We sat down to ask horror writer, Paul Edmonds, our questions on his magnificent story, Vertebrae. We recommend you read the story first as there may be spoilers ahead.

1. I love how you use the story to talk about how pain and major events can change people – where did the idea for this come from?

I grew up in a factory town where most of the working-age men had jobs at one of the tool or furniture plants. There was this guy I knew. Not well, just through acquaintances. Good dude. He got into a forklift accident. Nothing life-threatening, but it laid him up for a while. I remember how he was before it happened. Hardworking, family man, all that. But as he recovered, something shifted. He started screwing around on his wife, got rough with his kids. It was sad.

I was thinking about him one day, and that’s where the idea for “Vertebrae” came from. How something can get knocked loose in a person after a traumatic event. Or in this case, something gets crushed inside them, and they’re never the same again. I’m interested in that moment where someone realizes they’re not who they were a month ago, or even a day ago. What happens when that shift goes to the extreme. What’s left on the other side.

Q2. There’s a real meanness to this tale as we decent to the end of it. How important is it that horror writers ‘not look away’ from the horrific moments?

I think it’s important that writers don’t step back. That doesn’t mean shocking people just for the sake of it, but if something needs to be said, you should say it. If a moment is best communicated in a way that’s bloody or uncomfortable, maybe cuts a little too deep, then you should go there. I don’t think a writer—especially one working in darker stories—should pull their punches out of fear of how it might be received. With “Vertebrae,” that meant following things all the way through and not softening the moments that needed to land.

Q3. What was your favourite thing about writing this tale?

It was just a really exciting story to write. It felt sharp from the start. I wanted it to feel immediate. And the fact that it tied back to someone I’d known made it more personal. I felt energized the whole way through. The momentum never dropped, which isn’t always the case.

Q4. How much of your time do you spend writing short stories compared to novels, etc?

Right now, it’s all short stories. That’s really where my focus is. Of course, I’ll spend time brainstorming, outlining, working through different ideas—kind of figuring out the architecture of a piece—but it all lives in the short form at the moment. I do see a novel on the horizon, though.

Q5. Do you have any other projects you want to make everyone aware of? (add links if you have them).

Yeah, definitely. I recently had a story published on the Horrific Scribes website called “Grand Guignol.” It’s an analog horror piece about a group of dirtbags watching a cursed porno flick (horrificscribblings.com/grand-guignol). I also had a story appear in the anthology Humans from Earth!! from Daft Notions, which is available on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GLWW3H6L). I’ve got a Weird Western story coming out soon in audio form on the Tales to Terrify site, and a couple more slated for publication.