ANTHONY ENGEBRETSON is a dark and speculative fiction writer living in Nebraska. Short stories of his have appeared in anthologies such as Spring Into SciFi (2018 and 2019) and The Rabbit Hole: Weird Stories Volume One. He was also an editor of the 2021 anthology, ProleScaryet: Tales of Horror and Class Warfare. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Library Science.
His debut novella, Sair Back, Sair Banes, was published by Ghost Orchid Press in Spring 2022.
An Interview with Anthony Engebretson
ANTONIA RACHEL WARD: Let’s start with an introduction: can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what inspired you to start writing?
ANTHONY: I am 29 years old, from Lincoln, Nebraska but will be living in Michigan soon. I have been writing fiction for about eight years now and have been published in several anthologies. I was also one of the editors of ProleScaryet: Tales of Horror and Class Warfare.
I have loved storytelling for most of my life. I would draw these little “movies”. I remember when I was around 9, I watched a short documentary about monster movies and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker when I grew up. I stuck to that dream—went to film school, dropped out of film school, went to the college in my hometown but still took film classes. Through that process I came to realize that maybe being a movie director wasn’t my thing. It just simply isn’t my personality to effectively run a film set. But I learned that I was talented at writing and decided to focus on screenwriting instead. It felt so liberating; through writing, I’d found my “thing”. After graduating from college, I decided to dabble more in fiction writing, and here we are!
ANTONIA: Tell us a bit about your novella, Sair Back, Sair Banes.
ANTHONY: It is a dark fantasy/folk horror set in Scotland. I have had this fear of deep water ever since I was a kid, especially of lakes. Consequently, I am fascinated with cryptids like the Loch Ness monster. You know how it is, we horror writers are drawn to things that scare us. It was through that where I learned about the folklore of the kelpie, a water horse that lures people onto its back, traps them with its skin and then drowns them in a river or loch. After college, I’d decided I would write a screenplay about the water kelpie or each-uisge. Even when I changed my focus to fiction writing, I had the kelpie story/book idea in the back of my mind. Come 2021, I decided it was time.
ANTONIA: Sair Back, Sair Banes is set by a remote Scottish loch. What drew you to use that location in particular?
ANTHONY: Well, when I began developing my book I was hit with a dilemma. A kelpie story must surely be set in Scotland, which is all well and good except I’ve never actually been to the U.K.! I juggled around with the idea of setting it in the U.S., like somehow the kelpie got to an American lake; you could have themes dealing with colonialism in a story like that. It could be an interesting story, but the concept never really settled right for me. Besides, there’s just so much atmosphere you can create with a remote loch in Scotland. So, I decided to just do as much research as I possibly could and set it in Scotland. Thank god for the Internet age. I am absolutely fascinated by the country, and my family has Scottish ancestry as well, so it was a fun process. But to give myself some wiggle room, I made the town, loch, and river fictional. Making a fictional town is fun; it lets me play around with world building without having to go through the rigor of trying to build an entire new world. Also having an American protagonist helped, but I mainly made that choice to fit the themes of alienation, isolation, and disconnection, and having a protagonist in a place that’s completely foreign to them.
Incidentally, by the end of this August, my “never been to Scotland” problem should hopefully be fixed!
ANTONIA: Do you have a particular approach you take when writing a novel or novella?
ANTHONY: I’m what you’d call a “plantser”. I like to not just have an outline, but several drafts of an outline before I start writing the book, as well as character sheets, location sheets, etc. I start the story with a solid foundation and an idea of where everything’s going to go. That said, it’s all malleable. My outlines are guides, not rules, and everything is subject to change once I actually start writing. But I like having an outline. I’ve tried the full “seat-of-my-pants” discovery approach and, while it’s interesting, I just think I write better stories when I’ve been able to think them through in a structured document.
ANTONIA: What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
ANTHONY: While there are a lot of writers trying to get work published or promoted in a super competitive environment, I truly believe there’s room for everyone. Keep at it and your work will find its place, even if there’s a lot of rejection along the way. Also, while I used the word “competitive”, do not think of your fellow writers as competition that you have to try to push down to get ahead of. We need to be there for each other and lift each other up. And though there are a lot of writers, there are even more readers out there, all with varying tastes. Everyone can find an audience.
ANTONIA: Was there a particular novel or movie that inspired your love of horror / dark fantasy?
ANTHONY: I can’t pinpoint any one thing. I always loved watching monster movies growing up. I didn’t quite graduate to “harder” horror until I was in middle school. I remember the horror section of the video store being this forbidden zone when I was a kid, filled with all these terrifying VHS covers that I would just imagine what those movies might contain. Of course, I’d later discover the cover art was usually scarier than the films themselves! But once I started actually watching horror movies I was hooked, and that love extended to horror books and games. I went from this scaredy cat who didn’t even go to the first Lord of the Rings movie because it looked “too scary”, to horror lover. I think that is a common origin story for a lot of us.
And speaking of LOTR, I also have long enjoyed fantasy movies/books/video games. I think the Game of Thrones show especially kindled a deep interest in darker fantasy stories (which I’m sure is very original of me). So, this love of horror and fantasy is more of a culmination of my watching/reading/playing interests throughout my life than starting with any one film or book. So for me, the intertwining of horror and fantasy in dark fantasy is as natural as breathing.
ANTONIA: Finally, what have you been working on since Sair Back, Sair Banes?
Since I’m also working on a graduate degree, I’m taking my writing slower than I’d prefer, but I’m still plugging away. I have a 100,000-word dark fantasy novel that I’m querying. I actually started developing it long before Sair, back around 2018. Since then, I’ve tinkered with it on and off. But now I think it’s ready for the world to see. I call it my “epic,” because it’s the longest thing I’ve ever written, and I don’t know if I want to write anything nearly as long ever again!
I’ve written two more novellas, one I’m dipping my toes into trying to get published, though I’ve missed a lot of the submission windows. I’m also developing an idea for yet another novella. It’s set out in the sandhills of western Nebraska and involves the Daeodon, a species of animals called Enteledonts that lived millions of years ago. They have been called “hell pigs” because they look like this combination of a pig, a bull and an alligator on steroids. Though they apparently were more related to modern hippos and whales. But some of the artistic representations of these things are the stuff of nightmares. I think they deserve to star in their own horror story.
You can learn about Anthony and read more of his work at raccoonalleyblog.wordpress.com. You can also find him on twitter at @AnthonyJEngebr1.