Dark Veil Society - Despoina Kemeridou

The Dark Veil Society is a collective of independent horror authors united by a shared love for the eerie, the unsettling, and the unknown. Founded by a group of self-published writers, we are storytellers who breathe life into nightmares and find beauty in the macabre. Our mission is to craft tales that linger long after the last page, to champion the dark corners of fiction where others fear to tread, and to uplift the voices of fellow creators walking this shadowy path.

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Interview

1. Tell us who you are.

I'm Despoina Kemeridou — a multi-genre author and poet from Thessaloniki, Greece. I write across genres, but darkness runs through all of it one way or another, and my poetry sits closest to it. I've self-published seven books so far, five of them poetry collections. When I'm not writing, I design book marketing visuals for other indie authors through my studio, Graphindy.

2. What are you currently working on? Can you tell us a bit about it?

Right now, I'm working on a new dark poetry collection. Like most of my poetry, it explores themes of loss, grief, trauma, and mental health — the heavier things that are hard to put into words, which is exactly why I keep trying to.

3. What is most difficult about building your brand?

Figuring out who my audience actually is, and what makes me stand out among everyone else in the same space. There are so many voices in poetry and dark fiction; finding the people your work is really for, and carving out what's distinctly yours, is the hard part.

4. Where do you draw your inspiration from?

Darkness, mostly — it's where my head naturally goes. It rarely shows up on schedule; a line or an image will hit me when I'm least expecting it, usually sparked by something dark I've watched, read, or heard. I don't go looking for it so much as it finds me.

5. How do you make time for personal projects around your other commitments?

I keep set hours for client work during the day, and once I'm done, I turn to my own projects. If I'm not feeling it on a weekday, the weekend usually picks up the slack. It really comes down to organizing my time well.

6. What do you need in your workspace?

Coffee and a notebook — cliché, I know. I like silence when I'm doing design work, but music when I'm writing; the right soundtrack pulls the words out.

7. What piece of horror has been the most inspirational for you?

It's less about one specific title and more about a kind of darkness — the quiet, psychological sort that gets under your skin, rather than shock or gore. The horror that comes from real feelings, from grief and the things we don't say out loud, is what's always stuck with me and shaped how I write.

8. What has been the most difficult scene you've written? Why was it difficult?

A certain character's death. It was hard because I'd spent almost an entire book building them, living with them, and then they were gone in a single paragraph. Saying goodbye to someone you created that carefully isn't easy.

9. Have you ever written something that changed the way you think about the world?

Several of my own poems. Writing them, I ended up finding myself inside the words — and somewhere in that, I learned to see the world a little differently than I did before.

10. What advice would you give to others?

Keep going, even when no one's watching yet. Protect your time, build the habit, and don't wait to feel inspired to show up for your own work.

11. Do you have any other talents or hobbies? Tell us about yourself!

Outside of writing and design, I'm a big gamer — currently deep in Aion 2. I also read a lot (no surprise there) and love photography; I'm mostly drawn to capturing nature and the mood in a shot.

12. How do you develop your characters? Are any of them based on people you know?

They might carry traits from people I know, yes — and some carry traits of myself. Mostly I feel like my characters build themselves as the story unfolds… or maybe it's the other way around. I can never really tell.

13. What is your dream project you hope to complete?

To one day write something that outlives me — a collection or a story people keep coming back to, that makes someone feel a little less alone in their own darkness.

See more about Despoina and her novels HERE.