The Best of Spanish Steampunk by James Womack

James, collections of early gothic novels, novellas, and short fiction. From there it was an easy walk towards the stories of M.R. I definitely had a Gothic sensibility from very early on, and one of the novels that most influenced me in my early years was Wuthering Heights. With regard to Poe, he is still very much with me, in everything I do. I remember quite clearly closing Crime and Punishment and deciding I wanted to be a writer at that moment. I think these two books defined my writing and my personal aesthetic from very early on (I co-run a small press with a strong Russian literature list, and write gothic/weird/horror fiction). The first ‘adult’ books I remember reading, and that really had a big influence on me, came from this collection: they were Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and a compilation of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. They didn’t buy us lots of children’s books we were encouraged to dig into this amazing well very early on. They were members of a Spanish catalogue book club, the Círculo de Lectores, and through we it we acquired most of the classics and Nobel prize winners, as well as contemporary authors. From the beginning they invested heavily in our education, and part of this was the number of books and encyclopedias we had access to. My parents weren’t exactly ‘bookish’ types, but our house had plenty of books we were a working class family, and my parents decided early on that both my brother and me should go to university. WFR: What kinds of fiction or stories did you read and watch growing up? And how have your tastes changed between what originally captivated you and now, if at all? Since “Orange Dogs” is Womack’s first piece at Weird Fiction Review, we decided to ask Womack some questions about her introduction to reading, her favorite stories, and where she draws her inspiration from. Chosen by literary magazine Leer as one of the thirty most influential people in their thirties in Spain’s book sector, she is also a prolific translator and co-runs Ediciones Nevsky, a Madrid/Cambridge-based small press specialising in European & Spanish slipstream in translation. Her fiction in English appears in Apex, Supersonic Mag and The Best of Spanish Steampunk, and she has published on Spanish literature, culture and society in the Times Literary Supplement, the New Internationalist, and The Science Fiction and Fantasy Network. She was born in Andalusia and has published two novels in Spanish, as well as contributing to more than 15 anthologies of short fiction, including Alucinadas, the first female-authored Spanish language anthology of SF. Today we’re pleased to announce that we’re publishing the original short story “Orange Dogs” by Spanish writer Marian Womack. Womack is a graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop, and a student in the Creative Writing Master’s at the University of Cambridge.

The Best of Spanish Steampunk by James Womack