Growth happens through change, and change necessitates unique life experiences. Problem is, it’s easy to get caught up in the familiar. That’s not to say comfortable indulgences don’t have their place, but they’re more sustenance than a delicacy. To elicit change and grow, I strive for delicacies that will sear the memory of their consumption into my brain.

One of the richest delicacies I’ve ever consumed is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. The book altered how I view horror, writing, and expanded the definition of both “story” and “novel”. I think more than any genre, horror has the most growth potential, and this book adds a strong point to that argument.

I’ve loved horror my whole life—it offers a safe place to cope with and experience fear. I also appreciate how it (usually) walks a fine line between reality and fiction. I’m big into all speculative fiction, but horror tends to tug at the fabric of reality with the most gusto. Maybe ghosts are real, perhaps the devil exists, and psychopathic serial killers are without a doubt a thing. By contrast, I’m confident faster-than-light travel and dragons don’t exist (at least on Earth). The possibility of another plane of existence is as exciting as it is terrifying.

House of Leaves is a masterpiece because it makes a mess of this fine line. References to the real world are interspersed with references to events and media that could exist, had a few things gone differently. The titular house is explored in a way that’s almost tangible, thanks to the strong description found in all good books, as well as unique elements like “historical” footnotes and formatting that adds a physical component to the story. Fiction and reality continue to blur as the reader progresses through the book’s multiple storylines. By the end of it, I felt so immersed that I spent hours decompressing. I had to crawl back to reality as if I’d gotten lost in the house proper.

I’ve seen, read, and played so much horror content that I’m usually onto the next thing in my life once I’m done. I’ve walked away from some of the world’s most heralded horror movies, books, and games with as little effort as changing a TV channel. I read House of Leaves years ago, but I still think about it more than any other piece of literature.

This fascination encouraged me to get back into and stick with writing when that 2020-event-that-shall-not-be-named started up. Instead of my usual foray (an overly ambitious multi-book epic fantasy series), I decided to write a standalone story that got inside my readers’ heads. That led to the birth of Claire Rossi, psychiatrist and protagonist of A Broken Clock Never Boils. From there, I crafted a unique central conflict: her patients’ symptoms would gradually infect her. Like House of Leaves, I also included a subplot for dedicated readers to decipher and interpret (though nowhere near the level of MZD’s genius).

To make all of this happen, I quit my “job” that same year (I was self-employed, so quitting meant winding down my business). This was a hard decision. I could’ve split my time between working and writing, but my attention is so easy to divert that I fall into nonproductive habits without a central focus. I had also saved enough that I’m years away from turning into a “starving artist”. What put me over the edge was that over the last few years, I’d grown to respect authors more than any other profession. House of Leaves isn’t the sole reason for that shift, but it played a vital role.

As with good horror, there’s a large unknown factor at work here. Maybe I’m blowing House of Leaves’s influence out of proportion. Maybe the big picture wouldn’t look any different without it. But like some of the best meals of my life, I can still recall a wealth of detail from House of Leaves, as if I’d finished it yesterday. Thus, I encourage anyone reading this to give it a read. Once you finish, feel free to hit me up on my website/Twitter/wherever and talk at length about it. I’ll be more than happy to listen.

My debut novel, A Broken Clock Never Boils, is available on Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Broken-Clock-Never-Boils-ebook/dp/B0BC2Q4DT4). During its launch window, it’s priced at $0.99 for the ebook and $9.99 for the paperback.

IS IT MADNESS OR THE SUPERNATURAL?

Psychiatrist Claire Rossi seeks cases nobody else can treat—cases like her mother's, whose misdiagnosis of schizophrenia and subsequent death inspired Claire’s career. Initially infatuated with an influx of seemingly schizophrenic patients, interest turns to terror as their ailments infect her too. She sees and hears a man who grows more violent with every encounter. The analysis and training she’s relied on her whole career fail to explain his presence, leaving only one conclusion: that what haunts her isn't in her head at all. But maybe that's just what she wants to believe.

As her symptoms escalate, she's left with two unsettling clues. Her mother speaks to her in twisted idioms, and a mysterious letter taunts her with a single line:
Enjoy your gifts.

A Broken Clock Never Boils is a slow burn, supernatural psychological thriller, with tension building steadily until its dramatic climax. It's written for readers seeking a middle ground between Gillian Flynn's mystery thrillers and Stephen King's supernatural horror.
​

As the coming year approaches three best friends reluctantly prepare for Hooper Industries’ annual New Year’s Eve bash. The clock ticks down and the body count rises as a psychotic murderer known as The Doctor is on the loose. This sadistic surgeon of death leaves Owensboro covered in blood as local police and FBI are forced to navigate through a maze of bodies left in his wake. Unbeknownst to the three best friends their mandatory party is about to turn deadly when the killer sets his sights on them. December 31st becomes a party to die for when Leslie, Brian, Moses and their colleagues are trapped inside an inescapable building with a blood thirsty madman hell bent on carving his way to midnight.

WINTER HAUNTS SERVES UP AN ONLINE DAY OF GHOST STORIES AND GOTHIC FICTION THIS NOVEMBER
Read on for your chance to win a ticket to this fantastic event…

Writing Magazine and Alex Davis Events have teamed up to present WINTER HAUNTS,  a huge day of workshops, interviews, talks and panels for writers and readers of ghost stories and the Gothic.

Taking place on the 6th November, this online event gathers together a range of authorial talent from across the world, featuring interviews and talks with Sarah Waters (The Little Stranger, Fingersmith), Paul Tremblay (The Cabin at the End of the World, The Pallbearers Club), Dacre Stoker (Dracul, Dracula the Un-Dead), Stephen Volk (Ghostwatch, The Dark Masters Trilogy), Carole Johnstone (Mirrorland, The Blackhouse) and AM Shine (The Watchers, The Creeper).

This will be complimented by a lively workshop and panel programme, featuring acclaimed authors from all over the world in JS Breukelaar, Gwendolyn Kiste, Ronald Malfi, Alison Moore, Lindy Ryan, Sarah Ward, Alexandrea Weis and Stephanie M Wytovich.

Event organiser Alex Davis said: ‘It’s been a really exciting experience to work with Writing Magazine on an event like this, and it’s enabled us to put together an incredible array of talent. A huge range of publishers have been hugely supportive too, and I can’t wait to get stuck into a day that promises to be a must-attend for fans and authors in the field.’

Tickets for the event are £50 for both threads of activity, or £30 for a single thread of activity. For more information, or to get your tickets, visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/winter-haunts-tickets-403503559007

HOW TO KILL MONSTERS: A Horror Comedy Feature Film Evil Dead II meets Hot Fuzz in a Practical FX driven horror comedy from the people that brought you Book of Monsters!

HOW TO KILL MONSTERS is a practical effects driven horror comedy movie from Dark Rift Horror, the award winning studio that brought you BOOK OF MONSTERS and THE CREATURE BELOW. 

Inspired by genre classics like Evil Dead 2, Gremlins and Hellraiser; How to Kill Monsters is a feature length movie made for fans of 80s horror. With a dash of British humour in the vein of Hot Fuzz and the self aware twists and turns of Scream, our goal is to deliver horror fans a blood-soaked popcorn horror movie that will have you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
​
With a menagerie of monsters realised entirely with practical effects and buckets of fake blood and guts thrown in for good measure, the movie will pay tribute to the classics we grew up watching on VHS, whilst delivering an original story filled with rich characters that you'll love watching die in horrible ways!
​

For more information on the film and full details of the excellent pledge rewards please follow this link 

​https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stewartsparke/how-to-kill-monsters-a-horror-comedy-feature-film

There’s a 1971 horror film called The Brotherhood of Satan that I watched on TV once, years ago. It’s campy, Satanist fun, but it really got to me. Not the Satanism, not the “child in peril” trope, not even the inventive climax that was kind of a precursor to Being John Malkovich.


A family keeps trying to drive out of a small, rural town and no matter what they do, they can’t leave.


I’ve seen a similar type of thing in many films since, but this was the first time. Even though the film’s larger metaphor is not that your hometown is inescapable, that’s the terror it touched in me. It all looked eerily familiar.


For many years—probably since I left my own hometown—I dream that I’m back in Tiffin, Ohio. No matter what direction I walk or drive, no matter what my plans are or how determined I am, something keeps me from ever leaving..


Usually, I find myself walking down the “grass alley” —a path where a series of back yards meet, leading from my back yard to a big willow tree by another alley. Tiffin is lousy with alleys. And by the time I get to the willow, I get turned around and every alley seems to lead to the wrong place. I take one, realize it’s the wrong one or go the wrong direction.


Or I take an alley then remember my car is at someone else’s house and I can’t remember how to get there. Or my ride stayed back at my house, and I’ve been gone so long they’ve probably left by now.


That specific anxiety is common enough for a coming-of-age tale like mine. In Roost, twin girls face mounting danger as they approach their 18th birthday. What will they do next and will they do it together are questions that hang in the air. But more importantly to the sisters is whether the town itself will let them go.


My own anxiety, the one that still visits me as I sleep, had less to do with the fear of what was out there in the unknown future. My fear was my hometown itself. That’s the anxiety I think seeps through onto the page: the isolation, the push toward conformity, the fucking cornfields that surround the town like a prison wall.


And though now, a lifetime and many miles from my hometown, I can see it as a charming example of rural Ohio, that same dread still wakes me up at night.


Roost is available in print, e-book and audio book format from Off Limits Press.

Every spring in small town Ohio, kids get a touch more daylight, wander a little farther from the front porch, and spend a bit more time off on their own, exploring.


One such spring, the Murphy twins were considered an Easter miracle. And now, almost 18 years later - Easter week, 1988 - the girls approach their birthday, and busybodies around town get a little anxious. Every time their birthday falls on Easter Sunday, bad things seem to happen, and the neighbors have noticed.


A babysitter goes missing. The little girl up the road meets a bad end. Maybe it's coincidence. Maybe living in a town dropped smack in the middle of farmland - with miles of corn in every direction - makes people feel isolated from the outside. Folks start to see evil where it isn't.


Or maybe this year, the devil's come home to roost.​

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING

A series I collected called Fright Time, which was probably too scary for how old I was, because it gave me so many nightmares, I swore off horror until I was a teenager. But I remember those stories fondly; they were fiercely inventive and reminiscent of Are You Afraid of the Dark.

THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER WATCHING 

I became fascinated with The Ring when it was remade in the U.S., but I couldn’t handle it; I was in middle school and had to avoid TV screens for a long time after that. But I loved the creepiness of Samara’s aesthetic, and I named one of my cats after her. I also signed up for giveaways as the name Samara IHateHorses, and my parents still receive spam mail addressed to her.

THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 

The Haunting of Hill House. Ghosts, and haunted houses, scare the hell out of me.

THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 

I love a lot of them, but the one that terrified me the most is It Follows. The slowly meandering monster following you wherever you go, disguised as the people you trust and/or strangers? Awful stuff.

THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

Of all time? Oh no!
I’ll go with horror authors, even though I read in a hundred genres.
I consider many of Jose Saramago’s stories quiet horror, so I’ll go with him.

THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstor has an amazing cover, where the front and back are different versions of the same furniture store. The cover is as spooky as the book!

THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME

I love the poster for Cabin in the Woods, because it hints at the many genres all smushed into the one horror film.

THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

My forthcoming novella, Glorious Fiends.

THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Maybe one of my first short stories: some flash fiction that didn’t quite land. I wrote a screenplay when I was little about people with magical powers because they were born on the Equinox. That could count.

THE MOST UNDERRATED FILM OF ALL TIME

Fright Night. It’s cheesy as hell—but Roddy McDowall’s washed-up Vincent Price character’s facial expressions are amazing; the effects are goopy in the best way; and the poster is great, too. But I never see it on lists of great horror movies.

THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME

Maybe a fantasy series I don’t hear mentioned much: Sara Douglass’ Wayfarer Redemption.

THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME

I wish Jeffrey Ford were known by more people—and had horror movies adapted from his books and short stories. They’re so creepy with so many great twists and turns.

THE BOOK / FILM THAT SCARED ME THE MOST

Film: It Follows and Nightmare on Elm Street
Books: Right now, it’s Sarah Gailey’s Just Like Home

THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT

I’m working on a haunted house horror novel and preparing for the release of my horror novella, Glorious Fiends