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This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Lori M. Myers, whose new story collection is Crawlspace and Other Stories of Dark Fiction and Horror. Here is the publisher’s description:

A windowed storefront, a foreboding brothel, a wine cellar, a burial plot. Small spaces surrounded by thick walls, bolted with padlocks, weighed down with wet earth. This story collection of dark fiction/horror by award-winning writer Lori M. Myers is about the mystery and danger of closed-in rooms and wombs; of the mistaken belief that being inside equals safety. It doesn’t; not in these crawl spaces…

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Lori M. Myers:

The inspiration for my story collection titled Crawlspace originated by simply reading and listening and then answering the question, “What if…?” Sometimes an idea sprang from reading an innocent new story or overhearing a conversation or by simply allowing my mind to wander during long walks. As these stories were completed and compiled, I began to notice the thread that linked them — a thread that both surprised me and yet didn’t.

So let’s rip this apart, shall we? I don’t consider myself claustrophobic by any means, but as I wrote these stories in my writing life, I noticed some revelations going on in my real life. It was in those moments (for instance, being stuck in crowded narrow hallways) that my breathing felt more constrained. I’d find myself shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers and yearned for the sea of humanity to part, to rush toward an exit door and find freedom, fresh air. I didn’t know its origins. I’d always equated indoors with safety, but the more I researched and examined the human condition, the more I realized that cramped places shut out a sometimes scary unknown if our imaginations take over.

I remember watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and not understanding why Vera Miles, all alone in that wretched house, got curious about a closed door leading to the basement. She was a few steps from the entrance door, a few blessed steps. Needless to say, I questioned her judgment. It appears that many other horror film characters took Vera’s lead and chose to turn the knobs of doors with ominous noises coming from the other side rather than leaving the place and phoning 911.

So I looked at my stories, asked myself what scared me, and the response was proof that having four solid walls around my fictional characters didn’t equal safety. I made bad things happen each and every time. In “Heartland Flyer,” a house serves as refuge (or is it?) from a train that kills; in “Dante’s Window,” close quarters become the “monster”; in the title story, “Crawlspace,” both the womb and the grave signify evil; in “Scar Girl,” even a Ferris wheel’s gondola becomes something other than an amusement.

Experts say that claustrophobia is an irrational fear of enclosed spaces, especially if there seems no way to escape. It could stem from our childhoods, like being left in a closet for long stretches of time or perhaps being in a crowded elevator that gets stuck between floors, neither of which happened to me. But I definitely felt it in those crowded hallways. Why?

Perhaps, when it came right down to it, it was my parents’ story that became my book’s focus and ultimately my own. Growing up, I knew little of my European parents’ experience during World War II. I knew they were Holocaust survivors, but discovered that they lived in a bunker in the Polish forest for more than three years. “Holes in the ground,” my father later told me. They would change their location often, finding another bunker to “live” in, never revealing to others in hiding exactly where their crawlspace was located for fear of being found out. That bunker became both sanctuary and a threat. A small enclosed space, yet a wrong move, a sneeze, could mean discovery, torture, death. Deep within my childlike wonder, I’d ponder what it was like for them. I’d put myself in that bunker with the monsters hovering, scouring the woods. There was no safe place in my imagination and that bunker didn’t provide one either.

We may breathe that sigh of relief as we settle in those crawlspaces, but once the door is locked and we’re inside those solid walls of wood, plaster or dirt, who knows who might be already right there, gnashing its teeth.

Lori M. Myers: Website / Facebook Group / Facebook Author Page / Twitter

Crawlspace: Amazon

Lori M. Myers is an award-winning writer of creative nonfiction, fiction, essays, and plays, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a Broadway World Award nominee. Her works have been published in more than forty-five national and regional magazines, journals, and anthologies. Her plays and musicals have been performed internationally and across the United States and Canada. Lori is an adjunct professor of writing and literature, and senior interviews editor for Hippocampus Magazine. She holds an MA in creative writing from Wilkes University and resides in New York.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Merry Jones, whose latest novel in the Elle Harrison Thriller series is Child’s Play. Here is the publisher’s description:

Since her husband’s murder two years earlier, life hasn’t been easy for Elle Harrison. Now, at the start of a new school year, the second grade teacher is determined to move on. She’s selling her house and delving into new experiences — like learning trapeze.

Just before the first day of school, Elle learns that a former student, Ty Evans, has been released from juvenile detention where he served time for killing his abusive father. Within days of his release, Elle’s school principal, who’d tormented Ty as a child, is brutally murdered. So is a teacher at the school. And Ty’s former girlfriend. All the victims have links to Ty.

Ty’s younger brother, Seth, is in Elle’s class. When Seth shows up at school beaten and bruised, Elle reports the abuse, and authorities remove Seth and his older sister, Katie, from their home. Is Ty the abuser?

Ty seeks Elle out, confiding that she’s the only adult he’s ever trusted. She tries to be open-minded, even wonders if he’s been wrongly condemned. But when she’s assaulted in the night, she suspects that Ty is her attacker. Is he a serial killer? Is she his next intended victim?

Before Elle discovers the truth, she’s caught in a deadly trap that challenges her deepest convictions about guilt and innocence, childhood and family. Pushed to her limits, she’s forced to face her fears and apply new skills in a deadly fight to survive.

 And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Merry Jones:

Imagine that you’re talking with friends and suddenly realize that you’ve missed a chunk of conversation. That everyone is waiting for you to respond to a question you haven’t heard. Imagine the moment of panic as you try to cover up for your lapse. You tell yourself you must have been daydreaming.

No big deal, right? So let’s raise the stakes a bit.

Imagine that you’ve just accomplished something you find terrifying — maybe bungee jumping or parachuting from a plane — and you have absolutely no memory of having done it.

Bothersome? Unsettling? But never mind. You’re okay. And you must have done it; everyone around you is congratulating you. Maybe you figure you blocked out the memory because of fear.

Fine. But what if you wake up covered with blood and have no memory of how it got there or whose it is?

Or you find yourself standing over a colleague’s body, not knowing who killed her or even how you got there.

Disturbing, right? These grisly situations are the kinds that Elle Harrison, protagonist of Child’s Play, faces on an all too regular basis. The reason: Elle suffers from a dissociation disorder.

Having that disorder means that Elle involuntarily escapes from reality. She disconnects from thoughts, consciousness and memory, particularly when she’s under stress or enduring a traumatic experience — which would likely include finding herself covered with blood or standing over a colleague’s body.

This escape reaction isn’t one of convenience. Elle can’t control them. Faced with danger, fear or extreme tension, her mind might slip into an alternate state of reality. And to me, that involuntary slipping away — Elle’s condition of dissociation — is the scariest part of Child’s Play.

Oh, yes, the book has its serial killers, its mutilated bodies. But these have become fairly standard commodities in thrillers and suspense. Neither is particularly scary.

The possible pedophile? He’s revolting, but not terrifying.

Even the murderer released from juvenile detention evokes more sympathy than fear.

I admit that the sociopaths, yes, are scary. Very scary. They have no mercy, no compassion. To them, cruelty is an idle sport. I’m afraid of them.

But not nearly as much as I’m afraid of Elle’s internal, invisible, intangible, uncontrollable, unavoidable condition.

It might seem strange that she mentally checks out when things get dicey. But think about it. At a time of great stress or intensity, have you ever felt like you were “out of your body,” watching from afar, or somehow detached or numb? Have you ever forgotten details or lacked emotions about a traumatic experience?

According to the National Alliance on Mental Health, fully half of American adults have had or will have such experiences. They are common forms of dissociation and are called depersonalization or derealization events.

In its most extreme and uncommon form, dissociative disorders result in multiple personalities. But two per cent of the population, mostly women, develop depersonalization disorders similar to Elle’s.

Elle lives with the awareness that she will sometimes lose seconds or minutes, even hours of time. She is afraid that her condition will worsen, making her unable to teach or function independently or live a productive life. Her days are therefore tentative, her interactions uncertain. She is anxious, watchful, wary of her moods, careful of her emotions. Unsure of the difference between daydreaming and slipping away. Often, but not always, she is unable to recall the chunks of time surrounding particularly dramatic or traumatic events.

Elle surrounds herself with caring, sympathetic and supportive friends. Even so, like all of us, she’s essentially alone in her skin and her mind. As she faces an ongoing battle against a force within her own being, she is alone.

Imagine it. Minute by minute. Waiting for the next time you’ll slip away. Not sure what will set you off. Or when it will do so. Or how long it will last. Not trusting that you’ll function in your altered state, or that you’ll even survive it. Not sure that your impressions or memories of events are accurate. Not knowing what’s occurred while you were drifting. Not trusting your own perceptions, even your own mind.

To me, a condition like depersonalization disorder is far scarier than an external villain who can be captured, overcome, defeated, even killed. Serial killers? They aren’t to be trifled with, but they aren’t nearly as menacing and terrifying as an untouchable, elusive villain lurking in the protagonist’s own psyche. To me, that is the scariest part.

Merry Jones: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads

Child’s Play: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound

Merry Jones is the author of twenty books of non-fiction (including Birthmothers), humor (including I Love Him, But…) and suspense (including the Elle Harrison, Harper Jennings and Zoe Hayes novels). Jones was a regular contributor to Glamour, and her work has been translated into seven languages, including Sanskrit. She taught college level writing for over a dozen years, and is a member of International Thriller Writers, the Authors Guild, Mystery Writers of America, and The Philadelphia Liars Club.

I don’t do “best of the year” lists because I’m rarely reading anything that current, but for over a decade now I’ve been posting a list of the books I read each year. I suspect it’s more interesting to me than to anyone else, but it’s become a tradition that I enjoy. Here’s what I read in 2016, in the order I read them:

Mr. White by John C. Foster
Boroughs of the Dead: New York City Ghost Stories by Andrea Janes
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham by Mike Mignola & Richard Pace
Hellboy in Hell: The Descent by Mike Mignola
Fatale: Death Chases Me by Ed Brubaker
Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman
Night Film by Marisha Pessl
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard
The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle
Slade House by David Mitchell
The Last Days of Jack Sparks by Jason Arnopp
Glorious Plague by Karen Heuler
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman
Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
Disappearance at Devil’s Rock by Paul Tremblay
Aickman’s Heirs edited by Simon Strantzas
Man With No Name by Laird Barron
The Inner City by Karen Heuler
Shock SuspenStories: Volume 1 edited by Al Feldstein
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Dead Ringers by Christopher Golden
Steve Lichman, Vol. 1 by David Rapoza & Daniel Warren
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Young Frankenstein: The Story of the Making of the Film by Mel Brooks
Grendel by John Gardner
Baby Powder and Other Terrifying Substances by John C. Foster

That’s 29 books for the year, just one short of my usual goal of 30. It’s interesting to see that I both started and ended the year with books by John Foster (with both books as ARCs at the time). It’s hard to choose favorites — everything I read this year was pretty good — but I will say that I was especially charmed by Grossman’s Magicians trilogy, and had my mind truly blown by Gaiman’s Sandman: Overture and LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom. Steve Lichman, currently only available to its Kickstarter supporters, is a hilarious D&D-themed graphic novel that I hope to see more of (and hope to see reach a wider audience through trade distribution, too). I’m glad I finally got to read some of Karen Heuler’s work this year after knowing her socially for several years now; she’s an extremely talented literary-fantasist. And of course I loved Tartt’s The Secret History, which reminded me in ways both good and bad of my own Northeastern liberal-arts college experience, and can only wonder why I didn’t get to it sooner.

And now, onto a new year with new books!

This week on The Scariest Part, my guests are Aaron Dries and Mark Allan Gunnells, authors of the novel Where the Dead Go to Die. Here is the publisher’s description:

Post-infection Chicago. Christmas.

Inside The Hospice, Emily and her fellow nurses do their rounds. Here, men and women live out their final days in comfort, segregated from society, and are then humanely terminated before fate turns them into marrow-craving monsters known as “Smilers.” Outside these imposing walls, rabid protesters swarm with signs, caught up in the heat of their hatred.

Emily, a woman haunted by her past, only wants to do her job and be the best mother possible. But in a world where mortality means nothing, where guns are drawn in fear and nobody seems safe anymore — at what cost will this pursuit come? And through it all, the soon-to-be-dead remain silent, ever smiling. Such is their curse.

This emotional, political novel comes from two of horror’s freshest voices, and puts a new spin on an eternal topic: the undead. In the spirit of George A. Romero meets Jack Ketchum, Where the Dead Go to Die is an unforgettable epilogue to the zombie genre, one that will leave you shaken and questioning right from wrong…even when it’s the only right left.

It won’t be long before that snow-speckled ground will be salted by blood.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest parts were for Aaron Dries and Mark Allan Gunnells:

Aaron Dries

Writing Where the Dead Go to Die was a unique experience as it was my first collaboration. Actually embarking upon the idea of working with someone was an initial hurdle for me. However, once I met Mark in person, I became so enraptured by his ability to tell a story, often making me laugh until my sides hurt, I just knew that this was someone I could creatively cook with. And of course, he’s a great writer. I’m glad that my ego didn’t get in the way of this happening, and that I followed my gut and opened myself to the opportunity — because with risks come rewards.

Along the way, there were no real concerns from my end about the writing process. Mark and I formed an agreement about being open with one another about our approaches, about trust. And this worked out wonderfully, the words spilling hard and fast.  We pushed each other from opposite ends of the planet, often inserting details in our sections that would inspire whole chapters from the other author. I can honestly say that this was a comfortable partnership from beginning to end.

The only really concerning part of the process for me is the release. The great ‘gulp’. The concept of working on something for so long, and showing its smiles and scars only to a select few, and then having to set it free in the wide-open world is terrifying to me. This book is easily the most political thing I’ve ever written, and its subtext is certainly overt — and yet I’d argue that it has be.

What if readers think agenda outweighs plot? What if readers don’t identify with the situation and the characters we’ve conjured up? All these things maybes swirl about in my head…

Maddening, really.

Regardless of the leaps and bounds we’ve made as a society, we seem to be living in increasingly conservative times, politically and ideologically. And you feel that hardest if you’re a part of a minority. Mark and I get that, feel that. There’s a peculiar swing towards policy that comes at the cost of others — and not just in the US, but globally. This is a post-Brexit, post-Trump, post-Pauline Hanson world. And Where the Dead Go to Die was very much born from the cultural shift we’ve now found ourselves trapped in (though hopefully not forever).

The content of the book doesn’t concern me. What concerns me is that we needed to go there in the first place. But that’s why horror is a great thing. It’s reflective. It’s reactive. A splinter purged from infected flesh. In this respect, horror is healthy.

As mentioned before, with risks come rewards. I think Where the Dead Go to Die deals with some risky, but essential issues — trauma, assault, euthanasia, homosexuality, gun control — all whilst spinning a story that hopefully keeps the pages flying by.

And as a terrified as I may be, I still think the best rewards are yet to come.

Mark Allan Gunnells

Unlike my pal and collaborator Aaron, this was not my first collaboration. I actually have done several collaborations, and I always enjoy the process.

And yet it’s still the scariest part for me. Not because I worry about clashing egos or butting heads or anything like that. I welcome the opportunity to learn from other writers. However, I also fear disappointing those with whom I collaborate.

I’ve been fortunate that I’ve worked with some very talented people, and Aaron is no exception. I first encountered him in the world of cyberspace, as a name on my Facebook Friends list. About two years ago, I purchased his first novel House of Sighs and read it in a state of complete and utter awe. I followed it up with his novella And the Night Growled Back, which confirmed for me he was massively talented. His stories were not just engaging and entertaining, they were also surprising. As someone who has been a horror fan my entire life, it’s hard to throw out a twist that really catches me off guard but he did it with ease.

I then met him in person shortly after at the World Horror Convention held in Atlanta, and he proved to be more than just a talented author. He was also funny and charming and nice. We had an instant rapport, so when he asked if I’d like to work with him on something in the future, I instantly said yes.

Then when he approached me with an idea, the fear started to kick in. I am not someone who spends a lot of time doubting my talent, but neither do I inflate it. I feel I have a realistic view of my abilities as a storyteller, and I am comfortable with that.

But faced with crafting a story with Aaron, whom I knew to be an exceptional storyteller, I had my doubts. Could I rise to the occasion, could I keep up with someone so talented? It wasn’t a crippling fear, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was there.

The way I overcame that fear was by opening myself up to the experience, allowing it to enrich my writing and committing to grow from this collaboration. Aaron became not only my collaborator but unbeknownst to him my teacher and mentor.

He was incredibly generous during our collaboration; he never made me feel like the junior partner of the pairing. I do think working with him made me a stronger writer, and I like to think that he benefited from our time together as well.

In some ways, the fear going in made me work harder, stretch the limits of what I had previously thought myself capable. I’m grateful for that, as I believe Aaron and I really delivered a strong and powerful story.

Aaron Dries: Website / Twitter / Facebook

Mark Allan Gunnells: Blog / Twitter / Facebook

Where the Dead Go to Die: Amazon / Barnes & Noble

Avid traveler, former pizza boy, retail clerk, kitchen hand, aged care worker, video director and copywriter, Aaron Dries was born and raised in New South Wales, Australia. When asked why he writes horror, his standard reply is that when it comes to scaring people, writing pays slightly better than jumping out from behind doors. He is the author of the award-winning House of Sighs, and his subsequent novels, The Fallen Boys and A Place for Sinners are just as — if not more — twisted than his debut. Feel free to drop him a line at aarondries.com. He won’t bite. Much.

Mark Allan Gunnells loves to tell stories. He has since he was a kid, penning one-page tales that were Twilight Zone knockoffs. He likes to think he has gotten a little better since then. He loves reader feedback, and above all he loves telling stories. He lives in Greer, SC, with his husband Craig A. Metcalf.