Interview: Clay McLeod Chapman talks "Acquired Taste" and mixing humor with horror
- Jonathan
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Last September saw the release of Clay McLeod Chapman's Acquired Taste, a collection of horror fiction that is currently nominated for the 2025 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. On June 9th, the paperback version will be released by Titan Books, who was also behind April's release of Ronald Malfi's The Hive.
The official description from Titan Books reads;
They’re feeding on you too.
A father returns from serving in Vietnam with a strange and terrifying addiction; a man removes something horrifying from his fireplace, and becomes desperate to return it; and a right-wing news channel has its hooks in people in more ways than one.
From department store Santas to ghost boyfriends and salamander-worshipping nuns, from the claustrophobia of the COVID-19 pandemic to small-town Chesapeake USA, Clay McLeod Chapman takes universal fears of parenthood, addiction and political divisions and makes them uniquely his own.
Packed full of humanity, humour and, above all, relentless creeping dread, Acquired Taste is a timely descent into the mind of one of modern horror’s finest authors.
We recently had the opportunity to speak with Clay about his award-nominated work and what influences his signature blend of absurdity and fright.
This interview was edited slightly for clarification.
The Horror Lounge: You once described the horror genre as a buffet. Did it feel like you were compiling a very diverse menu with Acquired Taste? Pun intended, of course.
Clay: You know… I’ll come clean: The title first came about after reading a few too many one-star reviews for my work online. I wanted to ask myself why certain readers weren’t responding positively to my work, and as some sort of self-preservational defense mechanism, I said to myself, Oh, well, I guess I’m just an acquired taste… Then I thought: Oh, that would be a funny title for a short story collection. And Titan never blinked! It was something of a subconscious happy accident to realize how many of the stories themselves were focused on flavor. Whole lot of gnoshing going on in here… but yeah, I was hopeful that there might be a bit of range in the mix. These stories stretch across ten years, almost, of publishing… but you really see what I’ve been preoccupied with over the last decade of my life, not to mention what I’ve been putting in my mouth.
The Horror Lounge: In April you released a list of books and films that inspired your book Bodies of Work. I enjoyed reading that, as I enjoyed most of the works you mentioned. The Last House on Needless Street was simply a masterpiece. Were there any particular films and/or books you had in mind when writing the stories in Acquired Taste?
Clay: You know… it’s an interesting question. With these stories, I think the major influence was less film and literature and more, well, just what was happening in the world. I think fifty percent of these stories were some riff of something I read in the newspaper or saw on the news. The other half? Well… those stories usually came about from me asking silly questions like, "What would happen if I put this breast pump on?"
The Horror Lounge: Your stories are very descriptive—would you say being a comic book writer contributes to your knack for detail, especially in your gorier scenes?
Clay: Funny enough, I’d almost—almost—say it’s the exact opposite. With comic writing, it’s more a matter of stripping the visual description away. Scripting tends to be a reduction, boiling the imagery down to a single gesture, a movement, a solitary beat… while fiction? Oh, man, you can dig in! Slow down! Stare at the roadkill from an inch away! Take a whiff, even!
The Horror Lounge: You utilize a well-balanced amount of humor in your horror. Why, in your opinion, do such two different subjects complement each other so well?
Clay: Humor, I think, is such a sneaky trick. It’s a tactic I feel writers or filmmakers can use to get the reader (or audience member) to lower the guard down. Humor says: It’s all good! Nothing to worry about here! See? We’re laughing… The reader loosens up, lets down their defenses, aaaaand… BAM! That’s when you scare them! Which is probably why we’re seeing such a bounty of comedic storytellers shifting into horror. Jordan Peele? Zach Cregger? Curry Barker? All comedians! And yet… look how scary these fellas are! Humor is a trap, I tell you! A trap!
The Horror Lounge: If you were to collaborate with another contemporary horror writer on a project, who would it be? What would you like the project to be?
Clay: That’s a toughie… I mean, I’m obsessed with CJ Leede and Keith Rosson, but I don’t want to collaborate with them. I’d just get in the way. I want them to do what they do! I don’t want to interfere! Let them cook!
Acquired Taste will be released on paperback by Titan Books on June 9th.
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