CHILDHOOD FEARS: THE WRAITHS THAT RULE CASSONDRA WINDWALKER'S MIND

2/3/2022

I’m probably the most fearful person you’ll never realize you’ve met. As far back as I can remember, I’ve been scared of pretty much everything. The only way to survive that sort of psychology is to plough head-on into the nightmares. And of course, never let the monsters see fear in your eyes.

My big bogeymen, even before I got to grade one, were death and solitude. I was fascinated by death, giving him a form and a gait and a voice and finding that he accompanied me everywhere. Sometimes I even thought him a friend of sorts. But being alone filled me with unmitigated terror. It was as if the whole universe was a malevolence waiting to catch me unattended so it could collapse in on me.

I devoured ghost stories and mysteries. My sister and I would read Scary Stories to Read in the Dark aloud to each other. At night, I would huddle under the covers with my flashlight and devour ragged copies of Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines rescued from thrift store bookshelves. Then I’d build a wall of pillows, burrow deep into the mattress, sweat through a tiny little blowhole made of blankets, and dream.

I dreamed of death often. Of finding my entire family, lifeless, dangling from hangers in my closet, their bodies flaccid as old clothes. Of my mother sitting dead in the hallway, and when I went to kiss her goodbye, her mouth fell open and became a black abyss that swallowed me whole. Of midnight storms sweeping down from the stars to devour us.

As I grew older, I encountered other sorts of monsters and learned that not only did they look like ordinary people, they thought and felt like ordinary people, too – except for when they didn’t. The same hands that might rescue a kitten so tenderly could smash a cheekbone to smithereens. I found the mysteries of human nature utterly enthralling, even when they repulsed me. I wanted to understand, to unravel, to follow the thread back to its beginning. What went wrong, and what went right?

In my writing, I still walk every page with death as my constant comrade. How we interact with him defines so much of our character. And the horror I find compelling is never external. I’m bored by beasties. But the wraiths that rule our own minds, the spectres that rise in our veins, chill me to the bone. The uncertainty between which is the reality I perceive and which is the reality I create shivers me timbers. All stories are ghost stories, if we tell them long enough.

Cassondra Windwalker

Cassondra Windwalker just released the gothic romantic horror Hold My Place, published by Black Spot Books. She’s the author of the novels Idle Hands, Preacher Sam, and Bury the Lead, in addition to the full-length poetry collections The Almost-Children and tide tables and tea with god. Her short-form work regularly appears in literary journals and wins the odd award, including the Helen Kay Chapbook Award for her poetry chapbook, The Bench. She has lived in the South, the Midwest, and the West, and presently writes full-time from the Frozen North. She keeps company mostly with ghosts, literary characters, unwary wild animals, and her tolerant husband.

Get your copy of Hold My Place in print or ebook on Amazon and across all platforms: https://www.amazon.com/Hold-My-Place-Cassondra-Windwalker-ebook/dp/B092BG6WW5.
Cassondra enjoys interacting with readers on social media:
www.twitter.com/WindwalkerWrite
www.instagram.com/CassondraWindwalker
www.facebook.com/CassondraWindwalkerWrites
www.cassondrawindwalker.com

Hold My Place
by Cassondra Windwalker

From the Helen Kay Chapbook Award-Winning poet Cassondra Windwalker, an unsuspecting librarian falls head-over-heels for a married man, but when she finds herself caught up in a whirlwind romance, she discovers her new husband's past wives have all met early deaths—and some aren't ready to let go yet.

Obsession never dies.

When librarian Sigrun falls head-over-heels for the sophisticated and very married Edgar Leyward, she never expects to find herself in his bed—or his heart. Nevertheless, when his enigmatic wife Octavia dies from a sudden illness, Sigrun finds herself caught up in a whirlwind romance worthy of the most lurid novels on her bookshelves.

Sigrun soon discovers Octavia wasn't Edgar's first lost love, or even his second. Three women Edgar has loved met early deaths. As she delves into her beloved's past through a trove of discovered letters, the edges of Sigrun identity begin to disappear, fading into the women of the past. Sigrun tells herself it's impossible for any dark magic to be at play—that the dead can't possibly inhabit the bodies of the living—but something shadowy stalks the halls of the Leyward house and the lines between the love of the present and the obsessions of the past become increasingly blurred—and bloody.

Mixing lyrical prose with simmering terror, Hold My Place is a modern gothic horror worthy of Shirley Jackson's nightmares and Daphne DuMaurier's dangerous lovers.

"Hold My Place is a dark, sensuous tale about obliterating love, and Windwalker's superb prose fairly drips with beauty. You simply must read this haunting book." —Mercedes M. Yardley, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Little Dead Red

"Sinister undertones steadily build into a genuine sense of doom...as thought-provoking as it is harrowing." —Publishers Weekly

"With ethereal prose [Hold My Place]'s departure from genre tropes will make it a favorite with gothic-horror and dark-romance readers." —Booklist

"A satisfying blend of romance and ghost story.... Hold My Place is anything but ordinary or predictable, despite its firm roots in the horror world." —Midwest Book Review

"Brimming with muted eroticism, Hold My Place is a dark romance novel punctuated by longing, lingering spirits and love without end." —Foreword Reviews