We sat down with Kurt Phillips to talk about horror and his latest story, Chalk Marks (which was the first ever story to be accepted by us). There may be minor spoilers ahead.
Q1. I love what you’ve done by tipping an exorcism story on its head by moving it to a different setting. How did you come up with this?
I had just watched Black Hawk Down for the 4th or 5th time and had become a little obsessed with the story. I read Mark Bowden’s book and several others about the Battle of Mogadishu, but then my horror writer brain took over and all I could think was, “How can I make this situation worse?” And the answer at the time was to make the soldier’s place of refuge more terrifying than the battle that was taking place on the streets.
This presented me a lot of great decisions to make. For instance, one tried and true trope of exorcism stories is that the possessed are speaking in languages they couldn’t know. Well, what if that language was English?
I also loved the idea of this frail, old woman pushing the buttons of these hardened, disciplined Army Rangers until they finally break. So, as soon as I came up with her character, I just turned her loose on them. I let her ratchet up the tension until something or someone exploded.
Q2. What’s your favourite excorcism story and did it have any influence on this tale?
I love Paul Tremblay’s Head Full of Ghosts and Grady Hendrix’ My Best Friend’s Exorcism, but I have to go with the queen mother of all possession stories, Blatty’s The Exorcist. But, more specifically, the scene where Regan/Pazuzu is tormenting Father Karras by imitating his recently deceased mother. That scene fascinated me and creeped me out more than any of the others. Just the idea of the priest’s dead mother speaking to him through Regan, tormenting him about being abandoned to die alone, still gives me chills.
I honestly didn’t make the connection between that scene and Chalk Marks until I had finished writing it, but I’m sure it informed my take on the story.
Q3. How much of your time do you spend writing short stories versus other projects?
In January of last year, I decided that 2025 would be my year of the short story. I had written plenty of them prior to last year, but I made the conscious decision to woodshed my short fiction chops for 12 months. Most of the short pieces I’d written up to that point was around 10,000 words, so I gave myself the arbitrary parameters of 5000 words or less.
Short stories require a different set of writing muscles, and last year was a workout. It was a lot of fun but it was very eye opening. Oh, I was still writing way more than 5000 words to start with, I just had to force myself to edit. I had to learn to whittle, and cut, and prune. You have to lean in to economy and eliminate everything that doesn’t directly add to the story. Then distil that down until it’s as lean and mean as it can possibly be.
I also focused on reading anthologies and collections over the last year, which helped a lot. Hailey Piper’s Teenage Girls Can Be Demons and It’s the End of the World As We Know It (ed. Brian Keene & Christopher Golden) stand out.
I have to admit though, I got antsy toward the end of the year and started working on some longer stuff. I’m slowly making headway on that right now.
Q4. What other works do you have on the go? Anything you’d like to promote?
I’m actively working on a follow-up to Noise Ordinance a.co/d/hutoMgi, a novella I published in 2024. It’s not a sequel necessarily, just some further adventures of Nolan Priest, a retired CIA special forces operative with ADHD and some preternatural reconnaissance skills.
Folks are also free to check out The Hand of the Archer a.co/d/1FN2itN, that came out in 2023. It’s about a parks and wildlife ranger who does a 5-MeO-DMT (toad venom) journey that goes horribly wrong. After his trip, he experiences a series of disturbing flashbacks and nightmares, finally setting out alone into the national forests of Colorado to deal with the frightened, confused, and violent entity he may have brought back with him.
By the way, congratulations on the inaugural season of A Midnight Kind of Place! I’m honored to be a part of it. Here’s to many more!