The first thing I ever wrote was a novel with vampires and werewolves before such things were super cool and then super uncool. I can see the manuscript sitting in its box from here, and some day I will pull it out and see if I can salvage a story from it. Some parts of it are very good. Other parts… not so much.
While I was trying to edit that novel, I fell in with a group of horror writers. My stories have always run to the dark side of human nature, but I prefer spooky to slasher. I’m very bad at writing blood and gore. I prefer to muck around with the mental twists and turns of reality vs fantasy/sane vs insane, because what’s more scary than the darkness that dwells in our hearts? And yes, sweeties, we all have darkness. I like playing with scary things, and even though Vagina Antics eats up much of my writing time, I’m always working on something for the Dark Side.
When I wrote HIS PET, it was the kind of story where I fell in love with every word. A horror writing friend ran it in it’s original version when I was just getting my feet wet in the writing world. A long time after that when Jason Darrick invited me to guest post something kinky horror-ish, I thought this super short story might do the trick. I knew it needed a facelift, so I presented it to my critique group where they gutted it (in a good way). At one point a writing comrade looked at me and said, “I wrote a story too about my ex-husband after our divorce. It was very therapeutic.” My mouth dropped open, and I just stared at her. “But this story is kinky and my ex is about as straight as… OH.” She was absolutely right even though I didn’t make the connection when I was writing it.
Many thanks to Jason Darrick, horror writer and contributor to FELT TIPS, for hosting me. This has been an absolute blast.
Click here to be whisked away to Jason Darrick’s Crumbling Abode and HIS PET
It was truly my pleasure having you, Heather. If you ever feel the need to flex those muscles again, you’ve got an open invite.
Jason – you’re going to be inundated with stories! Just teasing. But thank you very much for the invitation. I’m going to flex those writing muscles sooner than later.