Author Interview w/E.D. Jones

Laken Honeycutt
Sep 28
10 min read

In this Author’s Nook interview, weird fiction writer E.D. Jones discusses their debut novel AWOO, blending genres from cosmic horror to queer romance, the influence of humor and politics on their storytelling, and how contests, Substack, and community shape their creative journey.

Writing Origins & Style

You describe yourself as a “weird fiction writer” inspired by mad geniuses who create worlds out of words. What first drew you toward weird fiction, and how has it shaped your voice as a storyteller?

China Miéville was my introduction to weird/slipstream fiction. His novel Perdido Street Station dumped me into this grimy and gorgeously described world inhabited by women with cockroaches for heads, cactus people, water elementals, garudas, and weird, mad science and magic intermingling to tell a wild, beautiful, sad, and poignant story. I immediately devoured everything Miéville wrote, and each book took me somewhere totally new and wonderfully weird.

Miéville taught me to write big, to ignore genre constraints, and to find my own unique voice. I think some of my best writing has a bit of everything in it, and that sort of writing just wouldn’t be in my head if I hadn’t read Miéville first.

Your debut novel AWOO: The Association of Werewolves and Oppressed Otherlings was published serially on Substack. What was that experience like compared to traditional publishing routes?

I tried to publish it traditionally at first. I queried about 70 agents, and they all came back with rejections.

The idea to publish it serially came from hearing an interview with Andy Weir, who serially published The Martian. I figured that if he could have success doing it that way, maybe I could do the same. Of course, serial publication has a long history going back at least as far as Dickens.

It’s been a learning curve, definitely, but I’m happy to say that I’ve developed a little audience of my own, which is more than I would have if I’d continued struggling to publish it traditionally.

Genre-Bending & Creativity

You mentioned you love breaking genre boundaries—werewolves, aliens, vampires, cosmic horror, even Don Quixote and heavy metal bands can all coexist in your stories. How do you balance humor, horror, and heart without losing the thread of the story?

The key is to have solid characters that can experience the mad weirdness of a story while being relatable and three-dimensional. I think I mostly succeeded with AWOO, which is a very weird novel that features werewolves, vampires, aliens, Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and a little bit of queer romance.

What excites you most about blending cosmic horror with urban fantasy and queer romance?

Just doing that. Blending anything with anything else. Not worrying whether something fits in a box. Writing whatever I want with no limits.

Writing weird also helps me when I do want to stick to a specific genre. I think I’m writing better and more interesting sci-fi and horror stories now that I’ve got that weird gear in my brain.

Influences & Inspirations

You pull inspiration from a wide range of sources—tabletop roleplaying games, Star Trek, heavy metal, and even Douglas Adams. How do these influences sneak into your storytelling?

TTRPGs help me think about plot and characterization in new ways – like, hey, my characters are stuck in this situation – how would a Call of Cthulhu investigator handle this? How would a D&D party handle this?

Douglas Adams has lived in my brain since I first read Hitchhiker’s Guide when I was 10 years old. His writing informs a lot of my personality and sense of humor. If there’s ever any humor in one of my stories, Douglas Adams has a hand in it. Along with Monty Python, Sir Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, and a dozen other comedy influences.

Sci-fi was my first literary obsession, and I grew up on Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, PKD, LeGuin, Huxley, Orwell, H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, Star Trek, Star Wars, and anything else I could get my hands on. A lot of what I write will have some sci-fi influence, and though I’ve leaned into horror and weird fiction more these days, I’m still a big sci-fi nerd at heart.

Heavy metal music is often just the soundtrack when I’m writing. However, it did become a primary plot element of my work in progress 2^nd novel, Neon Cryptkeeper, which is about a heavy metal band that has to save the world from a very weird apocalypse.

The name “Sinister” shows up in your branding often—why does that word resonate with you?

I actually wrote an article about this on my Substack, but I’ll briefly summarize it here.

I’m left-handed, or “sinistral,” which is derived from the Latin for “left.” The English language is full of examples of “right” being synonymous with “correct,” and “left” being synonymous with “sinister” or untrustworthy, suspect, even evil. For example, if you can write well with both hands, you’re “ambidextrous.” If you can’t write well with either hand, you’re “ambisinister.”

Thus, I’m taking back the word “sinister” and waving it proudly as a banner. It’s very much tongue-in-cheek. I’ve also adopted (as a kind of brand) the “bend sinister” in heraldry, which is a stripe that goes from the top right to the bottom left of a shield. The bend sinister was often used to denote bastardry, or illegitimacy – although, interestingly, having a bend sinister on your shield was sometimes counted as a badge of honor, even though the illegitimate children of aristocrats had few rights. “Write Sinister,” the name of my Substack, is a play on bend sinister.

Craft & Challenges

You’ve said writing contests like NYC Midnight pushed you to grow by forcing you into unfamiliar genres. What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about yourself as a writer through those challenges?

NYC Midnight taught me to write in genres I’d never tried to write. NYC Midnight challenges start with a randomly assigned genre, character, and object or idea, all of which must be incorporated into your submitted story, and it adds a word count and time limit to further focus the mind. Thus, I’ve written sci-fi, drama, horror, political satire, thriller, mystery, romantic comedy, and other genres for NYC Midnight, thus honing and expanding my own ability to write in any given genre.

I think the most surprising thing I learned is that, given the restrictions of a contest like NYC Midnight, I can quickly pound out a story that turns out to be some of the best writing I’ve ever done. In fact, four stories I wrote for NYC Midnight ended up published in anthologies and a local zine, and two of them – “Resolution” and “Ferryman” – are, in my opinion, my two best stories ever. “Resolution” was the first story I ever wrote for NYC Midnight, and it was a simple, sad story of a man mourning the loss of his husband to cancer. That story advanced me to the next contest round, and I ended up going all the way to the finals the first year that I did the short story contest. “Ferryman” was the first pure sci-fi story I wrote for the contest, and I’ve sold it to publishers twice – once to a podcast, and once to an anthology of queer fiction.

How do you balance pantsing/discovery writing with the structure needed for contests or serialized work?

NYC Midnight, in particular, gives me the kind of structure that I don’t normally have with pure pantsing, and that helps give me the focus I don’t have when I’m just sitting down and seeing where a story goes.

My first novel AWOO was finished and polished before I started serially publishing it. The real challenge is this new “choose your own adventure” horror story I’m writing. I have no roadmap for the story, but that’s the fun of it. Allowing my audience to decide what happens next, and then writing that outcome, one chapter at a time, means I have no way of knowing how the story ends, or even how long it’s going to be, but that’s the challenge – write something coherent and good anyway.

Themes & Identity

LGBTQ+ identity and trans rights are part of your perspective as a writer. How do you approach weaving those elements into your stories—subtly, thematically, or front and center?

My goal is to write authentically and freely about queer relationships, characters, and experiences, and to realistically represent queer and trans identity. As a cis queer man, I’m always aware of my own limitations in understanding the complexities of the lived trans experience, but I try to accurately and empathetically represent trans voices in my stories, and to learn and grow in my own knowledge of how I can best be an ally. Trans rights are human rights, and any writer who rejects or demonizes trans people should be left in the darkness.

I center queer voices partly because that’s who I am, but also because there should be no reason why any story shouldn’t have queer characters in it.

You’ve also mentioned Judaism, neurodiversity, and left-wing politics as parts of your worldview. How do these aspects influence the themes you return to in your fiction?

Judaism. I credit my Jewish upbringing with encouraging my intellectual curiosity. Jews don’t say “find the right answers,” we say “ask the right questions,” and that makes all the difference. The name of our people, “Israel,” means “wrestling with God.” Not submitting to God – wrestling. That central identity means that we’re constantly questioning, arguing, debating, and learning. As a Reform Jew, I am further encouraged to find my own meaning within Judaism, to choose what works and reject what doesn’t, and to learn and grow in my understanding of Judaism and what it means to me.

Neurodiversity. Because of my ADHD, I notice different things, and I notice things differently, which makes me a different kind of writer than I would be if I had a neurotypical brain. Of course, ADHD also makes it more difficult for me to be consistent and focused with my writing, but sometimes the “hyperfocus” superpower kicks in and I can knock out a huge chunk of writing all at once.

Politics. I’m a Wobbly, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, which is focused on organizing the working class into One Big Union. I call myself a non-denominational communist, which is obviously a little bit tongue-in-cheek. I agree with Marx’s materialist analysis of capitalism and the centrality of class struggle, but I think there are a lot of possible ways to organize the working class. The important thing is to start organizing. A better world is possible, but only if we work together to build it. As Woody Guthrie sang: “We might lose many a fight, but we’ll damn sure win the last one.”

In AWOO, the titular organization (The Association of Werewolves and Oppressed Otherlings) is a union started by werewolves to unite the “good” cryptids and weird creatures that the mundane world rejects. Thus, for example, werewolves and Sasquatch are in, but vampires and Wendigos are out. I have a funny line in AWOO that sort of sums it up:

Vampires were pale aristocratic goths, and werewolves were working class, scruffy furries. Class conflict in cryptid form. The blood-oisie and the paw-letariat.

Works & Recognition

Beyond AWOO, you’ve had short fiction published in anthologies and even won recognition for “The Bookfly.” Do you approach short fiction differently from longer works, or do you see them as part of the same creative stream?

I don’t really have a set approach to anything I write. Short stories either come to me organically as initial ideas that might turn into something, or I write them specifically for a contest like NYC Midnight or a call for submission. For instance, I recently submitted a weird little horror short story to a literary anthology about horror in the deep forest. I wrote “The Bookfly,” which is a strange little tale about a mythical beast guarding a magical library from lava sprites that want to burn it down, on a cruise ship of all places. That story just took 2^nd place in the short fiction category of the 2025 Tulsa City-County Library’s Adult Literary Contest.

Which of your short works—like Resolution or Ferryman—feels closest to your heart, and why?

“Resolution” is a beautiful, sad little tale that was the first story I wrote for NYC Midnight back in 2017, and its success in that contest encouraged me to continue writing and submitting my short fiction. Without “Resolution” and that first NYC Midnight contest, I wouldn’t have “Ferryman” or “Bull By The Horns” or “Gambit,” all of which were later NYC Midnight entries, and all of which I’ve now sold to publishers.

Looking Ahead

You mentioned brewing a “choose your own adventure” style project. What excites you about experimenting with that format?

The story is called “Cold,” and it is in progress, with new chapters released each Monday. What excites me is the idea of writing a weird horror story from scratch with no roadmap and giving the audience the chance to shape the story as I write it. Each chapter ends with a poll, and then I have just a few days to write the next chapter based on the poll results. I’m also playing around with things like H. P. Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, which is this huge sandbox environment that’s just fun to explore.

This is all inspired by a horror podcast I love called “Malevolent,” where this incredibly talented guy named Harlan Guthrie creates a fully produced podcast with multiple voices – all his – each week based on polling his Patreon audience for what happens next. It’s amazing, and if you like cosmic horror, it’s required listening.

What’s next on the horizon after AWOO? Can you give readers a glimpse into your second novel with wizards, ninjas, Don Quixote, and a world-saving metal band?

The second novel is called Neon Cryptkeeper and the Guardians of the Strange, and it’s still in progress. The concept is that there’s this bizarre apocalypse that upends reality, time, and space, and a hapless group of metalheads is tapped to save the world by taking a road trip across America and doing a show at Disneyworld. It’s been fun to write, but it’ll be a while before it’s ready to see the light of day.

Right now my focus is on using my interactive horror story to build my Substack audience, and I’m continuing to write and submit short stories to anthologies and literary publications. I’ve also started accepting themed flash fiction submissions to be published on Write Sinister.

Thank you so much for the interview!