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This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Mark Allan Gunnells, whose latest collection is FLOWERS IN A DUMPSTER. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Seventeen Tales to Frighten and Enlighten

The world is full of beauty and mystery. In these 17 tales, Gunnells will take you on a journey through landscapes of light and darkness, rapture and agony, hope and fear.

A post-apocalyptic landscape where it is safer to forget who you once were… An unusual support group comprised of cities dying of a common illness… A porn star that has opened himself up to demonic forces… Two men battling each other to the death who discover they have much in common… A woman whose masochistic tendencies may be her boyfriend’s ruin… A writer whose new friendship proves a danger to his marriage and his sanity.

Let Gunnells guide you through these landscapes where magnificence and decay co-exist side by side.

Come pick a bouquet from these Flowers in a Dumpster.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Mark Allan Gunnells. I think you’ll find it’s a fear many writers share:

For me, the scariest part of my short story collection Flowers in a Dumpster was the “pitch.”

I’m a writer who is used to letting my work speak for itself. I realize my writing may not appeal to everyone, but I strive to produce the best stories of which I’m capable and allow them to stand or fall on their own merit.

When Crystal Lake Publishing opened up for general submissions last year, I was very excited to submit a short story collection to them. They had quickly developed quite a stellar reputation, and I was impressed by how much they promoted their books. I was eager to work with them, and immediately starting putting together a manuscript of stories.

The catch came when I realized that the first step in the submission process was a “pitch.” They didn’t want to read any of my work initially; instead I needed to sell myself to them, convincing them that reading my work was worth their time.

I understand that this is a common practice in publishing, but I had never done a pitch before. In all my previous dealings with publishers, I’d simply submitted a completed manuscript and the publisher decided based on that. I had never had to entice a publisher, make my work sound appealing without giving them a sample of it. And quite frankly, I was terrified.

I love writing, and I believe in the stories I create, but I always feel a bit awkward talking about it. I don’t want to come off as too egotistical, and yet I also don’t want to undersell myself, and I find striking the balance between the two extremes a difficult one. I realized that with the pitch, I ran the risk of ruining my chances with Crystal Lake without them ever reading a single sentence of my fiction.

To be perfectly honest, I found the prospect of the pitch so scary that I almost didn’t even do it. I seriously considered not submitting because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make my work sound compelling enough. My fiancé and a good friend of mine talked some sense into me, so while the fear didn’t abate, I forged ahead crafting a pitch.

The instructions for the pitch laid out all the things I needed to include. I had to compare my writing style to that of known authors while also indicating what set my style apart from anyone else’s. I had to discuss things I’d done in the past and was open to doing in the future to promote my work. Since I wanted to submit a collection, I also had to include a brief synopsis of each story I planned to include in the manuscript.

I worked on this very slowly, going back and reworking certain aspects of the pitch, and finally finished at the very last moment, just before the deadline. I sent the pitch in to Crystal Lake, not expecting to make it to the next stage in the process. Whereas I feel confident with my fiction writing, I was most decidedly unconfident about my pitch. But for better or worse, it was done, and there was nothing to do but wait.

I was beyond ecstatic when I was told that they liked my pitch, and I moved on to the next round of the submission process which was sending them 3 short stories. Finally I felt back on sure ground, letting my actual work do the talking for me. Obviously, the release of Flowers in a Dumpster is evidence that they liked what my stories had to say and accepted the collection for publication.

Ultimately this has proven to be a wonderful experience, and I’m happy that I worked through my fear and sent in the pitch. And yet I won’t lie, it scared the shit out of me.

Mark Allan Gunnells: Amazon Author Page / Blog / Pinterest

Flowers In a Dumpster: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound

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 has been lucky enough to work with some wonderful publishers such as Apex Publishing, Bad Moon Books, Journalstone, Evil Jester Press, Etopia, Sideshow Press, Great Old Ones Publishing, Sinister Grin Press, Crystal Lake Publishing, and Gallows Press. He loves reader feedback, and above all he loves telling stories. He lives in Greer, SC, with his fiancé Craig A. Metcalf.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is John Goodrich, whose latest novel is I Do Terrible Things. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Donna doesn’t know the old man with the sad face and yet there she is, beating him to death with a shovel. Is suppressed rage making her murder people in horrifying ways, or is she some sort of latent psychopath? The more people she kills, the more desperate she becomes to stop herself. Can she find the key before she commits yet another gruesome murder?

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for John Goodrich:

What sets you off? Really sets you off? Pushes you straight past angry into furious, even to that place when you can visualize killing someone? I bet there’s a couple of things you’re thinking about right now. We all have them. A subject, a person, something that gets under your skin and raises your blood pressure instantly. Being enraged enough to kill is a classic of the horror genre, going back to Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” and even further. That rage can be cold and calculating, like Montresor, or it can be wild and furious, as in Poe’s lesser-known “Hop-Frog.”

Can you imagine yourself actually doing it? The rush of rage, the burning need to do something leading you to a desperate act. There’s something seductive about it, being pushed too far. It’s liberating. We spend a lot of our time ignoring the slings and arrows of injury and insult, and it builds up. So it’s not difficult to make a character taking their revenge sympathetic.

But how to make a protagonist, in I Do Terrible Things her name is Donna, sympathetic if she lacks that motivation? If the story just starts out with her beating someone with a shovel, with no clear reason? And not only does the audience not know why, she doesn’t either. It’s a great hook, but how do I make Donna someone the reader is interested in following? It’s the writer’s job to take the reader down paths they don’t expect, and I’m trusting the reader on this one. I didn’t feel the need to make Donna as instantly understandable as my protagonists have been in the past.

I also want the reader to feel the disconnect between the usual revenge tale and what Donna is doing. To make it hit home, the violence had to be realistic. Realistic violence often gets labelled as brutal, since audiences are used to network TV’s non-messy action. So the blood pumps, bones break, skin chars, and Donna has a hard time dealing with it. Because very few people can beat a man to death with a shovel and not be affected by it.

With the need for graphic violence and a lessened need to make Donna completely agreeable, I was left with the question of how far I could go with the blood. I’ve written action, but never before with the intent to make it disturbing or graphic. So I wrote what I thought was necessary, and as I did so, the violence got very dark. Not because I was escalating, but because there are so many different and horrible ways to kill people. There had been lines I told myself I would not cross, and in the course of writing, I had crossed them. As I pushed my personal comfort zone, I wondered how far I would go. Would I be writing splatter like Brian Keene? Wrath James White? Ed Lee?

It turned out that I was writing like myself. That was the scariest part. That I wrote it. Yes, I had influences, but I had intended for the book to go in that direction from the beginning. This violent book grew entirely out of me. I wrote the scene where Donna slams a guy’s face down on a hot barbecue grill. The part where she smashes a guy’s head in with a baseball bat? That was me. To see someone who wrote something disturbingly bloody and brutal, I just look in the mirror. It’s all me.

John Goodrich: Website / Facebook / Twitter

I Do Terrible Things: Thunderstorm Books

John Goodrich has written a dozen short stories in such anthologies as Cthulhu’s Dark Cults, Steampunk Cthulhu, and the Fossil Lake trilogy of anthologies. I Do Terrible Things is his second novel. He lives in Shirley Jackson’s corner of Vermont, which should be inspiration enough for anybody. His current writing technique involves smashing his head against the keyboard.

‘Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It’s really shameful how long it took me to get around to reading this seminal horror novel, especially considering what I do for a living, but I’m so glad I finally did. It’s a great story with compelling action, vividly drawn characters, and some chilling images that will stick with me. But more than that, in many ways ‘SALEM’S LOT strikes me as the urtext of modern horror novels, the source material from which so much else followed, from imitations to improvements. Here we can see the seeds of so many tropes that would come to inhabit King’s novels, and indeed so much of the work of writers who came up reading King: the small town facing an ancient evil; the large cast of characters, all drawn with local authenticity and each with their own secrets to keep (though I did find myself wishing so many of the secrets of the Lot’s inhabitants weren’t of a sexual nature, but this was 1975 and that was probably considered quite edgy back then — although now the novel actually feels charmingly old-fashioned); the scenes of gruesome terror that stand in stark contrast to those of idyllic town life, as if to say only an evil intrusion from outside can upset the peaceful status quo of the small town. Given how closely this was written to the end of the Vietnam War — it’s still fresh in the characters’ minds — the allegory of innocent blood spilled and a whole town wiped out stands tall enough not to be overlooked.

I’ve read a fair bit of King — not a lot when you consider the size of his ouevre, but a fair bit — and most of it has been his more recent works. For years I heard that what I really should be reading was his earlier novels. Now, with ‘SALEM’S LOT finally under my belt, I understand why. There’s a purity to the story, even if there isn’t necessarily a purity to the prose (King definitely became a better writer over time), and an appealing sense of love for the horror genre on every page. You feel like you’re not just in the hands of a master storyteller, but someone who loves horror and monsters as much as you do, a kindred spirit, and that kind of connection between author and reader is something special.

As is this novel. If you haven’t read ‘SALEM’S LOT yet, don’t be like me and wait so long. Bump it to the top of your reading list and find out for yourself, firsthand, why this novel is so beloved by generations of readers.

View all my reviews

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Amy Grech, whose latest collection is Rage and Redemption in Alphabet City. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Amy Grech’s stories shock, like a sudden splash of cold water. This latest collection delivers gritty profiles of people snarled in the crime and seething anger of inner city New York at its most violent. Here you’ll encounter five dark tales — “Rage and Redemption in Alphabet City”, “.38 Special”, Cold Comfort”, “Prevention”, and “Hoi Polloi Cannoli” — actually 12, if you count the literary parts. These startling stories will convince you that Grech is a noir and horror writer you want to watch.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Amy Grech:

I’ve lived in New York City for 19 years now. When I first moved to NYC from Long Island, it was a much darker place than it is today. Back then, certain neighborhoods like Alphabet City and Hell’s Kitchen were covered in graffiti and had a reputation for being dangerous sections of the city, where crime ran rampant. These were not places where young, single women had any business being, but one of my good friends lived in Hell’s Kitchen, so I got a taste of that region of NYC on a regular basis, saw the crime firsthand, albeit from a safe distance, witnessed junkies desperate for a fix and got a sense that desperation bred contempt. I envisioned Alphabet City to be the same way, but much to my surprise when I went there to explore in the early 2000s, there was no graffiti to be seen, condos dominated virtually every street corner and self-absorbed hipsters replaced junkies, a crime-haven no more…

The scariest part of Rage and Redemption in Alphabet City occurs in the lead novella when Ruby Fuji invites Dr. Trevor Braeburn, an eye doctor, back to her apartment in Alphabet City after meeting him in a bar, knowing hardly anything about him. A potent cocktail of overwhelming lust, coupled with lax inhibitions, leads to poor judgment on Ruby’s part, with tragic consequences for the young girl. There’s Rage and Redemption to be had in Alphabet City once her older sister Gia and Mr. Fuji discover the culprit and take matters into their own hands. You might say the eye doctor set his sights on the wrong girl…

I felt extremely uneasy after writing that particular scene, especially because Ruby has unknowingly made herself vulnerable to the lethal whims of a proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. I don’t scare very easily, so it’s very rare for me to create a moment that strikes a nerve and lingers.

As a single woman living in New York City, one of my worst fears is that I’ll meet a guy at a local bar who is handsome, smart and after too many Margaritas, invite him back to my place, only to discover after we’ve hooked up that he has a gun or a knife and intends to kill me. Luckily, all of the guys I’ve dated have been pretty sane so far…

It’s an extremely dangerous, impulsive thing for a single woman to do, invite a stranger back to her apartment for a good time. And yet, thousands of single women do so every night in the Naked City. Some people might say these women are being reckless, setting themselves up for a fatal encounter. How much does she really know about him? Sure, she might know what he does for a living, where he grew up, when his birthday is, but she has no way of knowing if he’s a psychopath intent on doing her harm, until the macabre deed is done.

Amy Grech: Website / Google+ / Twitter

Rage and Redemption in Alphabet City: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Amy Grech has sold over 100 stories to various anthologies and magazines, including Apex Magazine, Beat to a Pulp: Hardboiled, Dead Harvest, Expiration Date, Fear on Demand, Funeral Party 2, Inhuman Magazine, Needle Magazine, Reel Dark, Shrieks and Shivers from the Horror Zine, Space & Time, The Horror Within, Under the Bed, and many others. She has stories forthcoming in Detectives of the Fantastic, Volume II and Fright Mare. Amy is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association who lives in Brooklyn.