Blood, Gore, and Human Bacon with Kendare Blake

BLOOD,GORE,ANDHUMAN BACON

Interview by Gillian St. Clair

Written by Kelsey Bjork

Kendare Blake (author of Anna Dressed in Blood, Antigoddess, and Three Dark Crowns) is a huge fan of horror and fantasy, and she is not afraid to include blood and gore. Much of her work is dark, but that doesn’t mean that she lacks a sense of humor.

“I love darkness and humor. Especially horror and humor,” Blake said. “I think they go together like peas in a pod. Like shoes and socks. Like bacon and anything. It’s why Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of my favorite shows growing up, why Cas was such a smartass in Anna Dressed in Blood, and why I am always recommending that people watch The Cabin in the Woods.”

Her favorite moment of darkness mixed with humor, however, comes from Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. “Narcissistic murdering psychopath Patrick Bateman is ruminating on how many crunches he does, and how he hopes

that his masseuse will notice how ripped he’s become, and then she walks in and says how nice it is to see him after two days. Like dude she’s not going to notice a change in how toned you are after two days. I don’t care if you’ve been crunching nonstop. Ridiculous.”

Blake does not shy away from violence. When asked if there are any hard lines that she is not willing to cross, she said, “Not really. I mean, you’re not likely to read anything from me that involves any kind of phallus and any kind of throbbing, but never say never, I guess. I can say with near certainty that I’ll never write an exploitative or gratuitous scene of animal violence. If an animal is hurt in my books, it better mean something.”

When writing such dark stories, it may seem like separating yourself from the world in the novel would be difficult. Some authors may have rituals to get themselves back in the real world once they finish writing, but for Blake, this is not the case.

“I never live my stories. I guess you could say that I’m not METHOD. So I’ve never done so deep a dive into one of my fictional worlds that it becomes a waking reality,” Blake said. “I can write a scene torturing someone with poison and then get up and feed my pet kids a nutritious lunch. Throw a ball around, give some snuggles, and then right back to torturing when they’re down for nap time.”

Although Blake can easily separate herself from the darkness in the worlds she creates, as is the case with many authors, writing from the perspectives of several

people can be quite challenging. It can be easy for authors to be so influenced by what they actually believe that the opposing arguments they make can seem weaker or less believable. This is something that Blake had to deal with when writing Three Dark Crowns.

The story focuses on three sisters who have magical abilities. Mirabella is an elemental, Katharine is a poisoner, and Arsinoe is a naturalist. These triplets are all queens and equal to one another. That is, until their sixteenth birthday when they must fight to the death in order to decide who will become the Queen Crowned.

Blake has said that she can relate to all three sisters and that she can see each of their perspectives, but writing for each of them was still a challenge. “When the sisters are torn about something, when they’re driven almost equally by opposing desires within themselves, that’s often difficult to write. Mirabella was the most challenging sister for a long time, be-

cause she was fighting to balance so many things: her love for her sisters against her duty to kill them, her obligations to the island and the family who raised her against the desires of her own heart.”

Characters can be unpredictable sometimes. “She would make decisions that seemed sometimes contradictory, and one moment she would want to run while at the same moment she believed that she was destined to rule. That poor girl almost fought herself to a standstill,” Blake said, “and me right along with her. Now it’s Katharine who gives me trouble, in much that same way.”

Blake has created many strong female characters including Anna from Anna Dressed in Blood and Cassandra and Athena from Antigoddess. And Three Dark Crowns, which is matriarchal, is no exception. Not surprisingly, Blake has found inspiration from strong female characters in

the works of others. One of her favorites is Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones.

“I love Cersei Lannister. More so in the show than in the books. In the show, she is unapologetically doing what she has to do in order to carve out a place for herself. And she’s doing a damn fine job of it.”

But that is not the only person she named. Her favorites range from a psychologically abused but powerful queen, to a young girl with special gifts and the ability to travel to parallel universes, to a priestess trying to preserve her culture and religion. This wide range of characters helps prove the fact that there is more than just one type of strong female character.

“I also love Jane Eyre, for her resilience and strong sense of self. Lyra Belacqua from The Golden Compass for her brave heart and general gumption. And Morgaine of Avalon from The Mists of Avalon,

much for the same reasons I love Cersei, even though they go about it in totally different ways.”

Creating characters and stories that readers will love may be fun, but some authors can find themselves being influenced by their fans reactions. This is especially the

case when it comes to writing a series where the author may be getting responses from their first release as they are working on their second. Blake has been in this position, but when asked if she feels obligated to satisfy fan expectations, she said that she does not.

“How can I, when I can’t even satisfy my own? What happens in the story is simply what happens. I have little conscious control over it,” Blake said. “Very often, my stories do not end how I hoped they would end.”

But that does not mean that she does not listen to her readers at all. “I do respond to feedback in the sense that fan favorites probably have an effect on me. People want to see more of Pietyr and Kat, or Billy and Arsinoe, and maybe I’ll pay special attention to the moments that they have.” Despite what all Blake has said, she does not actually believe in endings. Rather,

she says that the author simply stops writing. This, of course, makes choosing when to stop writing difficult. When it comes to knowing when the right time is, she said, “I think you just kind of sense it.”

“Like, I sense that book four, which I am calling 67 Dark Maids-a-Milking as a working title, will be the last book I write on Fennbirn Island. But since I’m not blowing the island up at the end, there will always be part of me that wonders what’s happening there, or wants to dig a little deeper into the history.” She added, “Sometimes I get the urge to pop in and check on Cas and the gang from Anna Dressed in Blood. But I think I’m too afraid that they’re all dead.”

So just like readers, even authors like Blake find themselves daydreaming about what has happened to characters after a book ends. And Blake is definitely a fan of hearing what readers think of her characters and her work. That is one of

the things she loves about the way social media has positively affected writers and the reading community.

“I can only speak for myself but I will say that it allows readers an easy way to contact me. They can tag me in their thoughts without addressing me directly, which would have been a godsend for a shy kid like me back in the day. And I’ve seen it connect fandoms, connect readers to each other in a way that didn’t happen before the internet. And that, is very cool.”

Blake was asked if there was a question she wishes people would ask her or if there was anything else she wanted to share, and she had this to say: “Hmm. Not really? I used to wish I’d be asked what flavor ice cream my characters would be, but I’ve been asked that now. Maybe if someone asked me what animal I would be? Because I think I would be a pig. I’ll eat pretty much anything, and I’m very low to the ground. Plus in the cannibal apocalypse I bet I would make a very nice side of bacon. This interview keeps coming back to bacon. Human bacon in this case, but it still makes me think I ought to take a break for lunch.”

When it came time for a parting message for readers and fans, Blake said, “Was ‘human bacon’ not enough?”

To learn more about Blake, you can check out her website. Here, you can also find links to all of her books!

INSTAGRAM @ kendareblake TWITTER @ kendareblake kendareblake.com