Welcome, Stephanie!

Stephanie Rabig has been into horror ever since she could read (a librarian remembered her decades later because she tried to check out Dracula in kindergarten). When not reading or watching her favorite genre, she’s making jewelry and tea blends, or adopting yet another cat.

Learn more about Stephanie at her website: stephanierabig.weebly.com

About On Stolen Land

When a prairie-mad settler murders Milton Allen’s brother and his family, the wealthy rancher offers an enormous bounty to bring the culprit in. Ada Marshall and Pearl Beckwourth, bounty hunters with twenty years experience, assume this is yet another straightforward job. But when a fellow bounty hunter is torn to pieces not fifty feet away from their camp, their natural wariness grows, and in the tiny, isolated valley town of Woodlawn, they learn that the attacker may not even be human…

Interview with Stephanie Rabig

Tell us about yourself – what is something readers would be surprised to find out? 

Despite how grim some of my work is (especially On Stolen Land, which is the bleakest of the bunch) I’m a marshmallow. I tap into some of the worst nightmares I’ve had or the nastiest historical atrocities I’ve researched for my fiction, and then go back to getting teary-eyed over sentimental commercials.

What is it about the Weird West genre that draws you to it? What are your favorite aspects or examples of this Under-appreciated genre? 

I love cryptids and monsters and ghosts, and the Western genre has been one of my favorites ever since my dad showed me The Fastest Gun Alive (which I soon followed with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Young Guns movies, Unforgiven, The Magnificent Seven…). Combining those genres is chocolate and peanut butter to me.

Some of my favorite examples: Movies– Ravenous; The Pale Door; Dead Birds; Bone Tomahawk; and (on the complete other end of the spectrum) Cowboys & Aliens. I love how unabashedly bonkers that one is.

Books– Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West is a fantastic starting point. Dreadful Skin by Cherie Priest; so many amazing works by Joe Lansdale.

What inspired you to write this story?

There was a lot of talk on my Twitter feed about a series of Splatter Westerns, and while looking through some of the incredible cover art by Justin T. Coons, the base idea for On Stolen Land just popped into my head. It didn’t exactly turn out to be a splatter western, but I love where it ended up. 

If you were living in the Weird West, what kind of character would you be?

Dead. I have all the survival instincts of a rock. (I would love to answer “the badass gunslinger who’s always ready with a quip”, but I have to go with either my first answer or “saloon girl who hides behind the bar at the first sign of trouble”.)

Are there any other writing projects you’re working on?

Yes! I’ve got the outline and a couple of chapters done on a horror comedy called “Luxury Superyacht Massacre: Eat the Rich;” the third in my Cryptids & Cauldrons series is out on Halloween; and I’m poking at a retelling of Dracula.

What are you reading right now? 

Just finished Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural– 101 True Tales of Hauntings, Demons, and the Paranormal, and I’m rereading Salem’s Lot.

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