Happy Halloween! Blessed Samhain!

Enjoy your spooky goodness today,
all you monsters and ghouls! 

Free Hallowreading from Bobby Nash and Rick Johnson! Operation Silver Moon!

Are you ready for a free Halloween treat?

A free read for Halloween week. You can read the ebook of Operation: Silver Moon, a graphic novel written by Bobby Nash with art by Rick Johnson. You can get the ebook FREE on Amazon from now through Halloween Night (ends at midnight Pacific Time). Grab yours today! 

https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Silver-Moon-Bobby-Nash-ebook/dp/B00XH21C0U

The Scariest?

Writers, what's the scariest story you've ever read? Ever written?

John L. Taylor: The scariest thing I ever read was probably The Hitchhiker by Christopher Pike (the story and title have nothing to do with each other). Though as an adult, The Russian Sleep Experiment has challenged that. As for scariest thing I've written, it would be "What Gasoline Won't Burn," a YouTube narration that I had written. I did this under a creative commons license, so feel free to adapt (https://youtu.be/1ybpIJw2HBM?si=hUC1owIkxb27vI_V) How scary a book is depends on what age you read it. These days, after spending decades as a CSI, fiction no longer scares me. But way back when, there was Steven King's Pet Semeatary and before that Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes." As for the scariest story I've ever written, that would be "Choice of Damnation" a Bianca Jones story found in Monsters Among Us.

Danielle Procter Piper: The scariest one I read was a short. Two medical students were getting ready to put their cadaver up after class and one mentioned how cadavers sometimes sit up, groan, and even roll off of things. They walk their cadaver down the corridor into the elevator, enter it to go to the morgue, and while in the elevator there's a power failure. As far as ones I've written...they don't scare me, but my readers would have to vote on which was the scariest. Othy Morris: Brian Keene’s The Rising gave me absolute chills Lucy Blue: For years, my scariest read was Lovecraft's "The Rats in the Walls." But there were scenes in Grady Hendrix's The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires that left Lovecraft in the musty shade for me--Palmetto bug in the ear is all I'm gonna say. <shudders> But there are different kinds of scary--I put down The Silence of the Lambs and never picked it back up again when it first came out in paperback because I didn't need knowledge of that level of inhuman meanness in my head. (If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand the women who think Hannibal Lecter is sexy.) And The Exorcist (book, not movie) haunts me still even though I read it decades ago. I guess The Devil Makes Three is the scariest thing I've published so far. But there are sequences in my WIP that have given me nightmares. Paul Landri: The scariest lately was Revival by Stephen King. That ending had me messed up for days and days. I was home alone for a few days and I'm man enough to admit I slept with the light on. Scariest I think was a story that was a prototype for a character featured in the Crimson Howl series centering on a guy who discovered a mold like substance after a bad thunderstorm. It's a sentient alien organism that turns him into a cannibalistic monster. It ends with him getting his girlfriend pregnant and the twist is that the story is being told from the child's perspective as he is about to devour his mom. Weird Tales Magazine rejected it for publication but the feedback I got from them was great! They loved the premise and the prose was well written but it wasn't what they were looking for at the time.

Scott Roche: Pet Semetary is probably the scariest one I've ever read. The scariest one I've ever written? That would be one of two. "Spiders, All of Them" is a short story I wrote about a dad whose son has a big spider collection of big spiders. And his newest one brings something new out in the boy. The dad isn't a fan. Or, "Let Go" about a dad who is trying to keep his family together during the zombie apocalypse even if it means going out and getting them fresh meat. Anna Grace Carpenter: Read? The Thief of Time by Clive Barker. (Which is shelved as Adult, but really more of a YA.) It sticks with me more than Weaveworld. [Those are the only two Barker novels I've ever read.] Written? Maybe the Southern Gothic novellas. One of my beta readers had nightmares after the first one. Kay Iscah: Erm... I tend to avoid horror as genre. If I'm up for a scare I'll read the news or a science journal. Tape worms...ugh. I enjoy action/creepy, but it doesn't necessarily lodge in my brain as "scary". Likewise I don't *think* I write scary, but may dip into creepy. Chris Riker: Read? Either Salem’s Lot or The Stand. Written: https://chrisrikerauthor.com/news/short-stories/youve-won-a-free-cruise-forget-your-worries-forget-your-life Brian K Morris: The scariest story I ever read was probably I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. It might be because I recall reading it on a hot summer's night in my bedroom. It was hot and we couldn't afford AC so I was minimally dressed. During one scene where the vampires crept up on our hero and was about to attack, a large bug landed on my bare shoulder. My next memory was standing at the foot of my bed, but not putting my legs over the side and walking down there.

B Chris Bell: The Boarded Window by Ambrose Bierce. At the end, and it might take a minute, the hero realizes the unnatural. Then you do. Whoa! Brandon Barrows: Ever read: Kafka's Metamorphosis. Only story that truly freaked me out. Ronald Hanna: “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door ...” -- KNOCK - Fredic Brown John Morgan Neal: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson and The Stand by Stephen King. I got sick when reading them.

Sean Taylor: The two creepiest stories I've read are both diametrically opposites in terms of why they creep me the hell out. "The Empty House" by Algernon Blackwood is perhaps the best use of setting to evoke tension and fright I've ever read. He's a master of that technique and it's on full display in this tale. "N." by Stephen King creeps me out because of how much I identify with the MC. I too and OCD (I used to only each French fries in fours and only listen to my car radio on even numbers, non-Prime levels, but I've weaned myself off those behaviors now thankfully). But, when I saw that it was those exact behaviors that kept out world save from another, that was truly frightening to me, along with the viral aspect that it could be passed on to new "guardians."

As for the creepiest I've written, I'd have to say it's "The Ghosts of Children" in my collection A Crowd in Babylon. It's a time travel warning about how hell hath no fury about a woman scorned. I love to read it at cons, but it always makes me feel icky. No spoilers. Go read it yourself. Despite being a horror fan I've only written one horror story. And that short story was more of a premise for a short film idea. Taco Hell was the title.

Sunday Funnies: Where It All Began

[Link] Why I Write: Let Me See About Getting the Words Right

by Gary Phillips

I write because I can’t draw. Growing up in South Central back in the day, me and the fellas read and traded Marvel comics. You might sneak in a DC book now and then—say, an issue of Green Lantern rendered in the fluid style of Gil Kane. But certainly not a goofy Batman book. This was before writer Denny O’Neil and artist Neal Adams brought back the hardcore Batman, the template for The Dark Knight.

Marvel, however, was different. Beneath Spider-Man’s mask, the teenage angst was plain on Peter Parker’s face. The Hulk’s internal struggle was unending, involving both his horror at reverting to “puny” Bruce Banner and Banner’s own at becoming the man-monster. In the pages of Fantastic Four, meanwhile, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced the Black Panther and the scientifically advanced kingdom of  Wakanda. Mesmerized by those monthly adventures, made vivid by the art of Kirby and Steve Ditko, my younger self desperately wanted to write and draw my own comic books.

Harrowing real-life occurrences also captivated me. In my neighborhood barbershop, as well as other barber shops and beauty parlors in the hood, various kinds of stories were told by patrons and haircutters. Often, they involved brothers who had run afoul of the cops out of 77th Division, which patrolled our area. The comics and the community: this would be the transmutable clay out of which I’d later mold my novels.

The desire to tell stories led me to reach out as a teenager. Before the internet, like-minded youngsters would get together to produce comics with their own characters. Maybe a hundred copies would be reproduced on a desktop Gestetner duplicator. Or, if enough money was raised, offset printed. Trying to get my work into those fanzines, I stumbled across mystery and crime mass-market paperbacks, as well as science fiction, all of it available on the spinner racks at the Thrifty drugstore. Dashiell Hammett, Chester Himes, Andre Norton, and those Bantam reprints of 1930s Doc Savage pulps with eye-catching covers by James Bama.

A few more years would go by before it finally sank in that drawing comics wasn’t going to be my vocation. Yet even as I picked up a slew of rejections for my art, a few of the letters I got back did note that the writing wasn’t bad. Well, OK, then, let me see about getting the words right. This period dovetailed with my burgeoning community activism, which focused on the matter of questionable policing in my own and other Black and Brown neighborhoods.

Protesting police abuses led me to the anti-apartheid movement, which in turn fueled my participation in direct actions against the contra war, financed by the Reagan administration. From there, I went on, among other endeavors, to become a labor organizer and the outreach director for a community foundation. I found myself reflecting on these undertakings in nonfiction pieces for newsletters. Somewhere along the line, I started writing weekly op-eds for a community newspaper and a progressive media service. This discipline of writing on deadline proved useful to me when it came time to tackle writing a novel.

To write a book at first felt daunting. But looking back, it was an organic development.

Read the full article: https://www.altaonline.com/california-book-club/a61958649/why-i-write-gary-phillips/

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION PRESENTS JUNGLE TALES VOL. 3

Once again a quartet of the best New Pulp scribes delve into the mysterious world of the African jungle. The popular pulp hero, Ki-Gor : Lord of the Jungle, returns in two new tales set in the mysterious jungles of Africa. From battling an evil white woman to facing the challenge of lion-riding killer baboons, Ki-Gor and his friends fight side by side against overwhelming odds armed only with their courage and loyalty.

New Pulp writers Carson Demmons and Terry Wijesuriya offer up this duo of action-packed adventures while writer Curtis Fernlund introduces Jenna the Jungle Girl. This volume also includes a bonus jungle yarn by Bob Madison where a seasoned big-game hunter, Richmond Kane, ventures into the forbidden land of the cannibal Bogas in desperate hope of finding his lost brother.

Artist John Gallagher provides the black and white interior illustrations and Ted Hammond the stunning color cover. All put together by award-winning book designer, Rob Davis. Here is old-fashioned action and adventure reminiscent of the best of the classic jungle pulps. 

PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!!

Available now from Amazon in paperback and soon on Kindle.

Best Practices: Write Something Scary!

Hey, writers! Give me your one best piece of advice to help someone learn to write something actually scary for a reader. And... GO!

Jessica Nettles: Mine the things that scare you the most, especially childhood fears. Then crank them to 11 (that is a different level for different people). I never fail to hit my mark when I go there.

John L. Taylor: Make the reader care about the character who will have the worst fate. Horror fails if you're rooting for the protagonists to die. Get them emotionally invested in someone who really doesn't deserve their fate and slowly pick them apart like a daisy. They will know fear from that.

John Pence: It's got to scare the author. It's got to be something the author had to be brave and confront.

That's not true for all horror, and can be applied outside of that genre.

Scariest damn thing I ever read was Poe's first-person narrator popping his cat's eye with a pocket knife in "The Black Cat." I read that when I was like 9 or 10, and I still feel it.

Michael Dean Jackson: Get your reader emotionally invested in a character and then scare the hell out of that character. Maybe it's not something that would scare you or the reader, but if it scares the main character, then the reader will feel vicariously frightened along with them.

Lainey Kennedy: Less is more. Leave room for the readers imagination to fill in the gaps. What our own mind comes up with is often scarier than any written words.

Sean Harby: Write something that frightens you. Make sure you include all your senses and express the nature of your own fear. It will translate.

John Morgan Neal: Use your imagination to think of something you were horrified by or you think would be horrified by. Then present it in a way that gets across why it's horrifying. But leave enough room where the readers imagination fills in the blanks. Making it personal to them.

Bobby Nash: I always start with character. Make it scary for the character and the reader will feel it.

Krystal Rollins: Haunted old house in a small town, picture books left inside of the family, only stories are told for the new people in town, until, one gets into the house.

Danielle Procter Piper: Many people go for the gross-out factor, I go for psychological stuff.

Laura Rucker: Describe a physical reaction to the horrifying thing, or a physical description of the horrifying aspects. A. Piece. At. A. Time.

Mike Schneider: You have to establish normal. Scary is a juxtaposition. So many creators want all thriller/ no filler but the reality is those stories aren't scary, no matter how gruesome they get. In fact, show too much of the killer/ monster and we start rooting for them instead.

If you want any part of your story to be scary you need to put more time into establishing things are light and joyful. You need to get us invested in that story to a point where we forget we're reading something scary. Then WHAM.

Barry Reese: If it doesn’t scare YOU as the writer, it probably won’t scare them as a reader, either.

PJ Lozito: End the paragraph or chapter before the thing actually happens...

Jim Beard: Scare yourself. Everything else will follow.

Paul Beale: What scares you? It will likely scare the rest of us too..

Brian K Morris: Study Alfred Hitchcock's films as a blueprint for pacing and escalating the terror.

Sheela Chattopadhyay: This is a great question! While some may say to "write what scares you," I tend to find that the scary part is more in the suspense, pace, and overall environmental feel. Those aspects are what drew me to Poe and Agatha Christie as a child. From learning experiences and currently working on a suspense that's scary short story, the pacing and stakes help build the suspense.

Sean Taylor: The key to writing horror, as least as I see it (and you’ll find as many different takes on this as you can find authors, I’m sure), is to camp out in the concepts of discomfort and dread. You’re not going to surprise scare a reader. You’re going to slowly overwhelm them with several smaller “uneases” that become a full-blown “creepy” and finally if you’ve done your job right, all-out dread.

Dread is that feeling that keeps a reader’s stomach unsettled, that scene that makes them feel phantom pains in the same limb or joint the killer keeps sticking a pin into, the sum of all the chills up a spine and “what if” scenarios of the mind a reader keeps accumulating during the time it takes to read your tale.

Anna Grace Carpenter: Don't self-censor. (Especially on the first draft.) It's a lot easier to take things back off the page later if they seem too much than it is to add things back in when it's not enough.

Gordon Dymowski: Horror and comedy share one aspect in common: timing. The only difference is that comedy results in laughter, horror results in fear

Danielle Procter Piper: Less is more. Let their imagination fill in as much as possible.

Editor's Note: All images are free use from Unsplash.com.

The Multiverse Con Pictorial Recap

 My Set-Up

This year's badge art.

Posing

Good Neighbors

Cosplay

[Link] Script Collection: Supernatural Horrors That Still Send Shivers

by David Young

Horror has so many dimensions, but one of the most celebrated and explored is the horror of that which is supernatural. It’s not enough to be an extension of the natural—the horror we mean is the stuff of legends, myths, or creatures beyond the veil. Spirits, curses, devils, psychic disturbances, and living products of the mind all create stories we shudder to tell. That means they also provide the fuel for some of the most terrifying or fun horror films in history!

Script included in this article:

• The Exorcist
• The Babadook
• Poltergeist
• The Witch
• Candyman
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Hellraiser
• Final Destination
• House
• Rosemary’s Baby
• Friday the 13th
• The Evil Dead
• The Grudge
• Krampus
• It
• The Conjuring
• Annabelle
• The Omen
• The Ring
• It Follows
• Insidious
• Carrie (1976)
• The Shining
• Fright Night
• Hereditary

Get 'em here: https://thescriptlab.com/weekly-feature/42177-script-collection-supernatural-horrors-that-still-send-shivers/

National Freedom to Read Day

Today is National Freedom to Read Day, sponsored by the American Library Association. I know you know how to celebrate -- with a book! But it's more important than ever this year -- as the Authors' Guild says, "Books unite, bans divide." Speak up for your library. Speak out against bans. Buy a challenged book and give it to someone who needs it. Wear your button proclaiming "I read banned books." Vote for candidates who support public libraries. Support the freedom to read. #writersofinstagram  #ireadbannedbooks #freedomtoread #ilovelibraries

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION PRESENTS BOOK HUNTERS’ APPRENTICE

Airship 27 Production is proud to present writer Barbara Doran’s exciting new Chinese fantasy adventure: The Book Hunter’s Disciple.

Qing began life as a prized the little prince’s prized golden carp living carefree in a delightful pond on the royal estate. Then one day he ingested a magical soul stone and found himself evolving into consciousness. With this came other abilities such as being able to flight and change his shape; even into human form.

All of which would have been terribly confusing and maybe dangerous until he encountered the gifted Book Hunter Master Zhi Wanku who was instantly captivated by him. Enough so that she offered to accept him as her apprentice and teach him the proper way to continue his growth into a fully realized dragon.

From that moment on their adventures together were the stuff legend and along their journeys they encountered all kinds of weird and bizarre people and creature. Some would become staunch allies in their battle against the sorcerer Zhu Khan and his army of puppets locked away in might mountain fortress.

Once again Barbara Doran weaves a beautiful and thrilling Chinese fantasy with truly memorable characters in a story rich with humor and adventure. Artist Gary Kato provides the interior illustrations and Guy Davis the stunning, colorful cover.

AIRSHIP 27 PRODUCTION – PULP FICTION FOR A NEW GENERATION!

Available now from Amazon in paperback and soon on Kindle.

Creative Non-Fiction

Hey, writerly types, we spend a lot of time covering fiction on this blog because that's the main topic we discuss. But what about the other side of creative writing? No, not poetry. I'm referring to creative non-fiction. Let's bang that drum this week, shall we?

What kind of non-fiction do you prefer to write/read? Personal essays, how-tos, researched topics, true accounts (biographies, true crime, etc.)?

Alisa Richie Childress: I write personal essays. I write stories from my own life about mental health struggles (mine and my son's). Caregiving for me mother who passed from Alzheimer's last year. A lot about grief as I lost both of my parents in three years, my dad from cancer in May 2020, and my mom from Alzheimer's in June 2023. I write about parenting and what it is like to raise a child who had a major mental health crisis and who is gay (we live in a red state with conservative family members). Mostly I with about whatever I feel like I need to get out and what I hope will help others. My blog is alisachildress.com. I have been published in physical and online journals and write a lot on Medium.

Brian K Morris: I like to read mostly historical and scientific books when I read nonfiction. These days, I'm mostly into the business behind the creative efforts (such as how the comic companies were run by people affiliated with organized crime, or the boom/bust periods of comic books) these days. I also enjoy books on writing and marketing because I always want to do better at my job.

L. Andrew Cooper: I’ve been writing a lot of interviews for which I do extensive prep and into which I put significant thought, so that’s a biggie. Otherwise, I’ve done a lot of academic literary and film criticism, and after a long hiatus, I recently got back into film criticism a bit and found I still enjoy it. As for reading, I enjoy reading non-fiction for research related to whatever I’m writing (fiction or non). Otherwise, I enjoy reading philosophy.

Elizabeth Donald: Nonfiction is my bread and butter. I took my journalism degree into the newspaper world in 1997 and have worked in the news ever since, including my time on the national ethics committee and as president of the St. Louis Society of Professional Journalists. I was a full-time newspaper reporter for more than 20 years and I covered every beat except sports. I have stood in the snow outside a murder site and waited for an indicted governor at the end of a long dusty road and interviewed a president before he was anybody. Sometimes it was the county fair and sometimes it was the vicious beating death of a toddler. I wrote stories that changed the law and stories no one read. 

I went freelance in 2018 so I could have the freedom to go to grad school and begin teaching, but I have continued to work for local and regional news organizations, for regional and national magazines and so on, including a few investigative pieces. Freelancing has also given me the freedom to write more personal essays, writing essays and other free-form nonfiction, most of which is published on Patreon and Medium if it is not picked up by a magazine.

Scott Roche: Read - Biographies, history (particularly of science), and religious topics (not solely my religion, though primarily). Write - How to, reviews, commentary, and I'm getting to the point where I want to write some memoir-adjacent stuff.

Sean Taylor: I read a lot of various shades of nonfiction, everything from religious stuff (both classic like Augustine's City of God and contemporary progressive like Jim Wallis and Keith Giles), political/cultural stuff (currently reading White Rage and Hatemonger), to history (my fave is Lies My Teacher Told Me), and then also more fun stuff like books about horror and giallo movies and bios of my favorite actors and actresses. In terms of writing, I tend to do more essays about reading (like here on the blog), movie reviews (for a new book), and articles about the art and craft of writing. 

Van Allen Plexico: Most of my top sellers are nonfiction. Two books about the Avengers comics (I edited and coordinated both and wrote sections) and five books about Auburn sports (co-authored with my podcast cohost).

The Avengers books got me badges to Heroes Con and raised a lot of money for charity; the Auburn books have gotten me TV and radio appearances, speaking engagements before alumni/fan groups, and several book signings.

So yeah, I love writing nonfiction.

I also enjoy reading it a lot -- as a History professor I sort of have to -- and I find nonfiction works better in general on Audible than fiction does. So it's easier for me to listen to.

When writing non-fiction, particularly if you also write fiction, how does your routine or strategy differ from when you write fiction (if at all)?

Elizabeth Donald: Nonfiction and fiction use completely different brain cells, at least for me. My newspaper colleagues used to joke that I could sneak in a novel when the police beat was quiet, but I can’t work that way. After 25-odd years of writing news every day, I can turn out a high-quality news story in 15 minutes. It’s like falling off the proverbial log. Fiction, on the other hand, requires a good energy environment, the right caffeinated beverage, the alignment of the stars and planets and possibly the sacrifice of the nearest available virgin for the words to come. You’d think it would be easier to write stuff you can make up rather than the stuff that has to be accurate, ethical, responsible and all that jazz, but for me, the reverse is true. This goes back to one of those old writing saws we all hear and ignore: practice practice practice. Every word you write makes you a better writer, and I know journalism is easy for me because I’ve written 2-5 stories every day for decades. If I wrote fiction all day, every day for the next 20 years, maybe that would be like falling off a log.

Van Allen Plexico: I've found that when writing nonfiction I tend to outline very carefully beforehand--more even than I do in fiction. With fiction, I'm usually trying to leave myself lots of leeway to change the story as it wants to change when it unfolds.

With nonfiction, I need to know up front, "Okay, this section will cover the Sonny Smith years of AU Basketball; and this first chapter will be about how Auburn hired him and his first press conference and the preseason and then how his first team fared. And then the next chapter will be about how he recruited Charles Barkley and about Charles as a freshman. And then a separate chapter just of funny stories about Charles. And then..." sort of like that.

Alisa Richie Childress: I do not really write fiction, but I would like to. I have written a short piece in the Imaginarium anthology and am working on another. I have some ideas for novels. But I do not have a good fiction writing process. Or really a great writing discipline at all. I am working on this.

L. Andrew Cooper: Although I’m big in outlines for both fiction and non, for non, there’s an even more structured funnel process that goes from reading and research to organizing notes into conceptual groups that become outline points that become sections, paragraphs, etc.

Sean Taylor: It's actually easier for me to write nonfiction than fiction. I think this comes from being a Literature major in college and having to write so many essays and papers. They just kind of roll out of my brain onto the page. Fiction becomes so much more personal and that slows me down a lot because I really try to get my first draft super close to the way I want it. Nonfiction is the kind of thing I tend to trust myself to go back and edit/rewrite as needed.

Brian K Morris: Before I focused on New Pulp fiction, I wrote a number of articles about comic books. Usually, I'd look for the drama in the project (editorial whims, stumbling blocks in the production process, inherent challenges in changing a series' direction, etc.) and build a narrative with a satisfying conclusion. For instance, one of my favorite articles for Back Issue Magazine was about the final tales of the Silver Age Supergirl, how she'd gone from Superman's Secret Weapon to public acceptance, on-off powers, different locales, then her eventual death to become a spirit that helped talk people off the ledge, returning to her roots as a "secret weapon" for good.

What do you find most fulfilling about non-fiction writing?

Scott Roche: For me, any writing scratches roughly the same itch. Writing non-fiction does tap into a different vein. It requires more research/experience. For me it requires a different kind of brain work. I wouldn't say it uses a different part of your brain since I haven't done that research and am not a psychologist/neurologist, but it would make sense to me if it did.

Elizabeth Donald: I always knew I wanted to write and create, and I wanted to be in public service. Journalism allowed me to indulge both, while also engaging my brain, and I was able to make some small difference in the world around me. It is an incredibly difficult job, poorly paid with wildly unpredictable hours and an enormous emotional and mental toll, and as a weekend bonus, absolutely everyone hates you! We burn up new journalists at an alarming rate. But I loved it, and I still do. Doing what we do is a privilege, and one I’ve never taken for granted: we tell people what happened today, because they need to know. It’s that simple, and that complex, and completely unappreciated in this modern era. We write the first rough draft of history, as Phillip Graham said, and that is an enormous responsibility, as well as our honor.

Sean Taylor: When I write about writing, which is the bulk of my nonfiction, I'm telling the story of who I am directly. When I write fiction, it's still telling my story too, but it's far more subtle, far more hidden behind the symbols and the themes. With nonfiction, I can just come out and say what I think, feel, believe, etc. 

Van Allen Plexico: The really creative part of that kind of book for me is when I write the beginning and the ending, where I lay out what the book is trying to do, and then I make the closing argument at the end for what I was trying to say in it.

L. Andrew Cooper: I get to say what’s on my mind quite directly!

Alisa Richie Childress: The type of writing I do is very cathartic. Putting it all in paper helps me to organize me thoughts and my feelings in a way that I cannot do if I keep them in my head, it even if I am just journaling. Having an imagined audience to talk to helps me with clarity. I also hope that I am helping others. It really makes me feel good when someone tells me how much something I said resonated with them or helped them in their journey.

Brian K Morris: I enjoy finding out new ways of looking at something real, whether it's the history of a comic book character, getting perspective on a creator and their thinking, or instructing WHY something has merit, such as writing book reviews and how simple it can be.

Halloween Re-Runs: Writing the Scary -- 7 Tips for Creating Horror and Dread with Words

by Sean Taylor

What’s the scariest scene you’ve ever seen in a horror flick? Why was it scary?

Now I know some of you are going to default to either scenes of gratuitous (now there’s a loaded word if ever I’ve seen one), gore or perhaps others will immediately think of a jump scare, but I want us to think even deeper than that? What scared you even deeper than the moment of the scare? What really stayed with you and made you think twice about taking that dark alley, what caused you to make sure you got home before the woods at the park started to get dark, what got lodged in your brain and made you check the closet twice before being sure no one was hiding there so you could relax and go to sleep?

For me, those are the true scares, the deep frights, the fears that rattle us at our cores and stick with us.

Case in point. Okay, well, two cases in point. Both from my own movie-going experience.

Case 1: Window Scratching

I saw the original television broadcast of Salem’s Lot when I was way too young. At the time, my bedroom was made up of a former back porch and had glass shutters for the walls on three sides. Outside those shutters were short trees with limbs that moved in a good breeze. (Those of you familiar with the movie have already guessed where I’m going with this.)

In the movie, when someone was turned into a vampire, he or she would visit a friend or loved one and scratch outside their window, asking to be let in.

Well, that night, there was a strong breeze, and when the tree limbs brushed against my window-walls on all three sides, needless to say, I was terrified and imagined that vampires were outside begging to be let in to drain my blood. And no, I did not open the shades to check, not until morning light sent the vamps packing.

Case 2: Door Bumping

I was an adult when I discovered the absolute scariest motion picture ever made. For those who realize it, that movie is 1963’s The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson’s equally “haunting” story, The Haunting of Hill House. That movie had few jump scares and relied more on a constant, building sense of madness to keep the viewer off-center and off-balance.

Lots of folks remember the sudden face at the top of the spiral staircase, but for me, it was the bumps on the door while Nell and Theo hugged each other, huddled in shared terror. In reality, I will most likely never see a ghost, but I will hear lots of loud bumps in the dark, and that’s something that triggers memories of that scene almost every time.

I share these examples to show that the best horror isn't forced or faked or manipulated through tricks, but maintained through the steady use of narrative technique.

What made Salem's Lot scary was how the story affected me. And the same goes for The Haunting. And guess what? Each of those was a terrifying book before it became a motion picture -- and if they hadn't both been so damn scary as books, they never would have been made into movies.

You’re Not in Control, Like in the Movies

Writing scary is hard. Movies have it a lot easier when it comes to horror. They control the eye, and thus, they also control the mind of the viewer.

Writing scary is hard. Books are stuck in one place, but the reader isn’t. Skip ahead a few pages and the suspense can be ruined. Put the book down, and the tension is released. The writer has no control of the reader’s eye, no power to keep them from turning a page... besides those specific to all other genres of writing of course.

Writing scary is hard. It's really hard because it takes an understanding of the human mind, memories, senses, and universal generalities about the human condition. In a story, you don't have the luxury of visual shorthand to creep readers out like directors do in a scary movie.

Jump scares? Nope. Sorry. The reader controls the pacing. And he or she can skip ahead or backward at will. That clutching crone hand can go backward and forward and be skipped altogether based on the reader's whims.

Graphic visual scares? Gore? Sorry again. Unless you're the most visceral writer ever, written gore falls short. And overused, it simply becomes words on a page made less by the sheer volume of them.

So, as a writer, you're stuck with having to be a psychological and writing genius. But how? While I'm far from an expert on horror outside of reading it for years and knowing what I like (as the saying goes), I have written several tales in the genre, from ghosts to monsters to zombies and creepy human beings, and I've learned a few things with each telling.

Thanks for Reading Thus Far; Now Here’s Your Reward

The key to writing horror, as least as I see it (and you’ll find as many different takes on this as you can find authors, I’m sure), is to camp out in the concepts of discomfort and dread. You’re not going to surprise scare a reader. You’re going to slowly overwhelm them with several smaller “uneases” that become a full-blown “creepy” and finally if you’ve done your job right, all-out dread.

Dread is that feeling that keeps a reader’s stomach unsettled, that scene that makes them feel phantom pains in the same limb or joint the killer keeps sticking a pin into, the sum of all the chills up a spine and “what if” scenarios of the mind a reader keeps accumulating during the time it takes to read your tale.

But how?

1. Be visceral. But don't mistake visceral for gross. For example, while a limb being removed and force fed to a tied up victim is certainly a compelling image in a story, it may not be as effective as something as simple as a sewing needle being wedged into the soft skin beneath a dry fingernail.

My friend Kimberly Richardson is a master of this technique, as demonstrated in her story “Silk” from the collection Tales from a Goth Librarian. I won’t spoil it, but you definitely need to read it to see perhaps the best lesson on this topic you’ll ever see.

2. Tap into the universal fears. For example, when I wrote "Nymph" for the Gene Simmons House of Horror graphic novel collection (yes, I know that it's not pure prose, but bear with me), I wanted to recreate the sense of being lost in the woods, in a place where you're at the mercy of the natural world. When I was a kid the woods were creepy more often than not, and I had lost that feeling after moving to Atlanta and growing up. But I knew there was something innate, subconscious about being afraid of being lost in the woods, and I wanted to tap into that.

In Robert W. Chambers’ tale “In the Court of the Dragon,” from The King in Yellow, the narrator begins to notice he is being followed by a sinister church organist. Very few people enjoy being singled out, and none I know who like being singled out for a nefarious purpose. Add to that the idea of the messenger of death, and Chambers is able to touch on two universal fears at once in this story.

Another master of this technique is Neil Gaiman. What’s worse for a child than to have your own mother against you? And yet, that’s the premise for his newly classic Coraline. Is there any more universal fear than being hunted by those who are supposed to protect you?

3. Discover the specific, individual fears make a person tick. For example, in my zombie tale "Posthumous" (from Zombiesque by Daw/Penguin Books), it's not the decaying body of the zombie that makes her creepy. It's her determination to save her marriage, her blind, unwavering determination to do so regardless of the consequences to anyone else. Incidentally, this is something I learned from the writing of C.S. Lewis, that the great goods also have the capacity for becoming the greatest evils.

Stephen King did this well in the story “N.” Bear in mind that I have OCD and I constantly rearrange books on a coffee table, look for even numbers on everything from the radio volume to the number of french fries I eat at a time. Yeah, I know. Weird. But look it up online. I’m not alone in this. So when King asked what if those crazy little habits are the only things keeping a terrifying other universe from invading our own, that really resonated with me.

4. Unleash your horrors on ALL the senses. Don't let just sounds and sights convey your protagonist's woes and horror. Go deeper. Is that smell like the burn ward at a hospital? Does the touch of the killer leave grease and sweat on a victim's neck? Does the hooker's kiss taste like she's been eating rotting meat? Engage all the senses that can convey fear and discomfort.

As simple as this should be to writers, it’s perhaps the most underutilized. It merely requires us to shift from the “first gear” of what we see and hear to the higher gears that are stronger and more efficient.

Jessica McHugh, a fellow writer I’ve met a few times on the convention circuit, really, and I do mean REALLY gets this one. If you can read her work without really feeling the tightening in your gut (even to the point of wanting to empty your stomach sometimes), then you’ve got a mind and gut of steel. Don’t believe me? Then try to sit through this one turned audio at The Wicked Library podcast: Extraction.

5. Use sounds that bother the reader, not just the characters. You can make up words that sound like stuff. The official literary term for this is onomatopoeia, and it works because it plays games with the reader's ear, whether they hear the sounds spoken aloud or not.

For example, in my steampunk horror tale "Death with a Glint of Bronze" for Dreams of Steam II: Brass and Bolts, I hit the reader right off the bat with the "crick-cracking of the neck bone where it attaches to the top of the spine." But the following sentence continues the idea, simply by using sounds that create a stop and reflow, like restricted breathing might sound: "Then there is the delicious constriction as the breath slowly ceases its movement through the windpipe."

6. Don't try to be "horror movie" scary. Aim for "imagination" scary. Go for the stuff that no movie could ever film, you know, the kind of sick, warped, crazy stuff that could only take shape in someone's imagination as they read. For example, does anyone really know by reading Lovecraft's stories what an elder god truly looks like? We have ideas, but that's all. We have the accepted image that has become synonymous with the tales, but let's be honest -- does that fully match the horror you imagined in your psyche when you first read the words of Lovecraft's description? On a similar note, isn't your personal nightmare of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky far creepier than any of the drawings you've seen of it?

Ray Bradbury is the master of this kind of scare, and he isn’t afraid to leave the action sequences “off panel,” preferring to let the characters fears become the readers’ fears. One need only read Something Wicked This Way Comes or his short story “The Veldt” to see this master at play.

7. Make your setting as important as your characters. Setting is perhaps the most effective weapon in your arsenal as a writer when it comes to horror fiction. Choose the right setting and you’ve already done half the work. Why does Stephen King trap people on islands so much? Isolation. An island is a cage full of open doors that don't matter.

Why is Gothic fiction (even Gothic romance) so creepy? It’s those castles and mansions. Empty spaces and echoes. Secret rooms.

But let’s think a little more contemporarily too. Movie theaters with the lights out. Joe Hill covered that to great effect in the story “20th Century Ghost” from the 20th Century Ghosts collection. From the same collection, “Last Breath” captures the eeriness of dirty, unkempt roadside attractions during long car rides on family vacations.

But Wait! There’s More!

These techniques aren’t just for horror. A little bit of scary can often improve even the best love story, or perhaps a dramatic literary book.

Don’t believe me?

Okay, smarty-pants. I’ll prove it to you.

1. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier -- What makes this book memorable? Is it the forlorn new bride left mostly alone in the big house (shades of The House of the Seven Gables, anyone?)? Is it the lingering tension that her new husband could be a killer? Perhaps it’s the big, creepy, gothic type mansion with rooms she’s not supposed to visit. Is it the way Du Maurier forces the reader to use his or her imagination just as the protagonist does? Why, yes. Yes, it is.  And guess what? All those are elements of horror. The key fear: those who are supposed to protect you turn against you.

2. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton -- Let’s look at setting first. The frozen, rural town. What is more isolating, more soul-crushing to someone whose biggest goal is to live vibrantly? The sense of oppression doesn’t let up from the moment Ethan kisses Mattie. Tension mounts as they try to break out and find freedom, but fate has other plans, and ironically it’s the setting itself that becomes the “monster” that kills their chance at happiness. The key fear: failure to find happiness, and becoming the very thing you hated in the first place.

3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte -- Not only is the Gothic setting of this novel unsettling, but it seems to pervade through all the characters as well. Not only that, there are visions of ghosts, multiple creepy (and needless) deaths in the house, and unpunished sins left to fester that plague not only Heathcliff, who ultimately must die alone with his ghosts. The key fears: loneliness, isolation, and rejection.

4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Ronald Dahl -- Who's creepier than Dr. Victor Frankenstein? Willy Wonka. It's like Friday the 13th for kids in this book. Who gets knocked off next? Sure, they make it out (kind of) okay, but wow at the horror in here. Mauled by squirrels, shrunk, juiced, almost drowned in chocolate, etc. That Wonka was one whacked-out mad scientist. Key fears: how about squirrels, getting shrunk, drowned, and juiced? How does that grab you?

Okay, Bye-Bye Now

That's all I've got to give you, but if you can learn to do even those seven things well, you'll never hurt for a job writing truly frightening horror stories.