The Mistress of Macabre, Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc: By Tammy Kane

Andrea Dean Van Scoyoc also known as “Mistress Macabre” is not your every day female horror writer. Her novels are graphic, brutal and disturbing. When asked if she has had a difficult time proving herself in the horror field as a female, she tells a story about a man who reluctantly bought her book Michael and told her that he was sure female writers couldn’t scare him. A few months later after reading the book, he called her and told her that it made him sick and he wanted more. She has a large following of readers that agree. She has even made the best seller list on Kindle.

Andrea grew up in a haunted house when she was young and enjoyed mostly science fiction and a little horror when she was a kid. She has had an interesting background to draw from. She is a strong and independent woman who laughs at Freddy, Michael Myers or Jason and she doesn’t scare easily. When asked what scares her, she says that it is mostly real life, and that is scarier than any horror novel. She prides herself in the fact that her books have elicited fiery comments such as: “you are sick”, “you should be in prison” and “the authorities need to know what you’re up to” in fact she has even posted them on her website as her compliments. She even admits that some of her characters have even scared her or made her wonder if some of those remarks weren’t right.

Although some of her stories are based on stories handed down through her family, she says that most come to her like a “mini movie” in her head and then bits and pieces come later. She says they basically write themselves. Whether they do or not she has put quite a lot of blood sweat and tears into her career for many years and loves doing it.

She has been very successful and is now a best-selling, award winning author of many books of paranormal and psychological horror such as; The Two, Michael, A Man of Two Worlds, Playing Devil’s Advocate, and a collection called Darkened Requiem to name a few. You can find many more of her books at Lulu.com, and Amazon. Her books are classified in the horror sub-genre of “Sinisteria”. She wanted to state for the record that she did not coin the word. When questioned about her work, she has been quoted in saying “My work is graphically erotic, brutally sadistic and tends to not only pull at your heartstrings it rips them out and ties you up with them.”

It is her strength that has helped her fight publishers to keep her extreme content, when they wanted to edit out some of the graphic, brutal horror or sexual scenes from her books. Because of those reasons she has chosen to self publish her books and keep the content intact, which was a wise choice. She does things her way. She even runs her own magazine, Twisted Dreams and moderates her own website. Her stories are very good, they contain real-life struggles and issues and they pull the reader in. But it is the total package of story, contextual sexuality, and brutal graphic scenes that has hooked her followers. It is rare to find it all in one place. Especially in the recent era of PG-13 and political correctness that is forced upon us in horror novels and movies. She does post disclaimers on her site that the books are for readers over 18.

While discussing the dilemma of censored and edited horror, she discussed her boredom with movie sequels and remakes and believes that there is much better material out there. She feels that both the publishing and the movie making businesses are too worried about formulaic novels and movies and ignoring the real talent out there. Her book, A Man of Two Worlds, was being made into a movie but has been in and out of movie production for two years now due to funding and other issues.

The “Mistress Macabre” was asked about the future of horror and if it was fading away. She answered a swift no, and said that it will be there as long as people want to be scared. She was asked her opinion on why horror was not very popular now and she said that she thought it was because horror is the “red headed step child” of the genres, and that it seemed to be due to the fact that people want to go about blissfully ignorant in a nice world and they don’t like to look at the dark side. This mistress of the Macabre not only wants to show you that dark side but she wants to grab you by the throat and drag you screaming through the depths of her imagination. All her fans enjoy the ride!