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.
For the last Supersoldier left in the Galaxy, it’s kill or be killed…
Despite the genetic enhancements inherited from her father, Victoria Anetti never wanted to be a supersoldier. She’d rather spend her life fixing starships, free from family expectations.
Then her father and his comrades vanish on a mission to find a lost warship, leaving her the last supersoldier left alive.
Now she must flee from planet to planet in order to evade government agents—like her estranged mother—who want to use her as a pawn in a simmering interstellar conflict.
To escape yet another capture attempt, Victoria reluctantly joins her uncle’s salvage crew who are attempting to complete her father’s mission. But when clues surface that her father might be alive, Victoria must choose whether to disappear again to avoid sparking another war, or embrace her supersoldier legacy to save the only family she has left.
***
One of the best things about writing a trilogy is that it gives your characters much more room to grow, and you as the author grow right along with them. I wrote the ROBBER BARRONS trilogy during one of the biggest times of upheaval in my life, and by the end I had changed just as much as my main protagonist, Victoria. Here’s the five most important lessons Victoria and I learned during ROBBER BARRONS.
Planning is important. So is rolling with the changes.
One of the great debates between writers is whether you’re a plotter or a pantser. Do you outline your manuscript, use beat sheets, and plan all your turning points for impeccable pacing? Or do you write with only a vague idea of characters and plot, discovering the story as you go?
I’m a Capricorn, so of course I’m a planner. This came in handy when I was a mentee in Pitch Wars and had to revise at least half of my manuscript. (For the Xth time.) My tendency to outline paid off while writing the second and third books of the trilogy, since I knew the plots worked right away and could focus on my shortcomings: descriptions and feelings. I also planned out a schedule for when I’d write and revise books two and three, putting me on schedule for a Fall 2020 release.
Ahem. I’m sure you’ve already noticed it’s now Fall 2022.
Like I said. Planning is one of my greatest strengths. But I didn’t plan for how much pregnancy and a newborn would fry my brain. Nobody predicted COVID-19, which completely wiped my ability to be creative for at least a year. I had to give myself a lot of grace and accept that these books weren’t coming out when I originally planned.
When I finally started writing again, I felt invigorated. I made playlists for the sequels, because that’s how I motivate myself. I dove into the characters again. If I’d forced myself to push through, I don’t think I would have ever gotten back into the groove.
Similarly, Victoria spent her whole life planning to work on her uncle’s starship, the Robber Barron. She didn’t plan on having a messy breakup with the ship’s systems analyst. She didn’t plan her mother defecting to the enemy. She didn’t plan on becoming the last of the Mahjin. And she certainly didn’t plan on her uncle saving her ass and offering her refuge on his ship. At first, Victoria feels like she has no other option but to say yes. Then she realizes—flying on her uncle’s ship is what she always wanted.
And then everything goes sideways when she realizes her father might still be alive—and her mother might be responsible for his disappearance. Her plans once again fall by the wayside, and she has to adjust her worldview all over again.
The past is the greatest teacher.
Victoria’s parents mean well. But wow, do they make bad decisions. (Victoria takes after them in this way.) It was important to me that all of Victoria’s parental figures be presented as real people, not just shadowy caricatures who don’t take part in the story by either staying behind or dying. You don’t stop growing as a person when you become a parent, or even when you reach a certain age, so why should fictional characters? I also wanted to show Victoria learning from her elders. As a history major, I know that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Only when Victoria realizes she’s falling into the same traps as her family does she break free of that messy cycle.
Ironically, I wanted to tell a generational story before I became a parent. When I wrote the second and third books, that desire became even stronger. When my son was an infant, I wanted to do everything and make every decision with him in mind. I soon realized I was losing myself in the process, and while my son is the most important person in my life, I was an individual first. Victoria’s parents weren’t done growing once their daughter was born, and neither am I.
Sequels suck, but are also amazing.
Trilogies seem to be the bread and butter of science fiction, and I certainly had ideas for future stories when I wrote the first book. When Aethon Books offered me a deal for a trilogy, I was ecstatic, but also terrified. What if I couldn’t write books on contract? What if my ideas for what happened next were terrible? What if I was never able to write again? (The global pandemic and newborn brain made these thoughts fester even more.)
Writing a sequel was as hard as I envisioned, but it was also amazing to jump into a world with characters I already knew and start writing. I could really focus on the plot, expanding other areas of the galaxy I only mentioned previously, and introduce new characters. I definitely understand the appeal of writing a series and hope to someday return to this universe with new books.
Victoria has what appears to be a definitive ending in book one. But those events aren’t as resolved as she thought she was. When confronted with someone from her recent past, she is forced to go on yet another mission with the crew of the Robber Barron. And those events propel her to confront her destiny as a Mahjin once and for all.
She ends the trilogy in an unexpected, but good, place. One with (hopefully) lots more adventures ahead of her.
If it’s not enjoyable, try something new.
Writing is hard, but it should be fun. That seems self-explanatory, but even with self-imposed deadlines, it can be draining to force yourself to sit in front of a keyboard every night after working a full-time job and putting your very energetic toddler to bed. I had to learn to enjoy the entire writing process—yes, even the dreaded drafting. For me, that meant crafting playlists and listening to them on repeat while writing, imagining scenes in my head based on my favorite music cues, and incorporating my favorite tropes and scenarios. (Book Three has forced proximity, a fancy gala, and there’s only one bed. I’m not sorry about it.) All of this turned drafting, which was previously a slog for me, into something I actually looked forward to.
When the story begins, Victoria is set in her ways. She intends to stay on the run for as long as possible. But when she’s almost captured in the first scene, she realizes something must change. As the novel progresses, she takes drastic action to reach out to her mother and stop their never-ending conflict. Even when faced with only seemingly bad choices, Victoria can still take charge of her own destiny. And, eventually, things start to get better for her, and everyone around her.
Find your people and stick with them.
There’s a reason why so many writers recommend finding a group of peers to rely on throughout your career. Writing is such a solitary action—but it doesn’t have to be. During Pitch Wars, I became good friends with a group of fellow mentees, and we continue to talk via Slack to this day. We even have a channel devoted to drafting and writing sprints. I wrote most of Book Three while providing updates in that channel, and it was an amazing motivator. We all write different genres and are at different stages of our careers, but they remain some of my biggest cheerleaders, and I can only hope I return the favor for them. I can’t imagine publishing this trilogy without them in my corner.
ROBBER BARRONS is a story about family. Victoria’s uncle is not related to her by blood, but she’s just as close to him as her father—if not closer. Her aunt isn’t married to her uncle, but Victoria has always called her aunt. She’s always felt at home the Robber Barron, much more than with her fellow supersoldiers. She loves her father, but the life he wants for her isn’t the life she wants. And she certainly doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps and be an intelligence agent. But branching out from family traditions doesn’t mean you have to stop being a part of one. You can be part of more than one family—found and blood. Without both, Victoria wouldn’t be who she is.
***
Nanci Schwartz is an instructional writer by day, a science fiction author by night, and a mom 24/7. Her debut novel ROBBER BARRONS (September 13, 2022) is the first installment of a forthcoming trilogy from Aethon Books. In her small amounts of free time, she can be found gallivanting around Disney World, flailing about her favorite space opera movie franchise, or taking refuge from the heat in her pool. She lives near the Most Magical Place on Earth with her husband, son, dog, and cat.
Many new technologies follow an inevitable evolution that starts with invention and ends with exploitation by governments, usually for strategic defense purposes. Weaponization, in other words, often follows innovation. This is not a new trend. Stone tools were one of the first human inventions preserved in the archaeological record. In 1991, two Germans discovered a body embedded in a melting glacier in the Italian Alps. It turned out to be the mummified remains of a prehistoric man who died 5,300 years ago. Ötzi, as he was named, was found with a bow, a quiver of arrows, a copper axe, and several stone tools. Advanced imaging (X-ray and CT scan) revealed that he also had an arrowhead.
It was lodged in his back.
So it turns out that the human tendency to (1) invent new things, and (2) use them to attack others is something of a tradition. In modern times, we have followed it with every new technological advance. Within a dozen years of the Wright Brothers’ first flights in 1903, the first World War became the testing grounds for airplanes as weapons. Rockets that carry spacecraft into orbit can also carry nuclear warheads. GPS satellites that help us navigate to anywhere on the planet might also provide target guidance to those warheads. (At least in theory. I’m guessing the military has their own satellites that aren’t distracted by telling Uber drivers where to turn next). The association of many recent large-scale computer hacks to foreign states suggests that current and future wars will play out on a digital battlefield, an idea explored in books like Chuck’s ZER0ES.
The fear of biological weapons is what really keeps me up at night, though. As the recent pandemic has demonstrated, tiny pathogens can simultaneously kill millions of us and drive us apart like nothing else has done. SARS-COV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is by all indications a naturally occurring virus in some other animal that made the leap to human. It has evolved in the face of every measure aimed at eliminating it. Now imagine if such a virus were weaponized. Engineered to be more infectious and more deadly. It’s a sobering thought and probably within reach of current biotechnology.
A couple of years ago I wrote a book about a slightly less frightening application of near-future biotechnology: using genetic engineering to create dragons. In Domesticating Dragons, genetic engineer Noah Parker goes to work for a company that creates customized dragons for use as pets and service animals. He has his own secret reasons for getting a job there which have little to do with dragons themselves. Yet for reasons I won’t spoil here, at the end of the book it’s apparent that the Build-A-Dragon Company will need some new customers.
In my new book, Deploying Dragons, their new customer is the U.S. Government. More specifically, it’s the Acquisition Corps, the body that oversees development and testing of new weapons systems for the U.S. Army. In other words, Noah and his colleagues aim to develop dragons into weapons. If you allow yourself the suspension of disbelief to buy into dragons, this makes a lot of sense. Dragons can do a lot of things that current weapon systems cannot. They can be adapted to ground, air, and marine environments. They can pass through metal detectors. And probably most important, they can think for themselves. I think if we had dragons like that, the U.S. government just might come calling. Granted, it’s more of a collaboration in my book than outright co-opting, but I think it still makes for a good story. Especially because, as Noah finds out, he’s not the only one who can design dragons anymore.
ABOUT DEPLOYING DRAGONS
A BIOTECH RACE AGAINST TIME TO DEVELOP MILITARY-GRADE DRAGONS. Brilliant genetic engineer Noah Parker is pitted head-to-head against the founder of Build-a-Dragon to design custom dragons for the military.
Genetic engineer Noah Parker has at last landed the job he’s long coveted: director of dragon design for the Build-A-Dragon Company. With a combination of genetic engineering and a cryptic device known as the Redwood Codex, he and his team can produce living, breathing dragons made-to-order. But sales of dragons have plummeted, and the Build-A-Dragon Company will have to find new revenue streams if it hopes to stay in business. A contract to develop dragons for the U.S. military promises a much-needed lifeline. Yet the specs are more challenging than anything Noah has ever designed. Worse, he learns that a shadow company headed by former CEO Robert Greaves has stolen the dragon-making technology to make a competing bid. Noah’s dragons will face off against those of his old adversary. It’s a head-to-head design competition, with the ethical future of domesticated dragons hanging in the balance.
Dan Koboldt is the author of the Gateways to Alissia trilogy (Harper Voyager) and the Build-A-Dragon Sequence (Baen), the editor of Putting the Science in Fiction and Putting the Fact in Fantasy (Writer’s Digest), and the creator of the sci-fi adventure serial The Triangle (Realm). As a genetics researcher, he has co-authored more than 100 publications in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and other scientific journals. Dan is also an avid deer hunter and outdoorsman. He lives with his wife and children in Ohio, where the deer take their revenge by eating the flowers in his backyard.
Hey, I am as shocked as you are, but apparently The Book of Accidents went and won itself one of them fancy Dragon Awards @ DragonCon for Best Horror Novel? I say I’m shocked not because I don’t stand by the book — I do! I like it just fine, thanks. But it was in some really stellar company, and I say with all sincerity it’s a win just to be mentioned in the same breath as those writers. (C’mon, Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix, Caitlin Starling, Daryl Gregory, Kiersten White? That’s a helluva group to be in.)
But apparently, people actually… voted for TBOA, which is so great, and I thank all of you who registered and voted. I cannot be mad at an award that is chosen by fans and readers, which is really great, and I’m over the moon. Week made.
This week, the art robot has given us FIVE DOORWAYS.
You can choose one of these and write about them. Or, perhaps, what waits behind these doors. Or about who put them in, or why there is a door there at all. These doorways are strange, and there must be a story about them.
From there, you can and should write ~1000 words of fiction based on that prompt.
Do not post your fiction in the comments.
Deadline is one week, next Friday, the 26th.
Post it at your requisite online space, and drop us a link to that online space in the comment section below so others can read it.
Any genre is acceptable.
Let us know what prompt inspired the flash fiction you wrote.
What is it about small town horror? Why is it so godsdamned compelling? Good horror can happen anywhere. I’ve written city-based urban horror and international thriller-type horror as well as small town. There’s super famous horror set in the Arctic or the jungle or any number of other locales. A good dark yarn can be spun in any environment. But there’s something particularly delicious about hamlet hideousness. Why?
For many of us who live in or near such places, we see some of the more mundane horrors on a daily basis. I mean, you live in a place where almost everyone knows who you are—that’s terrifying. The level of gossip that circulates a small community like scum slowly circulating a partially-blocked drain, is appalling. But these are indeed everyday horrors.
The small town has its edge, I think, due to several other factors. For one, it shares its tight-knit community with some degree of isolation. After all, if it wasn’t isolated it would be a suburb. The fact that it stands alone is what denotes its identity. And that allows a certain culture to build up. Every small town has a vibe. An accent. A unique weirdness. Mostly they’re entirely benign. Maybe they’re great for antique shopping, or farm produce. Perhaps they have particularly interesting trees. Or maybe, like Snowtown in South Australia, they’re great for bodies stuffed into barrels. (In case you don’t know about that one, the short version is that between 1992 and 1999, three guys murdered 12 people and, with the help of a 4th person, hid all the bodies in barrels in an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, about 87 miles north of Adelaide. None of the killers or victims were actually from Snowtown, but the town carries the stigma to this day.)
It’s that combination of peculiar local culture and isolated location that lets small towns develop into genuine horrors, if we let them. When I wrote The Gulp and The Fall I leaned hard into that concept—Gulpepper is a small harbour town on the coast of New South Wales in Australia that some maps don’t even show. That town is weird with a capital WEIRD. I got to build an entire mythology around its weirdness which allowed me to tell all kinds of wild stories, and I’m not finished yet. There’ll be more Tales From The Gulp one day.
I wanted to visit that idea again with Sallow Bend, my latest novel coming out through Cemetery Dance Publications on September 2nd. But where Gulpepper is truly weird, Sallow Bend is a small town with a slightly different angle—this one is a pretty regular place, only it has a dark and forgotten history. Forgotten except that it periodically repeats, and at the start of the novel it’s beginning to come around again. That history best left unspoken is another aspect that makes the small town intriguing and potentially frightening. It’s small, isolated, with a dark past…
Where the isolation of the small town allows strange culture to build, it also provides a kind of trap when things go awry. In the city, the police are usually not far away (although they might shoot you simply for calling them, but that’s an entirely different strain of horror). In the city, you can jump on a bus or a train or hail a cab and leg it. In the city, there’s usually cell phone coverage. In the city you can get lost in the crowd and spend most of your time unnoticed. In a small town, the cops are very far away. In a small town there’s no public transport to help you get away (where I live there’s a bus once per hour on weekdays between 9am and 6pm—good luck if the monster is after you in the evening, or you just missed the last bus and have to wait another hour.) In a small town there are often cell phone dead spots—honestly, those places piss people off but they’re a fucking godsend for horror writers. In a small town, you can’t do anything without someone seeing you and taking note. And there’s another aspect of the horror we draw on.
“Oh, I noticed young Charlie wasn’t in school on Tuesday. Perhaps he’s dying of some rare terminal childhood disease!” Yeah, or maybe he had a dentist appointment.
“Hey, I saw old Mr. Crackerjack taking a lot of money out of the bank on Friday. I wonder if he’s paying off some terrible debt? Or hiring a hitman to take out Mrs. Crackerjack?” Yeah, or maybe he needs a new car.
Honestly, the gossip machine is out of control in local communities. But that’s the thing about the small town community—any of those explanations could be true, from the boring to the infernal. The people can have as many dark secrets as the place. Someone might be as sweet as pie or a cannibal who wants to eat your lips, sauteed in a nice onion and garlic sauce. Your lovely neighbour might indeed be dear old Mrs. Flowerpot, who runs the Country Women’s Association and makes delicious orange marmalade cake, or she might be dear old Mrs. Flowerpot, who runs the Country Women’s Association and makes delicious orange marmalade cake and is also a slimy swamp beast wearing the original Mrs. Flowerpot’s skin like an ill-fitting suit. “Do come in for a nice, moist slice of cake dear, then I’ll trim off those full lips of yours and fry them up with onions and garlic.”
Small towns are often old too, therefore packed with haunted places. There are a million apocryphal stories passed on by generation after generation that make city-based urban legends seem like children’s stories. When people see everything that goes on, it’s easy to speculate about your neighbours and the best speculation involves all manner of things sinister and cruel. Despite the idea that small towns are friendly and supportive (which, to a large degree, they often are) they frequently also create sharply opposed cliques, groups at loggerheads with each other about any number of issues, small or large. This engenders all kinds of potential conflict. Now the town is small, isolated, with a dark past, and there are factions and gossip running rife. Who fits where? And why? Or why not?
But the idea of fitting in often brings those communities together on one subject: their disdain for the outsider. Their distrust of anyone not local. That alone creates some wonderful fodder for horror. But what if you’re part of that community but also, somehow, always seen as the outsider?
Equally, of course, the disdain can run the other way, with urban folk sneering at the backwards simpletons in the country. Well, that’s all very well, Chad, until you go for a weekend antiquing and your cell phone has no coverage and dear Mrs. Flowerpot is eating your lips. Sucked in, Chad!
Small town horror has been around forever, and some of our favourite horrors are small town ones. Think of movies like A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Scream, or The Lost Boys. TV like Midnight Mass, Stranger Things, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, League of Gentlemen, or Gravity Falls. And of course books, like Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, Needful Things or IT, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Josh Malerman’s Goblin, Jennifer McMahon’s The Winter People, and so many more. Plus, of course, my own books like The Gulp and The Fall, and now my new one, Sallow Bend. All these examples are just a random selection off the top of my head, and even there you can see such a wide range of horror styles. The genre is indeed a truly broad church, from the blood-soaked to the deeply disquieting and everything in between.
I think small town horror has a place deep in our souls, and I have a theory as to why, beyond the obvious one that it’s just super entertaining and hella creepy. Just maybe it’s because, no matter where we live or were born or grew up, we’re each a kind of small town ourselves, existing in our isolated brain-mind-trapped-in-a-meat-bag state. The locations of these horrors are small, isolated, with a dark past, and there are factions and gossip running rife, and people who don’t fit in. That only serves to highlight our own fears of insignificance, isolation, forgottenness, otherness, with our secrets we don’t want others to know, and a terror of not fitting in, or just being too fucking weird. Perhaps therefore, these stories reflects some of the most deep-seated issues we all carry with us, consciously or not.
But take comfort, friend, because the other thing horror does so well is help us face the darkness. It helps us interrogate our fears. It’s cathartic and emboldening. And while we might each be a little isolated weirdo, we can all be isolated weirdoes together in our love of this wonderful genre. I hope you enjoy some small town horror soon, you brain-mind-trapped-in-a-meat-bag, you.
Sallow Bend is now out through Cemetery Dance Publications — ! Learn more about it and everything else Alan Baxter at www.alanbaxter.com.au
