Interview - Johnathan Fortin

An accomplished author working in a variety of formats and genre styles, author Johnathan Fortin has crafted a solid series of titles and publications to his name as he begins his career. Now, in honor of the release of his upcoming book, "Lilitu: Bloody Caleb," I talk with him about his early interest in writing, creating the universe of the novel, and his work on the book.

Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. First off, when did you get into horror in general? What films specifically got you into watching horror movies?

Johnathan Fortin: You know, as a kid, I was terrified of everything. As a hypersensitive, overly imaginative autistic child prone to nightmares, I initially avoided horror movies. Even without them, I would find myself lying awake at night, imagining all sorts of things that terrified or disturbed me. 

My fear was so crippling, I think, that it was only natural that confronting it would become an obsession. Even then, I was reading Goosebumps books. Ridley Scott’s Alien was the first R-rated movie I ever saw, and weirdly, I wasn’t too bothered by it. But I think my real gateway was Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow, which I became obsessed with in middle school. That was the movie that seduced me into the dark beauty of Gothic Horror. It wasn’t until college that I really began to seek out films I’d been too scared to watch before, and realized how powerful it could be to experience a safe moment of terror where you aren't actually in danger – especially when it comes to managing anxiety. There are still movies I won't watch (I have no interest in A Serbian Film, for example), but I'm now a horror fan through and through, and frequently use my own nightmares and anxieties for inspiration. Hilariously, I've found out that a lot of other horror creators have similar experiences, creating horror art as a way of taking power over their own fear. Just like how comedians are often extremely depressed.

Me: What was the starting point of becoming a writer? Were you always into writing growing up?

JF: I was always writing. I wrote and illustrated children's books when I was a kid, and moved on to writing YA books when I was a teenager (nothing I would publish, mind you). I also wanted to make movies and video games, but I lacked the resources and skillset necessary, and didn't really know how to work with other people, so writing was just the easiest way for me to tell my stories. 

Me: Who were some of your favorite writers growing up? Do you try to take influences from their style with your own voice in your work?

JF: Unfortunately, most of my favorite authors growing up have since turned out to be not great people. While many of the works I once loved are tainted, I do still find inspiration in certain aspects of them: the way a certain wizard series would weave tapestries of subplots, for example, or the way a certain British fantasy author would find magic glimmering under every stone. (I wish my favorite authors didn’t keep turning out to be terrible people.) I love worlds where magic is constant rather than rare, and messy rather than rigidly organized, and constantly causing problems because there are always going to be shitty people, and magic just lets them be shitty more effectively.

A more benign influence was Holly Black, whose books I’ve enjoyed since high school, and who I was fortunate enough to study under at the Clarion writing program in 2012. Holly’s awesome, and I enjoy her work to this day. China Mieville’s Bas-Lag trilogy was hugely inspirational to me as well, making me rethink what a fantasy book could be. I've been impacted by the twisted beauty of Clive Barker's works, the Victorian Gothic atmospherics of Michael Cox's The Meaning of Night duology, the relentless weirdness of Carlton Mellick III's Bizarro fiction, and the sheer joy of Patrick Rothfuss's The Kingkiller Chronicles. I take inspiration from all storytelling media, not just books: Guillermo del Toro movies, manga like Berserk or Uzumaki, and video games like Bloodborne and American McGee’s Alice, you name it.

I wouldn’t say I seek to crib the style of any one particular work or author. I’m interested in writing books that haven’t been written before, not books that other authors are already writing.

Me: Is there any specific genre you prefer to write? Is there a style or format that you find easier to get into, even if you don't have a preference?

JF: I most enjoy writing Dark Fantasy and Gothic Horror. I love how Gothic Horror combines the beautiful with the morbid, and the grotesque with the sensual. I especially enjoy writing stories that employ the aesthetics and heightened intensity of horror with the scope, magic, and structure of fantasy. I usually find myself bored by stories that just follow predictable formulas like “teens get killed in the woods,” or “impossibly pure farmboy defeats evil with the power of friendship.” I like fusing genres because then you don't know which one will ultimately direct the story. A dash of horror ensures that a fantasy story might not go in the direction you expect, while fantasy’s complicated plotting and world-building keep horror from getting too repetitive.

Me: Having contributed to various anthologies early in your career, what tools and skills did you acquire working on those that transferred to future projects?

JF: Honestly, I was always more of a novel writer than a short story writer. I just knew I needed some short story credits for anyone to take my novels seriously. Also, Lilitu: The Memoirs Of A Succubus was an extremely ambitious first novel, and I was very young when I first wrote it. So it took me such a long time to whip it into shape that stories were just easier to place first. That said, I do think that writers can learn a lot from crafting short fiction, like how to compress stories into short, simple packages.

I am very fond of novellas, which I feel are excellent for horror. There’s enough room for a developed plot, but they’re still short enough that they aren’t as intimidating for those of us with ADD. With that in mind, we just came out with a free Lilitu novella called Saintkiller, which I think turned out really well. It’s very, very dark, and designed to work both as an introduction to the series for new readers and as a self-contained side adventure for people already familiar with it. It’s a free download, so I hope people will check it out. Here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/jod64iv98m

Me: That brings us to your latest book, “Lilitu: Bloody Caleb.” What can you tell us about the book? Where did the inspiration for the story come from?

JF: I originally wrote Lilitu: The Memoirs Of A Succubus because I noticed a lack of good succubus/incubus-themed books, and having always been drawn to them, I felt there was a lot to explore there. I eventually took the direction of using succubus folklore to explore the horrors of misogyny and the rigid gender roles in Victorian England: deconstructing ideas like “succubi are beautiful” to create a more body positive message, giving a middle finger to abusive love male interests in similar books by showing how they were actually abusive, and turning the “evil seductress” archetype on its head by having a protagonist who becomes a sympathetic demon warrior-seductress.

This ended up being the key to unlocking Bloody Caleb as well. On the surface, Bloody Caleb is the story of a murdered man who becomes a demon in an effort to escape from Hell and get revenge on his killer. But thematically, it’s a mirror of the first book, exploring the horrors of toxic masculinity just as Memoirs explored the horrors of misogyny. As someone who struggles with things like body dysmorphia and trauma, I felt it was important to show how men struggle with these things too, while also exploring how many men, unfortunately, seek relief from these issues by turning to the very structures that cause them. We live in a time where boys grow up watching misogynistic sociopaths on social media and idolizing them, and I think something is horrifying about that. So that was very much on my mind as I wrote Bloody Caleb. Even though it’s set in the Victorian era, the issues it explores are unfortunately all too relevant to today’s world. I honestly feel that Caleb’s slow psychological corruption is far more disturbing than any of the book’s gore.

Naturally, the third Lilitu volume will have characters from both books meet, giving the series a “thesis, antithesis, synthesis” structure, even though Book III has ended up being split into two due to its length. 

Me: What is your writing process? How do you stay focused on writing?

JF: Being autistic, I’m very fond of routines and rituals, and find that I work best when writing is part of my daily routine. I get up earlier than I need to so that, unless something happens, I’ll have at least a half hour of designated writing time every day before going into the office. I also try to get some work done on my lunch break when time allows. I’m very much a plotter, and frequently take notes on my phone as they come to me, though I almost always end up changing the story when I actually write it. 

Me: Since this is the second story in the series, what type of concessions, if any, were made to the story so that it not only fit with part one but would allow it to tie into upcoming entries in the series?

JF: I worked hard to ensure that Bloody Caleb would be accessible to new readers, but it also seeds a lot of things that are important in future books: characters like Emperor Riven, one of the main antagonists in the series; or Kaeru, a lilitu with a rare bloodline that causes their body to change to suit the desires of whoever they last touched (which they use to their advantage in espionage operations, even though this is all very psychologically complicated for them). I didn’t really need to make any concessions. It was all designed to fit together, with Caleb experiencing things Maraina couldn’t, so that by the time Book III rolls around, the reader already knows everything they need to.

Me: Was there any special significance to making the characters’ relationship take place in Hell with demons?

JF: The series is about using succubi and incubi, folkloric demons, to explore gender and class power dynamics, and how organized religion can sometimes twist people into worse versions of themselves. Obviously, religion isn’t by itself evil, but it is often used to justify inhuman acts. A big part of the first book is about how London’s new demon monarchy justifies itself with religion, because this is what fascist regimes do, and as an author who’s living in a fascist regime right now, I can tell you that firsthand. Why would a regime of demons be any different? The nature of this also meant I needed to eventually take readers to Hell and show the world these demons came from.

Rather than sticking to any single mythological or religious interpretation of the underworld, I combined elements of many. I didn’t want Lilitu’s Hell to justify any particular dogma. I don’t believe that morality is black and white, and can’t agree with any system that says it’s okay for people to be tortured forever – especially if they’re being tortured just because they were raised with the "wrong" religious text, or no religious text at all. Again, that’s what abusive fascist regimes teach people, and that’s what the series is critiquing in the first place. So it made sense to me that even in Hell, religion would be omnipresent, with many demons claiming to act in God’s name, even while torturing people. Indeed, Emperor Riven is pretty much Hell’s Pope. I was also very interested in asking and provoking questions about the logistics of such a place. If everyone who has ever died were down there, how would a hypothetical demonic government manage such an unfathomably huge population? How would people stay sane through decades, centuries, or millennia of torture? If a group of mortals escaped demonic control, would they be able to find happiness in Hell? There was a lot I wanted to explore in this book, and it will continue to be explored as the series goes on.

Me: Once it was finally written, what was the process for having it published?

JF: I signed with Crystal Lake for the first Lilitu after I won HorrorAddicts.net’s Next Great Horror Writer Competition, wherein I competed with some amazing other horror writers and we all participated in various writing challenges. (Several other competitors were Jess Landry, who’s since won a Stoker; Sumiko Saulson, who’s been nominated for Stokers as well; Naching T. Kassa, who’s now Crystal Lake’s Talent Relations Manager; and Daphne Strasert, who’s written a bunch of great stuff too.)

Long story short, I somehow climbed up to the top 3 overall scorers at the very end, and the 3 of us got our novels looked at. Crystal Lake selected Lilitu, and just like that, my baby had a home. In 2023, after working on some unrelated projects, I figured I should probably finish the other Lilitu series, since it had always been meant to be a series, and it felt kinda “now or never.” So I asked Joe at Crystal Lake if he still wanted more Lilitu books, and pitched the series as I envisioned it. Joe was good enough to give me the green light. Ever since then, I’ve been working on this series day and night. As of this writing, Lilitu: Bloody Caleb is done and launching October 3rd, we’ve released the free Saintkiller novella, and I’ve completed the first draft of Book III. There will be 4 books total (not including Saintkiller).

Me: What do you do to keep your creative energy flowing?

JF: Writing is like a muscle: the more you work it, the easier it gets. At the same time, I think it’s important to not beat yourself up for not getting enough done (even though we all do it). If your main emotional association with writing is feelings of shame and inadequacy for not doing it enough, then it’s very hard to get yourself to regularly do it, because then every time you try, you’ll feel like a failure before you even begin. You have to show empathy to yourself and recognize that you’re doing the best you can, and that writing is a process. That first draft is gonna be a mess, and that’s okay. (Of course, this is all easier said than done.) I also find it helps to be a part of the writing community, because every single person there has struggled just like you, and sometimes being around other creative people can help keep your fire lit.

My writing is also part of how I stay sane. It gives me purpose; a reason to keep living; an outlet for my overwhelming emotions. I don’t want to die before I finish all the books in my head, even though I’m certain I will. It probably sounds deeply pretentious, but I feel that my work is not yet done.

Me: Lastly, what else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers? Thank you again for your time!

JF: Thank you so much, Don! And thank you to everyone who read this. I hope you’ll all consider checking out the Lilitu books here: https://geni.us/LilituSaga

For a free taste, don’t forget that Saintkiller can be downloaded here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/jod64iv98m

You can find me online here: https://www.jonathanfortin.com/links

Thanks again!