Category: The Ramble (page 36 of 465)

*Steps onto the world stage of Chuck’s Terrible Minds blog. Chuck gives the thumbs up to get started* Thank you, Chuck! *waves awkwardly* Hello, everybody! Can y’all hear me? Yes? Okay – let’s get this started:

The Pixel Project, a 501(c)3 anti-violence against women nonprofit, has been running our Read For Pixels program since September 2014 when Chuck himself, Joe Hill, Sarah J. Maas, and nine other award-winning bestselling SF/F, Horror, and YA authors helped us reach out to their readers and fandoms about violence against women (VAW) and raise funds to keep our anti-VAW work alive.

That inaugural Read For Pixels livestream author interview series and fundraiser was a resounding success and over 200 authors, 18 campaigns, and 9 years later, we are continuing to build what is probably the world’s largest archive of recorded livestream interviews and panels with authors speaking out about VAW. These are easily accessible on our YouTube channel to parents, teachers, kids, readers, writers, and fandoms worldwide who can either watch the videos to learn more about VAW while fanning over their favorite authors or use the videos to start conversations about VAW in their communities. Authors, editors, publishers, and agents have also helped us raise approximately $10,000 per year by providing exclusive goodies as giveaways for readers, fans, and book collectors who donate to support our work.

You’re probably thinking: “Cool! I’ll go check it out. So why the guest post on Chuck’s blog?”

The short answer: 2022 aka “Twenty [insert expletive of your choice] twenty-two”.

Like many small nonprofits, we are continuing to fight the good fight while navigating the continuing fallout from the pandemic and spiralling global inflation in 2022. Women’s organizations have experienced decades of scarce funding for the overall women’s rights movement and women’s human rights are often one of the first casualties in turbulent times such as these. So, with our current Read For Pixels fundraiser grinding to a halt like Artax sinking into the Swamp of Sadness in The Neverending Story (it’s been over a month and we’re stuck at $2,280, which is only 45% of the way to our modest $5,000 goal), you can imagine our growing, um, concern. While we are 100% volunteer-staffed, we do have certain bills to pay so we can keep our campaigns, programs, and services running.

Chuck being the mensch that he is, received our SOS and basically paraphrased “Mi casa es su casa”, then kindly published this blog post to boost the signal for our fundraiser.

So here I am, as Domestic Violence Awareness Month 2022 kicks off, presenting five win-win reasons why you should consider giving to our fundraiser to help get us to our $5,000 finish line by our extended deadline of October 31^st 2022:

Win-Win Reason to Give #1: Support accessible information for victims and survivors of VAW… while slaying your holiday gift list

One of the key services that The Pixel Project provides is to bridge the information gap that victims and survivors encounter when trying to get help.  Programs such as our daily helpline retweet session on Twitter which tweets out domestic violence and rape/sexual assault helplines for women in 205 countries worldwide from 8.00PM to midnight Eastern Time, 24/7, 365 days a year.  We also create specific lists to address current major VAW events – this year, the team pulled together a starter list of organizations and groups specializing in assisting Ukrainian women and girls who are casualties of wartime sexual violence and human trafficking.  

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: When you donate to us, you can also tackle your holiday season gift list at the same time. From signed rare editions to goodie bundles stuffed with books and swag to tuckerisations galore, we have treats for every donation level. And while you’re appreciating the joy of squaring away some of your holiday gifts, also appreciate the fact that your donation will be going towards keeping our programs and initiatives that connect victims and survivors of VAW with the help that they need.

Win-Win Reason to Give #2: Support resources for educating folks about VAW… while getting your WIP workshopped

We have built an ever-growing archive of over 190 resource articles to date about everything from how to stop street harassment to lists of organizations tackling everything from child marriage to MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women). Additionally, our website has plenty of beginner-level primers about VAW and our Facebook page and Twitter account are excellent just-in-time sources for the latest headlines and articles about VAW.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: If you are a budding author who is thinking of making a donation, we have a stellar line-up of Read For Pixels authors who are offering critique bundles for WIPs (works-in-progress), including Alastair Reynolds (Science Fiction), Daniel H. Wilson (Science Fiction), Kathryn Purdie (YA Fantasy), Marshall Ryan Maresca (Fantasy), Pintip Dunn (YA Romance), and Romina Garber (YA Fantasy in English or Spanish). Some have a post-critique video chat bundled in; some welcome writing pairs; others allow for up to five questions via email from the donor about the critique. Enjoy knowing that while you are getting expert help for your WIP, you’re also supporting the creation and growth of online resources for educating folks around the world about VAW.

Win-Win Reason to Give #3: Support digital platforms for people to speak up about VAW… while chatting away with your favorite author

A key pillar of our activism and advocacy work is providing digital platforms which are safe spaces for people from different walks of life to speak up about VAW. In April, we hosted the Giving The Devil His Due blog tour featuring book bloggers using our first charity anthology to speak up about VAW during Sexual Assault Awareness Month. In June, numerous dads got on board our Fathers For Pixels program (including blog interviews, panel sessions etc) to share ideas with other dads about engaging with their peers and communities about sexism, misogyny, and VAW.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: While your donation keeps our platforms available for folks to speak up about VAW, it could also snag you a chat with your favorite author in the name of supporting a good cause. For this fundraiser, Jeffe Kennedy (Fantasy and Romance), Meg Gardiner (Crime/Thriller), Namina Forna (YA Fantasy), Roseanne A. Brown (YA Fantasy), and Sue Ann Jaffarian (Mystery/Crime) are all happy to have a video chat with donors to natter about everything from books and writing, to RV life, furbabies, and geeky hobbies. These video chats are open to individual donors and groups – fan friends, book clubs or library groups are also welcome to pool together the donation to get one or more of these chat sessions. 

Win-Win Reason to Give #4: Support shining a light on anti-VAW activists and advocates worldwide… while surprising your loved ones with cool treats

Part of our work involves shining a spotlight on how anti-VAW advocates, activists, and organizations worldwide are changing the world for women and girls, as well as their ideas about what people can do to help stop VAW in their communities and countries. Our Inspirational Interviews series has been running for a decade and counting. We also run topical sessions with anti-VAW advocates and activists speaking about their work and educating people about VAW such as our panel of domestic violence experts discussing the negative repercussions of the Depp/Heard case on the movement to end domestic violence and what can be done about it.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: If you have a geeky friend or family member with a birthday coming up and you see a Read For Pixels goodie offered by their favorite author available on our fundraising page, donate to snag that unique treat and delight them while supporting signal boosts for anti-VAW activists and advocates. BONUS: You’ll have an interesting story to tell them about where the gift came from. It might even be a great opener for chatting with them about VAW.

Win-Win Reason to Give #5: Support the right of women and girls to live a life without VAW… while your donation benefits TWO anti-VAW nonprofits

Nearly 1 in 3 women and girls worldwide experience some form of VAW in their lifetime. In terms of domestic violence alone, over 1 in 4 women under 50 have experienced physical or sexual violence from a male partner. So donate to our fundraiser because you believe in supporting efforts to prevent, stop, and end VAW. Whether you can give us $5 or $500 to help us reach our $5,000 goal, every dollar counts.

THE WIN-WIN FACTOR: If you choose Mystery/Thriller author Carol Goodman’s THE NIGHT VISITORS $50/$50 Matching Donation treat, your $50 donation will not just support our work but Carol will make sure your impact is doubled by donating $50 in your name to the domestic violence shelter run by Family of Woodstock in Ulster County, New York, USA where she volunteers.

(And even if you don’t choose Carol’s treat, when you donate to us, please also consider donating either cash or supplies to your local women’s shelter or rape crisis center. Like us, they need all the help they can get.)

It’s time to stop violence against women. Together.

***

Interested in checking out The Pixel Project’s anti-violence against women work? Visit us at https://www.thepixelproject.net/

Interested in checking out our Read For Pixels fundraiser and making a donation to help keep our work alive? Go here.

***

Regina Yau is the founder and president of The Pixel Project, a virtual volunteer-led global 501(c)3 nonprofit organization on a mission to raise awareness, funds and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women at the intersection of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts. A Rhodes Scholar with a double Masters in Women’s Studies and Chinese Studies, she has a lifelong commitment to fighting for women’s rights. In addition to running The Pixel Project, Regina also teaches English to middle-schoolers and high-schoolers, writes stories about cheeky little fox spirits and terrorist chickens, and bakes far too many carb-and-sugar-loaded goodies.

Please behold this vital list of THINGS YE NEEDS TO KNOW, like for instance, where will I be this weekend (spoiler: NYCC), some news about Dust & Grim, a light little tour preview, and more.

First up:

Yes! I’m going to NYCC this weekend. I’m vaguely terrified! It’s probably a bad idea! I really need to figure out how to get a mask to cover my entire beard. Can I wear a hazmat hood? We shall see. My schedule is as follows:

FRIDAY 12:45PM – 1:45PM

PANEL: Authors on the Best Advice They Ever Got

PANELISTS: Peter V. Brett, Terry Brooks, Wes Chu, Delilah S. Dawson, Naomi Novik, Chuck Wendig (moderator: my excellent editor, Tricia Narwani)

Location: Lit Room 1B-02

FRIDAY 2:00PM – 3:00PM

POST-PANEL SIGNING – Authors on the Best Advice They Ever Got

Location: Autograph Area

SATURDAY 12:00PM – 1:00PM 

SIGNING at Penguin Random House booth

Location: Well, duh, the Penguin Random House booth.

So, that’s that.

What else?

WELP, Dust & Grim has been chosen as B&N’s October Monthly pick for young readers — which means the book gets some very nice placement and is in fact deliciously inexpensive at $6.99. You can grab online or in stores!

I will be going on tour for Wayward — it’s not final yet, so dates and times are TBD, but the loose tour, Good Lord Willing and the COVID Don’t Rise, will be PA (Doylestown) to GA (Atlanta, Eagle Eye) to Asheville (Malaprops) to Charlotte (Park Road Books but hosted at Queens University) to Richmond (Fountain) to Alexandria (B&N). Those should be launch week or before (Doylestown is likely the Saturday before launch, I thiiiiink), and then I’ll do a couple local dates in December (Let’s Play Books on 12/4, B&N in Bethlehem/Easton 12/10). I ask that everyone mask at these events if possible. I’m boosted, and you should also get your bivalent booster immediately, as Omicron is still ripping, and new Omicron subvariants are rising, and the bivalent booster protects against Omicron specifically (BA4 and BA5, I believe, in particular). COVID is still a thing!

Also, please note, if I’m not coming to your town, it’s because of personal reasons, as in, I don’t like you personally and have chosen to punish you directly as a result. (This is not true. I do not set my tour dates, but rather, work with the publisher to get those places and dates chosen. This tour is focused largely on the South. Which is exciting as I get to visit some stores I’ve never gone to!)

ANYWAY.

Right now, I’ll be doing signed, personalized copies of WAYWARD through Doylestown, but I also expect that some of these other stores will have their own opportunities for such. Presently, feel free to nab at D-town; they will ship.

Wayward is out 11/15.

Kirkus gave it a starred review.

Hope to see you soon.

LET’S SEE, WHAT ELSE.

I finished my Evil Apple book. Well, first draft, anyway.

I have a new middle grade in mind. We shall see.

Starting to conspire what the next adult horror-ish will be.

Have an introduction to write for a talented horror author, so that’s an honor, and I better get on that ASAFP.

I think that’s it?

More as I have it.

BYE.

HEY, YOU.

PSST.

PSST!

I got a shiny new paperback book right here. It features *squints at list* a monstrous funeral home, rampant sibling rivalry, a mysterious cemetery, a coupla magical wolves, a bezoar, a vampire named Dave, cosplay, and uhhh *squints harder* something called FLORG.

It’s funny! It’s scary! It’s Florgtastic. Florgariffic. FLORGDERFUL.

If you want a signed, personalized copy, you can look no further and ping Doylestown Bookshop. They can get you sorted.

Otherwise, B&N is doing a wonderful promotion this month on the book, and you can run there and find it, or fetch it from the link. Plus, your local indie bookstore is certainly your friend, and you can go there and grabbit.

Wait, I should probably do the proper descriptions and such…

From a bestselling author: Miss Peregrine meets The Graveyard Book in this middle grade adventure about rival siblings running a monster mortuary.
​
Thirteen-year-old Molly doesn’t know how she got the short end of the stick—being raised by her neglectful father—while Dustin, the older brother she’s never met, got their mother and the keys to the family estate. But now the siblings are both orphaned, she’s come home for her inheritance, and if Dustin won’t welcome her into the family business, then she’ll happily take her half in cash.

There’s just one problem: the family business is a mortuary for monsters, and Molly’s not sure she’s ready to deal with mysterious doors, talking wolves, a rogue devourer of magic, and a secret cemetery. It’s going to take all of Dustin’s stuffy supernatural knowledge and Molly’s most heroic cosplay (plus a little help from non-human friends) for the siblings to figure it out and save the day…if only they can get along for five minutes.

Bestselling author Chuck Wendig’s middle grade debut is equal parts spooky, funny, and heartfelt—perfect for Halloween and year-round reading!

And here are some very fancy blurbs:

An Amazon Best Book of October 2021

“A clever, heartwarming tale of funerary rites, ghosts, and the undying power of family.”—Holly Black, Newbery Honor-winning author of Doll Bones and The Cruel Prince

“Wildly inventive, totally hilarious, and unexpectedly moving.”—Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The Silver Arrow and The Magicians

“A one-of-a-kind delight—mysterious, exciting, inventive, sometimes scary and always funny, Dust & Grim reads like a rollicking ghosts and monsters story, which it is. But just as important, it’s a compelling and tender story about family. Sibling duo Molly and Dustin will find their way into readers’ hearts as surely as they find their way into each other’s.”—Trenton Lee Stewart, bestselling author of The Mysterious Benedict Society

“Sucks you in with a wise-cracking zaniness that soon spirals into a delightful rampaging chaos of swarming vampires, thorny wolves, walking trees, and eldritch horrors. And yet even as the dangers for Molly and Dustin increase and the wise-cracks keep flying, the importance of family both lost and found grounds their story with a profound sense of heart.”—Paolo Bacigalupi, bestselling author of The Windup Girl, Ship Breaker, and Zombie Baseball Beatdown

“Spookily charming, bewitchingly creepy, full of hope, heart, and horror, Dust & Grim is the sort of book you gobble up in one sweet and salty bite.”—Delilah S. Dawson, author of Star Wars: PHASMA and Mine

“Every line of Dust & Grim is packed with a laugh, a sharp observation, or something radically cool, and sometimes all three at once. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Wendig is a welcome new voice in middle-grade fiction, and we are lucky to have him.”—Greg van Eekhout, author of Weird Kid, COG, and Voyage of the Dogs

“Siblings Molly and Dustin Grim are the most unlikely of heroes, and for that reason they are among the greatest. The fact that they must save the world from within a secret monster mortuary is only the first of many surprises that bestselling tale-spinner Chuck Wendig has created for this full-of-heart debut about trust, friendship, and the importance of having the perfect costume for every occasion. A fantastic, spooky adventure!”—Fran Wilde, Nebula Award winning author of Updraft and Riverland

“Playing to strengths demonstrated in his many comics and tales for older audiences, not only is Wendig a dab hand at concocting extremely creepy critters, but here he also pulls together a secondary cast of quarrelsome but supportive allies for the beleaguered teens.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Wendig charges onto the middle-grade scene with a monstrously fun tale of family and funerary arts…. [The] easy writing style is a perfect vehicle for the humor and rapidly paced shenanigans that propel the narrative…. Monstrously fun…. A sure pick for those enamored by Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Tahereh Mafi’s Whichwood.”—Booklist

“Wendig thrills, enchants, and amuses in equal measure…. Peppered with nail-biting action scenes, the well-paced storytelling is as heart-felt as it is heart-racing, and readers who appreciate word play will love the snark-filled banter and witty narrative voice…. The ideal read-next for fans of Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, this is also perfect for readers who embrace the weirdness of family.”—BCCB

“A spooky, heartfelt, darkly funny adventure…. The importance of relationships, regardless of blood relation, runs deep and gives an endearing core to this perfect Halloween read.”—Shelf Awareness

“The supernatural realm meets a cosplayer teen in this…blend of horror, spooky, funny, pop culture, cosplay, and sibling rivalry.”—School Library Journal

“Packed with pop-culture references and creepy beings, the novel is written from Molly’s sarcastic-beyond-her-years viewpoint and subtly threaded with life lessons that together create an engaging narrative.”—Publishers Weekly

Best children’s books of 2021: ages 9 to 12—Amazon

Journalist Jamie Vega is Sleepless: he can’t sleep, nor does he need to. When his boss dies on the eve of a controversial corporate takeover, Jamie doesn’t buy the too-convenient explanation of suicide, and launches an investigation of his own.

But everything goes awry when Jamie discovers that he was the last person who saw Simon alive. Not only do the police suspect him, Jamie himself has no memory of that night. Alarmingly, his memory loss may have to do with how he became Sleepless: not naturally, like other Sleepless people, but through a risky and illegal biohacking process.

As Jamie delves deeper into Simon’s final days, he tangles with extremist organizations and powerful corporate interests, all while confronting past traumas and unforeseen consequences of his medical experimentation. But Jamie soon faces the most dangerous decision of all as he uncovers a terrifying truth about Sleeplessness that imperils him—and all of humanity.

The entire experience of bringing a debut novel to life is a non-stop learning process, especially so since this book was the first I ever wrote. I could fill up a much longer list, but for now, here are five things I learned writing The Sleepless:

Sleep Evolved Before Brains, and Other Rad Trivia

Creating a science fictional world where some people do not have the need or ability to sleep meant doing a lot of research about sleep science. I learned that “fear naps” are a thing, and that cognitive behavioral therapy is more effective than medication in treating insomnia. I learned about g-suits, which are pressure trousers worn as a part of an astronaut or pilot’s flight suit to prevent g-force induced loss of consciousness. And did you know that sleep deprivation is a public health epidemic, and that about a third of Americans get less than six hours of sleep a night?

One of the more surprising things I learned is that most of our sleep research has been brain-centric, focusing on how it functions in complex creatures; after all, those are the ones with physiologies that you can hook up probes to. Yet newer research has shown that simple organisms like cockroaches, or even brainless ones like hydras and jellyfish, do sleep or engage in sleep-like behavior.

There are a Lot of Hate Groups Out There

One of the more unpleasant parts of my book research for is learning about hate groups. The Sleepless world has created a new class of people, and with it, a new basis for othering. Because of their condition, the Sleepless are treated differently: they are discriminated against, and they suffer threats to and loss of life, liberty and security.

To more realistically depict this, I delved into different kinds of hate groups, reading about their origins, their supposed ideologies, and their modus operandi. I learned their names and histories, how they are structured and funded, where they are located, what their membership looks like and how they recruit. Resources like the Southern Poverty Law Center were invaluable for this purpose–and for my own education. Through their research and databases, I gained a deeper insight into how widespread hate is in this country, and the different forms it takes. Things I thought I already knew. Not to sound alarmist, but things are worse than we think.

Genres are Meant to Be Blended

I’m a wide reader–I have no overwhelming favorites in terms of genre, setting, style or form and I feel that I have an richer reading life because of this tendency for openness. When I decided to become a writer, that translated into the stories I created. The premise of a sleepless world came to me first, so I knew The Sleepless was going to be a sci-fi book, but I also was drawn to the idea of writing a locked-room mystery, so I tried mashing those two together. I also wanted deep character interiority and a slow build, so I also had literary fiction conventions in mind as I was writing.

This made the process both rewarding and complicated: I was playing in several story sandboxes that I love, but I also needed to learn how to write each of them individually, in order to execute them well as a whole. That meant honoring each genre tradition, knowing their tropes and hallmarks, and examining what made me fall in love with them. That also required a willingness to depart from those hallmarks, to break them and bring my own spin on them, all the while finding ways to make everything cohere.

Life Imitates Art Sometimes, And That’s Okay

The world of the Sleepless was brought about by a global pandemic of mysterious origins, which was fun to write back in 2017 when I started, but not as much in 2020. Real-life events had a lot to teach me, learnings that made their way into the book. I saw first-hand the fear and confusion caused by a pandemic, as well as the pain and hatred that misinformation and panic can cause. I also saw how our institutions responded to the threat; the inefficiencies, the incompetence, and the iniquities of world leaders and private entities were, unfortunately, useful fodder for my world building.

In 2020, I was in the middle of revising and pitching it to agents and publishing houses. I received some rejections that responded to that aspect of the book, which taught me a lot about how difficult the industry is in general, and how much more so during an ongoing crisis. Compound that with the fact that I’ve written a pandemic-adjacent book, and it truly felt like an unwinnable uphill battle. Yet I stuck to it, refining the details of the pandemic to be more grounded in reality. I believed in my story and though I sometimes had doubts, I believed that there were readers out there who would too, despite the circumstances. Luckily, that turned out to be true.

Who I Am as a Writer is Ever-Changing

When I started drafting The Sleepless, I did it mostly for myself. I didn’t aspire to publish; I didn’t even know how. As my first book, writing it was largely a process of me discovering the story, and also myself as a writer. I knew what kinds of stories I liked to read, but I didn’t yet know what kind I liked to write, or the kind that I had the skills enough to write. I didn’t know process either: would I create better stories if I plotted or if I made things up as I went along? What’s the best way to motivate myself to keep working on a project?

And there were deeper personal questions too. How much of myself do I want to infuse in my work: as a brown person, as an immigrant, as a queer man, as someone raised in a religious and lower class background, etc. Even more, do I have to? What part of my personal values and beliefs do I want to examine, or to challenge, in coming up with my stories? I didn’t have ready answers to these questions when I first put words to paper; for the most part, I now do, but they are always shifting. My knowledge increases, my interests grow and expand, and with that my view of myself and the author’s life becomes clearer and more refined. On several levels, writing is constant exploration and investigation; it’s a journey of self-discovery, one that I’m glad I set out on.

***

Victor Manibo is a Filipino speculative fiction writer living in New York. As a queer immigrant and a person of color, he writes about people who live these identities and how they navigate imaginary worlds. Aside from fiction, he also spins fantastical tales in his career as a lawyer. He lives in Queens with his husband, their dog, and their two cats. He is a 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, and his debut science fiction noir novel, THE SLEEPLESS, is out August 2022 from Erewhon Books.

Victor Manibo: Twitter | Website

The Sleepless: Bookshop.org | Indiebound | B&N | Amazon

From the acclaimed author of The Remaking and Whisper Down the Lane, this terrifying supernatural page-turner will make you think twice about opening doors to the unknown.

Erin hasn’t been able to set a single boundary with her charismatic but reckless college ex-boyfriend, Silas. When he asks her to bail him out of rehab—again—she knows she needs to cut him off. But days after he gets out, Silas turns up dead of an overdose in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia, and Erin’s world falls apart.
 
Then a friend tells her about Ghost, a new drug that allows users to see the dead. Wanna get haunted? he asks. Grieving and desperate for closure with Silas, Erin agrees to a pill-popping “séance.” But the drug has unfathomable side effects—and once you take it, you can never go back.

***

Let’s talk about tarps.

Clear plastic tarps in particular. I’m going to go on record as saying there is nothing more frightening than a simple strip of transparent polyethylene. You can buy rolls of the stuff at your local hardware store, over a hundred feet long. Four hundred feet. The sheeting shields your furniture from dust during construction demos. It prevents soil erosion, creating a protective barrier for asbestos abatement. Winter insulation. Leaky roofs. You name it.

I find them terrifying. Why? Wes Craven. That’s why.

Let’s go back to 1984. A Nightmare On Elm Street is out and disrupting our sleep cycles. I’m far too young to be watching this film, but of course that’s not stopping me from sneaking a peak at Freddy Krueger invading the dreams of Nancy and her circle of friends.

Everybody’s got their favorite moment from this film. Watching Johnny Depp get sucked into his bed and then regurgitated in a geyser of blood, or Freddy’s tongue slipping out from the telephone, or perhaps his gloved hand rising up from the bathtub as Nancy drifts off to sleep…

For me, though, there’s one scene in particular that has seared its way into my subconsciousness. It’s the moment when Nancy dozes off in class, quickly slipping into dreamland, only to discover the corpse of her closest pal Tina standing in the hallway.

She’s in a body bag.

Not just any kind of body bag, though… For some perverse reason, Craven crams Tina’s corpse into a carrier made from some kind of transparent plastic material better suited for a construction site… not the removal of a dead body. In my horror film/true crime mind, body bags are always an industrial black. In any other movie, the camera catches one last glimpse of the deceased before the coroner zzzzzzips up the bag, concealing the corpse for the rest of the film. Not this one. Tina’s body bag isn’t opaque at all. Nancy—and therefor the audience—can see right through to Tina, dead, eviscerated and bleeding, shrink-wrapped within her own cellophane container. The plastic is frosted just enough that her features are blurred. Her breath—how can she still be breathing?!—fogs over the other side of her Saran Wrap sarcophagus, along with all her dribbling bodily fluids.

Tina reaches her bloodied hand out to her friend, but it’s trapped behind this plastic barrier. She calls out for Nancy before her body bag is dragged down the hall by her feet…

And years’ worth of childhood trauma was born.

Every time I see a clear plastic tarp these days, I can’t help but think of the barrier between me and whatever rests on the other side. It’s so thin. You can see through it—and yet, no oxygen can pass. No dust particles. Nothing is breaking through that sheeting.

In the strangest of ways, these transparent tarpaulins remind me of the barrier between the living and dead. The veil seems so exceedingly slim, there and somehow not there at the same time. All you have to do is poke your finger and… break on through to the other side. 

When I was writing my new novel GHOST EATERS, which is all about a haunted drug slowly insinuating itself through a small group of friends, I found myself focusing on my favorite ghost story tropes and seeing if there was a new spin to put on them. How could I recalibrate the gothic sensibilities of our favorite haunted housers and come up with something different, if not entirely new? When it came to ghosts—actual spooooky ghosts—I kept obsessing over the essentials: a bedsheet with two holes cut out for the eyes. It’s so simple and yet has so much supernatural tonnage to it. The sheet is what gives definition to the apparition. Without it, the ghost itself is invisible. You need the sheet to see the spirit… but even then, you’re not looking at the ghost, but the receptacle that encases it. Cloaks it. It’s all gift wrap and no gift.

So… what if the sheet were transparent? What if we could see behind the paranormal curtain? Is there a chance to peer beyond the veil by simply changing the outer covering?

My book has so many ghosts in it. Like, too many. In my afterlife, I posit that what ghosts want most is definition. Parameters to cozy up in. That means a house to haunt.

That means a sheet.

Without these quaint containers, these spirits are untethered. Unmoored. They wander. All they’re after is a roof over their head, a house to haunt. They just want a sheet to wrap themselves up in and define themselves by. How else are we going to see them? But in lieu of bedsheets, I gave my ghosts tarps. Clear plastic tarps. This simple shift permits my protagonist to see directly through the veil and peer into what’s waiting for us all on the other side…

It’s not pretty. But it suggests that we’re so focused on the surface of these spirits and not, you know, what’s on the inside. All we see is the sheet. Not the ghost itself.

Clear plastic changes all that. It allows us to look even further.

Who knows? Maybe clear plastic tarps will be all the rage for ghosts this season. Don’t be so surprised if the next apparition you encounter is sporting their own polyethylene sheet…

***

Clay McLeod Chapman writes books, comic books, children’s books, and for film/TV. His most recent horror novels include Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, and The Remaking. You can find him at www.claymcleodchapman.com. 

Entering adulthood is like stepping into a dark room in a haunted house. Or that’s what it was like for me. As an undergraduate student living on my own for the first time, I stared mortality in the face. After not taking care of myself for several months, subsisting on boxes of mac and cheese alone, my body welcomed an illness that refused to leave—and no doctors could tell me what was wrong, why I kept dropping pounds, or why a fever kept ebbing and flowing, again and over, over several months. It was just a virus, they said.

During this nebulous time, I had my first panic attack. I was watching Buffy, second season, a show I’d seen a hundred times before—and suddenly, I went weak all over, my heart pounding and palpating. That was the first time I went to the ER, and as I explained my shitty college lifestyle to an overtired doctor, I realized that fear—anxiety—could affect the body. It could make me feel so scared I thought I was dying.

Over the next years, I collected a series of phobias like new hobbies. After moving to Oregon, I developed a fear of flying that made it difficult to get home to see my family. After a bad car accident, I acquired a phobia of driving. I grew frightened of medications; food I didn’t prepare myself; storms, crowded places. As I gave into them, they changed my life—for the worst.

This isn’t about those phobias, which I overcame with years of exposure therapy and medication. These days I can climb onto a plane; drive; enter the world without worrying that a satellite might fall from the sky and kill me. But one persistent fear stuck around: the fear of fear.

After so many panic attacks and nights wasted in a shaking ball on the floor, losing control of myself became my greatest fear. I hated every reminiscent sensation: dizziness, tiredness, a tremor. But how does one expose oneself to fear?

I didn’t know the answer until I met my current spouse. He was a horror aficionado, and when he begged me to watch some of his favorite movies, I agreed—as long as it was daytime. He put on Hellraiser. I made it through. Next was Nightmare on Elm Street. That one was more difficult; there was no happy ending, no monster defeat to wrap things up neatly. The unsettled feelings remained a little longer, and that was okay. It didn’t last forever.

From there, I watched every classic horror film I could convince my friends to consume. I’m most frightened of ghost stories, but I stay up several nights a year turning the pages of some haunting book like Sarah Gailey’s Just Like Home or Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

People often ask me what drew me to writing horror after mainly exploring sci-fi and fantasy. Fear is powerful; it has such a hold on us, both when we wake and when we sleep. It dictates what we do every day—and more so, what we refuse to do. To watch, to read, to write horror is to stare fear in its face—and to understand that it’s nothing more than shadows.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam is the author of Glorious Fiends, out now through Underland Press. Her short story collection, Where You Linger, came out earlier this year from Vernacular Press. Her Nebula-nominated fiction has appeared in over 90 publications such as LeVar Burton Reads. Find out more about her at BonnieJoStufflebeam.com.

Glorious Fiends: Underland

Where You Linger: Vernacular