NZ Horror Books: Author interview with Tim Jones & Andrew Imms
- Denver Grenell
- Oct 29
- 6 min read
Next up in the October series of NZ Horror Books author interviews:
Tim Jones
Who are you? I'm Tim Jones, an author, editor and anthologist who lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara / Wellington. My first short story collection, Extreme Weather Events, was published in 2001, and in total I've had five poetry collections, two novels, two short story collections, one novella and one poetry chapbook published, plus a couple of co-edited anthologies.
I write speculative and mainstream poetry and fiction, and a couple of threads that run through my work – including the climate fiction I'm perhaps best known for – are horror and comedy. I was born that way: four of the twelve stories in Extreme Weather Events are horror. My latest poetry collection, launched on 1 October, is called Dracula in the Colonies, which gives you another indication of where I'm coming from. Even my climate fiction has horror elements – for example, there is a fairly significant nod to The Omen in my 2023 climate fiction novel Emergency Weather.
Your signature style: That's a very hard question to answer, so I'm going to swerve it by letting someone else answer instead. Poet Erik Kennedy very kindly gave this endorsement for Dracula in the Colonies, and I think the elements he mentions are characteristic of my work as a whole:
“Tim Jones’s latest collection is, as you’d expect, eminently readable but never comfortable. It contains multitudes. There is a vulnerable mini-autobiography in verse, and tender elegies about what happens at the moment of death and the beginning of grief. There are also broadsides about the grotesque interplay of politics, media, and climate inaction, among other civilisational lapses, and, as this book’s title suggests, there are poems that examine the extractive, blood-sucking nature of the colonial project. Dracula in the Colonies is full of characters you’ll love to hate from a poet whose work we know to love.” - Erik Kennedy
Toot your own horn: I reckon that would be winning the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010.
Give your opinion on Kiwi horror right now: I think the strength of the recent Remains To Be Told anthology, edited by Lee Murray, and the success of Lee and many of the other authors in international publications and awards, shows how strong Kiwi horror writing is at the moment.
As other authors you've interviewed have noted, horror from Aotearoa is strongly entwined with both the physical and spiritual features of the land, the water and the air of this country and the ongoing legacy of colonisation: the violence humans have done to te taiao, the violence humans have done to each other, and all on a landscape that shifts and trembles and floods and slides, beneath a brooding sky.
The horror element is fully present in so much of New Zealand literature, from Katherine Mansfield to Frank Sargeson and onwards to the present day. Literary writer or horror writer, we all brood together!
Words written: I haven't actually written a word of fiction or poetry this month – my focus has been on getting the word about Dracula in the Colonies out into the world. I've just had a My Wellington feature in The Post (many thanks to my excellent publishers at The Cuba Press for setting this up!) and I'm working on setting up a bunch of readings and so forth.
Future stuff: When I get back into creative writing in November, my two main priorities are working on another climate fiction novel – which isn't exactly a sequel to Emergency Weather, but which does feature some of the same characters – and writing some more short stories. I'm about 1/3 through the first draft of the novel, and I am planning to make good progress in January and February towards completing that draft.
As for short fiction, my most recent short story collection, Transported, was published back in 2008, so I am distinctly rusty, but I'm enjoying re-engaging with the form. The next story I plan to work on is a non-supernatural horror story: I write both supernatural and non-supernatural horror, but of late, it seems to be real-world horrors that are providing my primary inspiration. Unfortunately, there is a lot of inspiration to go around.
Favourite Kiwi horror book(s): I know it's a bit naff to recommend a book I have a poem in, but I really like Remains To Be Told. I think it's both a strong anthology, and a really good introduction to the varieties of Kiwi horror for those folks who may not be familiar with the field.
Andi C Buchanan's From a Shadow Grave (Paper Road Press, 2019) begins from the murder that's associated with the construction of the Mt Victoria Tunnel, near where I live, but takes it so much further.
For a surprise pick, which I justify on the grounds that I'm a genre-hopping sort of person, I'm going to recommend Short / Poto, edited by Michelle Elvy and Kiri Piahana-Wong (Massey University Press, 2025) - it's an anthology of 100 flash fictions and microfictions in both English and Te Reo. Many genres are represented, but there is a strong strain of the type of horror characteristic of Aotearoa, and the anthology includes authors that genre fans are likely to recognise, such as Cassie Hart, Melanie Harding-Shaw and Tusiata Avia. The book is also a great resource for folks who want to improve their te reo (like me!).
Favourite Kiwi horror movies(s): I can't deny that I've gone off Peter Jackson following his rabbit powered sled era, but nevertheless, Braindead. And can we include M3GAN? As these choices show, horror-comedy is one of my favourite genres, and I think Rachel House's performance as Malgosha in The Minecraft Movie is about as Kiwi horror-comedy as you can get – especially that bit with the swords at the end. (I know it's US-funded, but it was made in Huntly, people. Huntly!)
Anything else Kiwi horror related you want to share: Despite what I said above about horror being central to the literature of Aotearoa, it has taken a long time for horror as a genre to get the respect it deserves from the keepers of gates and the holders of purse-strings in the New Zealand literary and arts scene, and there is still a long way to go in this regard. So I want to give a shout-out to everyone who has both been keeping the flame alive and making breakthroughs so that horror enjoys its proper place. I will miss so many people out, but I'm going to single out Lee Murray, Dan Rabarts, Cassie Hart, and the team behind this excellent project!
Where people can find you:
NZ Horror author:
Andrew Imms
Who are you? Hiya - I’m Andrew Imms (writing as A.J.S. Imms as a filthy Englishman stole my name!)
Your signature style: I’m a comedy-gothic-noir kind of guy. More a monster-in-the-dark than psycho killer. I love me a broken person, who learns that things can still get soooo much worse, and then laughing at their misery. Also, can I just say—go the creeping dread. I tend to draw from a bunch of sources, books, comics, movies, tv, and even music (both lyrics and videos).
Toot your own horn: My greatest achievement was at the age of eight, writing a pseudo-horror poem, which the teacher wrote up on big paper and put on the wall for the year. I guess the second was getting a short story included in the upcoming Holiday Spirit anthology by British publisher Dragon Press. That was good too.
Give your opinion on Kiwi horror right now: Honestly, not a lot is getting through to me. I guess it’s hard to push on through for horror locally in the indie bookstores (which surprises me as the whole cinema of unease thing we had going in NZ in 90’s). I did like S.J.Bradley’s Clocks, Locks, Corpses! and Nikky Lee’s A Night So Dark and Full of Stars.
Words written: This month has been marketing/publishing support. Had a horror novelette published in the North Shore Writers Group anthology Unexpected Guests and I’ve been sorting out some self-publishing for my upcoming novel, so actually writing volume is low. Also, who knew a back page blurb was so hard!
Future stuff: December 20th is the release of Holiday Stuff, with my horror novel We Are All Monsters coming out in February. In between, I’m going to begin a series of Babylonian fantasy/horror short stories.
Where people can find you: Usually in a café, either reading or writing.
Favourite Kiwi horror book(s): Nikky Lee’s A Night So Dark and Full of Stars.
Favourite Kiwi horror movies(s): Sorry – for me I can’t go past What we do in the Shadows. I used to work in Wellington and the whole Boogie wonderland scene had me in stiches. In the serious category I’d have to go with Scarfies. More thriller than horror, but oh so disturbing. Then of course there is always Rocky Horror.
Anything else? I need to read more NZ Horror!
