Talking editors!

STEAL ME, says the book... 

Well, before that came WRITE ME, when I had the idea for a story about a cursed bookshop where every volume offers an insidious message. And somewhere in between the two was EDIT ME, a sometimes unsung but critical part of the creative process! Steal Me's editor was Marie O'Regan (below), the Managing Editor of PS Publishing's award-winning novella imprint Absinthe Books. 

Marie is an award-winning author and editor, based in Derbyshire.  She has released four short fiction collections, a bestselling novel, Celeste, and her fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in several countries – including The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, and Best British Horror among others. To date, she has co-edited fifteen anthologies (several of which were award-nominated), and solo edited the  bestselling The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women and Phantoms. An ex-Chair of the British Fantasy Society and the UK Chapter of the Horror Writers Association, she also ran ChillerCon UK in Scarborough in May 2022. As mentioned, Marie is also Managing Editor of Absinthe Books, novellas from which have won the Shirley Jackson award (alongside several nominations) and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. It has also garnered several nominations for the British Fantasy Awards, the Aurealis Awards and the Bram Stoker™ Awards.

One of the things I find intriguing about Marie is that she both writes and edits. These two roles require quite different skills sets; I have had one stint as an editor myself, for the small press mag Ghosts and Scholars, and I found it really difficult. How do you winnow through all the submissions you get? How do you reject people tactfully? And how do you give necessary feedback diplomatically too? Hand on heart, I don't think I have what it takes to do that on a regular basis. However, I think that being a writer probably informs being an editor, in the sense that you have been on the other end of the rejections and the (sometimes tactful, sometimes not) feedback. And you have creative opinions. 

I asked Marie whether she has a preference: writing or editing? She said: "I like editing and writing – but like editing my own work least, as it’s so easy to get too close to it." I have to say I agree with this. I don't like editing my own work! In an ideal world I'd do a perfect first draft and never have to change anything. Alas, this never happens. 

Above: I managed to find a pic of me and Marie (and Marie's other half, writer Paul Kane), at a signing in London in 2023!

Prior to Steal Me, I had worked with Marie (or Marie and Paul) on various other projects: I wrote a story called 'The Chain Walk' for Phantoms, 'A Curse is a Curse' for Twice Cursed, 'The Third Curse' for Beyond and Within: Folk Horror, 'The Professor of Ontography' for In These Hallowed Halls and 'Remembrance' for Beyond and Within: Witchcraft. The thing I really love about working with Marie (and Paul) is the wide range of themes involved. I'd personally hate to always be confined to traditional ghost stories, loveable though they are. 'A Curse is a Curse', for example (and I'm trying not to give any spoilers here) possibly slips over into sci fi. 'The Third Curse' has a time-slip theme blended with eco-horror. 'The Professor of Ontography', a story I had great fun writing, draws on my fondness for M.R.James, my experiences of Oxford in the 1980s, and some other weird ingredient which is probably best defined as body horror. I found the briefs for these anthologies just about perfect for me - I like a bit of freedom to twist the theme into something unexpected, but at the same time my heart sinks a bit if the brief is too broad. I find ideas are sparked more readily when there is a clear (and interesting!) theme, and Marie always comes up with those. 

When it came to Steal Me, I was faced with a bit of a challenge. Everything I'd done was either a short story or a full-length novel of over 70,000 words; I had never attempted a novella before. It was an interesting experience. If I'd been writing a full length novel, there were some strands I would have developed more, particularly the relationship between the two main characters. But actually it was fun keeping things shorter and more punchy, and not fretting about word count (I dread the day I write a novel and it comes in at 60,000 words, which feels like neither fish nor fowl). Anyway, horror website Ginger Nuts of Horror was kind enough to say: "Grant has moved from the slow burn of the full Gothic novel to something tighter and more fable-like, and the discipline suits her." Phew. 

As mentioned, Marie manages the Absinthe imprint of novellas, and her second novella Resurrection Blues was published last year by Black Shuck Books. So once again she's been on both sides, authoring and editing. I asked her about this, and particularly whether she feels drawn to shorter forms such as short stories and novellas. She said: "I think the idea dictates the form. I enjoy writing shorter fiction, and also novels – some ideas have one strong central image, for me, but I don’t feel there’s enough ‘meat on the bones’ to write more than a short story. Other ideas have more potential to develop various strands within the main idea, and how many of those that story can include then decides the length of that tale – whether it ends up being a novella or a novel."

I also asked Marie what she thinks makes a good novella (a question I probably should have put to her before I blithely embarked on writing one!). She said: "I think with any story, not just a novella, there has to be a clear central theme – as I mention above, for a novella, there has to be enough material to keep the reader interested for the length of a novella, without leaving them feeling as if the story’s been padded – or feeling as if there’s a lot left unsaid and the story would have worked better developed as a novel. I look for the heart of a story, and its characters, rather than looking for what length I feel it should have first, if that makes sense. So as with any tale, you need that theme, you need enough of a story to keep the reader involved for that length of tale, and characters/situations they can fully empathise with and visualise."

As for the challenges of writing one: "The same comments apply, really. The challenge would be to recognise when developing a particular story strand in an attempt to write a novel would work to the detriment of the story, and to limit yourself to a novella if that’s the story’s natural length."

If you'd like to explore Marie's work as both writer and editor, here are some of her latest titles: 

The novella Resurrection Blues, published by Black Shuck Books in May 2025, and a collection, Bleed For Me, published by Demain Publishing in December 2025. Anthologies (with Paul Kane): The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment and Land of Oz, coming from Titan Books in September 2026, Beyond & Within: Witchcraft (January 2026) and Beyond & Within: Best Served Cold (July 2026) from Flame Tree Press.

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