Laois author thrilled audiences with extracts from her new book
Abbeyleix Library staff member Martina O'Connor and author of The Nightmare F B Hogan
LOCAL author, blogger, editor and Laois Libraries staff member Fiona Hogan who writes under the name F B Hogan, chilled horror and supernatural fans by reading from her latest book of short stories in Abbeyleix Library on the night before Halloween in a spine-tingling setting.
Before cosying up by the fire in the library with an intimate group of people and flawlessly reading four of her stories, Fiona spoke about her writing and her background in dark fiction for the .
She said: “I have been writing since I was a child, but I only really came out of the writing closet in 2015 when I published my first book which is a book of different types of fiction called . I also have a few books on Amazon, and another called and an upcoming novel called which I haven’t yet had a launch for. It is contemporary fiction.
“This book is a collection of horror fiction which is my favourite genre to write in. The book is brand new and hasn’t been launched yet either, so I decided to give it a little outing for Halloween and get it out there.
It’s a mix of different kinds of sub-genres of horror so it has gothic horror which I absolutely love writing by nature of being gothic with old-style Victorian type ghost story horror and it has some contemporary horror stories in there too.
There’s a story called Our Friends Electric which is set in the Electric Picnic about suspicious goings-on there. The rest are a mixture of long and short fiction, and one is kind of a novelette at the end which is gothic horror.” Continuing, Fiona said that she was an unusual child interested in everything occult, reading books on parapsychology and trying to move wardrobes with her brain.
She said: “I have always been fascinated by the fear factor and that you can be on the other side of that as in the person who scares rather than the person who is scared so you can do whatever you want which is why horror writing is such good fun. I’m not so much the gore – it's more the suspense so there's no gore and it’s a book to read by the night fire – but with the lights on!” Fiona will be doing her own horror imprints, and she has her own website called Unusual Fiction so people will be able to buy copies from there and they will also be available in local bookshops soon too.
The event was a great success, and the gathered group loved Fiona’s readings.
