Author Rachel Martens

Rachel M. Martens is a Wisconsin based writer who penned the Poe gothic thriller series, including Poe: Nevermore (2013), a First Place winner in Chanticleer Book Reviews and Media’s Paranormal Awards, as well as the short horror collection Midnight Hour (2017), the YA romantic thriller Metalhead (2019), and the conspiracy thriller Patriots' Dance (2024).  Her short fiction has also appeared in the anthologies, Twisted Love (2021), Stranger Than Truth (2021), and Anthology of Campfire Stories (2025). We met at Milwaukee Horror Con, and I was thrilled that she wanted an interview.  

I find it fascinating that you are one who does writing in the midnight hours. I say this because it is widely known that the brain is normally at its sharpest in the morning. How do you minimize distractions or defeat fatigue to fuel creativity at that time?

I have always been a night owl and actually do some of my best thinking, especially writing, after dark. I think there is something in the darkness, the quiet, and the solitude that help my brain let go of any of the real-world things it spins with during the day. This allows me to focus on the fictional worlds I write in. Fatigue is sometimes a problem, and if a little caffeinated tea is not enough to fuel me, I accept that whatever I was working on was not ready to come to the page just yet anyway. When the writing is flowing and the scene is right, though, the high of good writing can carry me through all night. About 90% of my most recent book, "Poe: Living Tomb," was written like this in large ten thousand plus word chunks typed sometime between the hours of 4:00pm and 6:00am. 

You have been very open about not posting often on social media. Nowadays, being active on these platforms is crucial to building your brand. Has this choice ever had a negative effect on you as an author?

I will admit to eyeing the number of Amazon reviews garnered by certain Book Tok success stories quite jealously, but not enough to spend more time on social media. All authors would love to be able to reach more readers (me included), but I have found that social media is not good for my mental health and, by extension, my writing. For now, I am prioritizing the writing itself and convention appearances, where I can meet new readers personally and build a cult following from the ground up. Maybe if I can get better at opening up Instagram just for marketing, not doomscrolling, I will start posting more. 

We are both Wisconsinites. From your perspective, does our state offer a great deal of incentives or inspiration for writers as a whole? Secondly, please share some of your favorite events you have participated in here so other writers can attend them.

I absolutely find inspiration here, and I have attended some pretty special events. When I was in high school, a very supportive English teacher took me to the Creative Writing Festival that UW-Whitewater holds for young writers. This was my first experience at a writing conference and my first experience publicly reading a story I wrote. It was a huge deal for me and I highly recommend it. A lot of Wisconsin's communities and small bookstores host local author book fairs, and some of which I have attended with my books. I've also found the many craft fairs Wisconsin offers to be very welcoming to authors looking to sell books. As a horror writer, I had a booth at Milwaukee Horror Con the last two years and really loved that experience. Personally, though, my inspiration comes from the Northwoods, the quiet, clean air and the black skies full of stars. I love traveling for my writing and meeting readers, but real peace grounds me and gives my mind the space it needs to create, and I find that at home deep in the woods here in Wisconsin. 

I often see you credit your husband Jordan for the many ways in which he supports you. Tell us more about him, and also, how he has helped in part to shape you into a more successful professional? 

I could not have asked for a more supportive husband than Jordan. We have been married nine years and have been through a lot together. He is the kind of person who is truly a rock. That phrase gets used a lot, but in this case, I really mean it. Jordan is an immovable object in the face of any and every unstoppable force. Nothing shakes him. I am an overthinker and my brain tends towards worst-case scenario thinking (which is an unfortunate side effect and an asset to writing thrillers). Jordan does not overthink and is amazing at helping me calm down and think clearly, no matter what, which really has made me a stronger person and a stronger professional. He never doubts that I can do something, and when I am really stuck, he helps me work through it. Writer's block, nerves about social situations, procrastination...whatever is dragging me down, he is always there to help cut me free. I bounce ideas off him when I'm struggling with a snag or a block writing, and I credit him with helping me troubleshoot several huge snags in my recent books. He knows how to make me laugh when I need it most and he always believes in me. He travels with me to almost every convention and event I bring my books to, helps me haul all these heavy books around, and sits with me all weekend telling everyone who will listen about these books his wife wrote. He's wonderful and having that kind of support has been invaluable to me, as I am pursuing the kind of career that only works if you commit fully and believe in yourself entirely. I never would have finished "Poe: Living Tomb" without his support. We had a few extremely helpful brainstorming sessions together, coupled with his emotional support and presence in my life. I really can't say enough nice things about him. I love him to death. 

Would you recommend that most writers join a writer's association, and if so, why? Are you also joining the Writers Guild? 

As a generality, I don't put much stock in writers' associations, especially for indie authors like me who often don't meet the membership criteria or only qualify for a lower membership tier that includes less benefits. My perspective on these is that their main benefit is credibility, which can be very important in the old guard traditional publishing world in which writers' associations were born. In the indie publishing world, though, a typical reader doesn't know or care about what associations a writer may be in at the moment. It matters only that they can find your book and get excited enough about it to jump in and read it.  

With that in mind, rather than a writers’ association membership, I focus my networking efforts on conventions and craft fairs. This is where I can interact directly with new readers across the country, and some of whom become diehard fans who buy every new book and recommend it to everyone they meet. Others are valuable industry connections I can secure organically just by being myself and sharing my books with them without any gatekeeping or membership dues involved. I will not namedrop, but by being a vendor at a recent horror convention I had a chance to have a real conversation with and befriend someone who played Ghostface in a "Scream" movie. Now, that new friend has bought one of my books. I cannot make friends like that any other way, no matter what writers associations’ I may join – however, at a convention it’s natural. I have also made connections with indie filmmakers, convention runners, audiobook narrators, graphic artists, podcasters/media personalities, and of course - other writers. I met some incredible people at Poe Fest International, where Poe fans gather from around the world. Maybe there is a value in a membership with groups like the HWA or the Writers Guild, and I may join one or two of those groups someday. For now, I just try to be authentically myself and place my books in the hands of people who will love them. 

Your written work is within the thriller/horror genre, which has been experiencing an uptick in sales. What is it about this type of prose that you appreciate? Additionally, your catalog of books contains one paranormal romance. Might you gravitate more towards this type of writing down the road?

I love thrillers. There is something about the raw emotion and the power that comes from fighting incredible odds alongside the characters that have always called to me, and I think that's what calls to a lot of horror/thriller fans. I love the high stakes of horror, and I love the strength that comes from facing fear and walking away alive and wiser. Even as a little kid, I would write picture books that had housefires and skeletons walking around in them. I occasionally read and write lighter things, but the life-and-death plotting of thrillers is my passion. I do have a paranormal romance in my catalog called "Metalhead" which I am working on a sequel for, and I am sure I will write more paranormal romance in the future. All of my work has at least some element of romance, including my horror writing. I do enjoy writing romance, as well as other genres like fantasy and sci-fi. The trick is that I can't seem to help myself; for even in my romance writing, I always end up with a tragic backstory and a villain who gets brutal justice. Maybe I ought to give dark romance a shot...now there is a genre trending right now. 

You have said that Poe: Living Tomb was your hardest book to write. Can I ask why, and approximately how long it took you to complete this piece?

"Poe: Living Tomb" was difficult because when I first started working on it, I did not really understand what it was about and the misunderstanding I had didn't fit with where I was in my head. I had a very detailed outline for it, which is more than I usually have when I start a book, and I thought it was going to be a fairly typical detectives-hunting-a-serial-killer story. The main character, Poe, was at a pretty good place in her life at the start of the book and feeling strong and confident, and I thought this book would include some difficult moments for her but would mostly be a continuation of the upward trajectory of her character arc. None of this fit with my personal life at the time, which is a problem because I feed a lot of my emotions into my writing. I was dealing with a lot of self-doubt, fear, and sadness, and missing deadlines for the project because I was blocked on it only made it harder. I couldn't connect with the story while I was feeling all that. Including procrastination and angsting, this book took a little over a year to write, but almost all of the actual writing happened in less than two months, after the story started to click for me. What broke the dam was realizing that "Poe: Living Tomb" wasn't as cut-and-dry of a story as I expected. It was actually at its core a story about how recovery is not linear and about how sometimes things in life go catastrophically bad, and we have to choose to keep fighting anyway. That is what I really connected with; that no matter how life kicks us while we are down, we can still choose to stand up, spit out the blood, and come back for another round. This book was grueling to write, but in the end my main character, who has been through absolute hell and battles crippling depression, chose to literally claw her way out of a grave rather than give up. If she can do that, I can do anything. In the end, this was the hardest book I have written, but also the most personally rewarding. 

How has Edgar Allan Poe left a handprint on your personal publications?

Edgar Allan Poe is everywhere in my work. He is the inspiration behind the plot of my "Poe" series, which is about a young woman who discovers Edgar Allan Poe's direct descendent that has inherited a family curse that takes the form of his stories. In those books, Edgar appears as a minor character in the form of a ghost trying to assist his descendant, and his stories come to life in twisted, modern forms to haunt the main character. The biggest impact Edgar Allan Poe has had on my work, though, would be in how his style and philosophy have informed mine. The similarity in subject matter is obvious, of course, but so much of the way that I write is because of things I learned reading Poe. I feed a lot of raw emotions into my writing like he did. My plotting and story arcs are very character-driven, and my characters are flawed, human, and often not entirely sane. My writing style is not just first-person like Poe's typically was but also can be very stream-of-consciousness in its pacing, like his. Just like Poe, I choose to write about incredibly intense and emotional moments in characters' lives and not to shy away from the darkest aspects of those moments. None of this was intentional, by the way, but looking back at my own work I can see the weight of Poe's influence, and I am grateful to him for making me the writer I am.  

Finally, are there any other upcoming events or endeavors for 2026 you wish to mention?

After Louisville Horror Con, I will be taking a break for a few months to focus on writing before getting back to traveling for spooky season this fall. I have a lot of work in progress I am eager to give some attention to, including the sequel to "Metalhead," the final installment in the "Poe" series, and a new project I am working on which is a horror series set in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I am looking forward to a quiet summer and hoping that when I hit the convention circuit again this fall it will be with one or two new books in tow.  

More information on Rachel is here: HOME | Rachel M. Martens - Author