She likes it that way.

As though offering herself as a handmaiden, Brite's style of erotic horror takes you by the hand and leads you toward entities and passions existing in an abyss you've been taught to hate.  Rather than run away from the fear of the strange, her writing has a way causing the reader to question just how much they may have in common with the serial killers, the necrophiliacs, and the cannibals she writes about. 

"I would like readers to ask themselves how much they identify with characters that are considered ‘other'," confessed Brite from her home in New Orleans. "Traditional horror stories have been so much about identifying the ‘other' as mutants and freaks who are rooted out of society and eliminated.  That has never interested me.  I'm much more interested in exploring the mutant and seeing what we have in common with it."

"I feel it's possible to learn a great deal about such people than we currently are.  I think it's important to do that. They are the predators of our time."

Listening to Brite talk about her writing projects is almost like watching someone juggle fire sticks. All promise to be intense, and observing her maintain them is a breath-holding pleasure. 

Her new novel "Lazarus Heart", set in the dark lure of the world first experienced in the movie "The Crow", is due out this spring.  She's putting together her second collection of short stories, written from 1993 to the present, entitled "Are You Loathsome Tonight?"set for release this fall.  And while still dealing fragments of curiosity about her biography on the complex vocalist/actress Courtney Love, Brite is working on her future offering, a story different from her previous works of fiction.  There will be just as much darkness within this novel, but no supernatural element and no horror, she says.

"I don't think this book will be as harsh or as over-the-top and gruesome as my last book ‘Exquisite Corpse' was."

It's hard to imagine a Poppy Z. Brite narrative without the harshness and grotesque imagery.  Describing her work as amoral, Brite has given her readers a penetrating view  into the tangled world of those yearning for their own kind of intimacy. The stereotype of a serial killer being a one-dimensional parasite is thrown away in her tales.  Brite creates characters as multi-layered as the predators who exist in our world today.

"Usually you'll see only certain facets of that type of character that we're willing to explore in a public way.  There are books that explore serial killers more deeply and actually go into what was in his human make-up that made him do things as opposed to how he became this uncontrollable monster.  These books usually don't find their greatest audience in America."

"There's a book called ‘The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer' written by Brian Masters.  He's a British writer and the book was first published in England.  When he submitted the book to his American publisher, they rejected it because they thought it was too sympathetic a portrayal of a serial killer.  I didn't think it was too sympathetic at all.  I thought it was much more open-minded than your typical American read-through because it looked at so many facets and the history of his character."

"When I write, I'm also much more interested in the grey areas.  It's difficult for me to see my characters in black and white, good and evil, because, to some extent, I have to identify with all of them," said Brite.

Once described as "the reigning queen of Generation-X splatterpunks", Poppy Z. Brite has been writing and harboring a fondness for grisly prose for as long as she can remember. 

"When I was 12, I was trying to put together professional stories that I thought could sell. I had a lot more experience than most kids, but I was still a kid.  In typical 12 year-old fashion, I submit my first story to REDBOOK magazine.  It was a normal 3-page love story.  They rejected it of course, but I was so excited because it was a real rejection slip from a real editor in New York.  I thought it was the beginning of my career, and it was."

Brite would spend the next six years writing, honing, and trying to find a place for her short stories. In essence, writing was her outlet for a relentless obsession with probing the idea of severing bodies and manipulating them by mutilation, drawing blood, and/or cutting the mortal being.  Knotted in with her fetish was an appetite for revealing homosexual eroticism.

"When I started to write much more about what I wanted to write about, it was soon after that I started selling stories.   I stopped censoring myself.  As a result, I felt I was able to develop my writer's voice more clearly.  My work became more honest and more interesting."

Her first published pieces appeared in the now-lifeless magazine The Horror Show.  The California-based publication was known for showcasing quality horror fiction.  From 1986-1988 seven of Brite's short stories were published within its pages.  Her writing caught the attention of a book editor whose interest motivated Poppy to forge ahead with her first novel "Lost Souls".

In the late 1980's Brite left behind the rent-paying jobs she took as a chef, a mouse caretaker, a candy maker, an artist's model, and a stripper.  She began to focus entirely on her writing. Over the next ten years Poppy would proceed to write three novels (Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and Exquisite Corpse), edit two anthologies, and see her stories published in numerous anthologies.  She has also been nominated for the Bram Stroker and the Lambda awards. 

Said Brite, "When I started in horror I felt I would be able to work in it for as long as I wanted to because I didn't feel it had any limits.  Artistically, I'm still not sure it has limits.  Professionally, it's definitely a limiting field.  It's stigmatized, it's not considered real fiction by many people, and horror books are stuck in the back of the bookstore.  The field itself is really backbiting and conservative." 

"I don't think my major fan-base lies with hardcore horror readers.  My reader-base is gay, young, weird, disaffected readers. Almost anyone rather than your typical Stephen King reader.  I don't think there's any chance I would have the widespread appeal he does and that's not what I wish to do."

When the opportunity arose to depart from fiction for a while and take on a project apart from her norm, Brite delved into the Courtney Love biography for various reasons.  It's an experience she doesn't regret, but doesn't want to repeat.

"It was a chance to explore an interesting female character that I hadn't managed to do in fiction.  I set the task to write about a real person for myself," said Brite, also admitting that she did the project for the money so she could create a financial foundation that would sustain her through the writing of her new novel.

"If you're going to write about a real person and be honest, I think you have a responsibility to try and paint their life as it has been, not as people want to see it.  I saw myself just reporting on her life rather than trying to make a value judgement because that's almost all that has been written about Courtney Love.  I wanted to stay away from that and just tell her story."

Anchoring herself in the psyche of those who dare to follow Brite's fictional raptures, she is content to draw upon the darkness that haunts us all. As we embrace the unexplored within ourselves, Brite uses writing as the passage to her own truth.
 
"I just don't know where I would be if I hadn't been successful as a writer.  It's difficult to imagine any other path I could have tolerated."