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This week on The Scariest Part, I’m doing something a little different. Instead of hosting the author of a new novel or collection, my guest is the editor of a new anthology. His name is Joe Mynhardt, and the anthology is The Outsiders. Here’s the publisher’s description:

The Outsiders is a shared-world Suspense Thriller / Horror featuring the gated community of Priory, with its religious leader Charles Erich and his cult followers: those who’ll do anything for him, and those who are waiting to overthrow him. Is that which slithers below true evil, or does evil reside in Priory?

Inside Priory awaits a lot more than meets the eye. The people might seem friendly, but only because their enigmatic leader Charles Erich doesn’t give them much of a choice.

The cottages inside this gated community seem simple enough, and even though what lurks beneath them is more ancient than mankind itself, can anything be more evil than the people worshipping it?

If you dare follow this UK invasion of five prime authors as they each tell their own story of the people living behind Priory’s steel gates and high walls, you’ll quickly find yourself an outsider, as well.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Joe Mynhardt:

You might be asking yourself what can possibly be so scary about editing an anthology.

Stressful? Sure.

Time-consuming? You bet!

But scary?

Then let me tell you. Three years ago I started writing a Lovecraftian story about a father and son who, after visiting the gated community of Priory on a business trip, find themselves fighting to escape the clutches of a blood-thirsty cult. I enjoyed writing the story and about my main characters, but what I enjoyed even more was how Priory started growing as a living, breathing community. Their religious leader Charles Erich started following me in my dreams, his silhouette always visible in the corner or standing at the far end of the passage.

I began to contemplate the options laid out before me, and decided to invite several authors to join me in shaping this world. I stepped down as author and into the role of editor/publisher, since I’d recently started my own little press — Crystal Lake Publishing.

And what better place to set a Lovecraftian story than a gated community with an underground church? It so perfectly symbolizes xenophobia and the need to be different, to separate or seclude ourselves from others — keeping them at a distance.

That brings me to the scary part. Writing or compiling a book about such a sensitive subject as race.

There have been a lot of opinions about Lovecraft and his viewpoint of other races and cultures. And although a lot of us are fans of his work, we are totally against his viewpoint. Some believe his viewpoint changed towards the end of his life, and although I’d love to believe that, I can’t say it with any certainty. The last thing I need is people labeling me, Crystal Lake Publishing, or our contributors, as being racist. I live in South Africa, so we’re used to being extra careful about what we do and say.

So instead of just ignoring the race issue, we decided to take it on in the collection. In Rosanne Rabinowitz’s story, a young black girl comes back to Priory years after making it out, hoping to save her mother. I don’t want to give anything away, but she plays a major role in the denouement. James Everington’s story features a female cop of color who investigates a murder linked to Priory and Charles Erich. Their race and how they’re treated by the folks of Priory and their own peers end up being huge obstacles they need to overcome.

I read a lot online about people’s viewpoints on Lovecraft, and with so many extremists on both sides, it was certainly a discussion I didn’t want to get involved with.

So what to do?

Do we scratch a project we’ve been working on for years? Or do we continue with the goal of providing solid entertainment inspired by the work and life of Lovecraft, the good and bad? This book does not take a stance, it merely comments on the world today, as good fiction does. It offers a glimpse of our time for those still to come.

Stepping aside as author and into the role of editor and publisher came with its own challenges. Spending so much time and money on a project is an investment. As a writer your story can be rejected and refined, but if a project fails, it fails. I had to find the right frame of mind to guide me through this. I had to find a balance between wanting to entertain the readers and making a profit. And let’s not forget, this is a shared-world anthology, which comes with a heap of new challenges. Talk about the mountains of madness, right?

In the end, I think it turned out pretty damn good. And what a cover!

Joe Mynhardt: Website / Facebook / Twitter 

The Outsiders: Amazon / Crystal Lake Publishing

Joe Mynhardt is a South African horror writer, publisher, editor and teacher. Joe is the owner of Crystal Lake Publishing, which he started in August, 2012. He has published and edited short stories, novellas, interviews and essays by the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Jack Ketchum, Graham Masterton, Adam Nevill, Lisa Morton, Elizabeth Massie, Joe McKinney, Edward Lee, Wes Craven, John Carpenter, George A. Romero, Mick Garris, and hundreds more. Crystal Lake Publishing believes in reaching out to all authors, new and experienced, and being a beacon of friendship and guidance in the Dark Fiction field. Joe is also an Associate member of the HWA.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is Keith Rommel, whose new novel is The Devil Tree. Here is the publisher’s description:

Based on the Port St. Lucie Legend…

Back in the 1970s, a series of bizarre incidents occurred at what has since been known as “The Devil Tree.” Beneath this ancient denizen, evil was wrought by a sick serial killer, calling upon forces most evil and dark. People were hung there…and bodies buried there…exhumed by the police. Overcome by superstition, some tried to cut down the tree, to no avail. Since then, it has stood in a remote section of a local park — left to its own devices — quiet in its eerie repose — until now!

Best-selling psychological-thriller author Keith Rommel has imagined the whole tale anew. He’s brought the tree to life and retold the tale with gory detail only possible in a fiction novel. Action-packed, with spine-tingling detail, this thriller is beyond parallel in the ground it uncovers…one author’s explanation of what may have really been said — what may have really happened — under Port St. Lucie’s “Devil Tree.”

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Keith Rommel:

When I stumbled on a local legend called The Devil Tree here in Port Saint Lucie, Florida, I was horrified by the back story but was equally intrigued. When I started to dig into the legend, I discovered a serial killer that was a sheriff’s deputy had picked up two people and had taken them to an ancient oak tree. The goliath tree dripped with Spanish moss and that is where the killer tormented his captives, beat, raped and murdered them. It is also said he hung them from the tree and soon after buried them there. As legend would have it, the bodies remained under the tree for many years before a local fisherman discovered bones sticking out of the ground.

After the killer was caught and had been incarcerated, he had been noted as writing, “Doing doubles is far more difficult than doing singles, but on the other hand it also puts one in a position to have twice as much fun. There can be some lively discussions about which of the victims will get to be killed first. When you have a pair of teenaged bimbolinas bound hand and foot and ready for a session with the skinning knife, neither one of the little devils wants to be the one to go first. And they don’t mind telling you quickly why their best friend should be the one to die.”

To think what these people might have gone through is disturbing and frightening on many levels, but it isn’t even the scariest part; at least not for me. When I wrote The Devil Tree and handed the manuscript into my publisher, owner Lawrence Knorr told me that I had to include the necrophilia scene in because that’s what the killer did. I know I didn’t mention that the killer was into necrophilia because it’s quite disgusting. Yeah, the killer deputy often went back to pillage the bodies until they reached such a state of decomposition that he could no longer use the bodies.

I remember Lawrence telling me to do the necro scene “tastefully”. We got a big belly laugh from the request and the wording used behind it. Even though I turned down writing such a scene and I thought Lawrence was kidding — I mean, how can someone write a necro scene and do it with taste? Lawrence quickly reminded me that Hannibal Lecter ate people. If you think about it, that is rather repulsive and has a high shock value to it, but the way it was portrayed, it wasn’t over the top make you look away from the screen sort of nasty. If there is such a thing as making something so vile tolerable to the squeamish, then author Thomas Harris did it tastefully (pun intended).

So I sat down and wrote the scene and I won’t lie that I was sweating while I was doing it. I hand wrote it at first, crumpling up some pages and starting over until I found an angle that I felt captured the essence of the act but didn’t go too far. I typed it in and sent it to Lawrence and then I got a phone call. He said, “You did it. That’s exactly what I was looking for.”

I had another belly laugh and told Lawrence that I needed a blessing and a shower. I think readers will find it was done tastefully and that it was a good inclusion and an important piece in trying to portray the legend with as much realism as possible.

The killer deputy was sentenced to prison after being caught and was soon stabbed to death.

Keith Rommel: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Facebook community for The Cursed Man film

The Devil Tree: Amazon / Sunbury Press

Keith Rommel is an award-winning author of eight books and is the co-screenplay writer of The Cursed Man movie adapted from his first novel with the same title. It is expected to be released October 2015 and has brought in talent that worked on such movies as The Matrix, Madagascar, Cabin in the Woods, Green Lantern, Harry Potter, and The CW’s Supernatural.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is M. Darusha Wehm, whose latest novel is Children of Arkadia. Here is the publisher’s description:

Kaus wants nothing more than to be loved while its human counterpart, Raj Patel, believes fervently in freedom. Arkadia, one of four space stations circling Jupiter, was to be a refuge for all who fought the corrupt systems of old Earth, a haven where both humans and Artificial Intelligences could be happy and free. But the old prejudices and desires are still at play and, no matter how well-meaning its citizens, the children of Arkadia have tough compromises to make.

When the future of humanity is at stake, which will prove more powerful: freedom or happiness? What sacrifices will Kaus, Raj, and the rest of Arkadia’s residents have to make to survive?

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

Children of Arkadia is a story about a utopia gone wrong. Like all expressions of the ideal, many would argue that the society I imagine in the book was wrong from the beginning; however it is, in many ways, a world in which I’d personally like to live. So I can’t deny that it was difficult, painful, and not a little scary to take my own idea of a better world and make it all fall apart.

The Arkadia space habitat is a double-whammy of wish fulfilment for me: since I was eight years old I’ve wanted to live in space, and since I was a teenager I’ve idly dreamed up better ways of living in community. My background is in political science and I’ve spent countless evenings over coffee or beer arguing about the precise layout of the best of all possible worlds. So it might not be surprising to learn that the first iteration of the novel that would become Children of Arkadia was entirely wish-fulfillment. It was a thin plot with no real conflict that existed solely to prop up this world I’d imagined that was essentially my vision of an orbiting paradise.

It was enjoyable to write but when I finished it I knew it wasn’t a real novel. I knew there was something wrong, something missing, so I put it aside. Years later I returned to that story, those characters and that place, knowing what was wrong. It was that I’d subconsciously come to realize all the little ways in which my lovely utopian society was broken, flawed and utterly imperfect.

It was hard to take this world I’d love to live in and figure out what was wrong with it, but I found that I couldn’t help myself. I don’t know if it was all those years of debating politics and theory, or if the shiny newness of Arkadia had simply worn off, but I was compelled to pick at the seams. I had to move beyond the surface and see what could happen when people of good intentions but different perspectives found themselves in conflict. Can good people do bad things for good reasons? What if people are doing what they believe is right and best, but others disagree? What if you don’t want to be treated the way I want to be treated?

Everyone is the hero of their own story and I realized that even in a world where people honestly strive to be good and kind there will always be conflicts — and those differences could be catastrophic. So I had to make my lovely, perfect space orbital a little less lovely and entirely imperfect.

It’s a scary thing to have to coldly examine one’s own vision of the ideal and see the flaws and pits. But it makes for a much more interesting story. And, ideally, helps to galvanize an idea of how a better world could really be achieved.

M. Darusha Wehm: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Google+

Children of Arkadia: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound

M. Darusha Wehm is the three-time Parsec Award shortlisted author of the novels Beautiful Red, Self Made, Act of Will and The Beauty of Our Weapons. She is the editor of the crime and mystery magazine Plan B. She is from Canada, but currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand after spending the past several years traveling at sea on her sailboat.

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 Pamela Crane, whose latest novel is A Secondhand Life. (On a personal note, I love the cover art and think it’s among the best I’ve seen this year!) Here is the publisher’s description:

In a freak collision when she was twelve, Mia Germaine faced death and the loss of her father. A heart transplant from a young murder victim saved her life, but not without a price. Twenty years later, chilling nightmares about an unresolved homicide begin to plague Mia. Compelled by these lost memories, she forms a complicated connection to the victim — the girl killed the night of Mia’s accident — due to a scientific phenomenon called “organ memory.”

Now suffocating beneath the weight of avenging a dead girl and catching a serial killer on the loose dubbed the “Triangle Terror,” Mia must dodge her own demons while unimaginable truths torment her — along with a killer set on making her his next victim.

As Mia tries to determine if her dreams are clues or disturbing phantasms, uninvited specters lead her further into danger’s path, costing her the one person who can save her from herself. More than a page-turning thriller, A Secondhand Life weaves a tale of second chances and reclaimed dreams as this taut, refreshing tale ensnares and penetrates you.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Pamela Crane:

I consider myself a pretty fearless person. I skydive. I ride and work with untrained horses. (Wanna see a rodeo? Come to my house!) So it takes a lot to scare me. What is the scariest thing I can imagine? The dark — not at all, because I love to sleep. Creepy critters — nah, because I can squish ’em. Heights — nope, because I can simply move to a safer place. Even being at the hands of a psychopath, while scary, at least gives me a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, I can talk him out of sadistically dissecting me while I’m conscious. (Please mercifully kill me first.)

The scariest thing to me: Losing my mind and being unable to stop it.

I like the fact that I can control my actions and thoughts. But what if that power were to be stripped from me? What if something — or someone — else took over my mind, something sadistic that plagued me with nightmares that I couldn’t stop, and compelled me to do things I didn’t want to do? That’s pretty darn scary to me.

My thriller, A Secondhand Life, is a story about this scary scenario. Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be possessed by another person? In real life I met someone who suffered this type of existence — and it wasn’t quack science or supernatural phenomenon. Due to a health condition, he was an organ recipient. Shortly after a lung transplant, he started “seeing” things, experiencing memories that weren’t his, and even his tastes started to change. He expressed just how overwhelming and, yes, scary it felt to be in this position. Luckily these memories weren’t anything creepy, but in A Secondhand Life, the protagonist, Mia Germaine, receives a heart transplant from a murder victim — a young girl, and the first in a string of killings. Mia must witness horrid, chilling nightmares of this murder, which eventually leads her down a dark journey straight into the path of the serial killer dubbed the “Triangle Terror.”

In researching this science called “organ memory,” where our organs retain parts of ourselves that can be transferred to an organ recipient, I read about haunting experiences that I transcribed into my own character’s life. Being forced to relive gruesome details and physical pain that often accompany these memories, Mia must survive the havoc this wreaks on her psyche in order to dig for clues amidst the blood and guts.

Does she endure the ordeal and capture the villain, avenging the lives of the victims? Is she able to conquer these demons to find peace from these grim phantasms? Is it possible to recapture your mind once it’s lost? Find out by picking up a copy of A Secondhand Life, available where books are sold.

Pamela Crane: Website / Facebook

A Secondhand Life: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iTunes / Kobo

Pamela Crane is a North Carolinian writer of the best-selling psychological thriller The Admirer’s Secret, A Fatal Affair, and A Secondhand Life. Along with being a wife and mom of three rug rats, she is a wannabe psychologist, though most people just think she needs to see one. She’s a member of the ITW, ACFW, and EFA, and has been involved in the ECPA, Christy Awards, and Romance Writers of America. Along with delving into people’s minds — or being the subject of their research — she enjoys being a literary reviewer and riding her proud Arabian horse, when he lets her. She has a passion for adventure, and her hopes are to keep earning enough from her writing to travel the world in search of more good story material. Grab a free book on her website.