Sep 296 min read

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: MICHAEL BOULERICE

Updated: 5 days ago

We wanted to know more about our anthology authors so we asked if we could pick their brains and scoop out the delicious brilliance.

Next up is Michael Boulerice, who wrote the straight up creepy and fucked up story "Music Facilitator":

IP: Would you survive one of your stories in real life? Which one and how would you last?

M: This is such a great question, and I just had a genuinely difficult time looking through my stories to pinpoint which one I was positive I’d make it through intact. I’d say I’d survive through There Is No Everlasting Light and Love (originally produced for The Creepy Podcast) only because, as

a New Hampshire boy, I’ve grown up being stung and bitten by every conceivable crawlie on god’s green earth, so there has to be some kind of built-up immunity there. Plus I’ve spent so much time polluting my body over the years that a brown recluse would probably drop dead if it

bit me.

IP: What is the most unconventional piece of inspiration you’ve had?

M: Oh god, I think this has to be a two-part answer specifically because of my contribution to Too Bad, You Died!

A huge amount of my writing is inspired by my lifelong battle with sleep related issues (chronic insomnia, parasomnia, Circadian rhythm disorder, etc.). A lot of my stories and imagery are taken from the things I’ve witnessed in lucid dreams and night terrors, and even hallucinations

I’ve experienced after having gone without sleep for X amount of days. Believe it or not, the man on the swing set in Music Facilitator was a main character in a recurring dream from elementary school. I never was able to figure out what my subconscious was trying to tell me with that one,

but he disappeared from my sleep reels shortly after I started seventh grade.

My second unconventional source of inspiration? Mushrooms. I’ll indulge maybe once or twice a year if I’m lucky. No hero doses or ego death or anything crazy like that; just enough to help my brain make a few different creative connections which I can take and run with the following day. Weirdly enough, everything I’ve conceptualized this way has sold…including Music Facilitator to you! The epistolary format of MF and the use of my hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire as the backdrop of this weird little story were the result of me sitting in my backyard at night with my notes app and a head full of psilocybin.

Wait, you guys aren’t cops, right? Okay cool.

IP: How do you write? What does your ‘routine’/‘set up’ look like? Do you have a playlist?

M: I typically start my writing days in my basement office with two cups of strong Italian coffee. I built a big fancy gaming desktop ages ago, which I’ve recently upgraded with one of those motorized standing desks so I don’t end up with my chin resting on my own belt buckle by the

time I’m fifty. I’ll bang out words down there until around lunchtime, at which point I’ll often be ready for a change of scenery. That usually ends up being my pool deck if it’s nice out, or my giant Lovesac bean bag chair in the living room if it’s not. Both are dangerous locations for my productivity because one is always tempting me to go take a leisurely float, and the other threatens to drag me kicking and screaming into a coma nap.

As for music, I have an extremely erratic Spotify playlist going all day long. Rap, death metal, EDM, classical, drum and bass, prog rock, 90s pop, the works. The constant shifting of genres and tones pries my brain out of comfortable spaces and seems to help my writing, but it's a lot for other people to handle. If I pop it on at my own house parties, my friends will almost immediately commandeer my stereo. My editor listened to this playlist once and said it was like being waterboarded with music. It’s okay. I love my unsettling little music baby anyway.

IP: What are you currently working on? If you're not working on anything at the moment, what work are you most proud of? (Big yourself up!)

M: Let’s see. What am I working on right now? I just wrapped up work on my debut folk/cosmic horror novel, which is just about to go on submission with my agent Josh Foreman of LCS Literary. Hopefully that finds a good home soon. Filling that void is both my new dark scifi/horror

novel, as well as my heavily/weirdly themed short story collection. I’m having a blast ping-ponging between these projects as the mood strikes me, which seems to be benefitting both despite my previous insistence that I must only hyperfocus on one thing at a time.

IP: What are your favourite things about the horror/writing community at the moment?

M: The massive piles of cash being thrown about everywhere. Seriously, where I am supposed to put all of this?

IP: Who would you say is the biggest supporter of your writing?

M: This is another double answer. My wife Jessica, who graciously gifts me with the space and cheerleading I need to put in day after day doing this because she’s always believed in me as a writer, and my developmental editor and close friend Alex Woodroe, who has dragged me out of The Neverending Story’s Swamp of Sadness more times than either of us can count because she is somehow convinced I’m worth it. I’m beyond lucky to have people like this in my corner, and I work extremely hard every day to ensure their support isn’t wasted.

IP: Why do you write?

M: I wish I had a more romantic answer for you here, but I write because I have no other choice but to write. The second I realized writing made it possible for me process lived trauma and everything else we experience in this broken world we have to carve space for ourselves in, I’ve

been helpless to stop. If I take a break from writing, I very quickly become miserable and functionally useless until I start back up again. For me writing is more of a compulsion than it is a career, which means I have to constantly nurture a balance between it and every other facet of my life. This is where I wave hello to my therapist. Hi, Adrienne!

IP: Name a writer that inspires you and why?

M: There are piles of writers that come to mind when asked this, but the first name that wants to jump out of my mouth is Nathan Ballingrud’s. His prose has always hit me like a sledgehammer in the best possible way, and that man has lived one hell of a fucking life. As far as I’m concerned, he’s horror’s Most Interesting Man in the World and I want to be him when I grow up.

up.

IP: What would be the worst superpower to have?

M: Telepathy, hands down. Imagine being at Thanksgiving dinner and all of a sudden you’re hearing your uncle’s perved-out thoughts about your aunt’s butt. I’d be lobotomizing myself with the electric turkey carver before the pumpkin pie came out of the oven.

IP: And because we have to ask - favourite horror movie?

M: All the signs of me being a horror guy were there at an early age (read: me being sent home from elementary school with a concerned note from my teacher for writing stories with titles like What Happened to Henry? and Davey’s Death), but Hellbound: Hellraiser II was absolutely transformative for me. Cenobites? Yes. Leviathan? YES. Dr. Channard?! YAASSSSSS. I watched it unsupervised on my late father’s black box when I was nine, and that prompted me to spend my childhood scouring the local VHS rental store hunting for the goriest, spookiest movies I could find...and that my mom would let me rent if she thought there was no sex in them. Impaled by a splintered table leg? No problem. A nipple? Unthinkable. Absolutely not.

IP: Where can we find you, and your work?

Feeding the Wheel (novella)

Dead Sky Publishing

Pub Date: July 2025

More information can be found at www.michaelboulerice.com when it becomes available

Deli Meat

2K Terrors

TL:DR Press

Pub Date: December 2023

Link here

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