Posts in "What Scares You" Category — Page 2

Mary Jumbelic, M.D., is an author from Central New York and former chief medical examiner of Onondaga County. A board-certified forensic pathologist, Mary has performed thousands of autopsies during her 25-year career. She has received awards for her work from the National Transportation Safety Board and the New York State Senate, and has been recognized as a trailblazer by the National Organization of Women. As an expert witness, she has appeared on numerous national broadcasts, most recently Dateline and 48 Hours.

In retirement, Mary has published many nonfiction stories, accounts of her life both in and out of the morgue. Using her experiences, she provides a strong voice for the deceased as explores the human imprint made by those departed, demystifying death for herself, and others. Her book Here, Where Death Delights was published in 2023.

I had the great fortune to take an online class with Mary a few years ago, where she taught us how to accurately describe dead bodies in our fiction. It was one of the most fascinating classes I’ve ever taken, and I appreciated Mary’s great care in discussing sensitive, traumatic situations and all the experience she’s had working with the dead and telling their stories. Her book describes a lot of her experiences, and I highly recommend it.

So what scares someone who’s spent her entire career with the dead? Read on, friends, to find out…

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What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

It started during at the Maryland State Fair in Timonium, an event occurring annually since 1878. As a child I loved the state fair with its crowds, hawkers, noise, and excitement. Mom and Dad watched as I rode the kiddie rides and ate cotton candy. We strolled to the edge, where a caravan lined the periphery. Large canvas placards in yellow and red announced the entertainment: The World of Wonders with such intrigues as Rubber Boy, Blockhead, the Mermaid. There were snake charmers, fire eaters, and sword swallowers. For one dollar, you could enter the tent and see the advertised spectacle. We never went in. The posters haunted me.

One image stayed with me––a half-human, half-snake creature with the head of a woman and the body of a python. Her brown hair flowed toward her reptilian body. The blue eyes, human shaped, followed me as I gripped my parents’ hands.

When we got home, I headed upstairs. The snake woman waited for me in the recess of a dark room on the second floor. I closed my eyes and ran past her, jumping into bed and pulling the covers over my head. My heart raced. My head felt hot. It took a long time to fall asleep.

This female reptile lived for a long time at my childhood home. Eventually I made peace with her by forcing myself to keep my eyes open and really see her.

What is your favorite urban legend?

Waking up with a surgical incision on my flank in a bathtub full of ice with my kidney missing creates a chilling picture for me.  While trafficking in human organs is an international phenomenon, the victims are not the random tourists of urban legend. People in poverty in third world countries fall prey to this trade to better their economic circumstance. The urban legend twists the reality into a freakish fear. When I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, I had chills with the reveal. He takes this fear and worldwide problem to a frightening, futuristic level. 

Do you have a recurring nightmare?

A dream that has repeated itself for me throughout my life is driving off a bridge into water. I am not afraid of heights or traversing water when I’m awake. Curiously, my mother had a longstanding fear of overpasses. When we drove across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, she would put her head down into her lap. I just shook my head as I drove. Yet perhaps I absorbed this into my subconscious. In my nightmare, I crash through the guardrails and plunge into the icy current. The auto sinks as the river closes over me. Murkiness surrounds, and sound is muted as I struggle with the seatbelt. I wake up gasping before the water rushes in and drowns me. I keep an emergency tool in my car, just in case.

What is your favorite horror movie or television series?

I’m not a big fan of horror, having been scared into holding a crucifix on my chest as I slept after seeing The Exorcist as a kid. My family enjoys the genre, so I’ve seen my fair share––Blair Witch Project, Drag Me to Hell, Midsommar. My favorite is a TV series that falls into the horror-light category––X–Files. I have watched all 11 seasons more than once, the first pass with my oldest son, and other viewings with my other two boys or alone. There are special episodes I love to rewatch. The scientific and law enforcement backdrop combined with the strong female character of the doctor-FBI agent, Dana Scully, and her chemistry with Spooky Mulder made the show a big hit for me.

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Today please welcome mystery writer Delia Pitts to What Scares You! You can grab yourself a copy of Delia’s newest book, a contemporary noir mystery, Trouble in Queenstown. She is also the author of the Ross Agency Mysteries, a series set in Harlem. She has published several acclaimed short stories, including, “The Killer,” which was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery and Suspense 2021. Delia is an active member of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Crime Writers of Color. 

Delia and her husband live in central New Jersey and have twin sons living in Texas.

But what scares her? Read on to find out…

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What is your greatest fear?

Like most parents, my greatest fear is suffering the death of my children. I have twin boys, now in their thirties, and this dread courses through me like a railroad train every time I get a phone call from one of them. Texts from them are a different matter, somehow less urgent and friendlier. I made the reality of this devastating loss the underlying disaster that drives all the central characters of my new book. Each asks and answers the question: Am I still a parent after I lose my child?

What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

Fleeing the movie theatre because I couldn’t bear another minute with the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. This was at about five years old. But those scenes with the Wicked Witch of the West still can make me turn off the TV even now.

I also remember waking in the middle of a summer night and standing on my bed looking out the window at the black sky over the bungalows in our neighborhood. I was ten years old. To this day, I’m certain I saw the bright light of an airplane plummet straight down to the ground. No explosion, no reports the next day of a crash. But I swear even now this disaster happened: The fierce streak of light perpendicular to the ground is etched on my memory. Having no one else confirm what I saw with my own waking eyes didn’t undermine my experience. In fact, my isolation made this event even more terrifying.

But the scariest thing I ever saw as a child was when both my parents wept at the assassination of President Kennedy. I had never seen them (or any grown-ups) cry. About anything. So, witnessing their trauma at the devastation of unpredictable loss was terrifying to my sixth-grade self.

How do you deal with fear?

My tendency is to analyze it into submission. The more I pick apart a fear, the smaller it becomes. I am the nerdy one who broods, noodles, and dissects until the fear withers to dust. This is why those flying monkeys still haunt me: To this day, I can’t figure out if they are little people made up to look like monkeys. Or real monkeys trained to wear flying gear. Which is it?

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What’s something that most people are afraid of that you are not?

Visiting new places seems to spook lots of people. Understandable, as the unknown could contain dangers. But I’ve always enjoyed exploring new places, people, food. A few months after college graduation, I headed by myself for a year-long stay in Dakar, Senegal. I knew no one there and no one who’d ever visited there. I had a grant that gave me the confidence of money. That plus extreme youth carried me forward. I can’t imagine doing that same land-on-the-moon sort of adventure now. My imagination is pickled with too much knowledge, I suppose. But I am forever grateful that I had that stupid bravery when I was twenty-one.

Do you enjoy scaring other people?

No, I think scaring other people is the lowest form or sadism. Except in my fiction, then its fair. One of the loveliest reviews I ever received for one of my serialized short works of fan fiction was when a reader wailed that the ending of the chapter had her gnawing her arm off to the elbow. She couldn’t bear the four-day wait for the next installment of my story. Sweet triumph!

What scares you most about the writing process?

That I won’t be able to finish the story I’ve started. All those voices yammering in my head, demanding to be heard, propel me to write. I keep at it until I satisfy the characters that I’ve done my best to share their story as they want it to be told.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

Losing my draft, of course. I’m haunted by the story of Hemingway’s wife Hadley who brought his first draft of The Sun Also Rises in a suitcase for a train ride to Switzerland, only to leave the suitcase on the station platform. Horrifying. When I was in Gambia doing my doctoral research, I spent hours each evening typing the day’s interviews on a portable Remington typewriter. I made carbon copies (yes, I am that old) and mailed the copies each week to my parents in Chicago. My fear was that a fire would devastate my room, and I’d lose the originals of those precious interviews with Gambian weavers. I never feared the fire, only the gut-wrenching fate of having nothing to show for my year of research.

Mark Morton, author of The Headmasters and Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (nominated for a Julia Child Award), is also the author of three other nonfiction titles, The End: Closing Words for a Millennium (winner of the Alexander Isbister Award for nonfiction); The Lover’s Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex (republished in the UK as Dirty Words), and Cooking with Shakespeare. He’s also written more than 50 columns for Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture (University of California Press) and has written and broadcast more than a hundred columns about language and culture for CBC Radio. Mark has a PhD in sixteenth-century literature from the University of Toronto and has taught at several universities in France and Canada. He currently works at the University of Waterloo. He and his wife, Melanie Cameron, (also an author) have four children, three dogs, one rabbit, and no time.

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What animal scares you the most?

Wood ticks and leeches. I am absolutely terrified of little creatures that attach to me and then start sucking out my lifeblood (or as General Jack D. Ripper calls it in Dr. Strangelove, my “vital essence”). If I see even an unattached wood tick or leech, a full-body cringe sweeps through me, and I have to repress a guttural vocalization. It’s a very pesky fear, because it means I’m afraid to hike through trees and long grass, or to wade into ponds and lakes. But I leveraged this fear in my novel The Headmasters. The headmasters are alien creatures that look like plate-sized wood ticks. They attach themselves to the backs of humans and slide their coils through your skull and into your brain—by doing so they’re able to control that human for about eighteen hours a day. I feel sorry for my characters that I’ve created such a repulsive overlord for them.

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions?

Oh my gosh, I haven’t told this to anyone in decades, because when I did, people either wouldn’t believe me or thought I was delusional. I was about twenty and living in a bachelor apartment in an older building in Regina, Saskatchewan. I went to bed as usual, fell asleep, and then found myself being awakened by a grizzled old man who was shaking my shoulder and saying, “Hey, buddy–hey, buddy, how did you get in here?” I was still half asleep and looked around and saw that it was my apartment–except it wasn’t. It had the same layout, but the furnishings were all different, the most noticeable of which was a leather saddle sitting ominously on a wooden frame.

I realized I was in the apartment either directly above or below my own. In retrospect, I’m astonished that the old guy didn’t grab a frying pan before waking me, but he didn’t seem alarmed, just puzzled. I told him I must have sleepwalked (which I’d never done before) from my apartment and wandered into his. He said no–he always locked his door, and when I glanced up at the door chain, it was indeed in the door frame’s chain plate. I was also, ahem, totally naked, which was odd because I always went to bed in a t-shirt and sweats. So, from a rational perspective, what I must have done was gotten up in a sleepwalking state, taken off my clothes, wandered up the building’s stairs to the next floor, opened the door of my upstairs neighbor, who for some reason left his door unlocked, walked in without awakening my neighbour (his bed was right beside the rug on which I was laying), and fallen back to sleep.

Alternatively, I “ghosted” up through the ceiling and onto my neighbor’s floor. Which is the simpler explanation? The latter, I think. Anyway, the old guy lent me a pair of his pants, and I went back to my apartment, got into my own clothes, and lay back down on my bed. It was two in the morning, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep. For the next couple of weeks–I’m not kidding–I tied my right hand to the bedpost. I didn’t want to wander away again–or ghost through the ceiling.

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Letitia Trent is the author of Summer Girls, available for pre-order from Agape Editions, Haunted Doll House imprint. Her other work includes the novel Almost Dark and the poetry collection Match Cut. Her poetry and short stories have most recently appeared in Biscuit Hill, Figure 1, and Smartish Pace. Her short story “Wilderness” was nominated for a Shirley Jackson award. She lives in a haunted Ozark mountain town with her family and works in the mental health field. She can be reached via her substack Tell Me Something Good or Bluesky. 

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Do you have a recurring nightmare?

Ever since high school, I’ve had dreams of losing people in a crowd or waking up in the morning and finding myself alone in the house with my parents. The one about waking up alone wasn’t much of a horror scenario (sometimes), but my relationship with my parents has always been rocky. Losing people in a crowd, though, would really rattle me. This became a recurring dream after I got married. In this dream, I’m always at a party where I feel uncomfortable or alone (not an uncommon real-life experience). In the confusion of people, my husband drifts away from me and gets lost in the crowd. When I realize he’s not next to me, I look for him and see him from a distance. I end up following him from room to room, unable to ever really get to him in the press of bodies. In my panic, I bump into people, knock over drinks, and am generally rude. I follow his retreating figure out the front door, where I rush to catch up, but when I go out the door, I find the street empty and him gone. 

Have you ever had any paranormal experiences or premonitions?

I’ve always wanted to see a ghost, or a UFO, or something anomalous, but the closest I’ve come is when I used a Ouija board with a friend a few months after I had my son. I’ve rarely ever found a friend willing to use Ouija with me, and my husband is too scared from his Southern Baptist childhood and 80s horror movies, but I was raised by a lapsed Catholic and daytime television, so I’m up for anything. I’ve never gotten one to work on my own, but my friend and I got the planchette moving. At one point, when we asked who was here with us, the board spelled out “I hear the baby crying,” which was pretty freaky, because my baby actually was crying. I am still completely baffled by this today, though I can’t say this made me afraid, since I’m still not convinced we weren’t somehow manifesting the movement unintentionally–it did feel like an outside force). I’m still waiting for somebody who is willing to do the Ouija again with me to see if I can repeat the experience, but I live in Arkansas now, where Ouija board fear is roughly equivalent to the fear of copperheads and the air conditioner breaking during a heat wave.

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What is your greatest fear as a writer?

I’m afraid that I’ll never quite get my ideas on the page exactly the way they feel in my brain. Every time I finish a novel (and now I’m wondering, have I ever truly “finished” a novel or do I just stop when I have to?), it’s on to a new challenge, one that always feels just out of my reach. I just finished a novel, Summer Girls, where I challenged myself to write something more in the domestic suspense genre. As a writer who struggles with plot, I enjoyed the process of seeing how a more genre-oriented novel gets filtered through my brain that leans more literary and horror, and what I learned is that I constantly felt at the edge of failure. I’m happy with the outcome and incredibly grateful to my editor and early readers who helped guide my way, but I truly didn’t know what I had until the end of the process. I love that surprise, but I also feel like I’m going to mess it up every time. My next novel is a kind of supernatural crime horror, a genre mashup that feels completely out of my dreamy, atmospheric wheelhouse. I can’t say I’m intentionally leaning into my fears as much as following my obsessions right down into possible disaster, but at least I’m never bored. 

What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever written?

I’ve written a couple of traditional horror stories, one that even appeared in the Best Horror of the Year, Volume 8, but I think my current novel is technically the scariest because it’s about something that makes me truly fearful: how vulnerable our human brains are, and how early messages about the world, ourselves, and our worth can take hold and shape the trajectory of our lives. Summer Girls features a character who joins a cult, and I find cults fascinating and terrifying because so many otherwise intelligent, educated, and functioning people can end up in them. The Chad and Lori Daybell story, NXIVN, the Mother God cult, Heaven’s Gate, Twin Flames, or even the Tik Tok dancing cult, all have various levels of harm, from actual murder to abuse both suffered and commited by members. I was interested in how this happens: how do we decide to submit our will to people with both rhetorical or actual power? How much of it is even a decision, and how much is manipulation, and how can we see outside of our own experience?  I’m using the word “we” here because I suspect many of us are vulnerable to bad ideas in the right circumstances, and that basic human vulnerability is terrifying to me because I know I have it, too. 

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

HANNIBAL! It’s beautiful, well-acted, deeply weird, and also disgusting. I adore it. I love how stylized and mannered it is, how everybody refers to everybody else by their full names. It’s darkly funny, too, which I caught more often in my recent third rewatch. I think the ending is perfect and wish I had endless seasons. 

What’s the scariest book you’ve ever read? Is there a particular scene that really haunts you still?

Definitely The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. What terrifies me about this book is that it’s ultimately a seduction: the house wants Eleanor/Nell, and because Eleanor is lonely, she’s vulnerable. It might be terrifying to her, and to everyone else, but it seems to know her, invites her, and ultimately feels more comfortable than the human connections she tries to make with Theo or any of the other people in the house. I relate to Nell a lot – she’s not good with people, she’s isolated, she’s had little opportunity to build connections, and she doesn’t quite know what she’s capable of. This goes back to what scares me about cults and the human mind: we are far more vulnerable than we think we are, and so we can be maniuplated without even realizing it. It’s also just beautifully written. We are in Nell’s mind, throughout, filtering the experience through her eyes, so the turn at the end feels like a gut punch.

What’s something you’ll never do because you’re too scared?

Skydiving is an absolute no for me. Even if you show me hard evidence that parachutes open 99.9 percent of the time, I can’t be sure that I’m not going to be the one person who ends up squashed like a bug. It would be an incredibly embarrassing and expensive way to die.

What’s the scariest place you’ve ever been?

This is going to sound like a joke, but I was truly scared in this situation. Once, my husband got recruited for some kind of weird MLM before MLMs were as much in the mainstream awareness, maybe around 2005. He was working at a videogame store and some very clean-cut guys who looked more like missionaries than customers complimented him on his sales skills and invited him to an “exciting career opportunity.” He agreed to go check it out and I tagged along. 

These guys took us out to the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, where we parked in what appeared to be an enormous, empty parking lot. To our surprise, they said the place we were going only had street parking, so they’d drive us the rest of the way. I had not watched as much true crime as I have now, so I did not know to never go to a second location, but I still felt pretty strange about the whole situation. They took us to a very clean, empty McMansion where we sat on folding chairs in front of a large white pad of paper on an easel. A man who had to be under thirty, in an ill-fitting white button-up shirt and slacks, came out to applause and asked how many of us wanted to be rich. This, apparently, was the “leader” of this business. I didn’t raise my hand, because I didn’t really want to be rich, just able to pay my bills. He immediately clocked me as not the right type of person for this opportunity, which revealed itself to be a pyramid scheme involving selling dial-up internet boosters to low-income communities, but the real sale was the recruitment of people in those communities to start their own “small business.” I was not exactly educated in business, but I could tell this wasn’t a viable model. Once we were released from the seemingly endless, painful meeting, we were taken from the empty house to the empty parking lot by an extremely perky woman, who at one point turned to me and asked how I liked the leader’s speech. I made some positive noises in her direction, and she said to me, beaming, “He’s such a believer.” It was a freaky moment because this woman seemed so disconnected from reality, joining an organization that was supposed to be a business on the basis of belief, and seemingly so happy in that delusion, that I started to feel like she could be capable of anything. Hell, maybe if we didn’t take the fifty-dollar starter pack, she’d slam us all into a brick wall. I have never been so excited to get back to my car before. 

Jackie Layton and I often end up sitting next to each other at author signing events, given the way our last names nudge up against one another in the alphabet. Lucky for me, because I love talking with her! Last time this happened, we had a great conversation about terrifying things, and I said, “You know…I have a blog for you…” and here we are!

Jackie is the author of cozy mysteries with Spunky Southern Sleuths. She lives on the coast of South Carolina, where she enjoys walks on the beach and golf cart rides around the marsh. (And, as you’ll find out, running into scary wildlife.) Reading, gardening, and traveling are some of her favorite hobbies. She always keeps a notebook handy to write down ideas for future stories.

You can check out her latest book, Clover Covered Corpse, which is book 2 in the Texas Flower Farmer series. And then you can read on to hear more about her greatest fears…

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What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

When I was in third grade, we moved to a new town, and our house had a basement. Before this, we’d lived in a little house that was one story. For some reason it terrified me to walk down the stairs into the basement. I imagined everything from bats to kidnappers.

What are your phobias?

Claustrophobia. I don’t like small, confined spaces. I don’t like blankets over my head. Jerky elevators scare me because what if they break down, and I’m stuck on one? If I pull on a shirt and it gets stuck on my head, I start to panic that I won’t be able to breathe. It’s silly, but that’s my worst phobia.

Is there anything you are terrified of eating?

Shellfish. I used to love eating almost all seafood, especially on vacation when it was fresh. Over time though, I started getting sick when I ate shellfish. The first couple times, I thought it was food poisoning, but when it happened the third time, I thought I was going to die. My doctor told me three times that I can’t ever eat shellfish again, and he made me repeat it.

What scares you most about the writing process?

Promoting my writing. It’s a challenge to find creative ways to market without looking ridiculous.

What is your greatest fear as a writer?

My greatest fear is that nobody will like my stories. Then they’ll give me one-star reviews. Then I won’t get contracts for future books. Then my writing career is over.

Do you have a childhood memory of your parents or other trusted adults being truly terrified by something?

One Friday night, my best friend and her dad came and picked me up to go to the local high school football game. I lived on a cul-de-sac. When I came outside, a UFO appeared over us. My friend’s dad and my friend got out of the car. The three of us stood on the street and watched it for a few minutes. When it disappeared, we looked at each other. He said, “Girls, get in the car or we’re going to be late for the game.” I think he was scared, and we never discussed it. I don’t know what it was, but the three of us experienced something that night.

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What animal scares you the most?

Alligators. I live on the coast of South Carolina, and there are frequent stories of people being attacked by alligators. When we first moved here, we were told alligators were only found in fresh water. Too bad nobody told the alligators.

There are also a lot of snakes around here. I’ve had friends kill snakes with guns and shovels. When I come across a snake, I just run.

Rob Osler writes mysteries featuring LGBTQ+ main characters. Each time I’ve seen him present his work during one of those “speed dating with the authors” events at mystery conferences, he always shares information about his books in delightful rhyming poetry. I thought about trying to do that for my intro, but then I realized no one wants to be subjected to my terrible poetry.

So instead I will tell you that Rob’s won a lot of awards for his fiction. His short story “Miss Direction” (Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Sept/Oct 2023) was a 2024 MWA Edgar Awards finalist. His debut novel Devil’s Chew Toy, predecessor to Cirque du Slay, was a 2023 Anthony, Macavity, Agatha, and Lefty Awards finalist. His first short story, “Analogue” (EQMM), won the MWA 2022 Robert L Fish Award. Rob lives in California with husband and a tall gray cat.

But what makes the hair on his arms stand on end? Read on to find out…

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What is the scariest thing you remember from childhood?

I remember going to the movie theater as a kid to see The Poseidon Adventure. I would have been around ten. When the movie ended and I rose from the seat, my back hurt. I realized I’d had my entire body clenched and hadn’t moved a muscle for an hour. If memory serves, there is a scene where Shelley Winters must swim underwater for a nearly impossible length of time. It was beyond intense for my young brain.

Is there any fear you’ve overcome in your life? How has that changed you?

Speaking to others—not just public speaking but speaking to people I didn’t know—even on the telephone. My mom helped me by having me write down ahead of time what I would say on the phone. I would write out the conversation like a script and rehearse before making the actual call.

What person living today terrifies you the most and why?

Donald Trump. He manifests the worst behavior of what humans are apparently capable of, but what makes him truly terrifying is that he stirs hatred in so many people.

What are your phobias?

I do not like heights or turbulence during a flight.

What is your favorite urban legend?

I grew up in Idaho and then lived in the Pacific Northwest for decades, so Sasquatch was a thing. I never really thought he/she/they existed, but I can easily envision Sasquatch romping through the forest and catching salmon from a stream with its bare hands.

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Mindy Quigley is a delightful human being, and I’m so thrilled to feature her here!

Mindy is the author of two lighthearted mystery series. Her latest, the Deep Dish Mysteries (Minotaur-St. Martin’s Press) was a Woman’s World book club pick and has been featured in Parade magazine. Mindy’s non-writing career is stranger than fiction, having taken her from the US to the UK, where she worked as the personal assistant to the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep and as project manager for a research clinic founded by the author J.K. Rowling. She now lives in small-town Virginia with her Civil War history professor husband and their children.

If all that isn’t cool enough, read on, my friends…

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What is your greatest fear as a writer?

Where to start? That everyone will hate my books. That I’ll become mentally or physically ill and not be able to meet my deadline. That I’ll forget how to write. That I’ll write something that pisses people off and then they’ll hate me. That I’ll be a failure and have wasted my life pursuing this dream. That I’ll be a success and not know how to handle it. That the mild arthritis in my fingers will become debilitating and I won’t be able to type my books. That my poor eyesight will become even worse and I won’t be able to see the computer screen. That I’ll make a stupid mistake in a book and no one at the press will catch it and it’ll go to print that way and everyone will think I’m dumb and careless. That my writing peers will hate my books. That readers will hate my books. That my family will hate my books. That I’ll die alone and stray cats will gnaw at my decaying corpse for weeks before someone calls the cops about a suspicious stench and they come and shovel what remains of me into a five-gallon bucket. Wait, what was the question again? 

What’s your favorite horror movie or television series?

When I was younger, I was obsessed with Dark Shadows. Maybe that’s more of a gothic romance than a pure horror show, though? Anyway it’s got sexy vampires and a governess-wealthy dude romance à la Jane Eyre, and a dual timeline sitch that’s akin to Outlander. BUT DID I MENTION THE SEXY VAMPIRES?

How do you deal with fear?

Three cheers for drugs! I’m very outgoing, so people are often surprised to learn that I have an extreme fear of public speaking. It got so bad that my doctor wrote me a prescription a few years ago for beta blockers that actually says “For Public Speaking” right on the little orange bottle. Now, about 30 minutes before I take the stage at an event, I pop a beta blocker. Sometimes, if I’m super-duper nervous, I’ll add half of an Ativan. That combo is enough to tame the butterfly mosh pit in my tummy and keep my heart from exploding out of my chest like that razor-clawed creature in Alien.

I now find that I can often give talks without these chemical crutches. Like Dumbo’s magic feather, the knowledge that the pills are there if I need them can be enough to calm me down.

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Author, speaker, educational consultant, and editor Katherine Hutchinson-Hayes, Ed. D. has had her hand in leadership for many years. She loves speaking to groups and delivering messages with a quick wit and real-life stories. Her first thriller, A Fifth of the Story, is the suspenseful, action-packed tale of one man’s courage and resilience as he works against the clock to save the lives of his two best friends and, ultimately, the freedom he’s fought for as a CIA agent during one of the US’s history’s darkest hours.

Katherine is a freelance writer/content editor, a content editor/writing coach for Iron Stream Media, and a sensitivity reader for Sensitivity Between the Lines. She belongs to Florida Writers Association, American Christian Fiction Writers, and Crime Writers of Color. Katherine also hosts the podcast Murder, Mystery & Mayhem Laced with Morality.

But what scares her, you ask? Read on to find out…

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What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever written?

I have successfully penned two thrilling novels. The first one is titled A Fifth of the Story, and the second one is currently awaiting publication. Both of my books deal with the spine-chilling issue of extremism that is rapidly affecting our country.

As an author, I have researched the subject matter thoroughly, and the topic kept me on edge while I wrote the books. Through my writing, I want to highlight the grave consequences of extremism and how it can disrupt the social fabric of our nation.

A Fifth of the Story and my upcoming novel delve into the topic in different ways, and I aim to educate and entertain my readers while also making them aware of the risks that exist in our society. 

What is your weirdest fear?

Despite being an expert swimmer and even a swimming teacher, I have a somewhat bizarre fear of deep water in swimming pools. I can’t help but feel anxious and uneasy whenever I’m in the deep end of a pool, as if something is lurking beneath me. It’s an irrational fear, but I can’t shake it off. I’m afraid that a shark will attack me, even though I know that it’s highly unlikely. I believe that this fear is a result of the book and movie Jaws, which I read and watched when I was too young to differentiate between reality and fiction. Even though I know that sharks don’t exist in swimming pools, I can’t help but imagine a shark suddenly appearing out of nowhere and attacking me. It’s a silly fear, but it still manages to bother me whenever I’m swimming in a pool with deep water.

What is your greatest fear?

My deepest fear is to exist in a world where I am devoid of God’s presence. I believe that true joy, fulfillment, and purpose come from having a relationship with Him. Without Him, life would be meaningless and empty. My faith in God is the foundation of my existence, and the thought of living without it is terrifying to me. I strive every day to maintain a close connection with Him, so that I may never have to experience a life without His love and guidance.

What is your earliest childhood memory of fear?

As a child, I had a deep fear of thunderstorms. The sound of thunder would send shivers down my spine, and the flashes of lightning made me feel like the skies were about to come crashing down on me. However, there was one storm that stands out in my memory as the worst one I ever experienced. The wind was howling, and the rain was pounding against the windows with such force that it felt like they were about to shatter. The flashes of lightning were so bright that they illuminated the entire room, and the sound of thunder was so loud that it seemed like it was right outside my door. I couldn’t bear to stay in my own room any longer, so I made my way to my parents’ room, seeking comfort and safety. I crawled into bed between them, and finally, with their arms wrapped around me, I was able to fall into a peaceful sleep.

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