Game Talk - Priya Sharma

I first met Priya at an Edge-Lit convention the better part of ten years ago, after hearing this name in reverential tones among peers. And, on meeting for the first time, I was asked, 'if I wrote horror' - establishing common ground. Anyhow. The short form. The long game. Pen and paper. And excitement. Priya Sharma gets into the basics.

1. For those who don't know, who are you?

I’m an unknown beyond the indie press as I’ve never written a novel or done anything particularly mainstream. I write short stories and novellas, normally in the realm of horror and speculative fiction. I’ve been fortunate enough to be published by Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Reactor.

My short story “Fabulous Beasts” was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award. “All the Fabulous Beasts”, a collection of some of my work from Undertow Publications, won a Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award winner, and was a Locus Award finalist.

“Ormeshadow”, my first novella (from Reactor), won both a Shirley Jackson Award and a British Fantasy Award, and was a Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire finalist.

“Pomegranates” (Absinthe Books), my second novella, won a World Fantasy Award, and was a finalist for a British Fantasy Award and a Shirley Jackson Award.

My love of the short form has been a limiting factor, but I can’t help myself.

2. Game talk – how do you organise and manage your game? How has it evolved?

I’m a shamefully slow writer but I play a long game. I take projects with a long lead in period as I like time for ideas to develop. That allows me to see connections I wouldn’t otherwise.

I think each story needs its own strategy. I like to research. I collect images and make a lot of written notes that might be useful later.

I juggle work/life/family just like everyone else. Fitting in time to write can he challenging. Finding headspace is even more difficult. I work better in chunks of an hour or two, maximum, working in sections. The thought of uninterrupted hours to write is intimidating. I write longhand because I think better with a pen in my hand. (I read with a pen in my hand, which is another story.) I edit as I type up.

When I started out, I sometimes went through up to thirty drafts of a story. I tied myself to that process for a few years, believing it was something that I had to do. I didn’t understand that was me learning how to write. Evolving is letting go of things that aren’t useful anymore. Now I write a lot of the story in my head, long before I’m at the page. Recognising that has been important because I used to beat myself up for not physically writing all the time, and that guilt was becoming counterproductive.

3. Talk us through one of your biggest achievements in your game – give us the story behind it. How did it play out?

I’ve been very lucky with my stories as I’m a small fry, working on the shorter end of the spectrum.

I think that I’m best known for “Fabulous Beasts” and have a lot to thank that story for. It started as a fairy tale about a princess in a tower, a modern tower block, but it took a long time to make it work. It’s one of the few times where a character has been vivid enough to tell me what their story was. It took me off on a whole new track. It was a glorious feeling. I’ll always be indebted to Ellen Datlow for taking it for Tor.Com (now Reactor).

“Pomegranates” is the most ambitious thing I’ve written. It’s a novella in three parts, based around the Persephone myth. I’m not sure how much people consider me a writer as I’m not a novelist, but for me the novella is the most exquisite form.

I wrote the first two sections from the point of view of the two central characters but I was short of my minimum word count. I didn’t want to add filler for the sake of it. It took me a while to figure out that there was a third character’s story that needed to be told. That changed everything.

4. Given how ambitious Pomegranates was, how is your craft in the wake of it with your stories that follow? Does Pomegranates still stand out from your following successive as ambitious, or do those subsequent works show more of that daring and ambition?

I have to be honest- I feel like a new writer each time that I start a new story. It always feels difficult. What I've done before becomes irrelevant in the face of the empty page.

I've only been writing short stories since Pomegranates, so their scope is much narrower. I've had a project that I've been researching on and off for years. It's quite complex but Pomegranates has given me a bit of confidence about having a go. You can only research for so long. It's in the writing that you work out what you need to do.

5. It's great if things go according to plan. Tell us about when it didn't; how did you handle it? What were/are those challenges?

Rejections still sting. Thankfully they’re less frequent than they used to be, but they still happen. You’d think I’d be over that by now.

I don’t mind stories not going to plan. I find that exciting. There was one story that got away from me though. I wrote a story called “Mercury” for Ellen Datlow’s Alice in Wonderland anthology Mad Hatters and March Hares. It was about hat production, mercury poison and industrialisation. Alice and her father moved between the real world and that of Alice in Wonderland. I wanted there to be another layer, where she moves to the world of Charles Dodson as Alice Liddell. I was hugely frustrated that I couldn’t make that final leap work.

I still think about that story. It’s a thorny reminder of the huge gap between my creative ambition and ability.

6. Give a pep-talk to someone on game in your field.

You’re unique. You have a unique point of view. Write about what excites you. Excitement is infectious. Your readers will catch it. Do you have interests or passions outside writing? Can you draw on these?

It’s okay to be despondent too. And to have bad writing days. Just keep turning up. If you need to step out and go for a walk, that’s okay.

It’s difficult but don’t compare yourself to other writers.

7. Promo for website / links:

Last year I only had two stories in print. The first was “Piglet”, a story about modern slavery, which was published in Fever Dreams, edited by Mark Morris for Flame Tree Publishing.

The second was “The Bright Day” for Ellen Datlow anthology, Night & Day.

It’s part of the Saga Doubles series, with a double cover - Dreadful Dark: Tales of Nighttime Horror / Merciless Sun: Tales of Daylight Horror. I wanted a go at writing horror set in bright light.

My latest story is in Issue 15 of Parsec. It’s “Lemuralia” and it’s about the Roman massacre of the Druids on Anglesey. Lemuralia is the ancient Roman ritual to protect the home from vengeful spirits (or lemures).

There’s more coming out in 2026, that have yet to be announced.

Website: priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com

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