I knew there was a reason why I was feeling so good about the near future.
As many of you know, I have a new collection of short stories, Hannah and Other Stories, to be released sometime this year by BSC Publishing Group. This is a terrifying collection filled with stories about ghosts, budding serial killers, and carnivorous horses, among other things. And I’ve been updating you all as developments occur.
Well, I have a new development: the cover will be revealed next week! What day, exactly? I can’t tell you. What does it feature? I won’t tell you. All I can say is that after I sent BSC’s graphic artist some ideas, they ran with them and created some great mock ups. From there, we worked together to make the cover everything I hoped it would be, and I think the final result is, to use my best French, fucking fantastic.
Anyway, I look forward to showing you the cover next week, and I hope you’re looking forward to seeing it. Once that cover is out there, the process to getting the book ready for publication and selecting a release date should speed up a bit. Just you wait and see, it’s going to be awesome.
And in the meantime, if you want to support me, or if you’re just looking for a creepy read, you can find all my work on the Books page of this blog. From plant/human hybrids and ancient gods to mafia-hunting serial killers and mad scientists, I got a bit of everything, so why not check it out and see what tickles your fancy?
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’m off to fill my belly before getting into a groove of creativity and terror. Until next time, good night, pleasant nightmares, and look forward to whatever’s coming next week.
Some of you may remember my interview with Sarah Hans last year about her debut novel, Entomophobia (click here if you’d like to read it). I was interested enough that I bought my own copy (Sarah gladly signed it for me) and I began reading it recently. And while I don’t have a lot of time to read these days, I was able to get through it quite quickly. So, what did I think? Let’s find out.
Entomophobia follows Meri, a woman who has just left her abusive husband and is trying to get her life back together. However, it seems life is conspiring against her at every turn: her aloof mother is unsupportive; the judge ruled that her soon-to-be ex-husband will have primary custody of her daughter, Magda; and, after having to steal supplies for an art show she’s part of, she gets cursed by a tiny man with insectile features. The curse is changing her, forcing her to face her darkest fears. And if she doesn’t do something quick, she’s going to lose what little she has.
One of the biggest strengths of this novel is Meri. She’s a fully realized character, sympathetic yet flawed. Within a few chapters, I felt like I really knew her, and that made it easy to empathize with her pain and fear and the woes of her life. There’s also a strong supporting cast, especially in the character of her mother, whom I wanted to strangle at times.
Another of the book’s strengths is the human-based horror. We see a lot of characters being cruel, uncaring, or just plain awful. This is obvious in Meri’s ex-husband Adam, who is a huge piece of shit, but also in her mother, in random teens in a bad neighborhood, and even in her ex-boyfriend Dan, though he does mean well at times. Whether they realize how their actions effect others or not, it’s horrifying to see just how much they don’t give a shit at times about the damage they cause.
The body and supernatural horror isn’t anything to sneeze at, either. A lot of scenes in this book will make your skin crawl as you read them, and the description of some of the characters, especially the less-human ones, really bring them to mind and make it easy to imagine what they might look like.
I do have some gripes, however. I did feel like the book could have been longer. As I said at the beginning of the review, it’s a short book, and I feel like it could have been a bit longer. Perhaps some scenes could have been drawn out more or added in, especially ones involving the curse or Meri’s phobia. I would have been good with some expansion.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving Entomophobia a straight 4. It’s a quick, creepy read with a great cast and an engaging story that I recommend.
On a sad note, you might have trouble finding copies. As mentioned in my interview, Entomophobia’s publisher closed and was only printing new copies through the end of 2022. So right now, I have a kinda-rare first edition.
The good news is, Sarah tells me Dragon’s Roost Press will be re-releasing the book sometime this year, possibly this summer. So if you’re interested in getting Entomophobia when it’s available again, check out Sarah’s Twitter and you’ll find out with the rest of us when the book is available again.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. I’m off to read some more before heading to bed (I’d rather do some more writing, but I know if I start now, I’ll never get to bed at a decent time). Until next time, good night and pleasant nightmares!
The first season of the Scream TV series. The show deserves more attention, if you ask me.
Odd topic for my two thousandth post, but hey, not every milestone post is going to be something big and amazing. Besides, this needs talking about before Friday.
And what’s Friday? The release of Scream VI, the sixth Scream movie. By now, most horror franchises, especially the slasher franchises, end up on direct-to-video (or DVD and Blu-Ray or streaming, as things now stand). But the Scream franchise, through not putting out sequels every year and making films that tend to age well (seriously, I enjoyed the films I disliked on first viewing more on the second viewing), has stayed in theaters. And the sixth film, set in New York and featuring a Ghostface who appears to be a major fanatic of the Ghostface killers, looks especially amazing. What could be missing?
Well, in all the rewatch of the films and which one’s best, I miss the TV show. Yeah, Scream had a TV show. A lot of people have forgotten that. It was on MTV for two seasons and VH1 for a third season, it was slightly more serious than the movies with less metatextual exploration of horror (but it did have that), and, for two seasons, had a Ghostface whose costume didn’t look clumsy or like it would get in the killer’s way.*
I actually bought the TV show’s version of the costume for Halloween soon after I got my job. I still have the costume, and enjoy wearing it on occasion. I wore it for this post!
What was the TV series about, you might ask? Well, it was a similar setup to the movies. A serial killer, known in this reality as the Lakewood Slasher or the Brandon James Killer, wears a mask based on the face of an accused murderer named Brandon James and starts killing people related to this world’s Sydney, named Emma. And, like the original films, the killings are often inspired by Emma’s family’s past.
There was also some amazing character development, a mystery that kept you guessing, and some really freaky kills and scares that competed with American Horror Story and the Slasher TV series. So, what happened?
I don’t know. I guess the producers got scared that people were losing interest in the second season, because after a Halloween special, they scrapped the ongoing storyline of Emma and her friends and started a new story with the original Ghostface costume for the third season. And that was the season that got critically panned and was followed by a cancellation. So, I guess it was a good decision?
Me in my Scream TV series costume. Creepy, right?
And that’s a shame, because as I said, I remember it being really good for the first two seasons. And while we can never be sure, if the series had decided to focus on the story of Emma and her friends, rather than doing a reboot for a possible anthology series, what could have happened? What if the series got better? At the very least, we might have wrapped up the story.
So, while I look forward to seeing the new film, I would like to point out that the TV show (or at least the first two seasons, anyway), deserve some love and appreciation. Hell, after I finish watching the original run of Law & Order, I’m going to rewatch the first two seasons on Netflix.
Maybe you can join me for a watch? I think that would be a lot of fun. And together, we can maybe show this show some deserved love.
Did you watch the Scream TV series? What were your thoughts of it? Any chance you’ll revisit it with me? What’s your favorite scary movie?
*Seriously, what the heck is with the Ghostface robe? It goes down to your feet and is tight around the legs. Every killer in that costume should trip every time they pursue a victim. Actually, they showed that in the parody film Scary Movie.
For those of you who don’t know, “squicky” refers to something that is very disturbing, disgusting, and/or unpleasant. In horror, it usually refers to something out of what Stephen King calls “the gross-out factor” of horror, with lots of blood and gore and bodily fluids. Occasionally squicky scenes (or at least most of the ones I’ve encountered) also have some sexual element, though not the kind that would indicate any form of healthy sex. Squicky scenes are the ones that make readers think, “Good Lord, what’s wrong with this author?” And they make the author’s parents go, “what kind of freak did we raise that they could come up with this?”
On a personal level, I can go either way with squickiness. Sometimes, like with the Evil Dead remake in 2013, I find that’s part of the charm of the movie. And I’m looking forward to watching Terrifier 2 because its squickiness reportedly caused people to vomit and faint in the theaters (though hopefully not at the same time). But when it comes to stories like Human Centipede and its sequels, where the very concept is squicky, I run the opposite way.*
That being said, I find myself writing squicky scenes more and more in my work. There’s a scene like that in my Backrooms story “It Changes You,” and one of the stories in my upcoming collection Hannah and Other Stories has plenty of squick in it. And there’s a particular story I hope to start writing soon that will have you shuddering from the squick! It’s going to be a blast.
Why am I writing these scenes? Well, part of it is because I’ve seen other authors in the books I read writing them and that has inspired/urged me to try writing them as well. Another is that, in my continual quest to improve as a writer, I’m trying to push myself to step more and more out of my comfort zone and try things that I wouldn’t normally write. And a third part is that, when done right, those scenes make the story scarier and make the story stand out to readers.
That being said, writing those scenes isn’t easy. I’m usually thinking three things when working on a squick moment: is this too much? Is this not enough? And am I using the right words to bring out the full squicky nature of the scene? Since some of these stories haven’t released yet, I can’t be certain. You’re trying to balance several elements like word choice, time spent on a particular moment, translating that horrifying moment from your brain to the page, and how it fits into the story as a whole, among others. A single misstep and people might call you “shocking for shock’s sake” or “exploitative.”
That being said, people are going to call you that anyway. Besides Human Centipede, other films like the Saw movies or Texas Chainsaw Massacre are full of squicky moments and features. I know authors whose books are filled with squick. And you’ll find that each one has both detractors and fans. It just depends on the person, what they’re capable of stomaching, and what personally draws them to the story.
As for advice on writing squicky scenes, I don’t have much, unfortunately. Like I said, I don’t write them too often. But I do think that, unless your main thought when writing a story is, “I want readers to be shocked and grossed out and wincing with every paragraph,” only use squick when it works for the story. If it adds something to the story, great, keep it. If it doesn’t, then perhaps think about whether you should include such a scene.
This entire film is squicky and I want nothing to do with it.
Also, and while it may be stomach churning, read what others have done with squick and try to pick up what makes their takes effective. Once you do that, you can hopefully get some practice in and start creating scenes and stories that, over time, will produce the same effect those scenes produce in other readers and in you.
All that being said, if squick isn’t your thing, don’t push yourself to include it. The thing about horror, there’s a niche for everyone. You prefer things to be gory and gross and shocking, there’s something for you. You like ghosts and psychological stuff? There’s something there for you. You like cosmic beings whose very appearance causes insanity? Yep, there’s something for you.
Anyway, I just wanted to talk about these scenes I’m writing and my thoughts on them. I hope that when some of these stories with their squick-inducing moments release, they’ll be quite effective and add plenty to the story. Now, if you need me, I’m off to watch some scary movies.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night and pleasant nightmares.
Do you enjoy squicky scenes? Do you write them often? What advice do you have for writing and including them in your horror?
*Seriously, you could not pay me to watch those films. Anyone tries, I will smack them into next week and make my escape in the meantime. I’m already screwed up enough, thank you very much! Don’t need to be twisted any further.
Before we start, I would like to thank Lucy A. Snyder and the team at Tor Nightfire for providing me with an ARC copy to read (and a special thank you to Lucy for the awesome galley copy she gave me a few months back).
Set a few years after our current COVID-19 pandemic, Sister, Maiden, Monster follows three separate women as their lives are affected by a terrible new disease raging across the planet. Known as polymorphic viral gastroencephalitis, or PVG, the disease is like the stomach flu from hell. For those who are lucky, it kills them very quickly. For the rest, it changes them, making them unable to eat most sources of nutrients. They have to get their nutrition through rather macabre means. And that’s only the start of the apocalypse that’s going to come.
So, it looks like there’s still an appetite for pandemic fiction, even after a real pandemic. At least, if the release of Sister, Maiden, Monster, the airing of “The Last of Us,” and one or two of my own stories, among other works, areanything to go by. And everyone telling those stories are making sure the hypothetical future pandemics are even more terrible than COVID-19 was. Which, honestly, I gotta respect.
Alright, onto the story. Sister, Maiden, Monster was great. I really enjoyed it. For one thing, the three main characters are really well-developed, which is great in such a character-driven story. There’s Erin, who’s seeing her life implode and strange new desires growing inside her after becoming infected; Savannah, a prostitute and dominatrix who discovers she has a talent for causing death in the name of new masters; and Mareva, a sickly woman who has been chosen for a terrible purpose. I really got to know these characters and get inside their minds. Which, by the way, was not always the most pleasant ride, believe me.
Speaking of which, Lucy Snyder does not shy away from showing what Stephen King calls the “gross-out” factor of horror. There are bloods, brains, gore, and plenty more body horror to make more squeamish readers feel faint. Add in the isolation and paranoia of living through another pandemic, this one worse than the one preceding it, as well as some good and delicious cosmic horror, and it makes for a rather scary read.
I did think that the time spent with each narrator was unbalanced. Somewhere between a third and half the book is from Erin’s perspective, and while I get why, I would have liked to see more from the other two narrators. Especially Savannah. That lady is wild and a lot of fun to read, even if you would be horrified by her if she were real.
I also noticed that something that appeared later in the book and which I loved seeing was foreshadowed earlier in the story, but I felt it could have been foreshadowed a bit more. Hell, I nearly forgot about the foreshadowing until the reveal, so that says something.
All in all, Sister, Maiden, Monster is a great, body horror-filled ride and I’m glad I got to be among the first to read it. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving it a 4.3. The book releases this Tuesday, February 21st, so go preorder a copy, settle down when you get yours, and get ready to see the horror of the pandemic go through a terrifying metamorphosis.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night and pleasant nightmares.
Take a good look. This temporary cover may not be around for much longer.
So, as many of you know, I have a new collection of short stories coming out at some point this year. This collection, Hannah and Other Stories, features stories with terrifying delights such as carnivorous horses, budding serial killers and a couple of very creepy ghosts. And earlier this evening, I had a meeting over Zoom with BSC Publishing Group, the company that will be releasing Hannah. There was me, two of the major players at BSC, and the other writers contracted with BSC.
Get this, by the way: everyone at the meeting had glasses! But of the men in the meeting, I was the only one who was cleanshaven. Everyone else had a beard!
Anyway, we talked about what would be happening over the course of 2023, what the company will be doing to hopefully make our books a success, and some other stuff that needed mentioning to the writers.
And with that, there came some bad news. Because of developments in the publishing industry these past couple of years, and because of the cost of producing paperbacks, even just for print-on-demand, Hannah won’t immediately be released in paperback.
Yeah, you read that right. Unfortunately, it’s just the way things are. You may have read something about Barnes & Noble last year? How the chain, as well as a lot of smaller brick-and-mortar stores, only stock bestsellers these days, and will return the books that don’t do so well to the publishers. BSC realizes this and is reacting to this.
There is a silver lining, however. If Hannah gets enough sales and reviews, and if the latter are positive, print paperback will become possible. And I’m determined to make that happen. Not only do I believe in this collection and the stories within, but I’m putting together a marketing plan to ensure that, alongside what BSC is going to be doing to help me out, this book gets as wide a reach as possible. My goal is to have fifty reviews by the first publication anniversary. Is that a lot? Yes. Is that more than Rose has gotten in three and a half years? Also yes. Do I think I can do it? HELL YES!
And why? Because I believe in the Followers of Fear. Over the years, you’ve not only grown by leaps and bounds as a group, but many of you have become close friends and colleagues whom I’ve supported and who have supported me right back. And I think, once this collection is released, enough of you will be eager enough to check it out and help me get to that goal.
And if not, there’s still a chance of an audio book. Apparently that’s possible even without a paperback with this company. Imagine that!
And now, for the good news: while another draft is likely, we’re moving forward with release. I’ve even been given homework, such as colors I want for the cover, covers to influence the cover, and a few other things. I’m excited. I can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been working on this past year and a half.
In the meantime, I’ll be working on this stuff, then working on a blog post regarding my Backrooms story (so expect more updates soon). So, until that blog post, my Followers of Fear, good night and pleasant nightmares. I hope you’re as excited for Hannah to be released as I am.
Well, that took less time than expected. Still took awhile, but it didn’t take two months as I predicted.
So, for those of you who are unaware, I have a short story collection called Hannah and Other Stories being released some time this year. It contains seven original stories of varying lengths and covers the following subjects: a rumor about a figure on the Internet who is targeting vulnerable teens; carnivorous horses; and budding serial killers, just to name a few. It’ll be released by BSC Publishing Group, whom I’ve worked with before through their magazine The Dark Sire.
And since New Year’s, I’ve been editing the last four stories in the collection, trying to expand on certain things such as showing rather than telling and cutting out stuff that doesn’t do the story any good. I think between that and all the other edits I made, the collection is that much stronger and will make for one hell of a read upon publication.
Of course, I doubt it’s finished yet. We’re probably going to have to go through and make another round of edits before we can set a release date, let alone format everything, create a cover, and make one hell of a marketing plan. But I think that at this point, we’ll just be making some minor alterations to make sure the stories are well-edited and the plots flow well.
Then again, they do say writers are their own worst judges of their work, so who knows? We may have more than cosmetic work up ahead.
The page and word count as I finished the manuscript. It’s going to be a long book.
Well, it’s with the publisher now and they’ll hopefully let me know what they think very soon. In the meantime, I”ll be taking the next few days to relax and catch up on some movies I’ve been meaning to catch and some reading I’ve been meaning to do. I’ll probably also celebrate finishing the latest draft with some good food and some wine. After that, and with my creativity replenished (plus, I’ll likely feel like I need to work on something or I’ll die), I’ll get to work on some other stories that require another draft. These stories are Forever Young, about an unusual child actress; It Changes You, taking place in the Internet phenomenon known as The Backrooms; and They Sleep Within the Rock, the story I wrote about neo-Nazis getting their just desserts.
You can tell why I call all this editing The Great Editing. It’s a lot!
Anyway, after those stories are edited, I haven’t made any commitments yet. It’ll depend on whether or not BSC Publishing Group has sent me back any decisions regarding Hannah and whether or not I need to do further edits. But I do hope I can work on some new stuff by that point. I’ve a bunch of new story ideas I want to work on, so I’m hopeful.
In the meantime, however, I’m going to make a late dinner, maybe open a bottle of homemade wine, and figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of the night. Until next time, my Followers of Fear, I look forward to sharing Hannah with you and hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed working on it.
Good night and pleasant nightmares!
Oh, one more thing: you may have noticed, but at the top of the blog there are a lot less pages. In fact, I recently consolidated all my books onto one page, simply titled Books. I figured that would make things easier for both new and old readers to find my works and the links to them, rather than having to scour fifteen different pages for them.
Just wanted to mention in case you hadn’t noticed. Good night!
(WARNING: The following post discusses some recent movies that not everyone has seen yet. I’ve tried to avoid spoilers, but if you’d rather see these movies without knowing anything, then stop reading now and come back later. You’ve been warned.)
It’s no secret that I’m an eccentric, and I channel that eccentricity into my fiction all the time. I mean, my most popular novel is about a young woman who’s turned into a plant/human hybrid. If that’s not an example of weird fiction, then I’m a high school girl in an anime. And I’m not!
Skinamarink’s poster displayed outside my usual movie theater.
With all that expertise, I can say with certainty that there is plenty of room in fiction, especially in horror fiction, for weird. The novel House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, is a prime example of this. It’s a story about a documentary about a recounting of one family’s experience living in a home that has a giant labyrinth hidden inside it. The novel is full of footnotes, some of which have footnotes, as well as pages with only a few lines of text, or the text laid out in an odd manner, forcing the reader to hold the book at weird angles. From what I’m told, it makes for an experience both agoraphobic and claustrophobic.*
No wonder that book has an enduring relevance among horror readers, despite the author and some readers seeing it more as a love story than a horror story.
All that being said, there is both a good way to make a story weird and a bad way to make a story weird. Especially in the horror genre.
Some of you may have heard of the new Canadian horror movie Skinamarink. The movie revolves around two children who wake up one night to find that their father, as well as the doors and windows to their home, have mysteriously vanished. There’s been a lot of talk about the film online, with some loving it and others reviling it. I went to see it on Friday, knowing that one way or another, I would get a weird experience.
Well, I did get that weird experience. It’s filmed in a way meant to evoke a child’s perspective and reflect their nightmares, with the majority of shots focused on hallways, things high overhead or on the television in the den. Anything but the characters themselves. The entire film is also filtered to look like a home movie from the 80s or 90s, and the use of effects is minimal and mostly reliant on practical effects. A lot of the dialogue is told in whispers, so subtitles are used throughout the film. There’s no music, and plenty of surreal moments throughout the film, especially near the end.
That being said, everyone in my theater, including me, hated it. I even spoke to someone who was in the theater with me afterwards, and he told me he fell asleep during the film. I can see why: except for a few effective jumpscares, there was nothing to actually unsettle the viewer or keep them tense or focused, let alone scare them.
Since seeing the film, I’ve been characterizing it like someone took the cursed videotape from The Ring and tried to make it into a feature film, but took out what made that video so scary in the first place.
Now, I’m not saying anyone who enjoyed Skinamarink or found it scary is wrong or bad. The wonderful thing about horror is how subjective it is and how there are many different niches to suit every fan. Nor am I shitting on the director for the choices he made. I reserve that for the Friday the 13th remake and its creators, because that film is trash that gets everything good about the franchise wrong. Most of the people involved in it should get a good kick in the pants!
No, what I’m saying is that the weird is emphasized at the expense of the horror. Online, Skinamarink is characterized as “an experimental horror film” and that feels like an apt way of putting things. From the way the film is shot, to the use of subtitles and the story (flimsy as it is), you can tell that it’s all been an experiment by the director to conjure up a unique viewing experience. And in that respect, his experiment was a success. However, in terms of creating an effective horror film, the experiment was a bust.
Hatching is, in my humble opinion, a great example of weird horror done well.
Now, compare that to another recent horror film, Finland’s Pahanhautoja, or Hatching. The film follows a girl who finds an egg in the forest and incubates it, only to end up the caretaker of a large bird/dinosaur monster that she calls Alli. Yeah, that’s weird, especially when you see the ugly-ass creature, which is brought to life mainly with practical effects and puppetry. But it also helps to tell a story about a very repressed girl who is struggling as part of a toxic family dynamic and being ruled by a narcissistic, social media-obsessed mother. Rather than overtaking the story, the weird aspects help drive the story and explore its deeper themes.
And that’s where the big difference between Skinamarink and Hatching is. The former’s weird aspects overtake the film and drown out the horror, while the latter’s weird aspects help out the horror and the story in order to be told more effectively.
To summarize, when telling a story of the weird variety, it’s important to remember that you’re telling a story first and foremost. Thus, while you can add as many weird elements as you want, if they overwhelm the story you’re trying to tell, you risk alienating rather than engaging your audience. And that’s something every storyteller wants to avoid. Including eccentrics like me.
*It’s on my TBR list, but that list is long and I only have so much reading time. Thus, it’s going to have to wait a while till I get to it.
Just a reminder, my Followers of Fear: this coming weekend I’ll be at ConFusion at the Sheration Detroit Novi in Detrot, Michigan. This is a big science fiction and fantasy convention that’ll be held from Friday, January 20th to Sunday, January 22nd. I’ll be there selling books and doing Tarot readings, so if you’re in the area, feel free to stop by and say hi. I’d be more than happy to see you.
I’ve been hearing about this one in one of my Facebook horror groups, so I got interested and got the audio book. And on the ride home from work, I finished it today.
Set in 1994, The Exorcist’s House follows the Hill family as they move into a farmhouse in West Virginia with the goal of flipping it for a profit before the new baby arrives. However, the house used to belong to a local exorcist who spent much of his life fighting demons. And there’s plenty to suggest that while the exorcist is no longer living there, or even living, something else is. And if the family doesn’t do something soon, they may not live much longer.
So, I couldn’t help but see this as kind of Conjuring-esque. I mean, it feels like something that would be inspired by The Conjuring. A family moves into an isolated home in the middle of the country with a history of the paranormal, demons start to oppress and try to possess them, it all takes place in an era that’s starting to become nostalgic in the public’s memory, an exorcist or two are involved in the story, and plenty of Catholicism to boot. Near the end, I couldn’t help but think that the author could do a whole shared universe around some of these characters, especially the exorcist of the title.
That’s not detracting from it, I’m just saying that’s how it feels.
All that being said, it was an enjoyable read. The story is well-written and the characters are quite fleshed out, especially mother Nora who has a strong character arc in regards to her own inner demons (pun intended). Even daughter Alice, who is a stereotypical teenager, is more than just a flat stereotype. There’s also some really scary scenes, such as the scene with Nora in the basement in the first half of the book (I got shivers while listening to that chapter in the car), as well as a few twists that I didn’t see coming.
And that ending! Not sure if the author really is setting up for a sequel or a shared universe al a The Conjuring, but even if he isn’t that ending left me satisfied as only a horror fan can be.
That being said, there are some tropes that we’ve seen a hundred times, such as an exorcist being brought in during the third act for the big confrontation, so at times it does feel a little predictable.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m going to award The Exorcist’s House by Nick Roberts an even 4. Plenty of good scares, a decent story and possibly the launching point for a shared universe. Also, the audio book has a great narrator with a ton of range. Pick the format of your choosing and get settled in for a nice read.
That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. This will, in all likelihood, my last review of the year, and likely my last post of 2022 (unless something comes up between now and Saturday and 11:59 PM). Thank you all for your support in 2022 and I look forward to sharing with you my adventures, trials and accomplishments in 2023. Until next time, happy new year, good night and pleasant nightmares!
The original photo that started the Backrooms. At first, not too creepy, but then you realize that there’s no sign of human habitation. And that’s what makes it really terrifying.
Well, I didn’t think I’d get it done this weekend, but I somehow managed to do it. Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah/Happy Boxing Day/Happy Holidays to me.
So, as I mentioned in my last article on Ginger Nuts of Horror, I was developing a story based on the Backrooms, an internet urban legend that’s become really popular in the past year or so. For those who don’t know, the Backrooms were inspired by a photo of an empty office decorated with yellow wallpaper and some accompanying text, both posted anonymously. The text went something like this:
“If you’re not careful and you noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you’ll end up in the Backrooms, where it’s nothing but the stink of old moist carpet, the madness of mono-yellow, the endless background noise of fluorescent lights at maximum hum-buzz, and approximately six hundred million square miles of randomly segmented empty rooms to be trapped in God save you if you hear something wandering around nearby, because it sure as hell has heard you.”
Spooky, no? The Backrooms has since gone viral, becoming a series of games, YouTube videos, and fan art, among other things. However, there isn’t a lot of prose fiction set in the Backrooms yet, so I thought I’d try to get ahead of the crowd and give it my own original twist while I was at it. After all, it was stuck in my head. Might as well make something with that.
Thus, I have created “It Changes You: A Backrooms Story,” which I have spent basically all of December working on. The story follows a bunch of people, particularly two teen girls named Kat and Ginger, who end up falling into the Backrooms, and what happens to them as they try to find a way out.
This story was a blast to work on for so many reasons. The first half is very strange and psychological, while the second half has body horror, some really gross stuff, and a bit of cosmic horror that was terrifying even to me! I also had a lot of fun making the main characters nerds into anime and Doctor Who like I am, and Kat in particular is a writer who also happens to be aromantic, like me.* I also based some characters loosely on characters from shows I watch, including Law & Order, and let my mind go in some really weird directions with this story, which allowed my characters to take over to a greater degree than I’d ever seen before with a story. Overall, it was just a great experience writing it.
And let’s not forget how much ambience helped me write this one. Prior to Kat and Ginger finding themselves in the Backrooms, I listened to YouTube videos of outdoor crowd ambience to get in the mood. Afterwards, I listened to ten-hour vids of fluorescent buzzing to really help me feel like I was in the Backrooms, and during the final scenes of the story, I listened to creepy horror music to get me in that cosmic horror mood.
And now this story is finished, a novella of decent length of nearly 27,000 words. Yeah, that long. No wonder it took all month to write. Anyway, I’ll let it rest a while before editing it and then sending it to a beta reader to look at. But honestly, I think it has potential. The Backrooms are still not as well known as other internet horror creations like Slender Man or Momo, so there’s plenty of room for this story to make a splash. That’s the hope, anyway.
So, now that this story is done, what’s next for me? Well, I’ll save that for another blog post. Right now, I haven’t had dinner, so I’m going to fill my belly, watch a late movie, and then hit the hay. Until next time, my Followers of Fear, good night, pleasant nightmares, and happy holidays! I hope Krampus didn’t visit you this year. Or maybe I hope he did, I honestly don’t know how many other people love the guy like I do.
*Aromantic means I don’t feel romantic attraction or want to be in a romantic relationship. Like, I’m physically incapable of doing so. It’s a real thing and a discussion for another blog post, but I liked putting it into a story through one of my characters.
One more thing before I forget, my Followers of Fear: in the hopes of starting 2023 off on the right foot, I’m having a special sale on my published stories. The electronic copies of most of my books will be discounted to 99 cents for the first week of January, and the audio book of The Pure World Comes will also be discounted for that first week from certain retailers. If you’re interested, please head to the retailer of your choice after the new year and download a copy.
And if you like what you read, please leave me a review letting me know what you think. Positive or negative, I love reviews, and they help me out in the long run. Not only that, but reviews help other readers figure out whether they want to read a story or not. Pretty sweet, right?
Right, now that’s the real end of this post. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!
Rami Ungar The Writer 