Queenie Chan is a comic book writer/artist. Last year, I tabled with her at a Halloween themed zine fair. So there we were, Queenie and I, and the devil herself was tabling a few metres over. Literally an enterprising zinemaker had, despite the heat, painted herself red head-to-toe and was horned and everything. Queenie and I were rather outdone, being merely in T-shirts. Despite our lack of killer costumes, we did well that day - Queenie did a brisk trade in her comics and I sold out of copies of This Fresh Hell, the horror anthology that includes my story. It was fun to see Queenie interact with her fans and to see her in her element. She gave me a tarot reading, it was quite detailed - and, you know, in its own way, actually quite accurate.
This month, a revised edition of Queenie's The Dreaming is out in comic shops and bookstores. As Comics Worth Reading explains, The Dreaming, a mystery/horror, is “Lovecraft meets Picnic at Hanging Rock” — it’s about twin sisters starting at an isolated boarding school where other girls have previously disappeared.
Queenie Chan. Image supplied
Queenie Chan is the 26th in my series of creatives to take five questions.
When my creative process is stuck, I reach for... something from a different medium. I read a lot of books, movies, and play a lot of indie games, so I tend to seek out the strangest and most unusual types of games/stories from that medium just to get my juices going!
The weirdest thing about being a creative human is... I have some strange habits that I have no control over when I'm brewing a story. I pace frantically, laugh for seemingly no reason, or have lots of random voices shouting things in my head. If it happens in public, people look at you like you're crazy, but you have no control over when inspiration strikes.
The most unusual object in my house is... a taxidermied rat that I'm dressing up to be a Chinese goddess. She has a headdress right now, I'm going to make her a dress.
I celebrate my achievements by... going to a spa to relax, or an expensive restaurant to eat something that I normally wouldn't splurge on. I like going to expensive sushi restaurants to try new things, so it's an excuse in that instance.
Something in the world that already exists that I wish I had created is... There's nothing much out there so far! Much of what I create is stuff that I haven't seen out there before, though it's something that I really want to see, so that's usually what gets me creating. I want to fill a void a specific niche that I (and often no one else) wants. 🙂
Volume 1 of the new and revised "The Dreaming" from IPI Comics is in comic shops in March/April 2024 including Impact Comics (Canberra), Kinokuniya (Sydney), Kings Comics (Sydney), Galaxy Bookshop (Sydney), and All Star Comics (Melbourne). Find out more about Queenie at queeniechan.com.