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Interview Overview
In this episode of The Writer’s Chair, Daniel Willcocks sits down with speculative fiction authors and educators Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan for a thoughtful, wide-ranging conversation about craft, genre, and building a writing life on your own terms.
Together, they explore the intersections between science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and how speculative fiction allows writers to interrogate the real world through strange, imaginative lenses. Tiffani and Val share insights from their work as both authors and teachers of creative writing, reflecting on what they’ve learned from guiding new writers, how genre expectations can both help and hinder creativity, and why embracing the weird often leads to the most meaningful storytelling.
The conversation delves into the realities of publishing across genres, the value of community in sustaining a creative career, and the importance of experimentation, play, and persistence. They also discuss the challenges of balancing artistic ambition with the practical demands of the industry, and how writers can remain authentic while navigating trends, markets, and reader expectations.
This episode is an honest, intelligent exploration of writing speculative fiction in today’s world — from the classroom to the page. Perfect for writers of horror, fantasy, and science fiction who want to deepen their craft, challenge their assumptions, and find new ways to tell the stories only they can tell.
Interview Transcription
Daniel Willcocks:
Welcome back, wordsmiths and story seekers. I am your host, Daniel Willcocks, broadcasting from the shadowy halls of Devil’s Rock HQ, and today I am thrilled to share the Writer’s Chair with Tiffani Angus and Val Nolan. Say hi, guys.
Val Nolan:
Hello, how are you?
Daniel Willcocks:
I’m doing very well. I’ll just introduce people to who you are as best I can and then you can speak for yourselves afterwards.
Tiffani Angus is a PhD-qualified creative writing lecturer turned freelance writer and editor whose debut novel Threading the Labyrinth was shortlisted for both the British Science Fiction and British Fantasy Awards.
Val Nolan holds a PhD in Contemporary Literature and lectures in genre fiction and creative writing at Aberystwyth University. Also a Clarion graduate, his fiction has appeared in Year’s Best Science Fiction, Interzone, and Nature, and his story The Irish Astronaut was shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon Award.
Today we’re picking Tiffani and Val’s brains about the third instalment in their Spec Fic for Newbies series, which launches on 24 March 2026 at Eastercon. Hello, guys, and welcome to The Writer’s Chair.
Val Nolan:
Thanks for having us, Dan.
Knowing Each Other Since 2009
Daniel Willcocks:
Now, I am very, very excited to have you both on, mostly because we’re going to be talking a lot about genre, which is what your books tackle. For me, genre is a very broad term and sometimes confusing for people trying to work out where their stories sit. There’s lots of crossover — are you purely in one genre, or not?
But before we dive into genre talk, you’ve known each other since 2009. Can you tell us one thing about the other person that nobody knows?
Tiffani Angus:
Gosh… we know where the bodies are buried.
Val Nolan:
Oh dear. We do. That’s where we buried some of them ourselves.
Tiffani Angus:
He has a slight addiction to Tatos. I know that.
Daniel Willcocks:
It’s not just potatoes?
Tiffani Angus:
Potatoes — the Irish crisps. The Irish crisps.
Val Nolan:
Potatoes. Potatoes. It’s a type of potato crisp, yeah.
Daniel Willcocks:
Okay, fair enough. And how are they different to, say, your Walkers or…?
Val Nolan:
They’re just better. They’re the proper thing. These are what potato crisps are supposed to be. Sorry, this is a point of national pride for me. Tatos are the only type of potato crisps that are acceptable.
Daniel Willcocks:
Wow, fair enough. And this episode is brought to you by Tatos. So there you go. We’ve got Tatos for that. Val, what have you got for Tiffani?
Val Nolan:
Tiffani’s the only person I know who is actually capable of herding cats.
Daniel Willcocks:
(Laughs)
Val Nolan:
It’s an impossible skill. I’ve never seen anybody else do it. Certainly never seen anybody do it successfully, but Tiffani can do it.
Daniel Willcocks:
Amazing. Are you the woman—
Tiffani Angus:
Real cats or people?
Val Nolan:
People. Generally at conventions, when they’re trying to decide where they’re going to have dinner.
Daniel Willcocks:
Okay, that makes more sense. I was going to say, are you the person on YouTube putting the cat in the wheelie bin?
Val Nolan:
Yes — but imagine the cat is a bunch of people trying to decide where they’re eating at a convention. Tiffani’s got that. She’s figured that out. She’s organised that.
Tiffani Angus:
I’m short and really loud and bossy. You know. Yeah.
Daniel Willcocks:
There we go. So we’ve gotten to know you a little more intimately — and it only took us five minutes instead of fifteen years. We won’t do the maths.
Origin Story: How Spec Fic for Newbies Began
Daniel Willcocks:
So, we’re here to talk about your new book, Spec Fic for Newbies. For listeners who might not know the background, can you give us the origin story? How did this project begin?
Tiffani Angus:
It started during the pandemic — Eastercon 2021, which ran online after being cancelled the year before. I gave a workshop on historical fantasy that I’d developed some time ago. Afterward, Francesca Barbini from Luna Press asked if I wanted to have lunch. So our little avatars had lunch together on screen — she was in Edinburgh and I was in East Anglia.
She said, “That was a great workshop. Do you want to write a book?”
They’d previously had Gareth Powell’s writing book on their list, but when it was picked up by another publisher, a space opened up. So she offered it to me.
I said yes — but also said I needed help. The idea I had was too big to tackle alone. I needed someone with complementary expertise. So I immediately messaged Val and said, “Do you want to write a book?” And that’s how it started. We thought it would just be one book. Now it’s three.
Val Nolan:
It sounded like an amazing idea from the start. We were all stuck at home during the pandemic anyway, and I was teaching science fiction and fantasy modules at the time. It felt like we could take what we were already doing in the classroom and turn it into something accessible to a wider audience.
That was the part that really excited me — the idea that not everyone gets to go to university or take creative writing classes with instructors who specialise in genre fiction. Some people end up in programmes that only focus on literary fiction, or very narrow definitions of what writing “should” be.
We realised we could create a book that anyone could pick up and get something close to that classroom experience. It wouldn’t replace a university course, but it could offer many of the same tools, insights and encouragement.
Tiffani Angus:
We love teaching the nerds. That was always the best part of the job. And suddenly we got to do more of that — with dumb jokes included — and reach people beyond the classroom. It was an easy yes.
From Fiction to Non-Fiction
Daniel Willcocks:
You both come from academic backgrounds and have written fiction before. Was this your first major venture into long-form non-fiction together? What was the shift from fiction to instructional writing like?
Tiffani Angus:
I’d worked as a technical writer and with educational materials before academia, so I’d already written and edited textbooks and learning resources. On top of that, academic life involves building modules, lesson plans and course structures constantly.
So moving into this kind of non-fiction wasn’t that difficult. It was essentially taking teaching materials, research and experience and shaping them into a book. Honestly, it was easier — and more fun — than it would’ve been if I’d tried to write a “how to write” book without that background.
Val Nolan:
I was already familiar with long-form non-fiction as well. I’d published a monograph based on my PhD, written long academic articles and contributed chapters to various collections. So I knew the rhythm of sustained non-fiction writing.
But what’s important to say is that it was fun. That’s something people outside academia don’t always realise. Teaching is fairly easy to imagine — everyone’s experienced classrooms. But the research side can be incredibly exciting when you’re working on something you genuinely love.
When you get to explore a topic that maybe hasn’t been fully examined before — or shape it into something new and accessible — that’s energising. You can get hyper-focused on it for hours because you’re genuinely enjoying the work.
Tiffani Angus:
It did make keeping the word count under control difficult. These books could easily have been twice as long if I’d let Val have his way.
Val Nolan:
That’s why we ended up writing three of them.
Daniel Willcocks:
That makes sense. And I love that sense of enthusiasm coming through. One thing that really struck me while reading — especially as someone from a horror background — was how much joy there is in the way you both talk about genre and storytelling. It feels very present throughout the book.
Genre Boundaries and Breaking Down “Proper Writing”
Daniel Willcocks:
I’ve come from an academic background in the sense that I graduated from the University of Lincoln doing English and Drama. I never got into teaching, but I have given a few one-off lectures in self-publishing and what I guess is the difference between what counts as “proper writing” in academia — that very highbrow literary fiction — versus spec fic, which is arguably seen as more wild and fun, and not always viewed as highbrow literature.
The joy that comes with creating in these genres really comes across in your introduction. You’re not just trying to define what genres are or what people should know. You’re very clear that these are guidelines — a way to see fiction differently and help people navigate it. That really stood out to me in the writing.
Tiffani Angus:
That was exactly the point, because there’s no hard and fast wall between genres. They wiggle so much and they evolve. That’s why we wrote the books the way we did. For each subgenre or trope we talk about, we give a quick-and-dirty history to show: look, this is where it started, here’s where we’ve ended up, and here’s how it’s evolved.
Now you get to be part of that evolution — the next step. Genres just don’t adhere to fixed rules.
Val Nolan:
And they’re always transparent. That’s something we talk about in the classroom and in the book — people think genres have walls. They don’t. There are holes and gaps, and that’s where the interesting work happens between one genre and another.
Genre, in some respects, is just where you shelve the book in a bookshop. People think it has to be rigid, but it doesn’t. It’s really a way for readers to find work they’re interested in. If you liked one book, maybe you’ll like something similar. It’s a guiding tool.
And I think Tiffani would agree with me — sorry if I’m putting words in your mouth — but this idea that some places focus on “proper writing” or highbrow literary fiction… we don’t really believe in that distinction. Literary fiction — the stuff that wins the Booker Prize or big awards — is just another genre. It’s another niche reading area with its own readership, rules, awards, and conventions.
They’re called literary festivals and they’re full of nerds. The nerds might look like the literati, wearing tweed and monocles, but it’s no different from going to Eastercon, Worldcon, or StokerCon. It’s just another type of reading.
I love literary fiction. I love science fiction. I love fantasy. I love horror. They’re all the same thing. Different people like different stories. Anyone who says one is better than another — that’s just personal preference. Nothing more.
Building a Horror Archive and Categorising Genre
Daniel Willcocks:
That’s very reaffirming. I’ve got so many directions already battling in my head.
At the minute I’m building a website called Devil’s Rock Books, which this podcast is part of. One of the challenges I’ve found is that I’m essentially building an archive for horror. The main USP is that it’s human-created, human-curated horror. I’m trying to stay away from AI slop and create a place where people can get recommendations that aren’t just the top five publisher lists.
It’s not just indie, it’s not just trad — it’s a real attempt to strip away those labels so people who love horror can just come in and enjoy horror.
One of the biggest challenges was that there are so many subgenres in horror alone — never mind science fiction and fantasy. I tried to boil it down to a core structure and ended up with fourteen genres for the site. Even getting down to those fourteen was incredibly difficult.
You’ve got a book tackling that same challenge. What was your thought process behind choosing which genres to include and how you structured each book? Was it based on popularity, personal interest, or something else?
Choosing and Structuring the Genres
Tiffani Angus:
We started by sitting down and brainstorming every subgenre we could think of. We made a huge list. For the first book, we picked what we felt were core elements. Some of them are subgenres and some are major tropes — like astronauts or dinosaurs, which appear in book three.
When we got to the end of the first book — which wasn’t originally called Volume One, just Spec Fic for Newbies — we realised we’d mentioned things like space opera multiple times without actually covering them. So we went back to the list and realised we had enough material for more books. That’s how we ended up with three.
We didn’t have a strict science behind it. We just tried to balance subgenres and major tropes across the books so that one wasn’t all tropes and another all subgenres. Then we’d meet and try to decide the order, which was always the fun part.
Ultimately, we chose things we loved and things with a clear history. For example, romantasy isn’t a full section in book three. We mention it in book two, but it’s so new — and rooted in fantasy and paranormal romance — that it didn’t make sense to give it its own section yet. We needed more history and development to work with.
Val Nolan:
Mm-hmm.
Tiffani Angus:
What would you add, Val? I’m sure I’m forgetting something.
Bringing the Classroom into the Books
Val Nolan:
A lot of the material in book one came directly from classes we were teaching at the time. It was drawn from things we were literally discussing in the classroom that week. Something would come up and we’d think, yeah, that’s worth exploring — let’s port that into the book and expand on it.
Tiffani Angus:
Yeah.
Val Nolan:
Once we sat down and realised we might do more — that we could write another book — we started thinking about book two differently. Book two became a chance to say, okay, we’ve proven the concept. We know we can talk about this crazy, nerdy stuff. Let’s talk about the things we’re personally really into.
So book two includes sections on astronauts, submarine stories, mysterious islands — all those wonderfully tropey, old-school ideas that we’ve always loved. They’re things we don’t always get to cover in the classroom because they’re not always popular with large groups of students. Maybe one or two students in a class want to write about them, but not enough to dedicate full sessions to. Still, there are plenty of people out there who love those ideas.
The third book, in my head, is the one that ties everything together. It’s in conversation with the subgenres and tropes from the first two books. For example, in book one we cover aliens because that’s such a core concept. In book two we talk about first contact stories. Then in book three we start asking: where’s the dividing line between those? Where do they overlap?
We look at things like alien abductions in book three because they sit in conversation with those earlier topics. Book three gave us the chance to really demonstrate that permeability of genre boundaries — the way they overlap and influence each other — that I was talking about earlier.
Tiffani Angus:
I thought you were going to say book three is where you finally answer the question: where are the anal probes? But you didn’t.
Daniel Willcocks:
[Laughs]
Val Nolan:
No, that’s in the alien abduction chapter.
Tiffani Angus:
Exactly! I was waiting for the anal probes and they didn’t happen. Sorry!
Val Nolan:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Daniel Willcocks:
We’re getting a flavour of this book now.
What Is Speculative Fiction?
Daniel Willcocks:
I’m thinking about the people in the Devil’s Rock Discord community and what they’d probably want to pick your brains about. Let’s start with a broader question.
The term “spec fic” gets thrown around a lot, but I think some people don’t fully understand what it means. Could you give us your overview of what speculative fiction actually is?
Tiffani Angus:
Spec fic is short for speculative fiction. At this point it’s basically an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, and horror, because they’re all speculative genres. They all ask “what if?” What if there were aliens? What if there were vampires? What if mushrooms grew out of your face?
It’s just an easy shorthand so you don’t have to say so many syllables. That’s how I think about it, anyway.
Val Nolan:
I’d largely agree with that. The umbrella term idea is exactly how I’d describe it. Spec fic is essentially non-mimetic fiction — it’s not trying to strictly replicate reality. There’s always some kind of change or “novum”, something altered from the real world.
It might be our world five minutes in the future, five minutes in the past, or a version with monsters, secret histories, or some kind of twist. There’s always something different. It’s not trying to mimic reality exactly — it’s trying to do something more exciting or invigorating.
You mentioned science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and those are the main genres we cover, but speculative fiction goes beyond that. In book two we cover the carnivalesque. In book three we include magical realism. These aren’t always labelled as science fiction or fantasy, but they still fall under that broader speculative umbrella.
Sometimes literary fiction writers try to play in those sandboxes — and sometimes they embarrass themselves horribly. If you see that happening, send them a copy of Spec Fic for Newbies. They might need the help. But broadly speaking, speculative fiction is anything non-mimetic — anything that departs from strict realism.
Tiffani Angus:
It’s also a bit of a political term. If you tell some readers a book is science fiction, they immediately say, “Oh, I don’t like science fiction.” But if you call it speculative fiction — or just describe what it’s about — they often realise they already enjoy those stories.
Science fiction isn’t just aliens and UFOs. There’s so much more to it. Part of my job in the world is bringing people over to the dark side and showing them they consume far more speculative fiction than they realise.
peculative Fiction, Classics, and the Stories We Already Love
Tiffani Angus:
You say, “I don’t read science fiction. I don’t read fantasy. I don’t read horror.” But the stuff you’re watching on TV or at the cinema, or even some of the books you’re picking up, actually is this. Spec fic is sometimes used to tamp down on the cooties a bit. I get people to describe what they like so we can get past that wall some people have about genre fiction, where they think, “No, I don’t do that. That’s garbage.”
And it’s like, actually, you do. You just don’t realise you do.
Val Nolan:
They’ve been consuming it all the time without realising it. Half the stuff in these books is descended from the Gothic. It’s descended from Mary Shelley. It’s descended from Gothic horror. It’s all there — it’s just percolated its way out into everything else.
I watched the trailer for the new Wuthering Heights movie the other day and thought, this is Gothic body horror. What the hell is going on here? People are going to go see that and say, “No, I’m not watching spec fic.” But maybe you are. Maybe you kind of are.
People watch TV shows about all these things. They sit down and watch crime dramas — they’re essentially watching forensic procedurals, body horror, people solving mysteries with science. It’s all there.
And the converse is that they read things they think are straight literary fiction, and it’s just fantasy. I read a mainstream literary novel recently about a family in America with a big house, a big farm, making jam. I thought: this is a fantasy. This isn’t reality. It was the most apolitical novel I’ve ever read set in the here and now.
You’re living in a fantasy if you think what’s happening in the world isn’t affecting these characters. But you’ll see those concerns in science fiction, fantasy and horror all the time. Maybe metaphorical, maybe allegorical, but they’re stories about now. Stories about us.
People say, “No, that’s the future,” or “That’s horror nonsense.” But no — that’s a story about how people are seeing the world.
Daniel Willcocks:
People watching on YouTube probably just saw me get very excited there because you hit on something that really irks me. The number of people in my friendship circle I talk to who say, “I write horror.” They reply, “I couldn’t stand reading horror.” But they absolutely love true crime dramas.
What I write is pretend, and they’re watching real people being sliced up and murdered. How is that not horror in itself? It shows how loose these terms are that we’re trying to define.
Tiffani Angus:
Plus, we have this tradition of students being assigned certain things to read in school. I grew up in the American school system, Val grew up in the Irish school system, and some things came across the pond. I’ve talked to parents who say, “My kids should read the classics.”
I ask what the classics are and they list Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe. And I’m like, that’s horror. That’s science fiction. That’s fantasy — or it’s part of all three.
The classics we love — Beowulf, The Iliad, The Odyssey — they are science fiction, fantasy and horror. They have elements of all these things in them and people don’t even realise it. We’ve been baked in it for centuries.
Val Nolan:
You mentioned the Irish school system. Growing up in the Irish school system was a horror in itself — corporal punishment was still a thing. But talking about the classics, people say you have to read Ulysses, this incredible version of The Odyssey. And it is great. It’s fantastic. It’s not as hard as people think.
But you know what’s just as good a version of The Odyssey? Ulysses 31. That old French cartoon. It’s crazy. These stories are constantly being retold and retold and retold.
Tiffani Angus:
O Brother, Where Art Thou? does it too.
Val Nolan:
Exactly. That’s as much a fantasy as anything else, and it’s magnificent. One of the most useful things we used in class as a set text was actually a piece of non-fiction. In the dystopia class I used to teach, it was an interview with a woman who used to be a cable repair person in the States…
Horror in the Real World and the Upsetting of Order
Val Nolan:
One of the most useful things we used in class as a set text was actually a piece of non-fiction. It was an interview with a woman who used to be a cable repair person in the States. She would go into people’s houses to fix their televisions, and the things she saw would chill you to the bone.
People in cages. People being abused. People trapped in horrible relationships where their partners were hurting them. It was terrible, and she couldn’t do anything about it except record what she saw.
We used that as an example for students: these stories are all around us. If you want to write dystopia or horror, it doesn’t have to be set a hundred years in the future in some fascist nightmare. It can be set right here and now. These stories are happening around you.
You don’t always see them — that’s part of what makes them so horrifying. They’re hidden, concealed, withdrawn from us. But once you peel back that curtain, you realise the inspiration for truly terrifying stories is already there. Sometimes you need to look at non-fiction as much as fiction to find it.
Tiffani Angus:
I sometimes wonder if Joe Hill got the inspiration for Best New Horror from that article, because my gosh.
Val Nolan:
I’m not sure, but we should ask him next time we see him.
Daniel Willcocks:
We’re going down the horror rabbit hole here. When I picked up the book, as a horror author who’s been doing this for over ten years, the first thing I did was look at how you define horror.
You describe horror as the upsetting of order — the disturbing of routine. If something is out of place, if something isn’t as expected, that’s the moment horror is born. It really resonated with me. Can you talk about where that idea came from?
Tiffani Angus:
I first read that idea in Stephen King — maybe in Danse Macabre. It’s been a while, and we’ve just finished book three, so my brain is full. But it’s something that kept coming up in research and teaching.
If you think about it, I am very much a “no” on clowns. When I was a kid, that clown in Poltergeist — absolutely not. Because it was out of place. It was wrong. The minute we see something that undermines the status quo, like a doll moving on its own, it’s wrong because we don’t expect it. That’s what freaks us out.
It’s that loss of control, the loss of order, the undermining of the status quo where horror really lives. If you break almost any horror story down, there’s always something that wasn’t supposed to happen — and that’s where the horror comes through.
Daniel Willcocks:
What struck me about that definition is the full spectrum it gives. The upsetting of order can be tiny — like, I had a pen on the table and now it’s gone. Immediately there’s friction, anxiety. Then you can scale that all the way up to world politics and global collapse. Horror exists across that entire spectrum.
Val Nolan:
That example of the pen is perfect. The way we get through our days is by automating so much of the world around us. We assume everything is fine. We “unsee” things, in that China Miéville sense.
When something is wrong — when some part of order is disturbed — it forces us to look. It makes us pay attention to things we’d rather ignore. It makes us study them and realise there are things there we don’t want to see.
That disturbance of order forces us to confront what frightens us. And those are the things that horrify us.
Tiffani Angus:
There’s also a theoretical angle. Farah Mendlesohn, a critic and academic, wrote Rhetorics of Fantasy, and while she’s talking about fantasy, it applies more widely. Different genres operate through different emotional rhetorics.
Horror is deeply tied to feeling — not sentimental in the Hallmark sense, but rooted in emotional response. It’s about how I feel and how the world makes me feel. Science fiction often leans toward logic and evidence. Horror leans toward sensation, perception, and unease.
When we read horror, we’re not always tracking events in a strictly logical way. We’re tracking how something feels wrong, how the world shifts slightly off centre. That’s where the horror emerges.
Horror as Atmosphere, Mode, and Emotional Experience
Daniel Willcocks:
When people ask why I write horror, I often say horror almost isn’t a genre in itself. You have sci-fi, thriller, fantasy — all these structural genres — but arguably romance and horror are feeling genres. They’re plugged into primal emotions.
Fear was a survival driver for early humans. Those early stories — Beowulf and others — were warnings, ways to help people survive and carry knowledge forward.
So when someone asks, “Is this a horror book?” I sometimes hesitate. Technically it might contain horror elements, but a true horror book creates that sustained sense of dread. There’s an underlying tension, a disruption of order that keeps you unsettled all the way through. Have you come across that idea?
Val Nolan:
Yes — it’s atmosphere.
Tiffani mentioned Farah Mendlesohn’s Rhetorics of Fantasy, which I consider one of my holy books. But another excellent text is Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie. It’s a very slim, approachable book that breaks down these emotional atmospheres — weirdness and eeriness — and how they function.
The weird is about something being where it shouldn’t be. The eerie is about something that should be there but isn’t. Again, it comes back to that disruption of order. Fisher explores this in an academic way that’s still very readable. You can sit down on Halloween night and read the whole thing in one go.
That sense of atmosphere runs through horror. It rises and falls in rhythms depending on the author, but it’s always there.
Tiffani Angus:
I also think horror can be understood as a mode.
I’m currently judging the Clarke Award, so I’ve got a hundred books piled up on my floor. In one discussion, someone said, “But it’s horror.” I said, “Yes — but it’s also science fiction.”
You can have horror science fiction. Horror fantasy. Horror doesn’t always function purely as a genre — sometimes it’s the lens through which you tell another kind of story. Frankenstein, for instance, is both horror and science fiction. If Mary Shelley had written it differently, it might still be science fiction, but it wouldn’t necessarily be horror.
Sometimes it comes down to the reader as well. What frightens one person won’t frighten another. That emotional response is subjective. That’s why I often think of horror as a mode rather than a fixed genre.
How the Book Helps Writers Explore Genre
Daniel Willcocks:
One thing I love about the structure of your books is that you don’t just define each genre or subgenre. You include reading examples, prompts, and exercises so writers can actually try working within them.
How do you see readers using these books in the real world? If someone buys the book and puts it on their shelf, what benefit do you hope they’ll get from it?
Val Nolan:
I think they’ll find a welcoming introduction to each genre. More importantly, we’re giving them permission to try new things.
Someone might never have written science fiction, or horror, or fantasy before. They might not even fully understand what those genres involve. Our goal is to say: here’s an overview, here’s where it came from, here’s what it looks like now — and here’s your invitation to experiment.
We wanted to provide enough contemporary examples as well. The historical context matters, of course, but we always bring it forward to the present. We show how genres evolved through the 1980s, 2000s, and today. These are living genres. They’re active right now.
The publishing landscape is shaped by what’s being written and released today, so we ground readers in that reality rather than leaving everything in the distant past.
Then there are the exercises and prompts. These are there to get people writing. To give them structure.
In a classroom, you can’t just say, “Write a Gothic story” and come back an hour later. That doesn’t work for novice writers. You need frameworks. So we give them practical starting points — write a story with these elements, start here and take it somewhere unexpected. Many of these exercises come directly from our teaching.
Ultimately, we want writers to break out of the framework. But you need a framework first in order to do that. And we make it clear that failure is part of the process. Making mistakes is essential. That’s how you learn and improve.
Permission to Fail and the Power of Creative Constraints
Tiffani Angus:
One of the biggest things I’ve seen after years of teaching and coaching writers is how afraid people are of making mistakes. They’re terrified of writing something bad.
And I always tell them: kittens aren’t going to die if you write a bad story. Nothing terrible will happen. It’s just words on a page or a screen. You can change them. You can delete them. Nobody has to see them unless you choose to share them.
The more you mess up, the more you learn what went wrong and how to fix it. If you hold yourself to some impossible idea of perfection, you’ll never reach it. You’ll freeze. You won’t write at all.
So give yourself permission to be terrible at first. That’s part of the process. That’s where the fun is. Failing is essential.
Another important part of the books is the range of examples we include — novels, short stories, TV shows, films, comics, manga. We can’t include everything, obviously, but we try to give a broad sense of the landscape.
In classrooms, students are often told they must read all the classics first. But realistically, nobody has time to read eighty years of science fiction or fantasy before they start writing. You’re writing now. You’re alive now.
So we provide quick histories to show how genres evolved, how current work connects to what came before, without requiring you to spend twenty years catching up. That way, you can start writing now instead of feeling like you have to complete an endless reading list first.
The third thing we focus on is creativity as problem-solving.
If you tell someone, “Go write an urban fantasy novel,” most people freeze. But if you give them a prompt with specific constraints, their brain immediately starts trying to solve the problem.
That’s why each topic in the books includes exercises. Every book covers thirty topics, and each one has two activities — sixty ways to jump in and try something. Constraints spark creativity. They give your brain something to work against, something to solve. Without that, most people don’t know where to begin.
Designed to Be Used, Not Just Read
Daniel Willcocks:
It’s incredibly well thought out. I haven’t read the books cover to cover yet — life has been chaotic and I’ve just moved house — but I’ve dipped in and out of sections and it’s clear how practical they are.
Val Nolan:
They’re not really designed to be read cover to cover anyway. They’re meant to live on your shelf. To be dipped into.
You might read five pages on one subgenre today, come back next week for another. We want these to be working books — battered copies with notes in the margins, pages folded over, carried around in backpacks.
Bring them into workshops. Bring them into classrooms. Challenge your teachers with them. Use them. That’s what they’re for.
Daniel Willcocks:
It’s refreshing to hear that emphasis on contemporaries rather than just classics. When I went through university, the focus was almost entirely on canonical texts. People assume studying English automatically makes you a better writer, but honestly, most of what improved my craft came from reading contemporary authors.
That’s what stands out in your books — the focus on what’s being written now, alongside the historical context. It makes the whole thing feel alive and immediately useful.
Subgenres vs Tropes — What’s the Difference?
Daniel Willcocks:
We’ve talked a lot about genre, subgenre, and tropes. What’s the actual difference between subgenres and tropes? Do people confuse them? How did you apply those distinctions in the books?
Tiffani Angus:
It’s a weird hierarchy. You’ve got motifs, tropes, subgenres, and genres.
A motif is something repeated within a single story that carries meaning. You might see it elsewhere, but within that story it has a specific symbolic role.
A trope appears across many stories. So things like dinosaurs, dragons, vampires, werewolves — those are tropes. They recur across works and genres.
A subgenre feels more complete. It has a recognisable setting, character types, and internal logic. It contains tropes, but it’s more of a self-contained storytelling environment.
That’s how I tend to think about it anyway.
Val Nolan:
Honestly, we also just did some of it on vibes.
I tend to think about it commercially. A reader going into a bookshop is usually looking for a subgenre — epic fantasy, cyberpunk, gothic horror — not a motif. They’re not saying, “I love that motif, where can I find more of it?”
Subgenres are the higher-level organising structures. Underneath them you get tropes, motifs, and all the rest. And sometimes you get sub-subgenres, and sub-sub-subgenres, until you realise these labels only go so far before they stop being useful.
The key thing we emphasise is that none of these are siloed. Everything is connected and in conversation.
Tiffani Angus:
That’s why in books two and three we start cross-referencing sections more deliberately.
If we reference something in the same book, it’s in bold. If we reference something in another volume, it’s underlined. We want readers to see the connections and follow them.
Ideally we’d love an omnibus edition one day so everything can be cross-referenced together. None of these ideas stand alone. They all blend together — like chocolate and peanut butter in a Reese’s cup.
Why Pick Up Book Three?
Daniel Willcocks:
Book three is nearly here. Why should people pick it up? What are you most excited about?
Tiffani Angus:
Swashbuckling fantasy. Archaeologist stories. Fantasy of manners. Fungal horror. I’m ridiculously excited about those.
Val Nolan:
Mad scientists. Alien abductions. Near-death experiences. Bugs. We did a whole section on bugs.
And dinosaurs — which weren’t even on the original table of contents. I just wrote it and told Tiff afterwards.
Tiffani Angus:
I was furious. I wanted dinosaurs.
Val Nolan:
Only slightly sorry.
We also cover terraforming tales, space academies, magic schools, spy-fi. It’s a real mix. And what’s fun is seeing how many of these ideas mirror each other across genres — space academies alongside magic schools, for example.
You start to see how everything connects.
Tiffani Angus:
That’s one of the joys of the third book. You start to see how spec fic intersects with things people don’t always think of as speculative — crime fiction, legal dramas, medical procedurals.
We talk about that in urban fantasy and spy-fi. You can have Law & Order in space. ER on another planet. Crime procedurals with aliens.
It helps readers and writers realise that the stories they already love often sit inside speculative fiction — they just haven’t labelled them that way yet.
Val Nolan:
Or even shows people are already watching without realising it. In the space procedural section we talk about forensic procedurals — bringing sci-fi elements back down to Earth.
You can sit and watch an episode of Bones and think you’re just watching a crime show, but really you’re watching science fiction. They’re loading information into holographic systems, reconstructing events with futuristic tech, analysing impossible data — it’s all speculative. Those science-fictional ideas get pulled from the future or from outer space and applied to everyday storytelling.
Daniel Willcocks:
Lots to be excited about.
Tiffani Angus:
We’re not excited or anything.
Val Nolan:
No, we’re extremely excited. This one’s a great volume. Is this our best one, Tiff?
Tiffani Angus:
I’m just excited because so many sections were fun to write. I got to write about archaeologists and pirates. Pirates! It was brilliant.
Daniel Willcocks:
Message to everyone: pick up a copy. I’ve dipped through the sections, especially the horror parts, and there’s loads I want to revisit. The excitement you’re hearing from Tiffani and Val really does come through in the writing. It feels fun and conversational rather than dry or overly instructive. It feels like ideas being bounced around.
So I encourage people to pick up volume three. But now we’re going into the quickfire round. Because there are two of you, we’ll alternate. One of you answer, then the other. Ready?
Val Nolan:
About 98% ready. Let’s go.
Quickfire Round
Daniel: Do you most commonly read ebooks, paperbacks or audiobooks?
Val: Paperbacks.
Daniel: Character first or worldbuilding first?
Tiffani: Worldbuilding.
Daniel: One writing quirk you can’t write without?
Val: My stupid pen. I need it. Also characters transforming into something new — I love that.
Daniel: Extend the deadline or pull an all-nighter?
Tiffani: Pull an all-nighter. I don’t like being flaky, though I’ve extended deadlines when mental health required it.
Daniel: Teleportation or invisibility?
Val: Teleportation.
Daniel: First drafts fast or slow?
Tiffani: Fast, if I know where it’s going.
Daniel: Unlimited books or unlimited snacks?
Val: Impossible question. I refuse to answer.
Daniel: Talking cat or talking sword?
Tiffani: Talking cat.
Daniel: Favourite writing spot?
Val: Corner table at Starbucks in Aberystwyth. Total cliché.
Daniel: Silence or music while writing?
Tiffani: Music, but no lyrics. Soundtracks only — otherwise I start singing.
Daniel: Final question for both of you: favourite book?
Tiffani: That’s just mean.
Val: Depends on the day. But right now…
(holds up Spec Fic for Newbies)
Cheap answer, but it’ll do.
Tiffani Angus:
Asking somebody their favourite book is like asking which child you love most.
God, no. Why do you have Derrida? Nobody wants Derrida. Once I was done with theory at university, I was done. I never made my students do theory. That is the meanest question ever: what is your favourite book?
Daniel Willcocks:
The Troop by Nick Cutter.
Val Nolan:
You had that ready to go. You knew it was coming.
Tiffani Angus:
You were ready. You knew.
Daniel Willcocks:
I do this every week. I’m on it. That’s okay — we can move past that one if you don’t want to pick one of your babies. Or I’ll let you pick two.
Tiffani Angus:
I’ll pick two then. The Stand, because I read it when I was about eleven, which was a weird time to read it, and I love it. It’s terrible, but I love it. And Erica Jong’s Fanny. It’s dirty as hell, but I love it. I definitely shouldn’t have read it at the age I did. So there you go — two.
Val Nolan:
Okay, I’m done, right? I’ve already chosen. I was going to say there’s a green book coming out… maybe that one. Yes, there it is.
Daniel Willcocks:
You’ve done two already, Val. Spec Fic one and two.
There is a green one coming out — we now know the colour. Final question for you both: where can listeners get their hands on the new book, and where can they find you online?
Tiffani Angus:
Right now, the only place to pre-order the new book is through Luna Press. I can send you the link. We have a Linktree and it’ll be populated with everything — where to get it in the US and UK.
As for me, I have a website under my name. I know my name is spelled oddly, but there are only about three people on the planet with it spelled that way. I’m on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. That’s it for social media. The rest of them are dumpster fires.
Daniel Willcocks:
How about yourself, Val?
Val Nolan:
I’m on Bluesky and Facebook. I should probably update my blog at some point, but that’s basically fossilised deep underground at this stage. Bluesky is where I mostly hang out online.
Daniel Willcocks:
We were talking about archaeology and dinosaurs.
Perfect. So for everyone watching on YouTube, I’m holding up the two books. Everyone listening on the podcast, I’m holding up two books. Spec Fic for Newbies volumes one and two are out now. Volume three releases on 24 March.
That is a wrap. Thank you so much, Tiffani and Val, for joining me this week on The Writer’s Chair podcast.
Tiffani Angus:
Thank you so much for having us.
Val Nolan:
Thanks, Dan. It’s been a lot of fun.
Daniel Willcocks:
And an especially big thank you to you, our listeners, for tuning in. Before you dash off, if you’re craving deeper conversation, writing advice, or just fancy hanging out with fellow readers and storytellers, consider joining the Devil’s Rock community on Discord.
I’m on a mission to build the largest online space for fans of horror and dark fiction — a home where writers and readers connect, create, and thrive together. It’s free, open to all, and always crackling with inspiration.
If you’re ready to pull up a virtual chair, head to devilsrockbooks.com/podcast and jump in.
Until next time, my friends — write bravely and dream dark. Thanks again, guys.
Val Nolan:
Thank you.
Tiffani Angus:
Thanks a lot.
