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This week on The Scariest Part, I’m delighted to have Kristin Dearborn as my guest. An up-and-coming horror author I’m sure you’ll all be hearing more about soon, her new novella is Woman in White. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Rocky Rhodes, Maine.

As a fierce snowstorm descends upon the sleepy little town, a Good Samaritan stops to help a catatonic woman sitting in the middle of the icy road, and is never seen or heard from again. When the police find his car, it is splattered in more blood than the human body can hold.

While the storm rages on, the wave of disappearances continue, the victims sharing only one commonality: they are all male. Now it’s up to three young women to figure out who or what is responsible: a forensic chemist, a waitress struggling with an abusive boyfriend, and a gamer coping with the loss of her lover.

Their search will lead them on a journey filled with unspeakable horrors that are all connected to a mysterious Woman in White.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Kristin Dearborn:

Woman in White is a winter novella in the vein of Christopher Golden’s Snowblind, Stephen King’s Dreamcatcher, or Ron Malfi’s Snow. A lifelong resident of New England, I am intimately aware of what a drag winter is, with the long, dark nights and everything muffled and muted by a blanket of snow. Don’t get me wrong. On a sunny winter day, it’s like the whole world is covered in glitter. You can ski, snowshoe, build a snowman, and the blue of a winter sky is blinding and brilliant. It’s the gloomy days that get to you. The days where you can’t tell where the sky ends and the snow begins because everything is the same flat grey. Nighttime goes on seemingly forever, and for most of us there are months where you go to work before the sun is up and get home as the sun is setting.

But the winter isn’t the scariest part of my novella.

The book tells the story of three young women in a tiny Maine town in winter, each of whom is battling her own figurative demons. One of the characters, Angela, has finally left her abusive boyfriend. Just out of high school, she found herself knocked up. She realized she couldn’t have Nate’s child. If she couldn’t subject a kid to his abusive bullshit, maybe it was time she shouldn’t either. So she got an abortion against his wishes and broke up with him, her childhood sweetheart. There are plenty of scary things in Rocky Rhodes, Maine, and many of them crawled out of the depths of my imagination. Angela’s experience with Nate isn’t one of them — one in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.

There is a moment in the book where Angela decides to walk home alone from work at night in a storm. Another character asks her to call when she gets home, but she’s sick of answering to people, sick of feeling like a puppet while someone else pulls the strings. She tells him no. As she’s slogging along through the snow, Nate appears and at gunpoint forces her into the car. The scariest part of Woman in White, to me, is how conflicted Angela feels when he appears. It’s so much work to get away from an abuser. It’s infinitely easier to just stay where he wants you. When Nate pulls a gun, Angela is flooded with momentary relief because he’s removed her choice. He brings her home to the apartment where she used to live, where she can sleep in her own bed once again.

Every time we hear about a woman staying with her abuser, we wonder why didn’t she just leave? Why didn’t she tell someone? Talking about it makes it sound like an easy thing, just…go. Setting aside, for a moment, that in 98% of domestic violence cases, the abusers control the money. In my book, Angela has to crawl back to her father’s house when she leaves Nate, and Dad isn’t the kind of guy who makes it easy for her. I wanted to write a book that takes a look at some of these issues in a way that’s not nearly as preachy as my The Scariest Part blog post. I wanted to do it in a way that subverts some of the horror tropes that are tried and true, as old as time. Did I succeed? Give Woman in White a read. And check out the links I posted. See how you can help in your community. Thanks for reading.

Kristin Dearborn: Website / Twitter / Facebook

Woman in White: Amazon / DarkFuse

If it screams, squelches, or bleeds, Kristin Dearborn has probably written about it. She’s written books such as Sacrifice Island (DarkFuse), Trinity (DarkFuse), and had fiction published in several magazines and anthologies. Stolen Away was recently a limited edition offered from Thunderstorm Books, which sold out. She revels in comments like, “But you look so normal…how do you come up with that stuff?” A life-long New Englander, she aspires to the footsteps of the local masters, Messrs. King and Lovecraft. When not writing or rotting her brain with cheesy horror flicks (preferably creature features!), she can be found scaling rock cliffs or zipping around Vermont on a motorcycle, or gallivanting around the globe.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Mark Matthews, whose new novel is All Smoke Rises. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Ten year old Lilly is the victim of a terrible house fire and a wretched family. Her father is an addict with mental illness, her mother was murdered and then buried across the street, and her uncle got her addicted to heroin.

Lilly’s tragic story has been told in the book All Smoke Rises, and it may be true, for the author has broken into your house, and placed Lilly’s body on your kitchen counter. He demands you read the manuscript, before cutting his own wrists and bleeding out on your floor.

Now you have decisions to make, for her body may not be dead, and her family is coming for her.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Mark Matthews:

I don’t write horror to scare others, I write it because I am the one who is scared. When I write, my life of quiet desperation instead becomes an audible cosmic scream.

The scariest part of All Smoke Rises, and its companion story, Milk-Blood, is that all of it is true.

All of it.

That doesn’t mean that there’s an actual ten year old girl who still hears the voice of her mother who was murdered, dismembered, and then buried in a shallow grave across the street.

Who became addicted to heroin when her uncle felt it would ease her suffering.

Who discovers that her true father is a schizophrenic, homeless man who had injected his dad’s ashes into his veins when he was craving his next fix.

Just because these things didn’t happen, doesn’t mean they aren’t true.

The urban decay, where abandoned, burnt-out houses stick out like a mouthful of jagged teeth. The isolation of being stuck in this dark bubble alongside the most despairing creatures the universe has to offer. The poverty where children get their best meals from school breakfasts. Addicts who crave heroin in their body the way a vampire craves blood. This stuff clearly exists.

The inspiration for writing these books came from my own work as a substance abuse therapist. For nearly 20 years, I’ve worked with hundreds of addicts. Before this time, I harrowed in my own addiction. I woke up each day and my daily efforts were how to get high and get by. By the grace of the old Gods and the new, I now have 23 years clean and sober, but I have come to understand the immense power addiction has over the human soul.

Real truth would be impossible to believe, and that’s why, I feel, horror writers make up stories. It’s the only way to express truth on the deepest level. Newspaper fiction has its limits, but when reality gets intense, when we pull out the magnifying glass and let the sun shine through and make it burn, that’s when you see it for what it is. The supernatural elements in All Smoke Rises are a way to give the urban decay and addiction a face and a name.

The fact that families are out there, right now, trying to survive in these terrifying environments is, for me, the scariest part. “We are the monsters,” is how Kealan Patrick Burke puts it in the book’s introduction. Despite the dark and gruesome nature of All Smoke Rises, during the time it takes a reader to finish the book, (spoiler alert) more people will die from a heroin overdose than die in this fictional story. Truth is darker than fiction, and the best way to tell that truth, is to make up a story.

Mark Matthews: Website / Twitter / Goodreads

All Smoke Rises: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound

Mark Matthews has a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Michigan, and is a licensed professional counselor who has worked in mental health and substance abuse treatment for over 20 years. His novel Milk-Blood, along with its companion short story, “The Damage Done,” have been optioned for a full-length feature film. All Smoke Rises: Milk-Blood Redux is the follow up and was published on February 8th, 2016. He is the author of On the Lips of Children, from Books of the Dead Press, which was nominated as a semi-finalist for the 2014 Best Kindle Book Awards. Matthews lives near Detroit with his wife and two daughters. All of his books are based on true settings. Reach him at wickedrunpress@gmail.com.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Patrick Rutigliano, whose new novella is Wind Chill. Here’s the publisher’s description:

What if you were held captive by your own family?

Emma Rawlins has spent the last year a prisoner. The months following her mother’s death dragged her father into a paranoid spiral of conspiracy theories and doomsday premonitions. Obsessing him, controlling him, they now whisper the end days are finally at hand.

And he doesn’t intend to face them alone.

Emma finds herself drugged and dragged to a secluded cabin, the last refuge from a society supposedly due to collapse. Their cabin a snowbound fortress, her every move controlled, but even that isn’t enough to weather the end of the world.

Everything she knows is out of reach, lost beyond a haze of white. There is no choice but to play her father’s game while she plans her escape.

But there is a force far colder than the freezing drifts. Ancient, ravenous, it knows no mercy. And it’s already had a taste…

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Patrick Rutigliano:

To me, the scariest part of my new novella Wind Chill is its isolated setting…or maybe just that it appeals to me.

A cabin in the remote wilderness, no matter how well equipped, probably sounds miserable to most people. I think this isn’t so much due to a loss of modern conveniences as the lack of human interaction.

People are social animals by nature. Interdependence has allowed us to survive as a species and serves as the touchstone for society. Virtually every conceivable service a person can’t provide for himself can be found via a phone book or 9-1-1. Free time is often spent going out with friends for a drink, to a party, or to be part of an audience. Live together, love together, mourn together. It’s the human way.

So, why does solitude come off sounding so…enticing?

Introversion is surely part of it (I’m a homebody, and I tend to find gatherings draining), but I think a lot of it is the quiet. Connected as we are now, our tendency for chatter has filled our world to the brim with racket: television, social media, and even the steady pulse of street noise. It’s always there–ambient sounds rattling in your skull–even if you don’t notice it. But when you do, it’s about as piercing as a jackhammer. So much so, that the thought of waking up and finding it gone feels like waking up on another planet. And with all those handy services gone, a far more dangerous one, too. But even that’s part of the draw. Because with that complex system missing, things suddenly become a lot simpler.

All the crap that’s become par for the course in modern life disappears. There’s no time card to punch or traffic jams to traverse. Instead it all boils down to living as well as you can without snuffing it. All the pressure and rewards are on you. I think there’s a freedom and simplicity there that resonates with me. And given the ongoing obsession with post-apocalyptic works in this modern age, I have a feeling I’m probably not alone.

So, I suppose the frozen wastes I wrote about hold a certain glamour for me. A siren song that makes me want to enter despite what would likely be dire consequences. I guess there’s just something to be said for choosing a road entirely of your making, even if the rest of the world never gets to see you walk it. Or if you happen to freeze to death Jack Torrance style along the way.

Patrick Rutigliano: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Goodreads / Amazon Author Page

Wind Chill: Amazon / Crystal Lake Publishing

Patrick Rutigliano made his way as a fry cook, cart monkey, and feral cat tamer before going into business for himself. Working as an editor and proofreader in addition to writing, his first independent release, The Untimely Deaths of Daryl Handy, hit Amazon in 2013. His first novel, Surviving the Crash, was released by Retro Rocket Press in 2014. Crystal Lake Publishing put out his newest work, Wind Chill, in January 2015. During his off time, Patrick can usually be found attempting to recreate foreign cuisine, performing the solemn duty of feline waterbed, and having spirited debates with his wife over the failings of Disney villains.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Jonathan Winn, whose new collection is Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Eidolon Avenue: where the secretly guilty go to die.

One building. Five floors. Five doors per floor. Twenty-five nightmares feeding the hunger lurking between the bricks and waiting beneath the boards.

The First Feast. A retired Chinese assassin in apartment 1A fleeing from a lifetime of bloodshed. A tattooed man in 1B haunted by his most dangerous regret. A frat boy serial killer in 1C facing his past and an elderly married couple stumbling and wounded from fifty years of failed murder/suicide pacts in 1D. And, finally, a young girl in 1E whose quiet thoughts unleash unspeakable horror.

All thrown into their own private hell as every cruel choice, every deadly mistake, every drop of spilled blood is remembered, resurrected and relived to feed the ancient evil that lives on Eidolon Avenue.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Jonathan Winn:

Truth be told, I’ve had several “scariest parts” throughout my brief writing career. Chapter Forty-nine of my first book Martuk…the Holy was an experience that so unsettled me I needed to take a very long walk just to shake it off. And I still feel guilty over what fate did to sweet Tiber from Martuk…the Holy: Proseuche. Also, did I mention I darn near lost friends over the opening chapters of both “The Wounded King” and “The Elder”? Yep. Had to convince them to keep reading. Promise them the worst was over and the rest of the read was tame by comparison.

But Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast? My latest? Especially the third story, Apartment 1C, in this collection of five novellas and short stories? That was scary on a whole other level.

Let me explain.

Now, to be clear, Apartment 1C (aka “Click”) wasn’t scary because of what, exactly, was happening, although the events and their consequences are certainly horrific. “Click” was scary because…how can I put this? It was scary because why it was happening was coming from a mindset that could never be mine. The reasoning behind the cruelty, the quiet joy taken in it, the victim’s confusion shifting into realization and then terror, the whole thing turned my stomach. Put a lump in my throat. An insistent thump, thump, thumping in my head. Sent me to bed at night drowning in violent tsunamis of bitter guilt. I actually more than once — more than twice, to be honest — stopped midsentence, stood up and stepped outside just to get away from Apartment 1C. I just could not understand someone like Colton Carryage. And I could not comprehend how I, this nice boring guy — no, really, I am — was creating someone like Colton Carryage. But I was. And I had to. I needed to go there, go deep, put aside my inate kindness and somehow wrap my sane, level-headed logic and reason around this dangerous, vicious insanity because that’s what the narrative demanded.

Thankfully I had a publisher who was supportive — I think brave is the better word — no matter how dark things were. Of course, it also became clear that Eidolon was going to have the dubious distinction of being the first book they’d launch with a Warning Label. But, more importantly, I was fortunate to have my small handful of friends around to remind me that it was just a story and I just needed to get through it — the phrase “survive it” may have been used — so I could move on and leave it behind.

Yeah, that’s how freaked out I got.

So, if you want to know my Scariest Part, it was watching the horror of “Click” and Eidolon unfold, word by word, paragraph by paragraph, page by page. Watching my fingers clickety-clack a brutality which was and still is completely alien to me. It was knowing that readers may cringe and gasp and sob and throw the book across the room because of what Eidolon insisted on being. And then hate me, too!

Actually, now that I think about it, the Scariest Part when it comes to Eidolon is the fear that this is a story — and a collection — I’ll never live down.

Jonathan Winn: Website / Facebook / Twitter

Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound

In addition to Eidolon Avenue: The First Feast, Jonathan Winn (Member, HWA) is a screenwriter and author of the full-length novels Martuk…the Holy (A Highlight of the Year, 2012 Papyrus Independent Fiction Awards), Martuk…the Holy: Proseuche (Top Twenty Horror Novels of 2014, Preditors & Editors Readers Poll), Martuk…the Holy: Shayateen (2016) and The Martuk Series (“The Wounded King,” “The Elder,” “Red and Gold”), an ongoing collection of short fiction inspired by Martuk. His work can also be found in Horror 201: The Silver Scream, Writers on Writing, Vol. 2, and Crystal Lake’s Tales from the Lake, Vol. 2, with his award-winning short story “Forever Dark.”