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This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author and editor R. Saint Claire, whose latest book is the anthology Served Cold, featuring stories written exclusively by members of the HorrorTube community, content creators who talk about horror novels and movies on YouTube. Here is the book’s description:

Twenty-two teeth-chattering tales!

Wrap yourself in your favorite blanket, curl up by a fireside or in a warm bed, and enjoy these tales of sub-zero terror brought to you by some of the many voices of HorrorTube.

Foreword by Steve Donoghue
Karakoncolos by Cameron Chaney
The Rescue by Janine Pipe
Red Albums by Cam Wolfe
Magic in the Hat by Donnie Goodman
Isolation by N.M. Brown
Sweep in the Sidestreet by A.B. Frank
Frostbite by Alfie Tobutt
Black Wood by Marie McWilliams
The Cold Traps by Steve Donoghue
This Grey Winter by Mihalis Georgostathis
Orpheus Descends by Andrew Lyall
Thou by Mers Sumida
The Walk-in by Mike DeFrench
Ensnared by Aphrodite Lee
Cold Crossing by Jacob Peyton
Snow Boy by Ryan Stroud
The Woods and Mister Softee by R. Saint Claire
Revival by Madison Estes
Lake Alice by Michael Taylor
Fractals by D.L. Tillery
Water of Life by Gloria McNeely
Black Solstice by Dane Cobain

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for R. Saint Claire:

When did I first consider putting together a HorrorTube anthology? I’m not sure, but I was pleasantly surprised at the positive reception once I put the idea out there. Then came the scary part: can I pull it off?

I had some experience composing indie books for self-publishing, which wasn’t altogether challenging. Also, as someone who had worked in theater most of my life, I was confident in my ability to “put on a show” with minimal investment. However, once the date was set, I wondered if I’d get any submissions. I needn’t have worried. People came through, and even better, they were willing to do it for charity.

Fears confronted and challenges met, the first HorrorTube anthology, Local Haunts, went off without a hitch. It continues to sell well today. Soon after its publication, Steve Donoghue, BookTube’s prolific professor emeritus, encouraged me to do another one and offered to help.

From there, Served Cold was off and running. However, the problem with doing a seasonally-themed anthology is you need to get it out in time. Cutting it too close for a winter release, I shelved Served Cold for ten months and aimed for a holiday launch.

Served Cold emerged from the freezer this past December, and so far, it has been thawing out quite nicely. The receptions for both anthologies exceeded my expectations. People outside of our small community were starting to notice, even if just to ask the question, “What the hell is HorrorTube?”

It’s a question Steve Donoghue answers in his foreword for Served Cold, where he breaks down the evolution of YouTube and its various sub-groups. He also reflects on why horror and the cold are a perfect marriage made in Hell. “Horror tales always give chills, not hot sweats,” writes Steve. This anthology explores the many possibilities expressed by that idea.

If given a choice between fire and ice, as Robert Frost’s famous poem posits, I, like Frost, would choose fire. But, as Frost so eloquently reminds us, ice is just as hateful and destructive, but perhaps in less overt ways than its fiery counterpart. Ice’s slow, soul-eroding nature entices mountaineers to perilous summits and leads, as it does in Served Cold, men and women to embark on ill-fated missions to Antarctica, the ocean’s depths, and deep space, as well as the coldest regions of the human heart. In horror, nothing is more chilling than realizing you’re irretrievably trapped in a cage of your own making or to awaken, as one of our characters does, within a deep freeze with no way out. The deceptiveness of the cold and our belief that we can survive it make for fertile, albeit frozen, ground for horror fiction.

That’s not to say there aren’t plenty of bone-chilling frustrations involved in the real-life operations of producing an anthology composed of authors from all over the world with varying levels of experience. But I can confidently say that all the authors involved brought their A-game, as did our returning cover artist Cameron Roubique, whose bug-eyed skeleton character is a story unto himself.

Overall, the plusses of producing both anthologies far outweighed the minuses. It was an honor to have Local Haunts recognized in Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, and I’m proud to report that as of this date, we’ve donated over $500 to the children’s literacy charity First Book.

Will we do it again? Possibly. Honestly, it was a lot of work that, at times, felt overwhelming. But other BookTubers, such as Cam Wolfe with his recent We’re Not Home anthology, have already picked up the mantle.

I sincerely hope the trend continues whether I’m involved or not. BookTube, and by extension HorrorTube, is a wonderful community of readers and writers worldwide. Not acting on the impulse to bring talented people together to strengthen the community and give to a good cause is a scary prospect indeed.

Served Cold: Amazon

R. Saint Claire: YouTube Channel / Instagram / Blog

Regina Saint Claire writes adult and young adult fiction, but always with a dark flair. Writing honors include a Watty Award for best horror novel and multiple screenwriting awards, including a Webby Honoree. Regina is also the contributing editor of the bestselling Local Haunts: A HorrorTube Anthology and its follow-up publication Served Cold.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Nick Kolakowski, whose latest novel is Absolute Unit. Here is the publisher’s description:

Absolute Unit is a dark carnival ride through the underside of the American Dream, where hustlers and parasites fight to survive against gun-toting furries, sarcastic drug kingpins, old ladies who are startlingly good with knives, and angry ex-girlfriends. It’s a hardboiled slice of modern American horror that asks the deepest question of all: Is the human race worth saving?

Bill is a nobody, a health inspector who’s not above taking a few dollars to overlook a restaurant’s mouse problem, and hated by nearly everyone except his long-suffering girlfriend. His nephew, Trent, isn’t much better: sexually and morally confused, he’s probably the worst teenage con artist on the East Coast. But today, these two losers are going to become the most important people in the world.

That’s because Bill and Trent harbor a sentient parasite with a sarcastic sense of humor and a ravenous appetite. As the parasite figures out how to control its new human hosts, the focus of its desires grows from delicious cheeseburgers and beer to something much darker and more dangerous.

The apocalypse might come from within us…

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Nick Kolakowski:

Sometimes a book is written in a sustained rush, your mind pouring out thousands of words per day. And sometimes it’s much harder, the words slowing to a trickle over months or even years. Absolute Unit fell into the latter category; I wrote the first portion in 2015 before my mind squeezed off that particular idea tap. The flow didn’t start again until 2019.

Absolute Unit is told from the perspective of a sentient (and highly sarcastic) parasite that lives in the gut of a corpulent, corrupt health inspector named Bill. Over the course of a wild morning, Bill and his parasite friend find themselves embroiled in a crime spree involving a demented police detective, a mysterious body in a car trunk, and Bill’s sexually confused nephew Trent.

That first portion ended there. It was a complete story unto itself. But the parasite still spoke to me at idle moments; it had bigger dreams than merely spending its days in the gut of a guy who shook down convenience stores and restaurants under the guise of public health inspections. It suggested a further plot to me, a horrific one that involved conquering the world.

When I sat down to work on Absolute Unit again, the world was a far angrier place. I was a far angrier person — not just because of the political situation, but because the world seemed to be falling apart faster and faster. Climate change. Financial turmoil. Jerks who didn’t respect bike lanes. My own anger about it all scared me at moments. I decided to pour it into the story.

Now here comes the scariest part, for me at least: How could I convey that broad-based anger in a way that fused organically with the narrative? If I executed incorrectly, I risked coming across as stilted and preachy. Nobody likes pages of monologue, unless you’re an Ayn Rand fan (spoiler alert: I am not). Nobody likes it when you bring the plot to a screeching halt so that characters can make some kind of point. But a speech is exactly what I wanted a character to give, and it risked derailing the action.

In the end, I wrote and re-wrote that climactic sequence in a number of ways, trying out each for effect. The speech is as extreme as the environment around it (a burning hospital, zombie-like revenants, a SWAT team positioning outside), and I’d like to think that the combined effect is a primal scream. Once I finished a satisfactory version, I went back and wove ample foreshadowing into the preceding chapters, so the end doesn’t come completely out of left field.

I finished the book in 2019. Then 2020 hit, and suddenly, I had a new thing to frighten me: What if people thought I wrote a book about a world-conquering parasite as a metaphor for everything happening with COVID-19? Especially since the climax is in a hospital? True, books are usually written years before they actually hit bookstores, but most folks don’t know that — I feared they’d assume I’d written the thing as a pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people. I didn’t want to be perceived as leveraging a real-life catastrophe to sell books.

But there’s nothing I can do about that. Some fears you just have to live with. There are always scary parts you can’t do anything about. But I’m grateful for how the book gave me an opportunity to externalize some of my anger. I hope it soothes some of yours, as well.

Absolute Unit: Amazon

Nick Kolakowski: Website / Twitter

Nick Kolakowski is the Derringer- and Anthony-nominated author of crime and horror thrillers, including Boise Longpig Hunting Club, Rattlesnake Rodeo, and the Love & Bullets trilogy of gonzo crime novellas. His short fiction has also appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road (Crystal Lake Publishing) and the infamous Tales From the Crust: An Anthology of Pizza Horror (Perpetual Motion Machine). He lives and writes in New York City.

This week on The Scariest Part, I’m happy to welcome back Mark Allan Gunnells, whose latest novel is 2B. Here is the publisher’s description:

Berkley Simmons died…for five minutes.

Berkley woke up to find himself in the hospital. He discovered that his ex is dead after a failed murder/ suicide attempt. With nowhere else to go, Berkley must return to the apartment where it all happened. It doesn’t take long for Berkley to begin to suspect that his ex never left the apartment, and still wants him dead.

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

I’ve done a few of these columns in the past, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared to write something as I was my current release, 2B. I was excited to write it, I believed in the power of the concept, but I also entered into it with great trepidation.

Why? you ask. Because the idea for the novel had been rattling around in my head for nearly twenty years, and over the course of those two decades it had taken on almost a mythic quality. To me, it seemed like a gem of an idea that I worried I wouldn’t be able to do justice.

The origins of the novel actually date back earlier than twenty years. For that, we have to stretch back to my college years. I wrote a short story that was built around what became a big reveal near the end of 2B. To be honest, I thought the short story was rather crap, definitely not my best work, and yet…the concept itself I thought was golden. If only I could find a way to work it into a better story.

Then about twenty years ago I was living in an apartment, and I came home one night and the light in the breezeway outside my apartment was flickering and buzzing. A short, no doubt, but I had the thought that it was the kind of creepy scene you’d see in a horror movie. Maybe a haunted house story.

In this case, a haunted apartment story, I thought with a laugh, but in the next instant I had an idea for a novel. Almost fully formed, realizing I could do an interesting take on the ghost tale and finally incorporate the concept of that college-era short story into something worthy. I even instantly came up with the title, 2B.

At the time, however, I was having a lot of work stress and personal stress, and I wasn’t writing much, so the idea went onto the backburner. A few years later when I finally got serious about my writing again, the idea was there but I didn’t want to touch it yet. Perhaps I felt too rusty and wanted to knock the dust off.

The years continued to pass, and I worked on other projects, but 2B never left my thoughts. At times it almost seemed to cry out to be written, but again I kept putting it off. The idea seemed too good almost, and I remembered that short I’d written in college and feared I would take a great concept and screw it up.

About ten years ago, I did try my hand at a beginning. However, almost right away I could feel it going off the rails and I stopped after a chapter and a half. I still have that chapter and a half, and while they aren’t terrible, they also aren’t what I wanted them to be. This made me even more afraid to really tunnel into the novel.

And so another decade passed. Then last year, I was offered the opportunity to write a short novel for a cool new publisher, Valhalla Books. I provided the editor with several ideas, and I included 2B among them. This brought my haunted apartment concept back to the forefront of my mind and while there was still fear, suddenly excitement overcame that fear.

When I sat down to actually start it (ignoring the aborted chapter and a half from ten years ago), my head was filled with doubts and worries and once more I wondered if I could do this idea justice. Having a publisher waiting for the book, however, helped me to push all that aside and simply start.

And much to my amazement, the novel just flowed from me. I wrote it over a two-month period, writing every single day with no breaks. And with every completed page, the doubts and fears began to dissipate like smoke. I simply dove into that world, lived with the characters, and it seemed like before I knew it, I was writing “THE END”.

Considering that many of my novels were started then put aside for months or years before I returned to them to finish, it is actually amazing how smoothly and quickly this one came to me. Only two months.

Twenty years and two months.

2B: Amazon

Mark Allan Gunnells: Blog / Twitter / Goodreads / Amazon Author Page

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, I’m delighted to host my good friend Douglas Wynne, whose latest novel is The Wind in My Heart. Here is the publisher’s description:

Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast. Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals.

The year is 1991 and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama. The police attribute the killings to Chinatown gang warfare. Miles — skeptical of the supernatural — is inclined to agree. But what if the monster he’s hunting is more than a myth?

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Douglas Wynne:

By the time a book is released, it’s usually been a while since I wrote and revised it. My memory of the details can be a little foggy. With each round of edits and proof reader corrections the story feels farther away from the close up immersion I had in the early drafts. You tend to just zoom in on the corrections and areas for improvement an editor suggests and work through them. Then, when release time comes around, I scan through and pick a couple of passages to read at bookstore events (ah, remember bookstore events from the Before Times?) or these days on Zoom and hope I still like what I’m reading now that I have some distance from it.

But with every book I’ve written, it seems like there’s always one scene that stands out and lingers in my memory. A scene that doesn’t fade over the many months of the process. A scene that comes to mind first when I think of that book. Sometimes I can remember writing it. What music I was listening to at the time and how it felt to get lost in the story. Other times I might remember getting sucked in again while editing, like I’m reading someone else’s work, with even my constant inner critic holding his breath for a few minutes.

When I sat down to revisit The Wind in My Heart for this post, I knew which scene that was right away, and (as usual) I think it might be the scariest part. I have a lot of different goals as a fiction writer and they vary depending on the genre or project at hand. I’m often considered a horror writer, though I dabble in fantasy, crime, and sci-fi. But my one aim above all others is to build suspense, in small ways and large. Suspense about what a character might say next in a dialogue, about some intriguing bit of backstory only hinted at when it’s first mentioned, and ultimately about who lives and dies and how characters come out the other side of a book changed.

Then there’s the suspense of a man we’ve come to care about venturing down a dark hallway toward flickering candlelight, registering the mingled scents of spilled blood and incense in the cloying air, and wondering as he touches the grip of his gun if it will do him any good against what he’s about to confront.

That’s the scene that stayed with me. Miles Landry, a hardnosed private eye hunting down a reincarnated demon and beginning to wonder if there might actually be something to this weird case he took on for what he thought would be an easy payday from some superstitious Buddhist monks. The previous night, Miles visited a fortuneteller the monks sent him to, and after a cryptic I Ching reading she told him about the bad vibes she got off a peacock feather he retrieved from a murder victim. The feather is one of Miles’ only clues in a series of murders rocking Chinatown, so when he finds it missing from his coat pocket the next morning, he goes back to the fortunetelling parlor/herb shop of Lily Lao, thinking she might have pocketed it after pretending to be freaked out about it. Maybe people are playing games with him.

But what he finds in the candlelit backroom of the shop is no game.

I may have got my own hair up while writing that scene, but it wasn’t the only scary part of writing this novella. I was raised Catholic and have digested as much Catholic horror as anyone, but for the past twenty odd years my real spiritual affinity has been with Tibetan Buddhism. Those years of study armed me with the details and philosophy to write a supernatural thriller from a somewhat exotic point of view. But it’s one thing to write about stuff you don’t believe in and another to take on a spiritual system that’s close to your heart. Add to that the fear of misrepresenting a culture I wasn’t raised in and you have a recipe for trepidation.

The tantric Buddhist concept of gods and demons is different from the Western view, and it’s part of what I find fascinating and alluring in the Tibetan worldview. In a nutshell, it’s a more psychological model. There’s an explicit understanding that the deity of compassion or the wrathful demon protector is a potential of consciousness inherent in every human mind. Those potentials can be activated with a series of intensive practices under the guidance of a qualified teacher whose job is to make sure you don’t over identify with the possessing spirit and have a psychotic episode.

The villain in my story identified with Yamantaka, Lord of Death, and now embodies him as a reincarnated serial killer. I find hope in the Buddhist idea that we may all, with practice, learn to embody angels of compassion. But the flipside of the coin is never denied. We all carry wrathful demons in our psyches, too — forces that must be tamed and rehabilitated. And the right conditions can awaken them. Maybe that’s the scariest part.

The Wind in My Heart: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / Bookshop

Douglas Wynne: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / Goodreads / BookBub

Douglas Wynne is an author of horror thrillers, including The Devil of Echo Lake, Steel Breeze, and the SPECTRA Files trilogy. His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and his writing workshops have been featured at genre conventions and schools throughout New England. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and son and a houseful of animals.