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Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, please review the guidelines here.)

My guest is Margo Kelly, whose debut novel is Who R U Really? I’m especially proud to have her on the blog today because the plot of her thriller is based on terrifying true events that happened to her own family. It’s scary stuff, and there are important lessons to be learned from this guest blog, as well as from the novel itself. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Thea’s overprotective parents are about to drive her nuts. They invade her privacy, ask too many questions, and restrict her online time so much that Thea feels she can’t do any of the things her friends do. She barely has time to answer her emails! When she discovers a new role-playing game online, Thea breaks the rules by staying up late to play. Soon, she’s living a double life: on one hand, the obedient daughter; on the other, a girl slipping deeper into darkness. In the world of the game, Thea falls under the spell of Kit, an older boy whose smarts and savvy can’t defeat his near-suicidal despair. As Kit draws soft-hearted Thea into his drama, she creates a full plate of cover stories for her parents and then even her friends. Soon, Thea is all alone in the dark world with Kit, who worries her more and more, but also seems to be the only person who really “gets” her. Is he frightening or only terribly sad? Should Thea fear Kit, or pity him? And now, Kit wants to come out of the screen and bring Thea into his real-life world. As much as she suspects that this is wrong, Thea is powerless to resist Kit’s allure, and hurtles toward the very fate her parents feared most. Ripped from a true-life story of Internet stalking, Who R U Really? will excite you and scare you, as Thea’s life spins out of her control.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Margo Kelly:

The scariest part of this novel is the truth inside, because much of the story happened in real life. The good news is: my daughter is fine and thriving. But the bad news is: there are too many teenagers across the nation who go missing every single day because they were beguiled by an online predator. I know it sounds like yesterday’s news, and in some sense it has become boring to adults. But that only makes it easier for the guy trying to lure your child away. And today, there are new avenues to do just that.

My daughter participated in an innocent online role playing game where she met a guy. He seemed nice. He seemed to need a friend. He seemed safe. But in fact, he was none of these things.

Over a year’s time, while I thought she was playing a simple game, this guy manipulated her and had her convinced they were in love. Not only had they exchanged cell phone numbers, but they had also arranged a time and place to meet . . . after school and before sports practice. That meant he would have had her for hours before I ever even went to pick her up from practice. Luckily, I discovered texts on her phone before anything came to fruition. But one of the scariest things was that she chose to believe a complete stranger over her own mother. He’d swayed her so well. He was an expert at what he did.

The plot of Who R U Really? offers up several fictional characters for readers to suspect as the online predator, and I won’t give away the details of that story here. But I will tell you that in real life, the predator had convinced my daughter (who was eleven going on twelve at the time) that he was a nineteen-year-old boy who needed a friend. In fact he was about three decades older. And because he lived in another state and because I stopped the process before he harmed her, there was nothing the police could do about it. Of course they investigated, but he had not yet broken any laws when it came to my daughter. Even though the police knew exactly who he was and where he lived, they could only watch him. I hope they still are, because as far as I know, he is still online playing games with young kids and trying to lure them away from their parents. He’s even fished around and tried to reconnect with my daughter over the years.

A local police detective said to my daughter, “It is your job to tell others — your real everyday friends that you go to school with — tell them what happened to you, so nothing like this can happen to them.” My daughter agreed. This novel was born with the hopes of helping others spot and unmask internet predators.

Here are a few tips for young adults to stay safe online:

• Only accept friend requests on FB (and other social media) from people you know in your everyday life.
• Be transparent with the people in your real life who love you.
• Trust your parents. You don’t have to always agree with them, but trust that they have your best interests in mind.
• Keep your actual birthdate, phone number, email, street address, even city private. No one online needs to have that personal information about you.
• Most importantly, remember that there is strength in numbers. Use the buddy system, and do not ever meet an online acquaintance by yourself. Not ever. Just don’t even play with the idea.

While my daughter did the opposite of several of these above items, she is now my hero for being willing to share her personal choices, conversations, and feelings, regardless of the negative judgment she might receive as a result.

Who R U Really? is primarily a work of fiction, but the essence of the plot is what happened when my daughter was nearly abducted. And that’s the scariest part.

Margo Kelly: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

Who R U Really?: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Merit Press

Margo Kelly is a native of the Northwest and currently resides in Idaho. A veteran public speaker, she is now actively pursuing her love of writing. Who R U Really? is her first novel. Margo welcomes the opportunities to speak to youth groups, library groups, and book clubs.

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, please review the guidelines here.)

My guest is Adrian Cole, whose latest novel is The Shadow Academy. Here’s the publisher’s description:

After the Plague Wars they waited for the invasion. And as the new Dark Age dawns… there is one who can bring light.

In a world little more than a whisper away from ours, the islands of Grand Brittannia lie just off the shores of the deeply forested content of Evropa, the dark and forbidding realm of legends scarcely remembered.

Grand Brittannia, itself almost completely a place of deep forest and mystery, has at its heart the crumbling, anachronistic administrative city of Londonborough. From here the Central Authority wields power over the Islands and exercises its control rigidly and clinically. Since the rigours of the Plague Wars, some hundred years in the past, when almost the entire population of the world was wiped out and the gradual decline of civilization began, industry and technology have atrophied, their development now strictly vetted by the Authority.

Out on the far-flung coasts, a network of ancient fortress ports wait in readiness for an invasion that some say will never come, their ancient, declining Academies committed to the rigours of training the defenders of the Islands. These Academies are subjected to regular inspections by Enforcers from Londonborough, and their native inhabitants are constantly being swelled by the young military graduates from the Authority’s own Military Academies in the center. Into a cauldron of intrigue and subterfuge that is the town and Academy of Petra comes Chad Mundy, the Authority’s replacement for Drew Vasillius, a veteran teacher who has committed suicide. At least, that is what he’s been told…

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Adrian Cole:

The Shadow Academy introduces us to a world very much like our own, but one where the landscape and culture of the population have been changed by a distant series of catastrophes known as the Plague Wars. Grand Britannia, equivalent to our British Isles, is almost totally overgrown with forest and only a handful of cities exist, from the central Londonborough, which exercises firm and sometimes ruthless control, to the outlying satellites, such as Petra Dumnoniorum in the remote South West.

Chad Mundy is a young teacher, sent to his first posting to Petra and its bleak Academy, to educate its students in English and to train them in hand-to-hand combat. He enters an environment that is even more insular than he had anticipated, where he begins to uncover more than a few hints of rebellion against the Authority that rules both centrally and locally, and against the weakened Christian religion.

The unease that Mundy gradually feels through the first part of the book begins to take on a deeper, more tangible form when one night he accompanies some of the staff of the Academy across the river to meet some of the more openly insurgent factions and is told, secretly, that his predecessor, formally believed to have committed suicide, was murdered.

Mundy feels the hostility of this strange landscape, with its crumbling buildings and derelict ships, the treacherous currents of the river and the suggestion of the supernatural. City born and bred, he feels more than ever out of his depth in a region that has a subtle beauty about it, but where an undercurrent of deep-seated power is stirring. Even at this stage in the novel, the storm that is building meteorologically can be sensed, gathering far away, but inevitably coming.

After a gradual build-up, the book abruptly plunges Mundy into a sequence of action where he is being pursued by a gang of men, clearly intent on harming him. His flight back to Petra across the river, with its intimation of “blood on the water” and his stumbling across strange carvings on the doors of some of the houses, add to his rising fears. He is cornered, weaponless against cold-blooded opponents.

At this stage of the novel, it is not clear to the reader whether the potential supernatural elements of the novel are to be realised. The superstition of the local people, specifically encapsulated in the terror of the caretaker, Skellbow, links to a secret past in and around Petra, whose dark secrets pulse with the increasing threat of menace.

To me the “Scariest Part” is this scene of terrified flight, which captures not only form the platform for a journey for Mundy into an even darker region, but starts the unravelling of the nature of the true powers that are work in his disturbing world.

Adrian Cole: Website / Goodreads

The Shadow Academy: Amazon / Goodreads / EDGE

Adrian Cole was born in Plymouth, Devonshire in 1949. He is currently the Director of College Resources in a large secondary school in Bideford, where he now lives with his wife Judy, son Sam, and daughter Katia. He remains best known for his Dream Lords trilogy as well as his young adult novels, Moorstones and The Sleep of Giants.

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, please review the guidelines here.)

I am very pleased to have Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated and Locus Award-winning author Cherie Priest as my guest. Her latest novel is the highly anticipated Maplecroft. Here’s the publisher’s description:

“Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks; and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one….”

The people of Fall River, Massachusetts, fear me. Perhaps rightfully so. I remain a suspect in the brutal deaths of my father and his second wife despite the verdict of innocence at my trial. With our inheritance, my sister, Emma, and I have taken up residence in Maplecroft, a mansion near the sea and far from gossip and scrutiny.

But it is not far enough from the affliction that possessed my parents. Their characters, their very souls, were consumed from within by something that left malevolent entities in their place. It originates from the ocean’s depths, plaguing the populace with tides of nightmares and madness.

This evil cannot hide from me. No matter what guise it assumes, I will be waiting for it. With an axe.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Cherie Priest:

For quite some time, I’ve nursed a pet theory that there are only two great fears: (1) the fear that everyone knows something life-or-death important, and no one will tell you what it is, or (2) the fear that you know something life-or-death important, and no one will believe you. At the core of both, I suppose, is the fear of isolation and/or being left out of something, which comes around again to the age-old fear of the unknown; but the academic in me has a fondness for the symmetry of it all.

I find it both tidy, and true.

So when I approached the aftermath of the murders which Lizzie Borden may — or may not — have committed, it’s no great surprise that I was struck by the woman’s isolation. She stood at the center of a media frenzy, a town’s wrath, and a justice system’s glare . . . and she stood there more or less alone. If she didn’t do it, she sure as hell didn’t deserve the aftermath of that trial.

If she did do it, then I’m not entirely sure you could say that she got away with murder. Was formal justice served? No, but public social justice saw to it that she basically never left the house again. Entire generations learned (and assumed, and believed) she was guilty via schoolyard jump rope rhymes, for pity’s sake.

So did she kill her father and stepmother, or was she railroaded? I don’t know. Nobody does anymore, because the only person who ever knew for certain was Lizzie herself — and she’s been dead for almost a hundred years. But I was intrigued by the idea of it all, how she never spoke a word to the press, not even to defend herself; and then, when it was all over she was free to go . . . but she didn’t. She bought a house right there in that same town where public opinion had utterly condemned her, never mind the verdict.

And there, she lived out her days, more or less alone.

So I wondered, what would keep her there? She had very little family left — only an older sister who was rather infirm. She had plenty of money, having inherited the substantial Borden estate; she could’ve gone anywhere she wanted.

Maybe she was afraid.

That’s the direction I took it, anyway. I decided to go ahead and make her guilty, but to give her a damn good reason for her infamous crime — something so terrible, so great a threat, that there was nowhere she could possibly run in order to escape it . . . so she might as well stay put and fight.

Because if Lovecraft taught us anything (apart from what “Cyclopean” means in the architectural sense), he taught us to make the threat bigger than the protagonist. In Maplecroft, the threat is enormous. It comes from within, and without — from family, from lovers, and from home. It comes from the ocean, and it isn’t stopping. Maybe it can’t be stopped.

Caught in the middle is Lizzie, who knows something life-or-death important. But no one will believe her, much less help her.

And that’s the scariest part.

Cherie Priest: Website / Twitter / Facebook

Maplecroft: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound / Powell’s

Cherie Priest is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the steampunk pulp adventures of the Clockwork Century, beginning with Boneshaker. She also wrote the Cheshire Red series from Bantam-Spectra; Fathom and the Eden Moore series from Tor; and three novellas from Subterranean Press. In addition to the above, her first foray into George R. R. Martin’s superhero universe, Fort Freak (for which she wrote the interstitial mystery), debuted in the summer of 2011. Her short stories and articles have appeared in many fine periodicals and numerous anthologies; and her most recent full-length project, Maplecroft, is the story of Lizzie Borden fighting Cthulhu with an axe. Cherie lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband, a big shaggy dog, and a little old cat.

Welcome to this week’s installment of The Scariest Part, a recurring feature in which authors, comic book writers, filmmakers, and game creators tell us what scares them in their latest works of horror, dark fantasy, dark science fiction, and suspense. (If you’d like to be featured on The Scariest Part, check out the guidelines here.)

My guest is multiple Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author S.P. Miskowski, whose latest book is the novella In the Light. Here’s the publisher’s description:

While fleeing from neighborhood bullies, a lonely girl uncovers a dark secret buried near the abandoned ruins of a house mired in local legend. Ruth hopes the charred remains that she unearths will bring a bit of magic to her life. But she’s no match for the force that dwells in this place, waiting for a chance to live again.

A displaced child neglected by affluent parents and a former preacher burdened by the tragic and scandalous circumstances of his mother’s death face a final reckoning at the hands of a woman with the power to summon good and evil.

In the Light is the final book of the Skillute Cycle, a chronicle of one fictional town and an abiding horror that lies just beneath the surface. In the woods. In the water. Beneath the ground. The time has arrived. Something evil has come home.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for S.P. Miskowski:

Recently I completed work on the Skillute Cycle, a series of books constructed around, and including, my novel, Knock Knock. This four-book series is published by Omnium Gatherum. In the three novellas that grew from the novel I’ve created a prequel, Delphine Dodd; a concurrent story, Astoria; and a sequel, In the Light. My intention has been to write four stand-alone books which, read together and in order, form a complex kaleidoscopic pattern with overlapping characters and events.

Most of the action in the series occurs in the fictional small town of Skillute, Washington. I’ve taken care to establish ways in which the town changes across time. As drastic economic changes occur, expectations and perceptions change. At the same time, I’ve chronicled the town’s underlying, mythological history. Locals tell stories of a scary creature who haunts the woods but few people realize that these stories have their origin in actual events.

Horrible things happen in Skillute, many of them triggered by a seemingly innocent game played by three girls whose only crime is boredom and frustration. The girls feel an impulse to break free of the social constraints that define their lives. This is a running theme in the series, women who find their situation unbearable and reach out or lash out, only to find they are trapped by a natural, malevolent force. Ironically, the force against which they struggle may have its origin in the very disillusionment they express, reiterated through several generations.

For me, the scariest and most daunting aspect of this cycle was returning to Skillute time and again, even though the town could sometimes be quite beautiful. I was afraid of the same things the women of Skillute fear, the long afternoons and empty nights, the loneliness which has no beginning or end, the sense that life may not have meaning beyond the ones we invent. My aim was to create a location which inspires claustrophobia and paranoia, in which reckless acts and desperate measures make sense. My growing uneasiness indicated that I had succeeded.

I’ve never lived in a small town but I spent a lot of time visiting the rural places where my parents grew up. As a child I only perceived these towns with an attitude of adventure. I saw the novelty and not the hardship. It was only after I grew up that I understood how my parents had barely managed to contain their youthful energy, and why they had run away as soon as they were old enough to do so. The picturesque and eccentric elements of small town life had masked, for me, the burden of history inherent to such a close-fitting world.

The girls of Skillute take an oath in the woods. They believe that if they can disrupt one building block in the life they are consigned to lead, the whole structure will topple and they will be free. Such are the dreams we cherish when we’re children. Escape is so much more difficult. However much we kick against the rules that shape our lives, we remain largely a product of our time and place. Real escape requires a deep understanding of where we come from and what we want, as well as an acceptance of our nature as something less pretty and more frightening than we ever imagined.

S.P. Miskowski: Goodreads

In the Light: Preorder from Amazon

S.P. Miskowski’s debut novel, Knock Knock, and her first novella, Delphine Dodd, were shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award. Both books are part of The Skillute Cycle, which includes two more novellas: Astoria and In The Light. All four books are published by Omnium Gatherum Media.

Rated by Black Static book critic Peter Tennant as “one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years,” Miskowski has written short stories published in Supernatural Tales, Horror Bound Magazine, Identity Theory, The Absent Willow Review, New Times, Fine Madness, Other Voices, and the anthologies Detritus and Little Visible Delight, and in the forthcoming anthologies Cassilda’s Song edited by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (Chaosium) and October Dreams 2 (Cemetery Dance Publications). Her work has received a Swarthout Award and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.