Colorado authors Nichelle Giraldes and Chelsea Iversen visit The Bookworm of Edwards on Thursday

Recently, there has been more readership of genre fiction, like horror, romance and fantasy, where historically, these genres have been looked down upon in favor of literary fiction. Luckily, two genre fiction Colorado authors, Nichelle Giraldes and Chelsea Iversen, will be at the Bookworm on Thursday, Oct. 19, to talk about their horror and historical fantasy books, and what it’s like to be a genre fiction author.

Iversen speculates a couple possible reasons for this increase in genre fiction readership. “Genre fiction has it all, and it’s been hanging out in the margins for too long, and these books are becoming more mainstream now for so many reasons, especially social media,” Iversen said. “This shift from literary fiction to genre fiction is a sign of the times. Our favorite genres can be truly escapist, and coming off a couple of years of social trauma, maybe some bookish escapism is just the balm people need.”

If you’d rather stare your trauma in the face to work through it, than escape from it, there is no safer place than in a book. “Horror provides such an interesting way to explore the things that scare us,” Giraldes said. “Not only ghosts and masked men with chainsaws, but also monsters that are often analogous to real-life terrors. It’s difficult for me to spend so much time mentally in these dark places with my characters, but I also enjoy getting to examine the darker parts of ourselves and the world from the safety of a book.”

Giraldes’ book features real-life terrors that she encountered while the world was beginning to recover from the COVID pandemic. “My initial inspiration came from the curse at the heart of ‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue,'” Giraldes said. “The family curse in my book evolved pretty quickly from reading that book. Also, I wrote ‘No Child of Mine’ in 2021, when I heard about the shrinking percentage of women in the workforce because so many mothers were forced to leave work due to the lack of child care. This was a reminder of the precariousness of the progress we’ve made for women, and I wanted to explore it in my novel.”

Iversen, on the other hand, drew inspiration from her relationship with her sisters and her research on Norwegian witch trials. “During a snowy and COVID-y Colorado winter, the story came to me about two sisters whose mother was burned at the stake for being a witch, one of them wanted to live a normal life and the other wanted revenge. And the setting of Finnmark, Norway, came from my research into the brutal witch trials that happened there. Witchcraft was often blamed for hard times during the 17th century,” she said.

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Both of these novels feature strong, but also complicated and imperfect women characters. “There’s nothing I love more than reading a book with a strong woman as the protagonist,” Iversen said. “Women’s stories are so relatable and empowering, but I didn’t set out to write a book that celebrated strong and resilient women. I wanted to write about two sisters divided by vengeance, and I got lucky with these two characters, who both are strong in very different ways. I think it’s important for ‘strong women’ to be portrayed in all their diversity, with their strengths and flaws laid bare because that’s what it means to be human.”

In reading both of these novels, both authors hope you think more carefully about revenge, love and your siblings. “I hope readers will walk away understanding a little better the far-reaching consequences of our actions,” Iversen said. “It’s really a story about the decision to take revenge and the fallout from a single moment of unbridled fury. It’s about the impact our choices have on others, even when we don’t intend them to. And if you have a sister, maybe you’ll feel compelled to give her a hug!”

“While ‘No Child of Mine’ is a ghost story, and I hope readers enjoy the spooky aspects, I hope, more importantly, that all of the different love stories at the heart of the novel stick with readers,” Giraldes said. “For me, this ghost story was a love story first (as a lot of ghost stories are) because fear is only compelling if you have something worth losing.”