Yvette Tan is one of the most, if not arguably the most, celebrated writers of Philippine short horror fiction.

For Pinoy horror fans the humanity through inhumanity of the folkloric stories by the 47-year-old author was the benchmark that’s simultaneously their introduction and baseline expectation of what makes the genre local.

Her first collection of short stories “Waking the Dead” (Anvil Publishing) was released in 2009 and later reissued in 2021, with a glorious new cover by R. Jordan P. Santos. Later, she wrote and published “Kaba: 50 Maikling Kwento ng Kababalaghan at Katatakutan!!!” in 2013.

Her new book “Seek Ye Whore,” (also from Anvil Publishing) is a collection of stories that her avid readers, including I, have been waiting for more than a decade as follow up to add to her body of work.

Released in October this year, the cover of “Seek Ye Whore” is also by Santos, a surreal and beautiful skeletal torso with flowers as internal organs — visually capturing her style as a writer who bridges the grotesque and the gorgeous.

Feted as a horror writer, she’s won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for her stories. She’s also branched into other media, writing the movie screenplay about water demons haunting a family (“Ilawod” 2017), released the country’s first NFT storybook with Team Manila, and teamed up with video game studio Masayato Games.

You may have also seen her with Liza Soberano, when she co-hosted the “Trese After Dark” discussion on Netflix for the popular anime.

Full disclosure: I have known the author for many years since the 1990s, ever since university. Meaning I may call her Yvette, rather than Ms. Yvette or Ms. Tan.

In her new collection, Yvette’s deliciously cool take on the American pronunciation of and view on our witch’s island of Siquijor (“seek ye whore”) mashed with mail-order brides and aswangs is just the starting point for a gamut of very human, well-crafted drama — some surprisingly humorous, like Chinese wraiths, moon-eating dragons, and how an aswang is made — all gleefully embracing the night.

It also means I have been honored in my capacity as a literary editor in past different publications to have been able to shepherd to print (or record on audio) some stories that made it to Yvette’s books.

Ultimately, the conversation that follows below is rather about one Filipino horror writer speaking to another sans the constraints and conditions of what we think of as An Interview.

We cover subjects mutually macabre and fascinating, like fan expectations about what horror authors should look like, the continuing vicissitudes of nailing the perfect writing process, as well as coping with literal physical conditions.

And of course, her stories and books.

Very little known fact that we long ago once tried to collab on a story about an aswang adventuress named Liwanag. Or was it an aswang assassin? We even got a few pages in, but no further. What I don’t recall is why we never did finish it, perhaps you remember since I am getting old and have no idea where I put our files!

Liwanag was a recurring character in my old stories in college. She was a manananggal named after someone I had a huge crush on. We scrapped the collab because you said it wasn’t going anywhere!

Incidentally, I tell everyone that you’re the friend who had to sit me down and tell me that what I write is horror.

Has your tolerance for consuming spooky and scary entertainment gotten better or still the same?

Still the same. It’s fiction, after all. It’s my tolerance for real life spookiness that’s changed. I’m surprised you didn’t ask about that as that’s something we have in common as well!

You’ve thrived with the horror and fantastic in incredible growth since “Waking the Dead” garnered momentum in the early aughts. But with this new collection of stories, do folks still ask: where’s the novel? And don’t you just want to retort ala George R.R. Martin and throttle them? I mean, I do.

I love it, actually. I grew up with the impression that, because I wasn’t thin or book smart, I wouldn’t amount to anything, so I’m still getting used to all this. Childhood wounds don’t go away so easily.

Young Yvette would never have thought that people would be interested in reading her work, much less demand more output, so to be asked why I don’t write more is a privilege for me.

I’m flattered that readers want to read more of my stories. Unfortunately, the realities of living in the Philippines (and also being disabled) means I can’t be as prolific as I and everyone else wishes I was.

"A lot of horror is about humans trying to control a specific outcome or keep the status quo amid extreme uncertainty, something it has in common with farming or fishing."

How about dealing with folks who say you write “magic realism?”

With people labeling my stories, I don’t mind, either. I don’t know where my stories fit in, so it’s interesting to see how other people see it. They can help me figure it out!

The bigger frustration, actually, is the reaction that either dismisses horror outright (“Ay, I don’t read horror, nakakatakot yan”) or immediately puts constraints on the genre (“There’s no such thing as horror comedy — yes, someone womansplained this to me once). This frustration isn’t necessarily related to my writing, but to horror and the supernatural in general.

You’ve done an NFT, a movie, a ballet, and co-hosted the “Trese After Dark” discussion. Among the many mediums that you’ve branched into, what was the most enjoyable or interesting experience?

I enjoyed all of them, as they’re all different and provide different experiences. It’s both amazing and nerve wracking to see your work translated into another medium. I always welcome projects like this and hope there are opportunities to do more.

“All the Birds” (incidentally my favorite off of the new book) and some of the new stories lean towards the folk horror that’s popular these days. Any connection to your current work as the editor of an agriculture mag?

No connection. A lot of my fiction falls under folk horror, and this is simply because I often use Philippine lower mythological imagery, which has agricultural roots, when you think about it. It just so happened that “Waking the Dead” was re-released during a time when folk horror was making a global resurgence, and that “Seek Ye Whore” has the same themes.

“All the Birds” was written for “All That Darkness Allows,” a 2016 anthology we were both in.

I should really break open the plastic wrap of my copy of that anthology and actually read it. “Dead Season” is also arguably quite folksy horror!

“Dead Season” is a new story, but it had more to do with my wanting to explore a lower mythological creature than my work in agriculture. And if I’m correct, this was before folk horror resurgence as well.

Most of the stories in “Seek Ye Whore” were written before 2015, some even before “Waking the Dead” was published. I like to think they were waiting for the right time to be appreciated.

I think the reason people are seeing my fiction as related to my current work is because I’ve verbally expressed the connection, not just of my work, but of folk horror in general, to an agrarian community. A lot of horror is about humans trying to control a specific outcome or keep the status quo amid extreme uncertainty, something it has in common with farming or fishing.

"The bigger frustration, actually, is the reaction that either dismisses horror outright (“Ay, I don’t read horror, nakakatakot yan”) or immediately puts constraints on the genre (“There’s no such thing as horror comedy — yes, someone womansplained this to me once). This frustration isn’t necessarily related to my writing, but to horror and the supernatural in general."

In my day job, the real horror is food scarcity. What’s scarier is that very few people seem to care, even though this will affect everyone. That’s scarier than anything any fictionist can come up with.

You could say that “Dead Season” is tangentially related to my interest in agriculture, in the same way that “Seek Ye Whore” was tangentially related to my interest in food writing at the time it was written.

Food and horror. Not strange bedfellows at all!

But when you think about it, a chunk of horror is about food. Monsters eating humans is about food. Post-apocalyptic horror will involve food. You can trace everything, even science fiction (terraforming, food in pill form, etc.), back to food because all humans need to eat properly to thrive.

To me, there’s been a big shift in your stylistic tone as we’ve grown older. I’ve also noticed a transference of themes into other areas that you’ve been working on craft-wise. Was the swing to focus on exploring human relationships via the lens of folkloric creatures something conscious for “Seek Ye Whore”?

As far as I know, it’s what I’ve always done, whether consciously or not. “Kulog” in “Waking the Dead” is an example of this.

I can understand how other people might view it differently, as all they see are the two books, and they aren’t privy to the timeline in which the stories were written. But I think the shift you’re seeing has to do more with language. I think I use words differently now and probably construct stories differently as well.

Am quite curious as to what exactly the creatures are in “Dead Season?”

The creatures in “Dead Season” are the Biagonan, which I read about in The Aswang Project.

I took some liberties in the name of fiction, such as relocating them from the riverside to the mountains, changing their shapeshifting abilities from animal to human, and so on. What drew me to them was the description that they ate every part of their victims except for the mandible, which they liked to hang on trees as decoration, and this was the image I had in mind when I began the story. Everything else was built from there.

What remains the hardest thing in writing horror for you? Have some techniques or processes become easier now or stayed the same in terms of execution difficulty?

The hardest thing for me is the writing itself! (Laughs).

I’ve realized that a lot of my fiction doubles as a way for me to process my feelings, and it’s hard to get words on paper when you’re not ready to confront or are unable to get a grasp on an emotion just yet. Sometimes just the thought of putting words to paper, of shaping the unknown in front of me, is terrifying.

For me, it’s actually thinking up of things that scare me since real life and some of the subjects I’ve covered are horrific enough without a monster or the supernatural behind them.

Another difficult thing for me is to figure [out] what to write about. I started writing because I ran out of stuff to read and wanted to tell my own stories, so if I have books to read, shows and movies to watch, podcasts to listen to, and work to do (this takes up most of my time, honestly), writing for myself tends to take a back seat. I’m not proud of this, and it’s something I’m seeing to change.

"When you think about it, a chunk of horror is about food. Monsters eating humans is about food. Post-apocalyptic horror will involve food. You can trace everything, even science fiction (terraforming, food in pill form, etc.), back to food because all humans need to eat properly to thrive."

Has your general ritual or writing setup changed or remained the same? I’ve found that I like Bluetooth peripherals more and more — the less wires, the less frustrated I am and the less tech stress I have. Also, is there a time you’re more productive with fiction vs working?

For me, work writing is faster than fiction writing. My suspicion is it’s because I do it more, so it’s a mindset I can easily get into. By this logic, I also think that the more fiction I write, the faster I’ll be able to slip into the right mindset for it as well. Whether my theory is correct will remain to be seen.

But for any kind of writing, I need a quiet place with a lot of table space and ready access to food and drink. I’ve realized that I can only write effectively if coming from a place of safety, which means I have to be as calm and contented and well-fed as possible. Not easy, given today’s world.

With the “Queen of Philippine Horror Writing” tag, do fans or people in general expect you to dress or act the part ala old school Anne Rice? Am betting they don’t expect to talk so much with you about food and cooking.

I don’t have an opinion about it, as I like dressing up, and I also don’t like dressing up. The normcore isn’t deliberate, it’s just what I’m comfortable with right now.

You knew me when I was goth. No reason I shouldn’t go back to that again one day. For now, it’s fun to confuse people by looking normal, though I think horror readers know that most horror writers look like regular people. After all, it’s the inside that counts. As Clive Barker says, “Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.”

Are you liking any of the new youngblood authors, whether local or foreign?

I haven’t had time to read! The last book I read was Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary.” I’m still making my way through “Driven to Distraction” by Edward Hallowell and John Ratey, which is about adult ADHD. My most recent local purchase is Carla de Guzman’s “Some Bali to Love."

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Get a copy of “Seek Ye Whore” or the re-issued “Waking the Dead” collections for ₱250 at Anvil Publishing.