In this interview, we chat with Gemma Files about horny monsters, Lovecraftian Airbnbs, the female gaze, and so much more.

Previously a film critic, journalist and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She's best-known for her novel Experimental Film (Open Road Media) and her collections of short fiction, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning In That Endlessness, Our End and Blood From the Air (both from Grimscribe). Her next book, Little Horn: Stories, will be out in October from Shortwave. She is the autistic mother of an autistic son. For fun she sings, and doodles pretty monsters.

Books mentioned in this episode: 

• Empire of the Sun – J. G. Ballard 
• D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths; Norse Gods and Giants – Edgar Parin d'Aulaire and Ingri Parin d'Aulaire 
• Black Flame – Gretchen Felker-Martin 
• The Rotting Room – Viggy Parr Hampton 
  Barrowbeck; The Loney; Starve Acre – Andrew Michael Hurley 
• Bright Dead Star; Zoetrope Bizarre – Caitlín R. Kiernan 
• The Jungle Book; The Second Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling 
• The Magician's Nephew – C. S. Lewis 
• The Reddening – Adam Nevill 
• Metamorphoses – Ovid 
• Cyrano de Bergerac – Edmond Rostand 
• Frankenstein – Mary Shelley 
• Dracula – Bram Stoker 
• A Dark Matter – Peter Straub 
• The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole