Hello and welcome to this Author Interview, where today I’m chatting to S.A. Sidor about his new novel Cult of the Spider Queen, his second in the growing Arkham Horror range from Aconyte Books. His first Arkham Horror novel, The Last Ritual, was a tale of surrealist art mixed with cosmic horror, but this time the focus is on adventure in the depths of the Amazon jungle…and maybe a spider or two. Cult of the Spider Queen is out now in global ebook and US paperback with the UK paperback due in February 2022, so read on to find out more about this new novel, check out some sample chapters of the book, then order yourself a copy!
Without further ado, let’s get straight on with the interview.
Track of Words: To start things off, could you give us an overview of what Cult of the Spider Queen is about?
S.A. Sidor: A young reporter in Arkham receives a film reel from the Brazilian jungle. It reveals a last glimpse of a missing film director who vanished with her crew in the rainforest on an ill-fated expedition. The reporter gathers a team of expert explorers to find the filmmaker and discover if the legendary Spider Queen she was tracking is real. They journey down a river of fear that bends their minds and swirls the pools of reality. Anything is possible. Dreams, nightmares, supernatural creatures…The rainforest is hiding a secret. Beside a ghost rubber plantation, an ancient evil grows. Crawls.
ToW: If someone’s new to Arkham Horror, how would you describe the setting and what to expect?
SAS: The time is the Roaring Twenties. The starting point is Arkham, Massachusetts. Doom hovers over the city like a fog of polluted smoke. Ancient Evil threatens to destroy Arkham and the world. The only thing holding back the dark forces is a team of investigators working together. Threats come in all forms, human and supernatural. Monsters are real. Hope rests in the hands of a few brave, skillful people. Expect an atmosphere of creeping dread and slam-bang action.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters here and what do we need to know about them?
SAS: The main investigators coming from the game are archaeologist/explorer Ursula Downs and her expedition partner, Jake Williams. Ursula is a popular investigator and a lot of fun to write for. She’s smart, bold, and in charge of the team. My contributions are investigators Andy Van Nortwick, a young reporter, and folklorist Iris Bennett Reed. Pioneering documentary filmmaker Maude Brion is the target of their rescue mission. She’s gone missing while shooting a movie about the legend of the Spider Queen. The Queen herself is an enigma. Is she myth, monster, or both? That’s what the team discovers. There are lots of spiders, too. Of all shapes and sizes.
ToW: Aconyte’s Arkham Horror range seems to be split into two loose groupings, with some books focusing on the pulp adventure side of things, while others really focus on the horror. Where would you say Cult of the Spider Queen sits on this spectrum?
SAS: It’s decidedly in the pulp adventure camp. But the book has more monsters than any other story I’ve written. And the threats come from all sides: human, other-dimensional, ancient evil, hallucinatory dream crossovers that bleed into our waking world, and huge spiders, of course…
ToW: You’ve already written one Arkham Horror novel, The Last Ritual, which blended surrealist art with eldritch horror. Of all the stories you could tell in this setting, what made you choose this one for your second book?
SAS: I wanted to take the Arkham Horror vibe and transfer it to a remote and wild place. Tropical rainforests, in general, and the Amazon River specifically, have always attracted me as a location. I haven’t visited there yet, but I hope to someday, before it’s all vanished or ruined by human exploitation. That biosphere is so precious, and endlessly mysterious but not in an inherently threatening way. I mean, nature is definitely willing to remind you of your place in the food chain, but the jungle is much more complex than a Green Hell. In fact, we’re probably the biggest threat spreading down there.
Taking the Arkham Horror investigators away from the urban streets of Arkham the city and dropping them in isolation on a paddleboat with a few canoes or tromping through a vine-choked, abandoned rubber plantation and stone ruins – it felt right and ripe for a horrifying adventure. The Amazon exists on our planet but most of us are cut off from the reality of it. So, it feels alien. I think that’s strange and worth exploring more deeply.
ToW: What challenges or opportunities did venturing out of Arkham and into the Amazon bring, compared to setting the story purely within Arkham?
SAS: I wanted to be careful to keep the spirit of Arkham Horror intact despite the change of venue. Having explorers like Ursula Downs and Jake Williams in the game already made them a great fit for this tale. I added some of my own characters to the team. The threats in this universe can get to you in many ways. They come through dreams. They cross dimensions. They spring from portals. And they ride along inside people like supernatural hitchhikers. One great opportunity the remoteness of this setting offers is a chance to give readers the thrill and fear of thinking, “Hey, anything can happen out here, and no one would know it.” Not at first anyway. You can’t call the police. You are on your own. The same rules don’t apply here as in New England.
ToW: Last time we spoke you talked about being influenced by a visit to Dali’s home, which provided some of the inspiration for The Last Ritual. Could you talk a bit about where you took inspiration from for this book?
SAS: My biggest inspirations were books. H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath was a springboard. Many of the monsters I included in my story started out in that novella. The Men of Leng, for example. Non-fiction books like Candice Millard’s River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey and David Grann’s The Lost City of Z provided additional background. I looked at news articles and photos online to make sure I was getting details right, from the kind of fish in the river to the look of the trees on the riverbanks in the flooding season.
ToW: Given that the book’s title is Cult of the Spider Queen, I feel like I have to ask…how ‘spidery’ is this story? Have you gone big on the arachnid elements?
SAS: Oh, it’s plenty spidery. I read so many fascinating details about how spiders hunt and consume their prey to the way they build their webs. Luckily spiders don’t grow as big as the ones in my book. At least not in this dimension…
ToW: What do you hope readers will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it?
SAS: I’d love it if people were entertained and thrilled. If they felt the tickle of a spider crawling on their arm, that’d be wonderful. I want the reader to feel immersed in this weird and exciting world of unsettling trepidation and old-fashioned matinee-style action. Lastly, but importantly, I hope to spark a curiosity about the game, the universe of Arkham Horror they can share with their friends. A place where they can create their own supernatural pulp adventures, turn by turn.
ToW: Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on with Aconyte for future release, or anything else you’ve got in the pipeline?
SAS: I’d love to write another Arkham Horror novel. And I have some ideas. But at this point I can’t comment on anything in the pipeline. But I’m sure the pipeline is dark and dank and full of unspeakable terrors.
ToW: Lastly, if you were living in the world of Arkham Horror what do you think you would be doing, and how would you get on?
SAS: Writing is the only skill I really have. So, I suppose I’d be a pulp writer. But writers usually find themselves taking on odd jobs to pay the bills between gigs. I once worked as an overnight caretaker at a residential facility for people living with mental illness. I guess that qualifies me to sit at a desk in gloomy Arkham Asylum through the wee hours, just in case of emergencies, while I scribble down stories and read fantasy novels. And drink pots of bad institutional coffee.
***
S.A. Sidor is the author of four dark crime thrillers and more recently two splendid supernatural-pulp adventures, Fury From the Tomb and The Beast of Nightfall Lodge. He lives near Chicago with his family.
You can find S.A. Sidor on Twitter or on his website.
***
Big thanks once again to S.A. Sidor for chatting to me for this interview, and for taking the time to give us the lowdown on Cult of the Spider Queen! If this has piqued your interest, then check out the PDF reader below to read the first couple of chapters!
Many thanks to Aconyte Books for providing these sample chapters. For more Arkham Horror-related reviews and author interviews, check out the main Aconyte Books page on Track of Words.
Cult of the Spider Queen is out now as both a global ebook and US paperback, with the UK paperback due on the 17th February 2022.
Check out the links below to order your copy* of Cult of the Spider Queen:
*If you buy anything using one of these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.
If you enjoyed this interview and would like to support Track of Words, you can leave a tip on my Ko-Fi page.
