Eden Royce is from Charleston, South Carolina now living in Southeast England. She’s a Shirley Jackson Award winner for her adult fiction, which has appeared in various print and online magazines. Her debut middle-grade novel, ROOT MAGIC, has won multiple awards for outstanding children’s literature. Her third middle-grade novel, THE CREEPENING OF DOGWOOD HOUSE, is a Bram Stoker Award winner, and the first horror novel to become a Walter Dean Myers Award Honoree in the award’s ten-year history. Find her online at edenroyce.com.
How long have you been writing? What brought you to it, and what are important highlights of your writing journey?
I’ve been writing most of my life – I got a little piece published in the local newspaper when I was around six years old – but only in the last fifteen years or so have I been comfortable and confident enough to publish my work. Reading has always been one of my loves, so it was inevitable I’d get around to writing at some point. That point was having a horrible day at work and an even worse commute home. Once I got inside, I sat down and rewrote how I wanted the day to have gone, complete with speculative elements, and after that, I began submitting. I haven’t stopped since.
What kind of horror do you write or edit? What brought you to the horror genre in particular, and what keeps you around?
I write Southern Gothic horror mostly, although I’ve dabbled in other sub-genres, this is how I would categorize most of my work. I came to horror as a young kid because I’m from a horror-loving family. We watched horror movies together, and talked about them. Once, I asked my grandmother why she wasn’t scared of a monster movie we watched and she said because the movie wasn’t real; it was people you had to be scared of.
Can you tell us about your books or short stories?
For my children’s books, I write horror and dark fantasy that also educates in a fun way. Root Magic and The Creepening of Dogwood House both have historical elements gathered from physical and ethnographic research, including school integration, folklore, and hoodoo.
My adult horror runs the gamut. I’ve written Southern Gothic with body horror like my novella Hollow Tongue, which Hailey Piper called “A claustrophobic descent into the hell of an old home…woven so that every scent and touch brings clutching discomfort.”
In my short stories, I combine horror, fantasy, and the surreal in varying amounts. I love beautiful, strange, beguiling horror. Even in Psychopomp & Circumstance, which I consider to be Southern Gothic fantasy, readers have deemed it quiet horror, and maybe it’s because there are darker elements in the story that create an unsettling environment the protagonist must navigate. Since I write about death often in my fiction, readers might see all my work through a horror lens. I don’t mind.
What piece of writing is the most meaningful to you and why?
This is a tough question, as I’ve loved reading for a long time and getting to write my own work and have it published is still such a thrill. If pressed, I’d choose my short story “The Choking Kind” because it’s based on a folktale my grandmother told me when I was child. It gave me chills then, and has always stuck with me. To this day, that story is one of the only things I’ve written where I never questioned whether it was going work or if I could pull it off.
Are there any other works or writers you think we should be reading?
I’d love people to embrace more middle-grade and YA horror, especially writers like Karen Strong, Ally Russell, Adrianna Cuevas, and Saundra Mitchell. I’d also love to see more readers discussing short-form horror. Novels are great, but sometimes a short story or novella can get under your skin just as much. Try: Flowers from the Void by Gianni Washington, We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe, and Doll Seed by Michele Tracy Berger.
Are there any unique challenges you’ve faced in your writing/editing journey?
I’ve had comments that Black people shouldn’t write horror, especially Black Americans, given our history of enslavement and trauma. I’ve seen posts that state horror written by women wasn’t as good as work written by men. I’ve had rejections that said while the editor liked elements of my story, they didn’t understand my magic system or didn’t believe my characters would react the way they did on the page.
*shrugs* I just keep writing.
Any final thoughts? What’s the best place to find you on social media, and if you have a newsletter, how can we sign up for it?
Final thoughts? No, not really. I’ve been working on a new novel, so most of my thoughts been directed toward that. This is the most talking about myself I’ve done in a while. I’m sporadically on social media these days, but drop in to update when there’s news to share and to congratulate my fellow creatives on their achievements.
I have a newsletter, though! It’s called The Front Porch, and I share updates with my writing and occasionally do a giveaway. You can sign up for it here: https://edenroyce.eo.page/sbtyt
Instagram, Threads: @edenroycebooks
Twitter (it’ll always be Twitter to me): @EdenRoyce
Bluesky: @edenroyce.bsky.social
Website: edenroyce.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/edenroyce
Adult:
Hollow Tongue (Shirley Jackson Award winner)
Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror
Kids:
The Creepening of Dogwood House (Bram Stoker Award winner)
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