"WHAT DO WOMEN WRITE WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING?": EVERY EVIL UNDER THE SUN'S ALEXANDRA BURT, V.P. CHANDLER, & LAURA OLES
- wildremuda
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Recently I had the honor of writing the forward to For Every Evil Under the Sun. and anthology of fiction leaning on the noir side from authors Alexandra Burt, V.P. Chandler, and Laura Oles It is a great way to introduce yourself to three great voices in the genre. I will be interviewing the three of them at Vintage Wine Bar & Bookstore Friday, July 18th, 7pm. Here is a taste of what to expect.
SCOTT MONTGOMERY: How did For Every EVil Under the Sun come together?
V.P. CHANDLER: We knew we wanted to create a project that we all contributed to as our first foray into publishing. Writing a short story anthology made the most sense since we all three have experience with that form. We wrote the first drafts of the stories and looked for a theme. We toyed with geography and time and landed on the sun. Then we went back to our stories and played up that motif. I like that our voices are very different. I think the anthology has something for everyone.
ALEXANDRA BURT: Together, we decided on the project—an anthology—and I think our first question was: What do women write when no one is watching? The answer came in stories that crossed borders—between crime and horror, memory and myth. But For Every Evil Under the Sun wasn’t just about compiling stories. We each naturally gravitated toward certain roles: I took on the creative part of the project, Valerie handled the technical side, and Laura took on marketing. But nine stories alone do not make an anthology; they need to speak to each other. A theme emerged—stories that dared to ask what happens when women are pushed to the edge, and what they become when they cross it. From there, we worked closely on each piece to make it land just right.
The title came next—ripped from a Mother Goose rhyme and twisted into something that captured what these stories do: a search for remedy, a failure to find it, or finding it too late. A relentless sun shines on all of us, and in the end, we brought together three voices speaking in turn. Different styles, different genres—but each laced with the same haunting urgency.
LAURA OLES: We have had several discussions over time about working on a collective project. Short stories felt like the perfect fit for us due to our experience and love of the short story format. Alexandra was driving force in the creative structure –she put her arms around all our ideas and fashioned them into this collection. It’s no small thing to bring three writers with distinct styles together—creative people with varied ideas and opinions—and weave them together for readers. It’s an eclectic offering, and I think that’s part of what makes it special.
S.M.: What do you enjoy about the short story form?
A.B.: The short story is where I learned the craft of writing. It was my first love, and in many ways, it still is—even if the industry often overlooks it. What I value most is the urgency. Every word has to pull its weight. There’s no space for filler, no room to wander. A short story forces clarity. You have to build an entire world in just a few pages, and still leave the reader changed by the end.
I’ve always compared it to walking through a house. With a short story, the front door opens, you’re pushed through, and you have to gather everything you can before being ushered out the back. A novel gives you the key and invites you to settle in—open drawers, explore every room. But the short story is about compression. It’s fast, focused, and sharp.
There’s also freedom in that. You can take risks. You can end suddenly, without explanation. You can try things that might not work in a longer form. And when it lands, it stays with you.
It doesn’t have to be neat or tied up. It just has to feel true.
V.P.C.: I love writing short stories. It’s longer forms that I have trouble with! I like taking a snapshot in time and filling it with depth and meaning. I think a good short story tells more than just what takes place within that brief time. There should be a history as to why characters do what they do.
L.O.: Short stories remain one of my favorite forms—in addition to the (in my opinion) under-appreciated novella. Its brevity requires more consideration in storytelling, and in that brevity is freedom. Sometimes I’m not sure if an idea is strong enough to carry a novel, but a short story is a way to discover if it has legs. I can experiment with one moment in time for one character and see how it unfolds. Maybe her story ends there. Maybe she has more to say.
S.M.:Alexandra,One of your stories uses the setting of rural California in 1975 to give the mood. How did you choose that backdrop?
A.B. In I Have Many Memories of My Father, the backdrop is Loomis, California, 1975. A daughter returns to her father’s farm—where she grew up during the fallout of the Dust Bowl. Take the father in the story: was he cruel, or just versed in survival? That kind of ambiguity could only live in California. Where else do you put a character who straddles the line between violence and necessity, silence and endurance? And if you’ve read closely, you’ll see all my stories in this anthology are rooted in California. Loomis was outside the direct path of the Dust Bowl, Echo Beach is set in Newport Beach during the 1980s, when a new generation of surfers turned the ocean into a stage, and Wings takes place in Hollywood, the graveyard of ambition, where dreams go to die.
Why California? Because California, more than any other state, holds contradictions the way the land holds fault lines. California is multifaceted—sunlight and shadow in equal measure. It’s where the same heat ripens peaches or bleaches bones in the dirt. There’s ocean and desert. Hollywood illusion and migrant labor camps. It promises paradise, but sells survival.
California is built on fracture. You can live on a cliff above the Pacific and still feel the ground shift beneath you. There’s always a tremor coming. That kind of instability breeds stories that sting. California isn’t just the setting for these stories—it’s the reason they exist. The heat, the dust, the history—it doesn’t just shape the characters. It made them.
The inspiration for the story came from ten years ago when we did the Murder On Wheels anthology with Austin Mystery Writers. I had another “wheel” story but didn’t have the time to write it before we went to print. So, this suburban story about pod people has been floating in my brain for years. Gale Albright was my inspiration for trying to write a story that was purely dialogue. I was impressed with how well she had tackled it with a project she had worked on, and I always wondered if I could do the same.
S.M.: Laura. What about your visit to Tokyo made you want to use it in your story?
L.O.: Tokyo is this glorious blend of leading-edge technology and stunning historic architecture, one that showcases history and modernity while also highlighting gardens and public spaces. Kengo Kuma, an acclaimed Japanese architect, explains that Tokyo is “a collection of small villages rather than one big city.” (Metropolis Magazine).
I’ve traveled to Japan twice, also visiting Kyoto and Kamakura. While in Tokyo, I spent most of my time in Shinjuku and had the opportunity to roam solo for a couple of days. Few things outside of having twins have humbled me more quickly than trying to navigate the streets of Shinjuku using kana and meters. But I also loved being in the middle of this metropolis and exploring, even getting a little lost. The story includes a nod to a wonderful bar owner, Midori, who I met on my first trip. Her establishment is very special, and watching her craft an Old Fashioned is a gift. I wanted to capture that fleeting feeling of being briefly immersed in this phenomenal city.
S.M.: What do you admire in the work of the other two authors?
A.B.: I admire Laura’s detective voice—sharp, unflinching, with a ruthless eye for the fractures in a family. Valerie—and we’ve gone back and forth on this over the years—always struck me as a western writer at heart, but she surprised me. What she pulled off in this collection was a feat: a seamless merging of genres.
V.P.C: Alexandra is good at getting into the psyche of a person. “Getting under the skin” describes it well in many ways. Laura is good at pacing and describing a scene. I’ve found their feedback to be immensely helpful.
L.O.: I love that Alexandra’s prose is haunting and layered, full of shadows and sharp edges. Reading her stories is like being handed a lovely cocktail with a shard of glass as a garnish. Valerie isn’t tied to any particular genre, and I enjoy watching her experiment with merging western and horror in an unexpected way.
S.M.: This is the first book to come out of Fredonia Ink. What are your ambitions with the publishing company?
V.P.C.: We want to be an avenue for new, fresh voices. So many stories aren’t purely crime fiction or horror or what have you. There are many good stories that don’t necessarily fit on just one shelf in the bookstore. Personally, I find those stories to be more interesting. So, we’re hoping to provide an outlet for our own projects as well as an outlet for other authors.
L.O.: Our goal is to expand in the future to highlight compelling stories from other writers that haven’t yet found a home. It was important for us start by learning with our own work so that we apply that hard won knowledge going forward on future projects. The joy of a small upstart like this s that we can experiment, explore and grow at our own pace. We are committed to building a professional team of editors and designers—we did have an outside editor for this project—so that we can bring new stories to readers while also supporting other creative professionals.
A.B.: We’re currently working on publishing other projects, whether as solo ventures or powerful collaborations. Each book will reflect our core mission: to champion bold, boundary-pushing fiction by women—especially in the realms of crime, horror, and dark literary work.
But this press was never meant to be a closed circle. In the near future we’ll be opening our doors to outside submissions. If you’re a writer with something urgent to say—something sharp, lyrical, strange, or brutal—we want to read it. We’re looking for voices that linger. Stories that don’t flinch. If that sounds like you, we encourage you to join us from the ground up. Go to FredoniaInk.com and sign up for our newsletter. You’ll be the first to know when our submission window opens. Come write in the dark with us.