A Conversation with Sarah R. New
Sarah R. New (she/her) has been writing since she was six. She specialises primarily in horror or fiction with horrific elements, but also writes speculative fiction and non-fiction. Her self published travel memoir, The Great European Escape, was released in 2023, and her Gothic horror novella, Amissis Liberis, was published in 2024. Sarah lives in the UK but frequently travels internationally. She can be found on Bluesky, Instagram, and X @aldbera or at sarahrnew.wordpress.com.
Sarah’s short story, “O’er All the Lochs and Into the Seas,” can be read in Issue no. 1 of Sabr Tooth Tiger Magazine.
Camila: Firstly, I wanted to say I enjoyed reading your piece. I learned a bit about folklore and I enjoyed the descriptions, which were vivid and simple, yet powerful. I just wanted to know a little bit about you, where you’re from, and what led you to writing and submitting this.
Sarah: I’m based in the UK! I grew up with quite a big attachment to folklore and fairy tales. I was that kid who read all the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales and Brothers Grimm. So it's been something that I've been interested in, and I've been writing since I was a kid. I only really started writing more horror adjacent stuff in the last couple of years. I've written a piece previously about the fae, but Kelpies I was always fascinated by, so I decided to write one. I think it's so interesting to explore folklore and these traditional stories that are held down through a more modern construct, so I tried to explore grief with the Kelpie because they always seemed interlinked in my mind.
Camila: Tell me about your experience writing this piece specifically.
Sarah: I had a very specific image that just came to mind and it was just somebody holding on to the Kelpie and when I started to explore that image, just playing around, it was very obvious to me that it was set on this remote little beach with a cliff and a house, with a very isolated perspective. The story sort of brought itself out of there. The Kelpie is part of Scottish folklore, and there's a very famous attraction just outside of Edinburgh called the Kelpies, which is these two big statues of horses. So I said, well, obviously this little place is in Scotland. The more that I started to play around with the image, and just sort of write about the setting, the more the story developed. With the whole little house on the cliff being isolated, grief just seemed to make the most sense for where the story was going.
Camila: For sure. Those images are very haunting, and I definitely detected that there's a lot of Scottish influence with this. It was interesting how the bridle is what controls it. Can you elaborate about the horse representing grief? And is the story about the struggle of letting go?
Sarah: To me, it was not necessarily about letting go but growing up, because it obviously revolves around Hamish and his father. I tried to do a bit of a dual narrative where he flashed back a bit. So for me, it was more about relating to my own experiences of when you grow up and having those memories, but it still is so powerful to you, even if something happens as a child. Like when you get those random flashbacks to your childhood, one really weirdly specific thing, and then it sort of brings everything up for you again.
Camila: Yeah, it kind of takes you for the ride. I had some questions about you, like your creative process as well. How do you access your most creative headspace?
Sarah: I think sometimes I'm a little bit bizarre because I don't have any rituals of the sort. I don't have a writing routine. I've always been very, very imaginative, and I've been writing since I was literally six years old. I seem to find inspiration in everything. I'm one of those people who has really, really vivid dreams. This is kind of where this story came from. It feels very dreamscape-y to me, probably because I just had this dream, the vision of Hamish holding onto the horse. I also travel quite a lot so I get very inspired from that, I've been to Scotland quite a few times. I think when you're out of your usual situation, your usual location, it can be very inspiring. So I sort of pick up these little ideas and I put them away and say, I'll come back to you at some point when it's right.
Camila: Yeah, that's awesome. Do you ever write it down? Because I know personally, I have terrible memory, so I know I have to do it.
Sarah: My phone notes app is full of one-line notes. I've got so many of them. I've got a whole notebook filled with so many more ideas than I will ever be able to write. I keep them all centralized in one place now. When the next project's done, I've got another, and I can find what I'm going to do next. I'm quite lucky in that I write down as much detail as I can and they stay inspiring to me. But sometimes you just have to let it percolate a bit and come back to it.
Camila: Do you have any non-writing hobbies that inform your writing? You already mentioned traveling. Care to elaborate?
Sarah: Definitely traveling and I would also say cooking and baking as well. I don't know why I tend to write food into so much stuff. I've got a few pieces out that are completely centered around food, but I've also written other projects where I have characters who show love through food. It's very bizarre, I don't know why… I think it’s probably because of how I grew up with my family. My mum is one of those people, she's cooking loads of food to show her love. She's the person at Christmas who's inviting everyone around and sending them home with little doggy bags and stuff like that, so I think I've really picked that up from my mum. Now, if I'm doing a horror piece, or if I'm doing a more speculative or romantic piece, there normally is a character who's trying to feed someone or a metaphor to do with food at some point.
Camila: Is there anything else that you want to mention about your craft, process, or intention?
Sarah: Nothing that I can think of… I had to look up which piece this was actually because I've just been in Sweden doing a retreat for my master's degree, so my mind was a bit jumbed.
Camila: What are you studying?
Sarah: Creative practice. I'm writing a double novella for my project. So it's really intimidating.
Camila: Woah! There's an art in that as well, art in the short story, that I think a lot of people overlook. It's hard to make something so captivating in such a short time.
Sarah: I am a very big advocate for the novella, and people are like, oh, but it's so short. It's like, yeah, it's short, but you can do so much.
Camila: I feel the same about short films, I’ve worked on a couple and sometimes people don’t know how to properly manage the time that they have there.
Sarah: Oh, cool. My background's in film studies.
Camila: I feel like every other video essay says that this movie would be better as a ten episode show, and I mean maybe, but it’s really just that everything is “content” nowadays.
Sarah: I think also a lot of people want everything explained these days and you see that very much on YouTube. It's like the ending of “this film” explained. Sometimes it doesn't have to be explained. That's the beauty in it. You can just go off and make your own conclusions!
