Meet C. S. W. | Horror writer and podcaster

We had the good fortune of connecting with C. S. W. and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi C.S.W., what do you attribute your success to?
The most important factor behind my artistic success was being able to tell the difference between what I wanted to do, and what I thought other people would want me to do. As an online creator, you find yourself wanting to write for an audience and create things that will get you more popularity, but in the end, that shouldn’t be the metric of your success, nor the thing you let motivate your decisions. Because if you create something that you’re not %100 sold on, but you think other people will like and then like your creation by extension, it really will never bring the result you want. Either it’ll work, and you’ll have successfully attracted an audience around something that you don’t even enjoy doing (which is, unmistakably, a form of failure) or, as I’ve seen to be far more likely, the audience won’t gravitate toward it anyway because your heart is obviously not in it. If you don’t believe in what you’re doing, it shows; that spark of inspiration just won’t be there. Cliché though it is, it’s true: I’d rather succeed at something I truly love and lose listeners because of it, than succeed at something I don’t love, and lose myself

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
My interest in the art of horror came when I was seventeen, but for my whole life leading up to that point, I was fraught with various deep-set fears; I most certainly scared easy as a child, and I continue to do so. Horror, as an art form and as a philosophical lens, gave me a way to express those fears and anxieties, turning real-world terrors into metaphorical scary-stories. The novels I drafted used a lot of visual experimentation, and since breaking into the publication industry is notoriously difficult, I changed those visual experiments for audio experiments. Audiodrama podcasting became my new means of creation, a place where I could take the novels I had already written, and flesh them into multiple-episode listening experiences. Hemophobia will be the place where that happens, with each season being its own story, adapted from a novel I had originally written. What makes my stories different from an audiobook, however, is the sound design: sometimes literal sound effects, other times laden with music and vocal effects, other times distorted and dissonant sound pieces with no words in them at all. This enables Hemophobia to tell a story in non-literal means as well as literal ones, creating an experience that is more emotional than it is scripted. My hope is that these stories will give someone else, someone equally as fearful as I am in this world we live in, a story that voices their struggle through mine.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Personally, the most fun I’ve ever had in Denver was at Voicebox Karaoke on Walnut. I went there and reserved a private room for me and my friends, which is hands-down the best way to do karaoke. For food, I’d want to go to the Brutal Poodle, and probably spend the rest of the evening at Meow Wolf – unless, of course, it was December, in which case the Denver Christkindlmarket would be an absolute must.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to thank my grandfather, James Dupy, who was my first artistic mentor and brought me up into the craft of writing.

Website: https://www.cswhorror.com/

Instagram: @cswhorror

Twitter: @CSW_Horror

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091738301467

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@incarnationread2043

Other: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cswhorror

Image Credits
Self photo: credit to Lachlan Quintana