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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.

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.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Stephanie M. Wytovich, whose debut novel is The Eighth. Here is the publisher’s description:

After Paimon, Lucifer’s top soul collector, falls in love with a mortal girl whose soul he is supposed to claim, he desperately tries everything in his power to save her from the Devil’s grasp. But what happens when a demon has to confront his demons, when he has to turn to something darker, something more sinister for help? Can Paimon survive the consequences of working with the Seven Deadly Sins — sins who have their own agenda with the Devil — or will he fall into a deeper, darker kind of hell?

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

Writing about Hell was hell for me, and I don’t say that lightly or in jest. When I made the decision to sit down and write this novel, I knew that I was going to be tackling some of my biggest fears, and then on top of that, I was not only going to be submitting it for publication, but presenting it to the thesis committee at Seton Hill University for completion of an MFA degree, too.

Talk about real life horror.

But nevertheless, into the flames I walked.

For me, the scariest part about writing The Eighth was that it put me on a journey where I explored, accepted, and rejected sin in all of its many forms: lust, wrath, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, and pride. I had to ask myself what these sins meant to me, how I viewed them, and what I was taught to believe that they encompassed and demanded if acted out. As someone who was raised Catholic, and who has since been struggling with her faith, writing a book about damnation felt blasphemous, and it gave me horrible reoccurring nightmares that led to night terrors and bouts of insomnia that were so bad that for almost three years, I did everything in my power not to sleep.

The more I fleshed out the character development of Paimon and Rhea, the more the face of sin — not to mention the face of Lucifer — became real to me. There is a scene in the novel where Lucifer masks himself as Rhea’s father, and this is after an especially terrifying moment where Rhea questions her sanity — not to mention the possibility of the thing that is speaking to her against slaps and screams in a dark hospital room — and I can vividly remember sitting in my bedroom and shaking while writing it. To me, good horror is something that makes one question everything he or she thought was an absolute: faith, love, morals. Writing this scene made me confront the fact that on a very real level, my biggest fear was/is putting my belief in someone only to find out that he/she was masquerading as someone else: an illusionist, a deceiver, a con-artist. The idea of trusting someone so much, in believing in them with all your heart and soul, so much so that you would die for them — sin for them! — only to have that faith and love stripped away?

That unmasking of false character is my definition of Hell.

And it’s something that Paimon, Rhea, and I all had to learn the hard way.

Stephanie M. Wytovich: Website / Twitter

The Eighth: Pre-order the book through Dark Regions Press website in e-book, trade paperback, and deluxe lettered, signed, slipcased hardcover edition. They will be shipped in November.

Stephanie M. Wytovich is an instructor by day and a horror writer by night. She is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University, and a book reviewer for Nameless Magazine. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-nominated poetry collections, Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, and Brothel earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press, and her debut novel, The Eighth, is simmering in sin with Dark Regions Press.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is British author Tess Makovesky, whose new novella is Raise the Blade. Here is the publisher’s description:

Like a spider wrapping flies…

When psychopath Duncan leaves a trail of duct-tape-wrapped bodies scattered across the suburbs of Birmingham, there’s nothing to link the victims except his own name and address, carefully placed on each new corpse.

Six very different people follow his clues, each convinced they can use Duncan to further their own selfish or naïve ends. Is there a reason Duncan’s driven to target these particular individuals, or does their very nature contribute to their fate? Will any of them be strong enough to break the cycle and escape a painful death? Or will Duncan reel them in and rearrange them to his own insane ideal?

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Tess Makovesky:

I couldn’t for one moment claim that my novella Raise the Blade is horror. It is, however, psychological noir, and like many books of that type it contains parts that are disturbing, unnerving, or even downright upsetting: so much so that I found writing some of them very hard work.

The book was partly inspired by the Pink Floyd track ‘Brain Damage’ (lyrics by the brilliant Roger Waters), and in particular the chilling lines:

You raise the blade
You make the change
You rearrange me till I’m sane

which have given me the shivers ever since I first heard them thirty-odd years ago. They gave me the idea for serial killer Duncan, who follows to the limit his own cold, logical (and totally insane) belief that rearranging people will cure them, with horrific results.

There are several sections which troubled me — more so as the book went on, since the structure works in reverse, revealing a little more of the killer’s methods with each new (previous) victim. However, easily the worst to write, and quite possibly the hardest for other people to read, was the chapter about Muriel.

There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, Muriel is Duncan’s first victim, but the last to feature in the book. I saved up the full, shocking details of his M.O. for her, so you get to see exactly how and when she dies. I’m not going into details because that would spoil the surprise, but let’s just say that the prologue quotes Cat Stevens for good reason.

The first cut. Not the deepest, in spite of what Cat Stevens says. Just a little scratch, through the tape, barely enough to mark the skin…

Even though I don’t linger on the gore, I found it hard to write since I have a ‘thing’ about suffering, and find it really difficult to cope with books, TV programmes or films which show people going through long-drawn-out physical pain, fear, or mental or emotional anguish. It’s the main reason I don’t actually like horror books or films. I don’t find the effects particularly frightening; I just get upset because the people are suffering so horribly.

But it was the second reason which really got to me. Muriel is Duncan’s mother, well into her seventies or early eighties, and like so many people of that age these days, suffering with dementia.

It was getting harder to leave the house. Every so often she had the oddest sensation she didn’t know where she was; that every familiar landmark had suddenly been swept away, leaving her on a lonely foreign shore…

This was particularly hard for me because my own mother went through the sheer hell of Alzheimer’s, eventually dying from the complications it caused. Although Muriel’s character isn’t remotely based on Mum, the details of her illness are very much taken from my own personal experience. The sudden lapses in concentration. The escalation of the mental decline during times of great stress. The flashbacks to a husband she knows existed but barely remembers. The touching but ultimately flawed emotional dependence on people who are still familiar to her. The bewilderment of both the sufferer and their loved ones as things get progressively worse. I lived through pretty much all of that, and writing about it, although probably cathartic, was also really, really tough.

Because that’s what mothers did. Buried their fear, buried their pain, did whatever they could to make their sons’ dreams come true.

I tried to push my own emotions to the back of my mind, for fear that I might get so upset I’d never actually write the scene. However, that then proved impossible, because without that emotional connection to the characters, I felt it was becoming stiff and uninvolving. It’s as though the author has to be right there with the people they’re writing about, in order to make the scene come to life for their readers. So then I had to tear down the protective walls I’d built and actually experience Muriel’s suffering and eventual death for myself. I’m hoping it makes for a gripping and involving scene, but boy, was it hard. I wrote the whole chapter flat out in about half an hour, totally engrossed, and resorting to a box of tissues whenever things got too bad.

I like to think it worked. I still find that chapter the hardest to go back and read, and I’m hoping that’s a sign that I got the emotional impact right.

The saddest and scariest part, though, is that no amount of rearranging could ever cure Muriel — or my Mum. And that really is tough.

Tess Makovesky: Website / Blog / Facebook / Twitter

Raise the Blade: Amazon US / Amazon UK

Liverpool lass Tess Makovesky is now settled in the far north of England where she roams the fells with a brolly, dreaming up new stories and startling the occasional sheep. Tess writes a distinctive brand of British comédie noir and her short stories have darkened the pages of various anthologies and magazines, including Shotgun Honey, Pulp Metal Magazine, Drag Noir (Fox Spirit), Rogue (Near to the Knuckle), and Locked and Loaded (One Eye Press). Her debut novella, Raise the Blade, a psychological noir tale involving a serial killer in Birmingham and a lot of Pink Floyd references, is available from Caffeine Nights Publishing now.