I’m
excited to feature LynDee Walker today on What Scares You. She’s pretty
awesome, and she’s super nice, and she’s crazy prolific. In fact, in the time
it’s taken me to write this intro she probably already drafted three novels.
Her novel Leave No Stone, from the Texas
Ranger Faith McClellan series, is a finalist for a Thriller Award this
year, and she’s constantly hanging out on the bestsellers list on Amazon.
BUT WHAT
SCARES HER, you ask?
Read on to
find out!
What is
your greatest fear?
Losing one
of my children. It’s probably cliche to say that as a mom, but it terrifies me
to my bones. That was the inspiration for the first Faith McClellan novel,
actually, which was originally written partially from the victim’s mother’s
point of view.
What is
your earliest childhood memory of fear?
Jaws. I was probably three, and sitting
in my mom’s lap eating sweet tarts, when the shark popped up out of the water.
I sucked a piece of candy down my windpipe and nearly choked. I’ve been afraid
of sharks ever since. I got over the fear of the candy, though.
Is
there any fear you’ve overcome in your life? How has that changed you?
The fear
of public speaking—I have always been able to talk with anybody one on one, but
until I was 30, I couldn’t speak in front of a group if you paid me. When I
took a job as a meeting leader at Weight Watchers, I had to figure it out
quickly, and conquering that fear has given me more confidence in myself and my
voice, and probably by extension, the confidence to try writing fiction in the
first place.
What is
your weirdest fear?
Sharks in
the swimming pool. It’s really random, but when we’re swimming and the idea
strikes me, my heart pounds until I’m out of the pool.
Weirdest fear: “Sharks in the swimming pool.”
Do you
believe in ghosts?
I do, I’m
pretty sure we had one when I was growing up. So many things would happen
inexplicably in that old house—bread falling off the counter, appliances coming
on when no one was even in the room…I never felt afraid, but there was
something there.
How do you deal with fear?
I find
something I can control in the situation and focus on that. And if I can’t find
a focus, I hide under the covers until the scary thing has passed.
What
scares you most about the writing process?
I’m a
total pantser, so every time I start a new book I’m afraid this will be the one
that falls apart in the middle and doesn’t get finished. So far, it’s
unfounded. Yes, I just knocked on wood after I typed that.
Do you
have any horror movie deal-breakers?
I’m not a
fan of the jerky, sort of stop-motion-esque animations of villains (like
Pennywise in the new theatrical versions of IT), and I don’t like blood
just for the sake of it being bloody (I never got into Saw, for
example). But well-done horror movies like the old original Halloween, The
Haunting of Hill House, or Get Out are some of my favorites to
watch.
In
which post-apocalyptic scenario are you most likely to survive and
thrive: 28 Days Later (zombies), The Stand (sickness
kills all but a few), or The Last Policeman (asteroid hits
Earth)?
The Stand—I usually manage to avoid germs, I get along with almost everyone, and I can fight off just about anything to protect people I love. I think I could both fit in with a survivors’ group and hold my own against Mr. Flagg.
—
LynDee Walker is the Amazon Charts bestselling author of two crime fiction series featuring strong heroines and “twisty, absorbing” mysteries. Her first Nichelle Clarke crime thriller, FRONT PAGE FATALITY, was nominated for the Agatha Award for best first novel, and in 2018, she introduced readers to Texas Ranger Faith McClellan in FEAR NO TRUTH. Reviews have praised her work as “well-crafted, compelling, and fast-paced,” and “an edge-of-your-seat ride” with “a spider web of twists and turns that will keep you reading until the end.”
Before
she started writing fiction, LynDee was an award-winning journalist who covered
everything from ribbon cuttings to high level police corruption. Her work has
appeared in newspapers and magazines across the U.S. Aside from books,
LynDee loves her family, her readers, travel, and coffee. She lives in
Richmond, Virginia, where she is working on her next novel when she’s not
juggling laundry and children’s sports schedules.
I’m very excited to chat with Carol Goodman for this installment of What Scares You. Carol’s books are among my favorites of all time. They are filled with spooky houses, buried secrets, myth, Gothic imagery, writers and artists, and ghosts. With all that swirling around in her mind, how could this interview not be interesting? Read on to find out what scares Carol.
What is your greatest fear?
That something will happen
to my daughter.
What is your earliest
childhood memory of fear? Or the scariest thing you remember from childhood?
I remember when I realized
that people died, specifically that my parents would die someday and that I
would die someday. I would like awake at night obsessing over that, and finally
the only way I could overcome my fear was to make up a story where my family
and I were transported to a planet where we would all be immortal—at least, I
think I included my family in this fantasy at first. Eventually it was just me
who got to go live on the planet and be immortal. This fantasy was really
comforting until I became a parent, and then I couldn’t resort to it because I
somehow knew I wouldn’t be able to bring my child with me. What self-respecting
child wants to go live on a planet with their mom?
Is there any fear you’ve
overcome in your life? How has that changed you?
See above: Mortality
conquered by fantasy. Also, I used to be frightened of being alone in a house,
but mostly I’m not anymore.
What is your weirdest fear?
None of my fears seem
weird.
Do you believe in ghosts?
My daughter recently
answered this question with: “I don’t believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of
them.” I love ghost stories, but if I actually saw a ghost, I’d completely lose
it.
What is your favorite urban
legend?
I remember hearing “The Claw”
when I was a teenager and being terrified that I’d be out parking with my date
and hear that scritch-scritch-scritch on the roof. There was a version of it, too, where the
woman is driving and people are pointing at her car with horrified faces and
when she gets home she realizes there’s a madman on her roof—or maybe a corpse?
That terrified me because of the idea that other people could see the danger
you were in but you couldn’t.
Do you have a recurring
nightmare?
For years I had the classic
school anxiety nightmare in which you are sitting down for an exam and realize
you’ve forgotten to come to the class all semester, only in my version the exam
would be in my Greek class (I took Greek for two years in college) and my Greek
teacher Mr. Day would be towering over me like Zeus, brandishing a lightning
bolt, and the exam would be in Sanskrit.
How do you deal with fear?
I make up a story that’s
even worse than the thing I’m afraid of, and then I write that story. For
example, when I was in my early thirties I’d separated from my husband and gone
to live at my parents’ house with my two-year-old daughter. I was afraid that
my life was over, that I’d have to live with my parents forever, and that my
soon-to-be-ex-husband would kidnap my daughter. So I thought: this could be
worse; what if I hadn’t had my parents to come home to? So I made up a story
about a woman in similar circumstances who takes a job at her former boarding
school so that she’ll have housing and childcare. The only thing she has to
worry about is the vengeful figure from her past wielding an ice-pike. Somehow
I found this comforting, and it was the origin of my first novel, The Lake of Dead Languages.
What scares you most about
the writing process?
Every morning when I sit
down to write I feel a little frisson
of dread. I’m not sure why. I think it has to do with exposure—the sense that
I’ll have to peel away the protective layer between my inner self and the
world—and, worse, that there won’t be anything there when I do.
What is your greatest fear
as a writer?
That I won’t have anything
left to write.
What’s the scariest thing
you’ve ever written?
I recently wrote a scene in
which a man saws his own hand off. That was scary.
Do you have any horror
movie deal-breakers?
I hate whenever anything
happens to a character’s hands. And yes,
I know that contradicts the answer above.
“I recently wrote a scene in which a man saws his own hand off.”
What’s the scariest book
you’ve ever read? Is there a particular scene that really haunts you still?
The
Shining was for a long time the scariest book. The
Kubrick film absolutely terrified me the first time I saw it (in the movie
theaters when it first came out) and haunted me for years. Probably when the
twins appear and say “Come play with us.” When I read the book years later I was amazed
that the book was AS scary. I also remember being really creeped out by Superstition by David Ambrose. Billy
O’Callaghan’s The Dead House scared
me, so then I read it a second time.
In which post-apocalyptic
scenario are you most likely to survive and thrive: 28 Days Later (zombies), The
Stand (sickness kills all but a few), or The Last Policeman (asteroid
hits Earth)?
Well, given our present
situation, let’s hope it’s The Stand.
I really wouldn’t do well with zombies, and I haven’t read The Last Policeman.
What’s worse: being haunted
by a demon or having a stalker?
I’ll take the human
stalker. Demons are definitely scarier.
You are renting a remote
house with a few close friends when all the electricity cuts out. Are you the
friend who goes down to the basement to check on the situation? If not, what do
you do when someone else does, and you hear them calling your name from that
dark basement? (Assume your cell phones don’t work out there in the remote
wilderness.)
Since I am the Mom in my house, I am ALWAYS the one who goes down to the basement to fiddle with the circuit switches even though I LOATHE the basement. So yeah, I’m the one who goes down. I’m calling for you now. Taaarrraaa …. Come play with me … foreverrrrr ….
—
Carol Goodman is the author of twenty-one novels, including The Lake of Dead Languages and The Seduction of Water, which won the 2003 Hammett Prize, The Widow’s House, which won the 2018 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and The Night Visitors, which won the 2020 Mary Higgins Clark Award. Her books have been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family, and teaches literature and writing at The New School and SUNY New Paltz.
Let’s welcome Alma Katsu to the What Scares You blog! Her latest book, The Deep, is about the Titanic and hauntings, and it was released right smack in the middle of the current pandemic, so you should buy it to support her and read it to scare yourself silly.
Alma writes really terrifying books that freak out a lot of people, but she’s an absolute delight of a person. I had the pleasure of chatting with her at an event in D.C. late last year and immediately fell in love with her. So of course I wanted to find out what really scares her. You will not be disappointed!
What is your earliest childhood memory of fear? Or the scariest thing you remember from childhood?
I grew up in a very spooky little town in Massachusetts. It
seemed there was some horrific legend associated with many of the buildings and
such. There were a ton of old cemeteries, and two funeral parlors each a block
in different directions from my house. We lived in an old, rundown Victorian
that was also creepy as hell, and growing up Roman Catholic gives you this
weird, superstitious outlook on life. The total of all these experiences is
that I grew up believing in the supernatural.
I don’t believe in any of that stuff now. It’s a little sad that
all that kind of mystery has been taken out of my life. But I’d had a strange
career in defense and the intelligence business and been exposed to really
horrible things that people do (genocides! Mass atrocities!) and so stories
like that kind of pale in comparison. For a long time, I didn’t scare, really,
and now that I’m retired it’s only coming back to me slowly.
And I write horror stories! Oh, the irony.
Do you believe in ghosts?
Why or why not?
I don’t not believe in
ghosts but it’s getting harder to sustain this possibility every day. My
husband likes those ghost hunting reality shows and so we watch a fair amount
of them (I keep him company), and I haven’t seen anything that seems
conclusive, not to me. And yet we keep watching them.
What was your worst
nightmare ever?
When I was very young, I dreamed once that the earth ran out of water and some people were committing suicide by setting fire to themselves, because no one would waste the water needed to put them out. And my father decided this was what we’d do, so he had us sit in the living room and set the house on fire. I could see the flames devouring the house, but my family were all sitting on the couch, not budging, and finally I ran away from them because I didn’t want to burn, but I felt awful about not dying with them. Then I woke up, but the dream has stayed with me for decades.
Yeah, my home life wasn’t fucked up at all.
“I dreamed once that the earth ran out of water and some people were committing suicide by setting fire to themselves, because no one would waste the water needed to put them out.”
Is there anything you are terrified of eating?
Why?
By saying “terrified of eating” you imply that I’d actually
consider eating it. I stopped eating things I don’t want to eat a long time
ago. You have to understand, I’m half Japanese and grew up watching my mother
eat things that any normal person would not consider edible, like dried fish
heads. Saturday mornings usually began with my mother pickling tiny octopuses
in a jar. So, no, I cannot be shamed or cajoled into eating weird things.
The question of eating weird things came up, naturally, with my
book The Hunger, which is about the Donner Party. You cannot write about
the Donner Party without studying up on cannibalism or asking yourself if you
would consider resorting to cannibalism if the circumstances were right. (The
answer to that is no.) I found out, on book tour, that most people don’t want
you to bring up cannibalism at all but some people, a very small minority,
really really want to talk about it. And oddly know a lot about it.
What is your greatest
fear as a writer?
Probably the normal writer fear that I won’t be able to get the
current novel to work. Just because you wrote one book, or a dozen, it doesn’t
mean you’re going to be able to write the next one.
As for being able to write things that scare people, my hang-up
is not writing something that
completely freaks people out. Because of my time being around genocidaires and torturers (see above)
kind of burned out my front-end filter, and things that didn’t seem like a big
deal to me kind of freaked normal people out (read my first book, The Taker,
if you want to see what I mean).
One of the things I learned from that experience and from
writing horror novels is that everybody thinks that what they like is “normal”.
I get bad reviews from people who think my books shouldn’t be considered horror
at all, and from people who think they’re terrifying. And each one of them
thinks their level is set perfectly. It’s a challenge for all writers, how far
to take “it”, whatever the “it” is in your story. As artists, we’re supposed to
challenge people. The problem is too many people these days don’t want to be
challenged.
What’s worse: being haunted by a demon or
having a stalker?
I don’t mean to take the stalker thing lightly, but people underestimate how hard it is to be prosecuted for murder. I mean, if there was no known association between you and this stalker you could probably kill him, and they’d never connect you to the body or his disappearance. Problem eliminated.
Alma Katsu is the award-winning author of five novels that combine history with the supernatural. THE HUNGER (2018) was named one of NPR’s Favorite 100 Horror Stories and was nominated for a Stoker and Locus Magazine award for best horror novel. Her debut novel, THE TAKER, was one of Booklist’s Top Ten Debut Novels of 2011. THE DEEP (2020), her most recent novel, is a reimagining of the sinking of the Titanic with a horror twist. Her first spy novel, RED WIDOW, will be published spring of 2021.
Hi, friends! Today we’re celebrating the stuff that scares the pants off Michael Landweber. We’re also celebrating the release of his new Audible original The In-Between, which has a fascinating premise involving teleporting. And if you sign up for my author newsletter right here [link], I’ll be giving away two free downloads of Michael’s book next week. So get on it!
What is your greatest fear?
These are strange times. It almost feels irresponsible to
answer this question with anything other than global pandemic. We all have our
own specific fears, but it is very unusual to be living in a moment where
everyone has the same fear. Not to mention that we are all learning to fear
things that very few people were scared of before, such as:
Going to the grocery store
People not wearing masks
Cardboard boxes
Joggers
Seriously, I have never been more terrified than the
other day when I started down an empty aisle in a grocery store and suddenly
someone entered from the other side NOT wearing a mask. If that person had started
jogging or throwing cardboard boxes at me, it would have been game over.
Also, climate change.
But this is about my personal fears, not global ones. So,
in that context, I really have to go with blueberries.
What is your earliest childhood memory of fear? Or the
scariest thing you remember from childhood?
So, let’s talk about blueberries.
When I was a very small child in the 1970s, my parents took me to see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This was a mistake. First of all, let’s be honest, that is one of the creepiest movies of all time. It is seriously terrifying. A middle-aged loner, who sometimes looks like Gene Wilder and sometimes like Johnny Depp, lures children into his “factory” by giving them golden tickets and promises of all their favorite candy, then seriously messes them up when they take his “tour.” Really, it isn’t that different from the plot of Stephen King’s It.
This horror show was the matinee of choice for my parents
and four-year-old me. I made it through the kid getting sucked up into a tube
out of a chocolate river. But when the girl started blowing up into a giant
blueberry after chewing a piece of gum, I ran screaming from the theater. That
was the end of the movie for me. I had no idea for years that the kids didn’t
die. This fear has also provided me with my longest-lived neurosis. I do not
eat blueberries to this day.
Blueberries….striking fear in the hearts of men (well, Michael) for all of eternity.
Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life? How has
that changed you?
I’m not sure that I can say I’ve overcome my fear of
flying, but I have definitely managed it. I still hate to fly. Every bump makes
me grab the armrest and stop breathing for a moment. I know all the arguments
about how its safer to fly than drive and so on. But every bit of turbulence
makes me check out the window to see if the engine has fallen off. And I need
to sit near the window so I can see the ground. This may seem counterintuitive,
but when it is night or the plane is in a cloud, my anxiety goes way up.
In my latest book, The In Between, I imagine a
world where climate change has made the atmosphere so turbulent that passengers
take a powerful sedative before take-off and the flight attendants wear magnetic
boots. In the story, challenges with flying led to teleportation becoming a
commercial means of travel. But sometimes when you teleport, you disappear.
But I digress … look, I get it, it does not sound like
I’ve overcome my fear at all. But my management of it definitely changed when I
had kids. I’ve always flown a fair amount. Every interesting place I want to go
seems to require a plane trip, and I like to travel. Before kids, I did very
little to hide my anxiety. I just let it all hang out there. Not like screaming
in the aisles, but definitely making travel less pleasant for my wife. After
kids, I realized that I needed to let my kids develop their own fears, rather
than imposing mine. So I learned to hide my fear of flying when I was with
them. That’s progress, right?
What is your weirdest fear?
Let’s go with the blueberries.
What are your phobias?
If you believe the internet, I’ve already discussed my
aviophobia and bebuphobia. I’ll wait while you Google them. So how about
arachnophobia. I really don’t like spiders.
We have a division of labor in our house for dealing with
any non-human invaders based on number of legs. I handle all critters with two
(birds), four (squirrels) and six (so many things). My wife disposes of the
eight-legged abominations. There is an ongoing debate about anything with more
legs than that, such as centipedes and millipedes. The one time we were
completely flummoxed was when a slug got into the house. We had no contingency
plan at all for no legs.
What scares you most about the writing process?
I tend to write without an outline. I have a vague idea
where I’m going when I start writing a novel, but I have no plan on how to get
there. I take it on faith that the road will reveal itself along the way. That
can lead to a lot of wrong turns and dead ends. So there is always a moment
about halfway into a first draft where I get scared that I’m not going to
figure out the rest of it. I calm down by reminding myself that it has come
together before and will work out this time too. Probably.
What’s the scariest movie or TV show you’ve ever seen?
I don’t watch a lot of straight-up horror movies. But I
do like a good slow burn with a creepy twist. Get Out. The Sixth Sense. The
Cabin in the Woods. Scream. The Others. All great twisty flicks that I
can’t watch alone at night. But one that really scared me was Identity.
It’s an indirect riff on Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None with
an amazing cast. Definitely an underrated gem.
What’s worse: clowns or spiders?
Yeah. Spiders. No contest.
—
Michael Landweber lives and writes in Washington, DC. He is the author of three novels: The In Between, We, and Thursday 1:17 p.m. His short stories have appeared in literary magazines such as Gargoyle, Fourteen Hills, Fugue, Barrelhouse, and American Literary Review. He is an associate editor at Potomac Review and a contributor for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Kudos to EQMM, which has four stories on the list of finalists! Here’s the list:
Hector Acosta — “Turistas” (Down & Out Books)
Michael Cowgill — “Call Me Chuckles” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Tara Laskowski — “The Long-Term Tenant” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Lia Matera — “Snow Job” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
Twist Phelan — “Fathers-in-Law” (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine)
I don’t often like my short stories after they’ve been published–I mean, I like them ok, but I mostly just see errors or things I could’ve fixed. But I’m particularly proud of “The Long-Term Tenant,” and I’m so pleased that it’s been recognized in this way. It was a really fun story to write–I’ve always found the desert a spooky place where anything can happen.
I love reading these interviews when they come in. I love the mix of stuff I’ve never heard of and things I totally relate to. I love hearing what my friends, writers I admire, get freaked out about.
I also always feel like I learn something each time–and this time is no exception. The answers that Anjili gives here are so super smart. I kept reading this and saying to myself, “Yes! Exactly! I could never have articulated it like that, but YES.”
Here, my friends, is a scholar and a wordsmith. (Who’s afraid of helicopter blades.) And Anjili, once this weird plague virus is over, let’s get beers.
What is your greatest fear?
I feel like I need to address the elephantine fear in the
room right off the bat. Obviously, I am writing this during a global pandemic. I
am confined to my apartment, isolated from friends and family, doing my best to
flatten the curve, and worrying about the health and safety of the entire world—just
like essentially everyone I know. In other words, my greatest fears, which seemed
as unique as everyone else’s a few weeks ago, will probably sound pretty
familiar to anyone likely to read this now. It would be easy to draw the
conclusion that, for a lot of us, what seem like idiosyncrasies of terror are
actually just different manifestations of the same concerns. I haven’t decided
whether this possibility is comforting or not. On one hand, it is reflective of shared
humanity. On the other, if we are all afraid of the same things at heart, then
those fears are remarkably powerful…and remarkably warranted. How’s that for an
optimistic start?
What is your earliest childhood memory of fear? Or the
scariest thing you remember from childhood?
The first strong reaction of terror I remember was to W. W. Jacobs’s
“The Monkey’s Paw.” That story haunted me in childhood, largely because of its
cruel moral. We are taught from an early age that hopes and wishes are positive
things: they help us to get through difficult times and to focus on goals for
the future. I haven’t read the story since I was a child, but I remember that
it was framed as a warning to be careful what we wish for, because we might be
punished by the forms our granted wishes take. One of the wishes in that story
is for the return of a loved one, and that is the part that upset me most. The suggestion
that human attachment should result in punishment is horrible indeed. The
implication seems to be that we need to fear the best of our nature as much as
the worst of it. Of course, the story leaves an especially bitter taste in my
mouth lately: I can’t count how often I have wished for more time at home,
alone, to focus on my writing…and here we are. You suck, monkey’s paw.
What’s the scariest movie or TV show you’ve ever seen?
I just named a story that scared me as a child, but it stands
out in my memory because I often feel like I am lacking some sort of “normal
reaction” gene for horror fiction. This is not to say that I don’t appreciate horror;
on the contrary, I seek it out and enjoy it. It’s also not to say that I
dissociate while reading or watching it, but it tends to evoke empathy or anger
in me, rather than fear. Monster stories, in particular, don’t scare me at all,
and on the contrary, I sometimes find them comforting. I think this is because we
create monsters as a way of defining, explaining, and creating artificial
limitations for the evil that humans are sometimes capable of. People can be a
lot more terrifying than monsters, because some of them are able to justify
their actions to themselves, however horrible, and when they behave without
compassion, it makes us doubt the humanity and potential of all of us. Also…you
can’t just throw holy water or garlic at them and call it a day. [Embarrassing
side note about my missing supernatural fear gene: when everyone was talking
about how terrifying The Witch was, I had to text a bunch of friends to find
out why it was supposed to be scary, like I was Mork from Ork or something.]
Do you have a recurring nightmare?
I did a lot of theatre as a child, and I am convinced that
it has affected the structure of my dreams. Generally, this is a good thing: if
a dream starts out frightening, my subconscious can often will it into
something else, like a change of scene. Sometimes, though, the opposite is
true: I’ll have a dream that begins as something seemingly innocuous, I’ll
suddenly realize that I completely misunderstood the context, and then it’s as
if I can’t change the scene, because I failed to adequately interpret it. For
example, I’m in a park, watching children frolic in Halloween costumes.
Suddenly, I realize that I have completely misread what is going on: one of the
“children” is, in fact, a bear, and he is mauling people…not frolicking. Yes,
my subconscious is about as pessimistic, transparent, and boring as possible in
its warnings to always be vigilant and not let my guard down. For the record, I
think it should lighten up a bit.
I’m in a park, watching children frolic in Halloween costumes. Suddenly, I realize that I have completely misread what is going on…
What is your weirdest fear?
In that other life—the one in which we can leave the house—I
am afraid of any kind of spinning blade-type object: round saws, helicopter
rotor blades…and windmills. But, no, I don’t believe they cause cancer, which
makes me less weird than some people, I guess.
Who is the best villain, fictional or in real life?
The best fictional villains are the kind that have just
enough of something good—charm, wit, intellect—to periodically lure us
into forgetting they are villains and liking them a little bit. Banal
villains are all around us in real life (to the misfortune of the windmills);
it’s nice to imagine a world in which even the bad guys have some compelling
qualities. Andrew Scott’s interpretation of Moriarty on Sherlock is a
great example; so is Boyd Crowder from Justified, though Boyd is a distinctly
more complex character than Moriarty. He has a number of decent impulses, too,
which make him as relatable as he is dangerous. “I’ve been accused of being a
lot of things. Inarticulate ain’t one of them” is, I think, a profoundly
satisfying line for a writer. It’s a line that layers self-consciousness about
personal shortcomings with hope—put forth as conviction—that mastery of words
might serve to counterbalance these shortcomings.
What scares you most about the writing process?
The thing that scares me most is pressing “print” or “send.”
I love words, but I sometimes love them too much, and I have a tendency
to spend excessive time rephrasing and restructuring my work. It’s difficult to
let go, but once I do, that stress completely dissipates, as if my role as
creator is done—for better or for worse—and the work’s destiny is its own. [Side note: yes, I know that Mary Shelley
warned about this type of thinking, but who’s afraid of the Frankenstein
monster? Not me.]
—
Anjili Babbar is a writer, scholar, and professor of crime fiction, British and Irish literature, and folklore, and president of the Dashiell Hammett Society. Upcoming publications include Finders: Justice, Faith, and Identity in Irish Crime Fiction (Syracuse University Press) and “‘This Isn’t F*cking Miss Marple, Mate’: Intertextuality in Adrian McKinty’s Sean Duffy Series” (in Guilt Rules All:Mysteries, Detectives, and Crime in Irish Fiction, edited by Elizabeth Mannion and Brian Cliff, Syracuse University Press).
Strange times. Strange times, indeed. A few months ago, I posted a blog here discussing all the spring events I was looking forward to. A few weeks later, I had to delete it because every single one of those events was canceled.
We are all sad, I know. All mourning the loss of something
and struggling to adjust to this new (hopefully temporary) way of living. For
me, I’m very sad that my son won’t go back to 2nd grade to finish out the year
with his friends and teacher, all of whom he loves. I’m sad that the writing
conventions, readings, and festivals I was going to attend are all vanished—poof!—some
of which, like the Edgar Awards, I was so very much looking forward to. I miss
my colleagues at work, I miss my favorite restaurants. I miss having lunch
dates with friends. I miss the luxury of wandering around a store for an hour
or so and just browsing for random things that I don’t need.
But in this moment of profound anxiety and loss, I know I
need to find things to be grateful for and things to look forward to. So I
thought I’d share with you a few cool things that I’m part of, since I can’t go
to events and shout about them.
First, on March 16, an anthology launched that I’m very excited about. It’s called The Swamp Killers, and it is a novel-in-stories by a great group of crime fiction writers and edited by Sarah M. Chen and E.A. Aymar. I’ve got the first story in the novel, called “Birthday,” about a depressed hit man who has to attend a child’s birthday party at, basically, a Chuck E Cheese kind of place.
Contributors include: E.A. Aymar, Sarah M. Chen, Hilary Davidson, Alex
Dolan, Rebecca Drake, Gwen Florio, Elizabeth Heiter, J.J. Hensley, Susi
Holliday, Shannon Kirk, Tara Laskowski, Jenny Milchman, Alan Orloff, Tom
Sweterlitsch, Art Taylor, and Wendy Tyson.
Another anthology I’m a contributor for hit the (virtual, I guess) shelves on April 7. The Beat of Black Wings: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell, edited by Josh Pachter, features 26 stories inspired by Joni Mitchell songs. My husband Art Taylor and I wrote a story together for this book, based on Joni’s song “Both Sides Now.” The story we wrote is a series of letters back and forth by a husband and wife while he’s in prison. We included secret codes in the story, so we make you do a little work while you read.
If you purchase a copy of the book, one-thirds
of the author royalties will be donated to the Brain Aneurysm Foundation in
Joni Mitchell’s name, so
snatch it up now!
Speaking of Art and me, we also did a podcast together
recently at the popular Dark
and Stormy Podcast, where we each talked about our Agatha-nominated works
(Art’s up for Best Short Story for “Better Days” and I’m up for Best Debut
Novel for One Night Gone.) You can hear us chat about our work right
here, and check out the other podcast interviews they’ve done for other Agatha nominees.
I also am excited to have published my first creative nonfiction flash piece over at The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. It’s called “Stochastic,” and it’s about my mom and grief and the randomness of life. It takes about 45 seconds to read, so I hope you’ll give it a go.
Finally, I want to give a shout-out to my favorite small
press publisher, Santa Fe Writers Project.
Publisher Andrew Gifford is tireless in shouting about his authors and getting
their works out to as wide an audience as possible. SFWP has been around for
more than 20 years now, and you can find a title in most any genre you love. You
can find my two short story collections there, Modern Manners For Your Inner
Demons and Bystanders.
Whenever I hear Adam Meyer talk about his stories, I am immediately interested. Maybe it’s the screenwriter in him, but he’s got a great talent for reducing down a plot line into a great pitch that hooks you in. I’ve bought several anthologies just because I heard what Adam’s story was about and wanted to read it.
Therefore, of course, I wanted to find out what creeps him out, since he does a pretty great job of creeping his readers out. Read on to find out…
Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life? How has that changed you?
For a long time, one of my greatest fears was public
speaking. I can still remember standing up for the 4th grade
spelling bee and being barely able to speak, let alone spell! This fear stayed
with me into adulthood, and in my early thirties I decided to conquer it by
trying the scariest thing I could think of: standup comedy.
I took a class with a professional standup, and we worked on
our routines over several weeks. At the end we were supposed to do ten minutes
in front of an audience, and I almost bailed. But my classmates and teacher
were so supportive, and I practiced like crazy, and when the time came, I did
my ten minutes and had a blast.
I’ve done standup a few times since, and it’s always
terrifying and usually great fun. But when I get up in front of a group of
people to talk about writing? It doesn’t really scare me, not anymore.
What are your
phobias?
Claustrophobia is my big one! It doesn’t often come up, but
sometimes I’ll be in the backseat of a car or on a long bus ride and before I
know it, whoa! I feel like the walls are closing in, and my heart races, and
I’m white-knuckling it the whole way.
My other phobia is dogs. The neighborhood where I grew up in
New York City sat against this huge stretch of wild marsh. My parents had
forbid us from going in there, so naturally my little brother and I went in
there all the time! These wild dogs would roam around, and I can remember one barking
fiercely and chasing after us. In retrospect, this scraggly mutt was probably more
scared of us than we were of him, but the fear I felt that day has stayed with
me.
These wild dogs would roam around, and I can remember one barking fiercely and chasing after us.
What is your
greatest fear as a writer?
Like almost every writer I know, I fear the blank page. Starting
a project always scares me, even if I have a good sense of where it’s going. What
if it’s no good? What if I run out of ideas midway? What if people read it and
think it sucks?
After the first few pages, that fear usually drops to a low
murmur. But as much as I fear beginnings, I also fear endings, especially on
longer projects. What if I can’t stick the landing. And what’s the next project
going to be?
All of this said, I like to be scared when I write—that’s
how I know I’m challenging myself, and that’s where the fun lies.
What’s the
scariest thing you’ve ever written?
My first novel, The
Last Domino. There’s nothing supernatural in it, but it’s about a school
shooting and is told from the point of view of the perpetrator and his best
friend. I remember writing the scene late in the novel where the shooting
unfolds—I did it several times, throwing it away and starting over.
The last time, I put myself into a kind of trance, imagining
myself in that school with bullets flying. It all seemed so real that I wrote
down what I felt and saw and that was the version that made it into the final
book.
A colleague told me that when his teenage daughter read it,
she was traumatized … which I feel badly about, and also take as a compliment. My
own daughter is seven now and she’s asked when she can read The Last Domino. My wife told her not until
she’s sixteen. I say when she graduates college … maybe.
What’s the
scariest movie or TV show you’ve ever seen?
I can remember so many from when I was a kid, maybe only ten
or twelve years old. In Search Of,
hosted by Leonard Nimoy, is a favorite. The stories of ghosts and aliens were
all supposedly true and that added to the delicious scariness.
I also remember my brother and I had a babysitter who’d let
us stay up late on Sarturday nights to watch Tales from the Darkside. The opening titles alone were terrifying!
Later, I watched the original Halloween on VHS in our neighbor’s basement. The masked face of
Michael Myers, the eerily repetitive John Carpenter score. I was terrified and
hooked.
But the absolute scariest thing I remember watching as a kid
was A Nightmare on Elm Street. Those images
of Freddy Krueger have stayed with me for over thirty years now, and if I put
on that DVD late at night, chances are I’ll have nightmares. But so worth it,
because I still love that movie.
How do you deal
with fear?
For years, I was terrified of the dentist. Sitting in that
oversized chair, feeling the scrape of metal on my teeth, hearing the whine of
the drill …
This is a somewhat common fear—Marathon Man, after all—but I took it seriously. I long avoided the
dentist whenever possible, and when I finally had to deal with some problem
teeth, I vowed to face my fear instead of running from it.
What I did was learn to meditate. It’s a great tool. Incredibly simple, but it’s been a lifesaver for me, and I use it in almost any situation where fear comes up—including at the dentist’s office, where I now go for regular checkups. Of course, it helps that my current dentist is a super nice guy … and looks nothing like Laurence Olivier.
—
Adam Meyer is a fiction writer and screenwriter. His
latest short stories appear in the anthologies Crime Travel, the Joni Mitchell-inspired The Beat of Black Wings, and Seascape:
Best New England Crime 2019. He’s written several true-crime TV series and
TV movies, including the upcoming film Deadly
Ransom. He’s also the author of the novel The Last Domino and is currently finishing his second novel, Missing Rachel.
I mean, it’s Friday the 13th and a global pandemic, so what better day to post another round of terror?
Carol and I have bonded over many things, but perhaps the most significant moment was when we discovered our mutual love of The Kraken. She’s a delightfully dark and wicked writer, and the more I get to know her, the more I love her.
Her latest dark fantasy story is “Deal with the Devil” in Across the Universe: Tales of Alternate Beatles. This “what if” anthology—edited by Michael A. Ventrella and Randee Dawn, from Fantastic Books—shows The Beatles in alternative world situations and has received positive reviews from Publishers Weekly and Analog, and a starred review from Library Journal.
But the important reason why we’re here? To discover what scares the hell out of her. Here we go:
What is your greatest fear?
Losing my identity or my mental capacity is my biggest fear.
I took both my parents through Alzheimer’s, and they each turned into some other
person who forgot they even had family, even though I went to care for them
every day. Our own identity, mental capability, and memories are what make us
unique and different from the animals. Being left without the ability to
properly understand, think, and reason is a terrifying thing.
I’m slowly working on a piece of my memoirs about this
period and the aftermath—of facing the fear of getting Alzheimer’s—because
there are actions we can take to keep our brains in good shape.
What is your greatest fear as a writer?
My greatest fear is writing something that doesn’t reach
people on a deep level, whether it’s science fiction, horror, mystery, or even
women’s fiction. One of my beta readers told me that my writing tends to “punch
you in the feels” and, while that may be a bit of a dated analogy, it made me
really proud.
What’s the scariest movie or TV show you’ve ever seen?
Why?
The first science fiction show that I likely ever saw—as well as
one of the first ones on television, coming a few years after Twilight Zone
began—was the initial episode of The Outer Limits, “Galaxy Being.” It aired on September 16, 1963 when I was six years
old.
I remember that I was in the TV
room all by myself, and it came on after some show that my parents deemed safe
to watch. They were in the kitchen out of earshot and had no idea what this
next show would be like.
Suddenly, the screen was filled
with squiggly lines and test patterns, with eerie, compelling music. An ominous
voice proclaimed,
“There is nothing wrong with your
television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling
transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we
wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. … For the next hour, sit
quietly and we will control all that you see and hear.”
Well, okay, I was a well-behaved
six-year-old who did what I was told, especially if it meant I got to watch
more TV past bedtime, so I sat and watched—and believed. This first episode
launched into a story about a radio station manager who was investigating
electro-magnetism and somehow drew an alien life force into the station. It was
the creepiest thing I had ever seen; the alien was a guy in a rubber suit who
was filmed
in reverse negative and super-imposed on the other footage, making it glow from
inside with eerie effect.
The alien was only trying to help people and get home, but
it caused radiation burns and electrocuted everything around it. Eventually, it
sacrificed itself to save the people in the area.
Well, as this was going on, I was getting more and more
frightened of the creature, as it was hurting people, but I also felt so bad
for it because nobody would listen to what it was saying. My parents eventually
found me on the couch, curled up and hiding under a towel so the alien couldn’t
see me, or reach out and zap me.
I had nightmares for years afterward, even still getting
scared in fifth grade when the baseboard heat came on in our next house. The
pipes expanded and made clunking noises as the hot water approached my room—I
just knew it was that alien’s footsteps, coming to get me!
Watching this show was a very formative moment, as I
remember feeling so bad for the creature, far from home, while at the same
being terrified of it touching and zapping me. In everything I write now, I try
to do the same thing, and reach into the heart of my characters so the reader
gets more than just an adventure story. The show explored the human spirit
confronted by dark, existential forces—isn’t that a significant concept to
explore?
What is your favorite type of monster? Why?
I’m a huge fan of cephalopods—octopuses and squid are
intelligent and fascinating, boneless and mutable, and aren’t always scary
monsters, but when they are … yikes!
I think it’s in part because humans are already at a
disadvantage when we are in the water, and thus the fear factor is amplified. And
they can do so many things we can’t.
Picture yourself submerged and floating in the dark, cold, ocean.
You can feel the pressure of the water on every part of your body.
Breathing—something we take for granted on land—is dependent upon some external
device that may not be under your control. You can’t hear or see things the way
you are used to.
A flash of movement scuttles along the edge of your field of
vision. Suddenly, you feel a gentle touch on your leg as something slides up
and wraps around your ankle, then the other one. Suckers grip your flesh.
It’s an intelligent creature that’s decided to make a wish,
and you are the wishbone.
It’s an intelligent creature that’s decided to make a wish, and you are the wishbone.
What’s worse: closed-in spaces or heights? Why?
Heights! I was actually never afraid of them until I was a
new driver, heading across a bridge, and my mom confessed her own fear of
heights. Suddenly, I could picture just driving off the edge—down, down, down.
I had that same reaction recently when I was hiking out in
Utah in Arches National Park. I was by myself (I know, I know, that’s not good)
and was walking along a tall fin of rock that was about ten feet wide and a
hundred feet high. I sat down in the sun and just looked around me for a long
time, down each side and into the distance, becoming one with the world around
me. Eventually I pictured myself just stepping off into the void and hightailed
it out of there!
I was relieved to learn that both of those are actually
considered healthy reactions. It’s called High Places Phenomenom (HPP) and the
basic thinking is that we have to recognize the danger of plummeting to our
deaths in order to affirm our desire to not go over the edge. The French call it L’Appel du Vide, or call
of the void.
What’s worse: clowns or spiders? Why?
Oh man, clowns are WAY worse. Spiders are perfectly
natural—they do what they are supposed to do. But a clown? Nothing natural
about it. The face is obscured and made to look like a caricature of a certain
emotion. Masks free up the person to do or be something else— something other—and
can remove their sense of moral connection. Did you know that some of the major
recreational parks (such as Great Adventure in NJ) hold Halloween events but
don’t allow people to wear masks that obscure the face?
And granted, all that is assuming there actually is a
person inside the clown costume, anyway!
You are driving alone on a road at night and your
headlights illuminate a man standing alone with a lantern in the middle of the
road. What do you do? Also, is it more or less scary if it’s a little kid in
pajamas?
Nope, nope, nope. We’ve all seen the movie and yet, they
never do the right thing. Turn around and get the heck out of there. Go hang
out in the garage where all the chainsaws are! That’s gotta be safer.
Of course, the little kid already has me wrapped around their finger. What could go wrong?
—
Carol Gyzander creates sci-fi, dark fantasy and horror … and a little mystery! She’s the editor of the Writerpunk Press anthologies; their latest, Taught by Time: Myth Goes Punk, contains punk stories inspired by myth, folklore, and legend and releases early April 2020. Her story contributions to WP include cyberpunk Shakespeare and Lovecraft, steampunk Poe and Tom Sawyer, and a biopunk myth of Echo and Narcissus. Recent horror short stories appear in Stories We Tell After Midnight from Crone Girls Press, and Hell’s Highways, edited by April Grey. “Runt of the Litter” is in Cat Ladies of the Apocalypse from Camden Park Press, March/April 2020. Carol lives in northern New Jersey with two felines—neither of which are battle cats, except in their own minds. Her work, including Across the Universe: Tales of Alternate Beatles, is available on Amazon.
Shannon and I have never met in person, but I’m pretty sure we’d be fast friends. For one, we’re both awesome…..I mean, both writers. Writers of creepy things, interested in creepy things. And I think we both have a similar sense of humor (or, at the very least, I find her hilarious online.)
I loved her book, Gretchen, which was one of the most original and surprising and downright scary books I’ve read in a long time. And I definitely wanted to know more about what terrifies her. She graciously agreed to share.
What is your greatest fear?
Insanity, the kind in which you don’t know if you’re insane
and you take harmful actions in reality that have real consequences. I have
always, I think ever since I watched the Kathleen Turner film, Julia and Julia, had this unrelenting
fear. I was too young to watch Julia and
Julia, I think I was 14 or 15, either that or my developing brain seized
and froze on the absolute darkness of the film. In adulthood, with what I think (hope) is finally a fully formed
front lobe, I can contextualize and rationalize the plot of Julia and Julia. But frankly, I’ve never
been able to truly shake it. If you haven’t watched it, it is by far the
darkest film I’ve ever watched, and that’s saying a lot since in my adulthood,
I gobble (and even write) psychological horrors. In it, Turner plays Julia, a
widow, who imagines (or is it a paranormal experience?) her dead husband and
son are still alive. She flits back and forth between this fantasy and reality.
She becomes so twisted between fantasy and reality, she kills a man in reality
and winds up in the final scene in a hospital for the mentally unwell. It is
never clear if her turns in fantasy-land are real or not, but to me, the
watcher, there is no doubt that Julia was suffering psychotic episodes
throughout and didn’t know it. Anyway, this, this type of insanity, the type in
which you act out and harm another in reality, but don’t realize how upside
down you are, that is the most frightening thing in the world to me.
What are your phobias?
I am scared of stairs (falling) and of grapes (choking).
Do you have a recurring nightmare?
How timely this question. My worst nightmare and the most
recurring is one I’ve had since about 10 or 12. And it is so vivid and tangible
in my mind, still, at age 46, that I just wrote an entire novel around it (this
is my current WIP, The Peculiar House of
Fearz).
Here’s the dream: I’m seated, somehow confined to this seat
somehow, at a bare wooden table. Next to the table to the right is a window
with a single potted plant. To my left, and in the interior of the room, is a
rolling, grinding machine, which serves as a threat from my unseen tormentors
(and who are they? The dream never reveals). The looming threat is that I will
be “squished” in the rolling, grinding machine.
Who the hell knows what this dream means, or why it is
recurring. No idea! I just know this. To this day, I sort of cringe when I’m in
a room that is as bare and pastoral, old, antiqued like this one. Now, I grew
up in a house full of antiques, but there’s a certain unique quality about this
one that is hard to explain, and I have, indeed, encountered from time to time.
THE WINDOW PLANT OF TERROR!!!!
And I positively cannot tolerate single potted plants on
windowsills. I don’t put one on any of mine, and I cringe if I ever see that. I
know. Weird. Super weird. But that dream ruined plants on windowsills for me.
So watch out for Peculiar Fearz,
because this dream sunk in me so deep, I baked it all in that novel.
What scares you most about the writing process?
The knowledge that I will work myself into a sure panic with
every book every time I send it off and wait for the reaction. And knowing I
must endure the wait and the panic.
What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever written?
I have an entire horror manuscript, named GOAT, in a drawer.
The simple explanation is that it’s based on the mythical goat man, but it
layers on that family traumas and a significant, physical assault on the main
character when she’s only seven. This manuscript has been fully edited twice,
gone through reads by my agent and her staff. I have notes to edit it further,
but I honestly just can’t do it. It’s been in a drawer a few years now. My mom
won’t read it; she says it scares her too much. And once, when I was in the
thick of the last round of editing it, I wound myself up so much, nightmares
and all, I feared a demon was talking to me through the NEST camera. It was
really just my husband playing a joke on me, but the fact that I allowed myself
to believe a demon for even a second, and the fact I didn’t just immediately go
to the logical conclusion that it was obviously my husband pranking me, led me
to seal GOAT away in a bottom drawer, and under several layers of file folders
on my computer. Not sure if I can ever return to it.
I have an entire horror manuscript, named GOAT, in a drawer.
Who is the best villain, fictional or in real life?
The best “villain” is Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ VEEP character,
Selina Meyer. My absolute favorite genre across everything is irreverent
satire. And VEEP is the apex pinnacle of irreverent satire. The Meyer character
is sooooooo totally a villain, the satirical representation of all the
horribles in modern U.S. politics. She is malignant narcissism; the only thing
that matters to her is winning the next election. Her wardrobe, like for all
excellent female villains, is absolutely fantastic. Honestly, the tip-top best.
She is a flat-out brilliant character, hilarious, and you hate to love her and
love to hate her all at once. The very best.
What’s worse: closed-in spaces or heights?
Closed-in spaces!
You are driving alone on a road at night and your
headlights illuminate a man standing alone with a lantern in the middle of the
road. What do you do? Also, is it more or less scary if it’s a little kid in
pajamas?
A little kid in pajamas is far more scary than Old-Man
Rivers with a lantern. The latter I’d pull over for and follow into a swampy
forest, allowing him to lead me to some haunted mansion. Thrilled for the
experience. The kid in PJ’s is obviously a ghost-demon meant to trap me in some
ninth layer of hell.
Not a ghost-demon…just Shannon and her son messing with photo filters. (Hopefully.)
Shannon Kirk is the international bestselling and award-winning author of Method 15/33, The Extraordinary Journey of Vivienne Marshall, In the Vines, Gretchen, Viebury Grove, and short stories in four anthologies: The Night of the Flood, Swamp Killers (TBP, 2020), Nothing Good Happens After Midnight (TBP, 2020), and Border Noir (April, 2020). Shannon is also a contributor to the International Thriller Writers’ Murderers’ Row. Growing up in New Hampshire, Shannon and her brothers were encouraged by their parents to pursue the arts, which instilled in her a love for writing at a young age. A graduate of Suffolk Law School in Massachusetts, Shannon is a practicing litigation attorney and former adjunct law professor, specializing in electronic-evidence law. When she isn’t writing or practicing law, Shannon spends time with her husband, son, and two cats.
