Cynthia Gómez for Women in Horror Month
1. Introduce yourself. What do you want people to know about you and your work?
I write horror and other types of speculative fiction, set primarily in Oakland, where I've lived for most of the past 26 years. I'm especially drawn to themes of revenge, retribution, and resistance to oppression. I love writing stories where brutal cops, greedy landlords, sexual abusers, etc, finally face consequences, usually through the help of some kind of magical powers. I mostly write horror, but my novella coming out next year is pretty much solidly gothic, and I've just started dipping my toe into science fiction.
2. Who or what were your earliest horror influences?
I remember watching The Shining before I was seven years old; it was my horror gateway drug. That mix of exhilaration and fear and twisted humor and violence... I was hooked. I've seen that movie probably thirty times. Next it was Roald Dahl and Stephen King and those Alvin Schwartz "Scary Stories" collections. When I was ten and eleven I had two friends who had somewhat lax parental supervision and great taste in horror films, and so I watched dozens of them in those two years: Fright Night, Dolls, April Fool's Day, Sleepaway Camp, Night of the Demons, Nightmare on Elm Street, Deadly Friend, etc etc... you'll notice that pretty much all of those influences are white men. In fact, until I picked up Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, I really truly associated horror with white dudes. Picking up Machado's work was like walking through a little paper door into a whole other world of horror created by queer/trans/femme/BIPOC writers. I don't think I'd be a horror writer today if I hadn't read her work.
3. Your collection The Nightmare Box and Other Stories is described as a "love-letter to Oakland [centering] ordinary people—Latine, queer, working class." What about the Latine, queer, working class identity do you find essential to contemporary horror audiences?
For nearly all of my life, in the horror movies I watched and the books I read, Latine characters were the shrieking Mexican maid, the silent brown-faced janitor, or the terrifying witch doctor/bruja, if we were present at all. And now, as I write this, the leaders of the U.S. are bragging about opening up a concentration camp for immigrants at Guantánamo Bay. Those two things are not disconnected.
The history of Latines in the U.S. is one where they have turned us into monsters, consisting only of the parts that they want—our legs and our backs and our hands, so that we can work and build this country's wealth. Sometimes they will let us keep our lips and our tongues, but only for the songs we sing and the music we make. It's joyful and cathartic to name that monstrosity, to smear that blood all over the page. To say, "If you want to make us monsters, then monsters it is." To paraphrase one of my own characters: If fear is the only emotion we provoke in you, then fear is what you get. And, in doing so, we're also reclaiming those parts of ourselves that the rulers of this country would put on the scrap heap: our hearts, that dare to love ourselves and each other and sometimes the "wrong" gender, the wrong bodies, all our queer beautiful messy hearts; our brains, that they have no use for and that they underestimate every time, to their own peril.
Also: a lot of what gives me joy is writing the kinds of characters I never saw or read enough of, especially as I get older and this world treats me as largely invisible: where are the Latine characters who didn't grow up speaking Spanish, or who love Jane Austen and Stephen King in addition to Café Tacuba and Vicente Fernández? Where are the fat, middle-aged queer Latines who have middle-class jobs? We exist, and we love horror too, and there aren't nearly enough of us on the screen or on the page.
4. Take us through a day-in-the-life of Cynthia Gómez.
I have a full-time regular job, but I'm going to give a snapshot of a day that I'm not working. I'm a homebody and nothing makes me happier than snuggling in bed with my little doggy, my books and/or movies, and my writing. So a good non-work day involves all of those, and probably involves some boring stuff that I don't care for, like cooking and cleaning (if I weren't such a curmudgeon, I'd love to live in a co-op.) I live in Oakland within walking distance of Lake Merritt, so most days I'll walk doggy over to the lake where he can run around on the grass and I can people-watch.
5. Imagine you're standing in front of a crowd of every horror creative—authors, filmmakers, podcasters, journalists, etc. What would you want them to know about your experience as a Latine woman in the genre, both in general and in the year 2025?
I've been having so much trouble with this question because while I am not shy and have no problem talking and sharing my thoughts, my own particular journey/experiences don't feel like the most interesting. But I'll try, and I'll start with some honesty: right now I am terrified. I wake up and I go to bed thinking about the rapacious, unchecked, reactionary viciousness of the moment we're living in. The way that so much of what gives us joy and what makes life worth living is being set out on the Trump chopping block. My brown skin means I could be rounded up and deported, even though I happen to have been born here (and if you doubt that that really could happen, take a look at the 1930s.) My trans friends have a fucking target on their bodies every day. And that's just two examples; I could fill entire pages with them.
The only thing that gives me solace at this moment is: writing. I get to give consequences, on the page anyway, to the people who in real life never see them, and it is really comforting. I want everyone who shares that fear to also dip their toes into that comfort, even if it's actually a pool of guts and blood. So I guess that would be my call to action, if you will. If the rulers of this country want to make us monsters? Then we'll show you some fucking monsters. Let's all of us make art that is queer and messy and terrifying and loud and angry. That is hopeful, that dares to imagine a world where the only choices aren't, to quote Barbara Kingsolver, between either being the destroyers or the destroyed.
Cynthia Gómez is the author of The Nightmare Box and Other Stories. Follow Cynthia and her work on Bluesky.