Matteo L. Cerilli (he/him) is a transmasc author and activist specializing in speculative fiction for all ages. His work features the YA horror novel LOCKJAW (Tundra, 2024); middle grade ghost story SOMETHING'S UP WITH ARLO (Harper Collins Canada, 2025); YA noir BAD IN THE BLOOD (Tundra, 2025); young YA gamer action FATHOM FALL (Bloomsbury, 2026); a featured short story in BURY YOUR GAYS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF TRAGIC QUEER HORROR (Ghoulish Books, 2024); and poetry in Augur magazine.

INTERVIEW

MG: Tell us a bit about your book, Bad in the Blood. What makes it unique?

MLC: Bad in the Blood is a fey-fantasy mystery inspired by film noir detective movies, with a POV split between two estranged stepsiblings, Gristle and Hawthorne. Almost seven years after Hawthorne’s mum succumbed to the madness of Faerie Disorder, resulting in the deaths of 300 fayre-goers (including Gristle’s private detective daddy), Hawthorne struggles to keep her own symptoms in check. When she loses control at a fey-owned nightclub on the same night a burned body is found on the dockyards, the club owner blackmails Gristle into investigating some suspicious activities, accidentally entangling the siblings in a mystery that could destroy their family name.

There are two “unique” elements I had a lot of fun with in BitB. Firstly, there are “clues” set between each chapter, like business cards, newspaper articles, magazine interviews, or diary entries from Hawthorne’s mum. This book juggles quite a few characters, and a lot of history and historical comparisons–adding in these extra elements catches the reader up and makes the world so much more real. Plus, they’re just fun. In a similar vein, the book’s “Faerie Disorder” is an allegory for neurodivergence. In the medieval era, especially, parents of neurodivergent kids often thought their “normal” children were stolen by the fey and replaced with a fey changeling. I decided to indulge that idea. I also took a fast-forward up to the post-industrial 1920s (one of my favourite historical periods to study) and infused feyness into the political threads of the time: labour changes, eugenics, the emergence of youth culture, growing fascism and state violence. I’ve loved every second of building Gristle and Hawthorne’s world–I seriously feel like a kid in a candy store, just adding all the things I want to talk about.

MG: What is your favorite line from your novel?

MLC: Gosh, I have so many. A reader reminded me of this one, though, and it’s been sticking with me lately. It’s the last line of a diary entry from Hawthorne’s mum, as she’s talking about the anti-fey sentiment in the city, her fears for her fey child, and her hopes for the future:

Let tomorrow be kinder, and let us play some part in it.

MG: What inspired Bad in the Blood?

MLC: There are two people I have to credit this novel to. First is my partner, who’s a huge classic movie/film noir detective fan and asked me to write my take on it. I didn’t really know much about the genre (and what I did know was that it was largely misogynistic, often racist/xenophobic/ableist/homophobic, etc etc), but when I stepped my toe in, I found that it’s a genre all about disenchantment, disappointment, and the struggle to affect change in an apathetic world. I can totally relate to that. And frankly, as a queer and trans Italian guy with ADHD, I love the idea of reshaping a genre that wasn’t meant for me.

Growing up with my little sister also gave me a lot to talk about when it comes to the dynamics of a two-sibling household. The binary competition, the saviour/victim complex, the adultified sibling and the infantilized sibling, the golden child and the scapegoat. We chewed each other’s heads off as kids trying to be “the favourite”, which Gristle and Hawthorne do too, until we realized the faults in that. I have so much love and admiration for my little sister, which I hope shines through in this beneath all the sibling bickering.

MG: What messages are you hoping to convey in this novel?

MLC: “We shouldn’t fear what we don’t understand, because we all have more in common than we think.” While this book is full of fey vs. mortal tensions, it’s also full of mortals doing their best to understand or at least empathize with fey. Hawthorne’s mum points out that, while Gristle’s daddy isn’t a fey, he did grow up as a poor juvenile delinquent: he’s distrusted and blamed by society the same way Hawthorne’s mum is. In our real world, our lives are, of course, affected by our identities, but we usually have more in common than we think. If we want that kinder world, we need to stand beside each other with empathy and understanding, to build real solidarity that celebrates our differences.

MG: What got you into writing fantasy?

MLC: I’m an exhausted trans man who hates fact-checking. In a more serious summation, I like a world that’s fully in my control. To me, writing factual historical fiction is like writing a sonnet: you have to work within confines, which can be super rewarding for certain projects, but has to be used with intention. When I want the vibes or themes of a time period without any of the constraints, fantasy is the perfect way to adapt the setting to the characters/plot/themes without worrying that I’m getting it wrong. It also means I can write out political strains that don’t interest me. I don’t want to spend time justifying trans and nonbinary characters or explaining the legality behind Hawthorne’s interracial relationship. So I built a world that’s inherently queer (children are given a placeholder name and a neutral gender until they turn 18, when they pick a new name and “path”/gender) and toned down the historical racism just enough to talk about it without turning the book into a different story altogether.

MG: Who are your favorite authors and/or authors you draw inspiration from?

MLC: I love Margaret Killjoy’s podcasting and her novels (the former was HUGE in filling my historical archives for BitB), Casey Plett always seems to come into my life at exactly the right time, Sami Ellis is the wittiest YA author I know, Andrew Joseph White fuels my anger in the best way possible, and frankly it all comes back to Suzanne Collins for showing me that books can (and should!) say something important. I’m also a big poetry guy. Richard Siken and Terrance Hayes haunt me in the best way.

MG: Would you like to tell us a bit about your activism and how that influences your writing?

MLC: My first brush with activism came in university, when I organized with my campus’s queer service group. Our work was pretty diverse: we hosted a lounge space where queer students could crash between classes, we put funding towards a gender affirming items order to get all sorts of gear for our members, and organized larger street protests with different groups in Toronto. From there, I floated to some other grassroots groups, usually for protest organizing about queer liberation or against police brutality and state violence. There are so many things I learned from this, but the big one for BitB is that our struggles are connected. There’s so much infighting in the protest scene because we’re all coming from backgrounds where we’re used to being ignored or discredited, so we think we have to puff up into attack mode to get our way. But while we do that, the people pinning us down are steadfastly aligned with each other even across ideological differences, because they all stand to gain from our squabbling. That’s a huge part of BitB. We need to find a way to work together even when it seems impossible.

MG: Are you currently writing anything new? Can you tell us anything about it?

MLC: My first adult fiction project is about to head out to submission… it’s a bit aligned with BitB, in that I’m back in a speculative fantasy world that’s vaguely early century-ish with a detective edge, but now with a stronger look at labour rights and immigration and body autonomy under capitalism. The story follows Luciano “Lark” Ferro, the son of indebted immigrants who literally give their blood to keep the city running. After Lark’s fiancé is killed by a mafia on the rise who begins targeting the police as well, Lark joins forces with the cops to go undercover, but gets a lot more than he bargained for with the mafia’s idealistic “bagman”. The story’s grim and bloody, and everyone in it is kind of terrible–I love it. It also features multiple trans characters, because a world where you’re paid to mutilate yourself is such an interesting playground for talking about trans bodies.

MG: What is the best writing advice you have ever received?

MLC: When in doubt, simplify. I’m a huge overwriter, so my early drafts end up cluttered with threads that don’t really go anywhere, or little details that aren’t important, or conversations that last too long because I’m trying to explain myself. Now, when I plan my projects, I’m critical of every element. Every character, setting, theme, and symbol needs to be essential: if the story can exist without it, I either need to find a way to thread the idea in more strongly or just chop it. It’s also better for just getting the story finished, in my opinion.

MG: Where can people find you online?

MLC: I’m most active on my Instagram @matteolcerilli. I also have a Substack under the same name where I post only my major updates (releases, events, cover reveals, etc.) if you don’t want to watch me feed content into the Instagram algorithm.

MG: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

MLC: Support trans authors. Like right now. Go right now!

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