Interview with Michelle Gallagher Soffe

I’d like to introduce you to some of the writers and artists of Cafe Macabre II, starting with Michelle Gallagher Soffe. The novel she cowrote with her husband (across an ocean, during a pandemic) is wrapping up a successful kickstarter right now, and there’s only a few days left for you to secure your copy of Last Road to the Backwoods

1.) How long have you been writing?

My mom tells a story about me sitting in the back of the car at 3 years old making up a story about the white flowers in the center divide. I think I’ve always had the desire to write in me, but have only just recently started calling myself a writer. It felt odd to do so when writing was a side effect of living.

2.) Tell me about the piece you contributed to this collection. What inspired it?

Sacramento is known as a River city. We have both the Sacramento River and the American River running through it. To me, water is very evocative, more like a living thing. And living in a death denying society even in the midst of almost constant grief with the pandemic, I felt like highlighting the beauty contained in the process of decay, along with the horror of what transpires in a mind and soul after dealing with death.

3.) Did you “pants” your way through your story, or did you have an outline/plan in mind?

100% pants. I guess I have a reverse process, in that I write stream of consciousness then double back and mold the outliers or places I wandered too far afield into something that makes sense.

4.) Where do you come up with ideas for your stories? What inspired the story you wrote for this collection?

I’m always inspired to write by the real horror people afflict on others. Everyday life presents us with multifaceted horrible things. The story for this collection came to me when imagining the perspective of wildlife surrounding a discarded human corpse as the corpse becomes more and more part of the nature surrounding it.

5.) Do you have any rituals or quirks when you’re writing?

Having a busy household, it’s hard to write on a set schedule or even in the same place. But I guess I need plenty of water and coffee and relative silence. Anytime I’m on the brink of “killing” someone in the story, I procrastinate. I think it’s a form of deliberation. Does this person need to be killed and in this way? So much gratuitous death happens in horror. I want to make it have maximum impact.

6.) What was the first thing you ever wrote?“

Moonlight, Moonlight, won’t you come back to me” a poem for a boy named Steven in kindergarten that went undelivered.

7.) What are you working on right now that has you excited?

My husband and I wrote a novel while separated by covid travel restrictions called Last Road to the Backwoods. It’s currently on Kickstarter! It’s an occult horror novel based in 1930s Pennsylvania. Its an unsettling, suspenseful slow burn that I think perfectly encapsulates our emotions during that separation. If you’d like to check it out, you can find it here: http://kck.st/30Vxaqp

I’m working on an anthology of short stories based around the Sylacauga meteor event in 1954. A woman named Ann Hodges was hit by a meteor and she’s the only person in recorded history to. They said the chances are like getting hit with a hurricane, lightning and a tornado all at once. When I saw the headline about it I had to write stories surrounding the event.

I’m also wrapping up a comic script about heroic women in World War 2 that assassinated Nazis.

8.) What is your favorite book, author, or genre?

My favorite book is A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway. It’s the first book I read as a young adult that had a gut punch ending. I chase that now in my own writing. I love to read all sorts of literature and styles of writing.

9.) What song would you play as the soundtrack to the piece you wrote for this collection, and why?

I would say Black Swan by Thom Yorke. It’s about getting lost in the shuffle and feeling disconnected, being tempted to let everything fall away.

10.) What advice would you give to new writers?

Read. Read absolutely everything you can get your hands on. And write, write, write. Even when it goes sideways, even when it doesn’t make sense. Do the thing. Put pencil to paper, fingers to keys. The words will find you.

Michelle Joy Gallagher Soffe is an author of poetry and prose from Sacramento, California. She is a mother of 3 and author of short stories “Red Woman” for Café Macabre and “The River” for Café Macabe II, “Awake” for Blackhawk vol 2, an anthology with author David Brown. She also wrote an 8 page comic ”Under the Root” for the video game themed comic anthology Get in the Game, edited by Pat Kawula, and has provided poetry for The Rejected series by Stan Konopka. She co-wrote the novel Last Road to the Backwoods with her husband Matt Soffe.