PONDERINGS WITH PIPER: An Exclusive Interview with the Elusive Hailey Piper
Hailey Piper is a regular visitor to Planet Scumm. Her short fiction also appears in Daily Science Fiction, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, and Year's Best Hardcore Horror. She's a member of the HWA and the author of horror novellas “The Worm and His Kings,” “Benny Rose, the Cannibal King,” and “The Possession of Natalie Glasgow.”
She lives with her wife in Maryland, but you can also find her at www.haileypiper.com or on Twitter via @HaileyPiperSays.
Hailey Piper and The Piper Pack
Hailey Piper had a hell of a year. A Stoker Award for Queen of Teeth, a movie deal, seventeen short story sales, plus the release of her second novel and her fourth novella.
We feel proud (arrogant, even) to say that the good ship Scummy just so happens to be—get this—the VERY FIRST market to have bought one of Hailey’s short stories. A literal 100 short story publications later, and Hailey is still killing it. To all you authors out there, Hailey’s four stories in Planet Scumm, not to mention the entire issue she stepped in to guest edit, serve as a clinic on how to get published multiple times by the same place. What can we say? She just gets us.
Her style and writing talent can be summed up with one word: range. Hailey’s Scumm stories span an array of genres like folk horror, deep-future sci-fi, and Victorian-era mystery.
In issues 6 and 9, respectively, she introduces the reader to ponderous witches and brain-hungry cultists.
In issue 7, she indulges in deep meditation on the long-term future of life on this planet (from the point of view of an accidental one-way time traveler).
In issue 13, she summons transmogrified people-eaters in defense of a queer teenager.
And in her guest-editor-in-chief role for issue 11, she curated a thoughtful collection of stories that will take you to dreamy new worlds, explore what it means to have a corporeal form, and emphasize the role of communities—especially those found in unexpected environments.
We’ve assembled one of our most Reckless Deals yet to celebrate The Year of Piper.
Our aptly-named Piper Pack contains the four issues Hailey’s stories have appeared in, plus the issue she guest edited for stupid cheap at $36.66 (which is a much more fun number than the usual full price of $56).
The Piper Pack contains issues #6, #7, #9, #11, and #13—which comes out to 33 stories, one RPG game, and 422 pages of fiction. It’s a kick-ass slice of Scumm any way you slice it (and we slice it diagonally (obviously)).
In Her Words: An Interview with Hailey Piper
by Contributing editor, anna catalano
PLANET SCUMM: What brought you to Planet Scumm in the first place, and what brings you back?
HAILEY PIPER: The early allure was essentially, Planet Scumm was having a horror issue and I was trying to write/sell horror stories. But then I started reading other stories they'd published and continued to publish, and I got a sense of what Planet Scumm is—for its daring, and sense of humor, and quality mixed with unrestrained love of wild ideas.
PS: Please tell us about your experience as the esteemed guest editor of Issue #11, "Snake Eyes."
HP: While I've freelanced editing before, "Snake Eyes" was my first time at reading submissions, and it was an eye-opening challenge. When you only have so many slots, and there are so many incredible stories with memorable moments and wonderful writing, figuring out what stays or goes gets heavy. Thankfully I didn't have to take that on alone, and between co-editors and the writers' stories shining so bright, we put together what I feel is an amazing issue.
PS: What do you usually look for in magazines or publishers when querying a project?
HP: The specifics depend on the project, such as general mood of the stories they're publishing, whether they seem open to queer work since that's a good chunk of what I write, etc. Multiple times, I've worked with new publications/publishers. But I definitely want a sense that they care about what they publish, that they're looking for quality and won't just slap your name on something and kick it out the door, and that we can have solid communication. Some of these habits developed as time went on though. I definitely know better about some things now than I did years ago.
PS: What helps you build strong writing habits?
HP: All writers have their own answers to this. For me, it's consistency. Not that I sit down to write every single day—in fact, I'm in the middle of a break as I answer these questions—but because I enjoy writing, I don't stop myself from it, and I make sure I'm open to whatever occurs to me. So for example, while I didn't sit down to write yesterday, I had moments where phrases or observations occurred to me, and I still jotted them down. I'll need them later when I do sit down to write. Also, knowing when to put my phone on silent and on the other side of the room.
PS: Tell us about your journey from your first short story sale to your upcoming film, "A Light Most Hateful?"
HP: I'll try to be concise! Planet Scumm was the start in, I think, summer 2018? Or September 2018? Shortly after, I self-published a short story that had grown too large, but I had this idea in mind that I would just be a short story writer. I had read about Caitlin R. Kiernan selling 100 short stories in a five-year span, so that became my goal.
But then some stories, like Benny Rose the Cannibal King and The Worm and His Kings, weren't satisfying as shorter tales and I ended up rewriting them into novellas. Queen of Teeth was the first novel, which I wrote in 2020, and I then wrote A Light Most Hateful in late 2020. Finding a home for that took some time, during which I worked on and moved toward publishing Your Mind Is a Terrible Thing with Off Limits Press (easily the most Planet Scumm-like of my books) and No Gods for Drowning with Polis Books, but once I signed with my literary agent, Lane Heymont, earlier this year, A Light Most Hateful not only landed with Titan Books, but also the movie deal with Tony Eldridge and LoneTree Entertainment.
There's a lot more in there, with various stories, almost-movies, almost-books; there is never a clear path in writing or publishing. It's all a big weird mess, and you just try to find your way as you go.
PS: What has changed or evolved the most in your writing style and approach from your first publication until now?
HP: Like I mentioned, I had this idea in my head of short story focus. But since 2020, my focus has really shifted more to writing books. I still write a lot of short stories, and I pour a lot of my heart into them, but I write fewer than previous years.
PS: Time management is a beast—how do you structure your time in order to consistently finish projects and stay organized?
HP: Mainly a detailed schedule. Some of it is calendar-based (when things are happening) and some is when things are due. I'm a mood writer, so I can't always work on projects in the order I've promised them to editors, which means I really need to understand what I've agreed to and give myself time, especially if I end up writing four stories that I'm not happy with to reach the one story that feels right. I end up tossing a lot of writing.
PS: What is your favorite and least favorite part of the creative process?
HP: I love the thrill of having a clear feeling I'm trying to capture. It's a bit of carving to reach it, but having that destination keeps everything purposeful. Probably my least favorite is taking that raw writing on its first step toward polished writing. I enjoy the process, but it's more time-consuming than any other stage of revisions, so it feels less like making progress (even though it's one of the most important steps).
PS: What should every author (aspiring and established) know about navigating the publishing trenches?
HP: There are a million answers to this. The common ones remain important though, to not take rejection personally, read contracts carefully, and to keep going.
Paperback: Bookshop.org, Target, Indiebound
Ebook/paperback/audiobook (coming soon): Barnes & Noble, Amazon
Audiobook pre-order at: Libro.fm
PS: Planet Scumm's upcoming Issue #14 is pretty apocalypse-centric... What is your preferred manner of apocalypse (outside the current one, of course), and how do you imagine you'd fare?
HP: It's a lot easier to destroy than create, and the current apocalypse of "grind everything and everyone through giant gears until it's all gone" is so dull and unimaginative. If everything's going to be destroyed, it should go down in some wild way, like everything plastic suddenly turns into mounds of glowing spiders. I would not handle this well, but at least it would be different?
PS: What are some of your go-to spooky season favorites?
HP: Part of me wants to say I don't have spooky season re-reads? But I did just re-read John Langan's Halloween story "Lost in the Dark" for the third time this October, so maybe that one. I also think Shirley Jackson's stories often capture the autumn air. For movies, Halloween and The VVitch. I try to mix it up though!
PS: In your opinion: the objective best movie monster vs. your own personal favorite?
HP: I'm not sure what objectively is the best movie monster. I suppose the alien in John Carpenter's The Thing is one a lot of people would say, and I do love it and that movie quite a bit. Though I guess my personal favorites are Godzilla and Freddy Krueger. They both have imaginative movies to them, but also, very importantly for a franchise, they both have really good movies and really terrible ones, so you get the whole experience.
