Luke Geldmacher, writer of the novella ‘Blood on the Snow‘, was gracious enough to participate in this interview regarding his book and the thought process behind the characters and the story. He is the latest to go Beneath The Macabre.

“Blood on the Snow” is incredibly intense right off the bat, within 2 chapters. What made you want to speed up the process of the action of the story?

I grew up reading Goosebumps and American Chillers books, and those stories are geared more toward a younger audience with a shorter attention span. As much as I love long series and interconnected stories, I wanted to try and do the same thing for an adult audience. Short, fast-paced, adult horror that you can pick up and get through without having to invest a lot of time in it.

The creature is fierce in this story, and such a powerful being. What spurred the idea to choose the nantiinaq as the would-be antagonist? And would you say it’s the antagonist or just a force of nature?

When I was originally thinking about the story, I wanted something that I hadn’t seen done before. In my research, I came across the nantiinaq and was intrigued by the stories and folklore surrounding it. Whether or not the nantiinaq is an antagonist depends entirely upon the reader’s interpretation of the story. I will say the nantiinaq, while representing a force of nature, is more than just that. He is his own character, with a backstory and agency in the decisions he makes.

“Blood on the Snow” reads like a slasher (horror) film. Was this intentionally done?

I can’t say that this was intentionally done. When I write a story, I usually plot out the broad strokes of everything and then figure out how I want to get all that down as I write the story. It makes for an extensive editing process, but I discover a lot about the story as I go, which keeps it interesting for me. More than one person has told me the story plays out like a movie, and my only answer to that is that’s what the story looks like in my head. I’m glad it translated well to other people.

Is the nantiinaq acting on behalf of Mother Nature? The way you wrote it in its chapters seemed as if it is doing the will of the natural beings.

The way I envisioned the nantiinaq was as an avatar and protector of the environment it lives in. He’s more than a territorial animal, though there are certainly elements of that. The nantiinaq has been around for a long time, and has seen the changes in the environment through human agency and actions. It was perfectly content to reside in its territory, but not only was that protected area violated, the hunters acted in a way the nantiinaq found intolerable.

From your viewpoint, is the villain the nantiinaq or Marcus? And why?

From my perspective, Marcus was always the villain. He was the catalyst for the story taking place. His actions led to the direct death of several people, and he acted entirely in his own self-interest for the entirety of the story. The nantiinaq might play the antagonist, but Marcus was always the villain.

Would you consider Sila a Final Girl? She was definitely a strong character and was written to be the last woman standing, it seemed.

I’d say she’s a Final Girl. She’s brave, resourceful, and faces the monster at the end of the story. Her fate wasn’t decided until I was writing those chapters. My beta readers were split down the middle when it came to what they wanted for her. Ultimately, I made the decision we see in the story, and I’m happy with it. I like Sila as a character, and while she doesn’t have the happiest of endings, I think she found something in herself that wasn’t there at the beginning of the story.

The nantiinaq appeared to enjoy eating parts from the victims that it viewed as warriors, people it deemed worth eating. Was there any special sustenance it received doing that?

The folklore around the nantiinaq attributes to it a lot of seemingly supernatural abilities. I touch on some of that in the story itself, like how quickly it regenerates from wounds. While there is some significance to the parts it eats, and from whom, it has more to do with its culture than anything. The nantiinaq is a warrior and a hunter, and it respects those it sees that reflect those attributes. It will eat anything for sustenance, but taking the heart or brain of a worthy opponent…it believes it gets a piece of that for itself. That consuming those parts imbues it with some of the traits from the fallen. Maybe it’s more right than it knows.

The ending was harsh! I was slightly heartbroken. Do you think it ends there for the nantiinaq, or is there another book ahead?

The collection of stories I’m writing is currently all conceptualized as standalone novellas. That doesn’t necessarily mean this is the last time we hear from the nantiinaq. There could be a prequel, a sequel, I left it open-ended for a reason. I liked writing the nantiinaq, and I wanted the possibility of bringing him back. But that depends on a lot of things, including interest from readers. If people would like to see more of him, I already have some ideas.