too much dialogue, too much…filler. But when it was all said and done, I think I turned out a clean, fun and riveting, body-horror creature feature.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed the process way more than I thought I would. Once I got going, I had a blast. And I do hope that having a published novella will up my street cred a bit.
I imagine it was nice getting to tell a story with a sort of built in cheat mode considering your real-life experience as an operating room nurse. How much fun was that to be able to fall back on your experience knowing that you could probably creep people out just by recounting crazy instances that occurred while you were on the job back in the day?
Believe it or not, I don’t recall having used any real-life events in my stories, thus far. I did base my gross-out story at KillerCon in 2022 on a nursing experience I once had, but other than a vague reference to a surgeon I worked with many years ago, I don’t think I’ve gone there in my books. (I’m sure somebody will correct me if I’m wrong.) I do have some insane, disgusting “nurse-days” stories though. Lots of them.
The synopsis of this story tells us about an entire hospital being held hostage as they’re quarantined from a terrible threat that they find themselves forced to be trapped inside with. Did writing your real-world experience make you fantasize about going back to that nursing world, or were you grateful it’s a part of your life best kept as creative fodder for story telling?
I loved being a nurse, and I think I was good at what I did. I enjoyed working the night shift, where I had the ability to spend quality time with my patients. Hospitals are terrible about dehumanizing people…often making them feel like nothing more than names and diagnoses in a chart. Plus, it’s a scary time for a multitude of reasons, and they’re dealing with all this when they’re sick. Maybe the sickest they’ve ever been. I did my best to make things a little easier and less intimidating. Because of that, several of my patients invited me to weddings and birthday parties, which is freaking cool.
When I left nursing, I assumed it would only be for a short time. My son, who had just been diagnosed with autism, had therapy two to three times a day, and I also had a newborn daughter. Something had to give. Turns out, it was my nursing career. I never went back, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I got to watch my kids grow up and be there for every single moment of their lives. That’s priceless.
Yet, to this day, I still have anxiety dreams about being a nurse. An example: I’ve been on shift for 12 hours but haven’t seen a single patient or completed any charting. (I wake up so damn stressed out!)
But to answer your question, no, I don’t miss it. I’m finally doing what I always wanted to…write!
Are there any real-life situations you look back on while being in the OR that you still can’t believe actually happened, whether it makes it into a future story or not?
Oh my gosh…YES! I’m not going to talk about them though…may need them one day.
Speaking of future stories, does Red Inside represent a new shift in focus as far as working on longer works goes, or do you still see yourself as a short story writer first and foremost?
I never actually saw myself as only a short story writer. Short stories were just where I started, and I’ll always love writing them. But the tide has turned, and I’m ready for bigger and badder.
Of course, I can’t ask you about the future of your writing without asking what you’re working on now, and what you’re hoping to see published first over the next year or so?
Right now, I’m finishing up a couple short stories for anthology invites. When those are complete, I’ll finally tackle the novelization for the film Deadgirl, while simultaneously working on a collaborative novel with none other than (the cutest boyfriend ever), Jeff Strand! After that, it’s on to my first solo novel, and there will also be a new collection debuting next summer.
Any final statements or words of encouragement as we enter your hospital? Are thoughts and prayers going to be enough to make it out of this nightmare alive and well?
Hell, no!
