GUTS: Not only does Crystal Beach allow for the animation of a ghostly presence, Crystal Beach is a kind of ghost, especially for Starla. And the hero is not an individual, but a community. I wanted my ensemble of characters-with their different strengths and shortcomings-to face off against a powerful antagonistic force so they’d have to collectively mobilize and show up for each other. I wanted show a small, rural community not only as queer-friendly, but more so as a community of different characters who come together cooperative ways. Can you discuss the choice to anchor this lesbian supernatural thriller-that doubles as a story about community and showing up for each other-in a small town?ĪD: You’ve hit upon one of my central goals for the novel-to disrupt the idea that queer life and urban life are synonymous. While cities are often upheld as the epicenter for queer life, possibility, and community, Crystal Beach is where community and kinship really flourish in Starla’s world. GUTS: Starla makes the move away from her hometown to the big city, only to return back home. When reading, I often focus my attention on what the characters or narrator is afraid of, what external forces are causing those fears, and what choices (or lack of choices) are being made during times of narrative tension and fear. Fear-whether expressed through a fictional character or by a nonfiction narrative voice-often helps reveal just what is at stake. While they are wildly different books, expressions of fear are palpable in both: fear of the unknown, fear of the other, fear of being othered, fear of not belonging, fear of oneself.

What’s your relationship to genres that work through fear? Do you watch or read a lot of these kinds of works?Īmber Dawn: The first two books I fell in love with were Katherine Dunn’s novel Geek Love and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. GUTS: As the editor of Fist of the Spider Woman, and a self-described genre-hopper, Sodom Road Exit isn’t your first foray into what I’m going to call “scary” writing, such as thriller, horror, suspense. In the interview that follows, we ask her about fear, love languages, and who we should be reading next.

Amber Dawn’s newest book Sodom Road Exit has been described as “part broken family melodrama part lesbian supernatural thriller.” It was this description that piqued my interested, the novel’s enthralling narrative that prevented me from putting it down, and all the ways Amber Dawn interweaves the complexity of relating to each other-across difference and in difficult situations-that has me thinking about Sodom Road Exit long after having finished it.

Fist of the Spider Woman by Amber Dawn