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This week on The Scariest Part, I’m honored to host my good friend of many years and one hell of a writer, F. Brett Cox, whose long-awaited debut story collection is The End of All Our Exploring. Here is the publisher’s description:

The stories in F. Brett Cox’s debut collection move through multiple genres and many times and places, from the monsters of the 19th century to the future fields of war, from New England to the South to the American West, from the strange house at the top of the hill to the bottom of your childhood swimming pool. But whatever the time and place, and whether utterly fantastic or all too real, all of these remarkable fictions pose the fundamental question: what’s next? The End of All Our Exploring features 27 stories, and it also includes Cox’s unique historical notes.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for F. Brett Cox:

One of the writer’s tasks that sometimes gets less noticed than others is the need to reread one’s own work before it’s published. Technically, it’s proofreading, I guess, but in preparing my collection The End of All Our Exploring: Stories for publication, I found myself rereading the stories carefully, more than once, in some cases for the first time in many years. Happily, the task turned out to be daunting, but not painful. I did not cringe at beginner’s mistakes or find myself regretting my editor’s decision to publish what is, for all intents and purposes, my collected stories to date.

But while I didn’t find myself thinking, “I wish I hadn’t written that,” I did find myself thinking, “How could I have written that?” Some of the stories, especially those I wrote earlier in my career, contain levels of grinding brutality that gave older reader me some pause. The father who puts the law above his family in “Up Above the Dead Line,” the couple bound within an inescapable curse in “Legacy,” the hierarchical cage that traps the young narrator of “What They Did to My Father,” the sledgehammer of oppression that keeps coming down in “Petition to Repatriate Geronimo’s Skull,” the quietly sinister systems of “Maria Works at Ocean City Nails” that leave no doubt the kids are not all right. How could I have written that?

Well, because that’s the world I found in reading the history of my own country, and that’s the world that waits outside the door every day. In “Legacy,” the character Constance says, “It doesn’t matter how careful we are. Terrible things happen for no reason.” In the story, Franklin, who loves her, has no reply to her statement, and as of this moment, neither do I.

What scares me about many of the stories in my book — several of which are taken from actual events — is that they are not just realistic, but real.

I should add, lest my publisher get nervous, that there are lighter moments in the book — some people find at least a couple of the stories pretty funny — and, in some of the stories in the book, there is a sense that forward movement is possible, that we don’t necessarily have to resign ourselves to being trapped within the systems that generate such terrible things. But even then, if you manage to move forward, there’s no certainty what you will find.

Someone once asked the philosopher Michel Foucault (whose Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison is scarier than anything in my book, trust me) why he thought everything was bad. “I don’t think everything is bad,” he replied. “I think everything is dangerous.”

I agree. Don’t ever give in to fear. But let’s be careful out there.

The End of All Our Exploring: Fairwood Press / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound

F. Brett Cox: Facebook

In addition to the stories included in The End of All Our Exploring, F. Brett Cox’s poetry, plays, essays, reviews, and academic writings have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. With Andy Duncan, he co-edited Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (Tor, 2004). He has served on the Stoker Award Additions Jury and is a co-founder, and current Vice-President of the Board of Directors, for the Shirley Jackson Award. A native of North Carolina, Brett is Charles A. Dana Professor of English at Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. He lives in Vermont with his wife, playwright Jeanne Beckwith.

My guest this week on The Scariest Part is author Ray Clark, whose new novel is Implant. Here is the publisher’s description:

Bramfield, near Leeds, a sleepy little market town nestled on the borders of West and North Yorkshire. Detectives Stewart Gardener and Sean Reilly discover the naked corpse of Alex Wilson, nailed to the wall of a cellar in his uncle’s hardware store. His lips are sewn together and his body bears only one mark, a fresh scar near his abdomen.

Within forty-eight hours, their investigation results in dead ends, more victims, no suspects and very little in the way of solid evidence.

Gardener and Reilly have a problem and a question on their hands: are the residents of Bramfield prepared for one of history’s most sadistic killers, The Tooth Fairy? The detectives race against time to stop the trail of horrific murders…

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Ray Clark:

I had a good think about the scariest part of the novel, and I even spoke at length to my editor about it and we both came to pretty much the same conclusion. I don’t think there is anything in Implant that falls in the really scary category, particularly not in the sense of a heart-pounding, jump out of your skin, nearly mess yourself, scary moment.

However, I think the overall concept of notbeing in control of any given situation is a particularly frightening one. As human beings we all like to control our environment, even if it’s something as simple as having friends over for dinner and you suddenly start to realize that you’re making a mess of a relatively simple meal you’ve cooked a dozen times or more. Running late for a meeting is another good example of losing control: you’re stuck in traffic, you’ve lost signal on the mobile and shortly afterwards you start to lose it. So, there are varying degrees of loss, most of which we can overcome. But if you are threatened by someone who has imprisoned you, is going to kill you, and who takes their time to explain how and why they have you, and what they’re going to do, that’s a whole different ball game: a brand new level of fear. As things progress, you can see that no matter what you do, there is no way out. Given that scenario, I imagine your heart will start to pound, very rapidly. As a writer you can control that situation perfectly by concentrating on your own fears before transferring them to the page.

There are definitely two very intense horrific scenes in Implant that fall into that category. They instill a sense of fear in the creeping-dread-of-what-is-about-to-happen sense. Both include victims who are isolated but treated in very different ways. With one, it’s a long drawn out affair in which the victim is held captive, and being forced — in a unique way — to part with information; the other is a scene set in the waiting room of a small country railway station. I take quite a bit of time throughout the novel to explain the gentle, rural setting where life is lived at a slower pace, with a small-town, tranquil yesteryear feeling. And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, I describe what I believe to be an extremely cringe-inducing, spine-creeping scene that the police are faced with. All along, you instinctively know that no matter what they do — or attempt to do — things are going to end very badly for the victim. Hopefully, the rising panic the scene invokes causes a sense of fright in the dreaded anticipation of what is coming.

Even whilst I was writing it I could sense it all perfectly, and despite what I was doing, and the fact that I was also starting to inwardly feel uncomfortable, I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to make sure that everyone who reads that scene feels as I did — or maybe even as stressed out as the victim.

Implant: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound / Press Release & Official Trailer

Ray Clark: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Amazon Author Page

Ray Clark’s first published work in 1995 was a 3,000 word essay on the author Graham Masterton, with The British Fantasy Society for one of their in-house magazines. A book length adaptation, Manitou Man, followed in 1998. Ray is the author of several stand-alone horror and crime novels including, The Priest’s Hole (May 2012) and Seven Secrets (Jan 2015), published by Damnation Books. Calix (Nov 2012) and two short story collections, A Devil’s Dozen (Dec 2013) and A Detective’s Dozen (June 2015), published by Double Dragon books of Canada. Ray’s first full-length crime novel, Impurity, was published by Caliburn Press in 2016. The second, Imperfection, followed in March 2017 from Urbane Publications. Endeavour Press also released Ray’s stand-alone horror novel, Resurrection in June 2017. Implant is book 3 in the IMP series, published by Urbane Publications.

My guest this week on The Scariest Part is author Karen Randau, whose new novel is Deadly Payload. Here is the publisher’s description:

Dead birds raining from the sky. Poison in the water supply. Spies on the back porch.

A lifeless crow shatters the windshield as Rita Avery, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter arrive at Arizona’s Rim Vista Park. Rita dodges bird carcasses on the road home, where she finds her husband Cliff and son Travis gravely ill from a mysterious pathogen with no cure.

The CDC assembles a team to create a cure, but Rita doubts it will arrive in time to rescue Cliff, Travis, and dozens of her friends and neighbors.

In a race to save her family, her community, and potentially thousands more Americans, Rita launches her own investigation. She partners with a certified herbalist and a homeless war veteran dubbed Crazy Mary.

But the more clues Rita uncovers, the deeper she finds herself in the middle of a ruthless plot that could unleash a wide-ranging American disaster. And the culprits aim to stop her at any cost.

Before it’s too late for her loved ones, Rita must thwart the next attack on innocent civilians.

Murder, spine-tingling trips through Arizona’s rugged wilderness, and callous spies determined to spread havoc — this isn’t your average family outing!

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Karen Randau:

The scariest part about writing Deadly Payload was researching how easy it would be for the spies among us to launch a chemical attack on our nation’s water and food supply. It scared me so much I kept having to pause work on the manuscript — once for several months.

The protagonist in my Rim Country Mystery series is a middle-aged mother and grandmother named Rita Avery. Her first husband died in the first book, Deadly Deceit, in a movie-theater shooting on the couple’s thirtieth anniversary. The investigation into the shooting uncovered a web of her husband’s lies that originated during his service in first Gulf War, making her question everything about her marriage, her life, and herself. Because her late husband knew his sins had put his family in danger, he led Family Fight Night every Friday for years. Rita didn’t realize what kinds of self-defense skills she had gained until she had to use them.

Since then, Rita has partnered with her second husband, Detective Cliff Avery, to solve the crimes that have followed them everywhere they go. Her adventures include saving her husband from drowning, him saving her after a bomb blew her onto a tree branch hanging over a deep gorge, and working together to escape from the grips of a serial killer.

In Deadly Payload, Rita is on her own.

She is thrust into the heart of a deadly mystery when her husband and son fall gravely ill from tainted water, along with hundreds of other people in her town. She deduces that the city’s water supply is the culprit and investigates what went wrong. As she digs deeper into the puzzle surrounding the contamination, she realizes that a homeless war veteran nicknamed “Crazy Mary” may be a part of the conspiracy, and that the roots behind the attack have something to do with Mary’s service in Afghanistan. They partner up to uncover the truth, but when they come too close, Rita is taken.

I’ve done a lot of research for all of my books, but nothing has scared me as much as what I uncovered for Deadly Payload.

It started with news stories about Russia’s meddling into the 2016 election. Wondering what else they’ve done to weaken their enemies, I discovered the real Russian spies who inspired the TV show The Americans, the actual use of chemical weapons on school children in Afghanistan, and multiple assassinations worldwide using KGB tactics.

I combined those revelations with my curiosity about the American electrical grid, water system, and food crops. The result was Deadly Payload.

My friends and I spend more time washing our produce and filtering our water now.

Deadly Payload: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound

Karen Randau: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

Karen Randau is the author of four Rim Country Mysteries: Deadly Deceit, Deadly Inheritance, Deadly Choices, and her newest, Deadly Payload, as well as Deadly Reception, one of several novellas by best-selling and award-winning authors. All her books are published by Short On Time Books. A native of the southwest U.S., Karen’s books feature a tough family-oriented protagonist from the fictional mountain town of Rim Vista, Arizona. Her article, “How Research Can Help Sell Your Story,” recently was featured in Writer’s Digest. She is a proud member of the International Thriller Writers, Sisters in Crime, and Mystery Writers of America. Karen lives with her family in the mountains above Phoenix, Arizona.

My guest this week on The Scariest Part is Linda Bennett Pennell, whose new novel is Miami Days Havana Nights, a follow up to her novel Al Capone at the Blanche Hotel. Let’s hear what the scariest part was for Linda Bennett Pennell:

My fourth work of fiction, Miami Days Havana Nights, was released as an e-book through Amazon on July 18. The dual-timeline work of historical suspense and contemporary mystery features 1920’s-1960’s gangsters and a young, female history professor determined to suss out their secrets.

While there are certainly some exciting action scenes filled with tension scattered throughout both timelines, in my opinion the scariest part is something that readers might not initially consider frightening. It is not a murder or attempted murder, though several such take place over the course of the novel. It is not a natural cataclysm, though the deadly 1926 Miami hurricane blows through the early historical chapters. It is not the undertaking of a dangerous assignment that could have fatal consequences, though that type of action certainly occurs in both timelines. For me, the scariest part is something more subtle than blazing guns and howling winds.

The back cover blurb offers hints at my choice for “the scariest part”:

Sometimes our biggest debts have nothing to do with money.

1926. When seventeen-year-old Sam Ackerman witnesses a mob hit, he is hustled out of New York under the protection of Moshe Toblinsky, A.K.A., the mob’s bookkeeper. Arriving in Miami with no money, no friends, and no place to hide, Sam’s only choice is to do as the gangster demands. Forced into bootlegging, Sam’s misery is compounded when he falls in love. Amazingly, the beautiful, devout Rebecca wants only him, but he cannot give her the life she deserves. When Prohibition ends, Sam begs the mobster to set him free. The price? A debt, as Toblinsky puts it, of friendship. A debt that will one day come due.

Present Day. History of American Crime professor Liz Reams has it all — early success, a tantalizing lead on new info about Moshe Toblinsky, and a wonderful man to love. Life is perfect. So what’s keeping her from accepting her guy’s marriage proposals? Confronting a long-standing personal debt sets her on a journey of self-discovery. While she delves ever deeper into Sam’s and Toblinsky’s relationship, her understanding of her own relationships increases as well, but the revelations come at a price. The emotional and physical dangers of her dual journeys may prove too big to handle.

The idea of being indebted to a powerful gangster who controls the entirety of one’s adult life chills me to the core. It would have been a psychologically and emotionally claustrophobic way of living to never know when the debt would be called in or the nature of the repayment. For me, never knowing when the axe might fall would be an unbearable form of exquisite torture.

Miami Days Havana Nights: Amazon

Linda Bennett Pennell: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Pinterest / Newsletter Sign-up

Linda Bennett Pennell has been in love with the past for as long as she can remember. Anything with a history, whether shabby or majestic, recent or ancient, instantly draws her in. She supposes it comes from being part of a large extended family that spanned several generations. Long summer afternoons on her grandmother’s porch or winter evenings gathered around her fireplace were filled with stories both entertaining and poignant. Of course being set in the American South, those stories were also peopled by some very interesting characters, some of whom have found their way into her work.

As for her venture in writing, it has allowed her to reinvent herself. We humans are truly multifaceted creatures, but unfortunately we tend to sort and categorize each other into neat, easily understood packages that rarely reveal the whole person. Perhaps you, too, want to step out of the box in which you find yourself. She encourages you to look at the possibilities and imagine. Be filled with childlike wonder in your mental wanderings. Envision what might be, not simply what is. Let us never forget, all good fiction begins when someone says to her or himself, “Let’s pretend.”

She resides in the Houston area with one sweet husband and one adorable German Shorthaired Pointer who is quite certain she’s a little girl.

Her favorite quote regarding her professional passion: “History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” Voltaire