- Thank you, Michael, and joining us in the studio this evening is local horror author, C.J.

Dotson.

C.j.

you're originally from Northern Ohio.

And first of all, welcome to the studio.

It's a pleasure to have you this evening.

- Thank you.

It's a pleasure to be here.

- And I just gotta know, first of all, being from Boston myself, I wonder what brings you from northern Ohio to northern New York.

- We moved from northeast Ohio to Maine actually in late 2021 for family reasons.

And the cost of living in Maine was a little bit beyond what we could manage or had expected.

So we started looking around.

Originally we were looking more in Southern New York for being closer to my family, but the cost of living there was also kind of prohibitive.

So we wound up, up here - And that's, but Northern Ohio was really where your author's journey began, is that correct?

- Yes.

- So tell me really about where it all began for the writer's journey of C.J.

Dotson.

- It started when I was about nine years old.

I was in my school's gifted program, it was called Nova.

And so once a week we would, me and my small class group of us would be bused from our elementary school to the slightly older kids elementary school for special classes with Mrs.

Frank.

And she had us enter a competition being held by yearly, by the local community college called the Young Authors Competition.

So the first year of the Nova Program, we entered the Young Authors Competition, and I wrote fiction for the first time I was nine, and I just absolutely fell in love with it.

It's the only thing I've wanted to do since then.

- Real quick, you mentioned a Mrs.

Frank.

Was she somebody who inspired your author's voice when you started writing?

- I started writing so young at age nine, that, that my, my voice as an author has definitely been unrecognizable from the way, the way that I was writing when I was nine years old.

But she is who I told myself ever since I was little.

I would dedicate my first book to her and I did.

So she actually was, she actually was in my dedication.

- Wow.

Can I read this out loud?

- Absolutely.

- It says, this book is dedicated to Marcia Frank.

When you encourage your elementary school class to write our own fiction, for the first time, a fire lit in me that has never gone out.

You helped shape the course of my entire life, taken from my heart and forever.

Thank you for that.

Big shout to Marcia Frank, because books like The Cut would never have been Possible, and that's what we gotta get right into right now.

You mostly write horror fiction, is that correct?

- Yes.

- So tell me, when did the process for The Cut begin?

- I was living in Maine when I started writing The Cut, and my youngest child was born in early 2019.

So in 2019, I was navigating motherhood with a toddler and an infant, and there was a lot of staying home and being alone.

And then right as my daughter was a year old and was starting to be someone like I could take her more places, then the pandemic hit.

And I was living in Ohio and the governor in Ohio shut everything down.

And so there was that very isolated year.

And then in October of 2021, my family moved from northeast Ohio to Maine where I didn't know anybody.

And so it was another very isolated year.

And all of that loneliness with small children and the, the tension of the previous, of moving and of the, you know, the effects of the pandemic on everybody at the time, it all came together to create an atmosphere that I was able to channel into, into this horror novel.

- And you know, there's a lot of subjects in this book that you delve in.

It deals with a lot of both emotional trauma and other worldly fear.

So how did you approach weaving those sorts of themes together?

- I think that horror is really great for exactly that.

When you can put a more outlandish or more difficult to believe in real life situation side by side with actual struggles or actual strife, it's sort of like holding a mirror to each other.

The monsters, the supernatural horror in the Cut is a reflection of the character's response to her own traumatic experiences.

The, I don't wanna give away too much, but there's an element of, there's a strong element of this character not knowing who she can trust as she rediscovers trust in herself after having escaped a domestic abuse situation.

And that of situation does erode your ability to know how to trust other people, to know how to trust yourself.

And so the nature of the creatures in The Cut was, was really easy to link to the character's growth from what had happened to her before the events of this book began.

- And that's gotta be a hard subject to write through.

How do you approach writing about topics like dealing with a domestic abuse situation - Very delicately.

There's been so many stories in which the character is being abused and in which the character, the story is about the character overcoming and escaping.

And there has, there's been a ton of stories also about the time after that, but I feel like fewer, fewer stories cover the time after that.

And that was most of what I wanted to get into with that aspect of this book.

That once you've gotten yourself out of a dangerous situation or an abusive or isolating situation, that doesn't mean that the struggle is over and everything is hunky dory now.

So the adjustment period, the rediscovering yourself period, the forgiving Yourself period of a surviving an abusive situation is what I really wanted to touch on with the domestic violence in The Cut.

- The Cut is a part of your two book deal with St.

Martin Press, and you have just released your second book, These Familiar Walls for fans of C.J.

Dotson.

What can they expect going into These Familiar Walls?

- Secrets.

My work often touches on themes of secrecy, people keeping secrets.

My work often deals with complicated family dynamics.

These familiar walls also deals with a return to childhood.

In a way, the main character in the beginning of the book moves into her childhood home, inherits and moves into the home that she grew up in.

This theme isn't one that's as present in The Cut, but a lot of my work and my short fiction involves a return in some way to a place or a per person or a part of your childhood.

And that's a huge theme in These Familiar Walls.

- So, for fans of yours, what's something you hope readers take away from your books when they read them?

- I think it's different with everything that I write, with the Cut.

I think what I want people to take away is that, is that they're not alone.

If they're dealing with situations similar to the situations that Sadie deals with, I mean, not the monsters, you're probably alone if you're dealing with monsters, but if you're trying to get out of a situation or you have gotten out of a situation, or you're recovering from a situation that was outside of your control or, or a situation you felt shouldn't have been outside of your control, it's, it's not, you're not alone in that.

There are other people who have been there and gotten through it.

And some of the advice that you hear, I ha I hate, I talk about this a lot.

I hate the phrase, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

And I wanted The Cut to sort of be an answer to that because what didn't kill Sadie, her abusive ex-fiancee didn't make her stronger.

It made her doubt herself.

It made her live in a position where she and her child were not safe.

And she had to on her own, find her strength again and find her belief in herself again.

And so if anyone takes anything away from The Cut, I would hope it would be that, that you are not alone in situations like this.

And also that you are what makes you stronger.

Not the bad things that happened or were done to you.

- Powerful world, powerful sentiment.

- Thank - You.

Before, now we're getting ready to wrap up, but there's one thing I gotta ask you.

Where can people go to find your books?

- Any major book retailer, they're available on amazon.com.

They're also available on bookshop.org at multiple different vendors.

They're at many indie stores.

If you head to your favorite local indie and it's not there, you can request it Barnes and Noble, I think.

I think basically everywhere books are sold.

- Now, one more question before we wrap up.

For aspiring authors looking to get started and possibly finish or finish that novel that they've been working on, but overthinking it.

I know I overthink when I write, what's something you would say to inspire them?

- It's kind of a catchphrase in the writing community, but don't self reject.

Give yourself the chances that you need.

There are so many gatekeepers between you and publishing your novel.

There's trying to get an agent, there's trying to get a book deal, and then once you have it, there's reviewers and all sorts of scary things going on.

But the first stumbling block that you have to overcome is not writing the book and not giving it its chance.

So don't self reject.

- C.J.

Dotson, thank you so much for joining us in the studio tonight.

Folks, go check out These Familiar Walls.

You can get it at Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore.

Shout out to the little bookstore, by the way, was where we actually saw the cut.

If you watch WPBS Weekly, C.J., thank you so much for your time and thank you for having, and we look forward to seeing what is in store for the future.

- Thank you so much.