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This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Chad Lutzke, whose new novel is The Pale White. Here is the publisher’s description:

After being held against their will in a house used for sex trafficking, three girls plan their escape.

Alex: A hardened goth-punk who’s convinced she’s a vampire with a penchant for blood.

Stacia: A seventeen-year-old raised by an alcoholic mother, her fellow prisoners the only family she’s ever truly had.

Kammy: The youngest of the three — a mute who finds solace in a houseplant.

But does life outside the house offer the freedom they’d envisioned? Or is it too late, the scars too deep?

A coming-of-age tale of revenge that explores a friendship and the desperate lengths they will go through to ensure they stay united, held together by the scars that bind them.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Chad Lutzke:

Is the literary world deficient in female-centric coming-of-age horror? Indeed. They’re out there, but they’re sparse and certainly not on the tip of reader’s tongues when recommending a title in the COA subgenre. There is no sister book to accompany McCammon’s Boy’s Life, King’s The Body, or Simmons’ Summer of Night (though you could argue Grady Hendrix’s fantastic My Best Friend’s Exorcism adequately fills the void). So, who better to write one than a man, right?

That was the scariest part of The Pale White for yours truly.

I’m not so full of machismo that I can’t set aside my natural inclination to crack inappropriate jokes in front of my wife, holster a hand far beyond my waistband, and pretend that I don’t care if Ross and Rachel or Jim and Pam get together. As a matter of fact, I’m rather in tune with my feminine side. Just ask my wife, who recently laughed at me for tearing up during the last episode of Friends, and who teases me when I can’t even talk about the finale of Six Feet Under without my voice cracking.

I think I’m hyper-empathetic.

Consider the above my credentials for thinking I can pull off a first-person female POV set within a disturbing scenario. But not only was I writing in the voice of a young girl, this is a girl who had experienced extreme sexual trauma. Unfortunately, the aftermath of such a thing I have seen, so there was some ugly insight. The book needed to be hard-hitting but without being distasteful. It needed to be done with tact — much in the way I handled Stirring the Sheets (believe me, there were readers who wanted to stay clear of Sheets, thinking it is a necrophilia fest when in fact it is not). It needed to be something that frightens people almost too much to crack the spine but are glad they did.

When writing The Pale White, this wasn’t done with typical writer research, googling scientific theories, what guns hold which caliber bullets, how long it takes for a body to decompose, or what poison is untraceable. This was attempting to tap into something I didn’t have, at the risk of coming off as insensitive or apathetic. That was the scariest part.

It’s been said: “Write what you know.” If you take that literally, without diving into the deeper meaning, it’s nonsense. If authors actually took that to heart, there would be no Middle-Earth, no Frankenstein, no Hogwarts. Yet, when diving deeper, we actually do write what we know. I know sadness. I know trauma. I know loss. I know violence. And being an empath who has had some rather deeply profound relationships and experiences with women through my life, both platonically and romantically, I know enough to tell a story.

Maybe just being the witness, and then the messenger holding their flag, was the scariest part.

The Pale White: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Powell’s / IndieBound

Chad Lutzke: Website

Chad has written for Famous Monsters of Filmland, Rue Morgue, Cemetery Dance, and Scream magazine. He’s had a few dozen short stories published, and some of his books include: Of Foster Homes & Flies, Wallflower, Stirring the Sheets, Skullface Boy, The Same Deep Water as You, and The Pale White. Lutzke’s work has been praised by authors Jack Ketchum, Stephen Graham Jones, James Newman, Elizabeth Massie, Cemetery Dance, and his own mother.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Mark Sheldon, whose new novel is Sarah Killian: The Mullets of Madness. Here is the publisher’s description:

Have you ever woken one morning with a burning, insatiable desire to go out and kill someone?

Sarah Killian, notorious serial killer for hire, and cohort assassin, Mary Sue Keller, are back on assignment for the Trusted Hierarchy of Everyday Murderers (T.H.E.M.) After receiving an ominous warning from a mark-gone-wrong, it becomes clear that Nick Jin — Sarah’s former nemesis — is still at large and singling Sarah out.

Sarah and Mary Sue are dispatched to Tennessee to discreetly kill off an accused family of KKK organizers, but their true mission is to lure Nick Jin into a trap. But will Nick Jin — who always seems several steps of T.H.E.M. — see their bait for what it is? Either way, one thing is guaranteed: blood will be shed.

In the spirit of Sidney Sheldon, Dean Koontz, and Joss Whedon, The Mullets of Madness is a truly unique blend of horror, suspense, and espionage.

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

When I wrote the first book of the Sarah Killian series, Sarah Killian: Serial Killer for Hire, it was not an easy headspace to get into. Being a violent sociopath, Sarah is not exactly a pleasant corner of my psyche to explore. And the fact that it was written in first-person narrative made it even harder to disassociate myself from the character and her point of view. I had to take frequent breaks from writing the first book to work on other projects just to clear my head and get into a healthier head-space, so to speak.

The second Sarah Killianbook, The Mullets of Madness, went much smoother — I wrote it in one go without taking any breaks — probably partly because Sarah’s targets in this book were alleged KKK members as opposed to high school students, so her moral justification was slightly easier to swallow.

So, for my own sanity if nothing else, I tend to try to steer away from the introspective analysis of where Sarah comes from in my mind. It’s also why I gave her such a snarky edge — she had to be someone that you hate to love, otherwise she just wouldn’t be readable.

That said, Mullets of Madness lent itself some nice opportunities for gore as I expanded on the world that Sarah lives in, and one in particular comes immediately to mind.

In the first book, we learned that Sarah works for a secret organization of professional killers for hire — the Trusted Hierarchy of Everyday Murderers (T.H.E.M.) T.H.E.M. contracts Professional Serial Killers (P.S.K.’s) such as Sarah to perform covert contractual killings. When on assignment, Sarah will be placed into a community for months — sometimes years — at a time establishing two separate personalities: the “dupe” persona, the everyday person she pretends to be while on assignment, and the profile of the “killer,” who will commit the murders and then disappear at the end of the mission, to be forever labeled an unsolved crime. The covert necessity of Sarah’s assignments makes the Sarah Killian books a unique blend of slasher horror and espionage.

In The Mullets of Madness, I got to explore what happens when T.H.E.M. needs to dispose of a body that they don’t want to be found. While on assignment, Sarah gets attacked in her hotel room by an agent of her nemesis, excommunicated T.H.E.M. assassin Nick Jin. Sarah manages to thwart the attempt on her life but is left with the inconvenience of a corpse that the hotel’s housekeepers undoubtedly would have some questions about.

Fortunately, T.H.E.M. is always prepared. I admit I took an unhealthy macabre delight with inventing the Bond-esque gadgets that T.H.E.M.’s extraction team utilized to dispose of the inconvenient hotel room corpse — in fact it’s one of my favorite examples from both books of how horror and espionage can be blended together.

The morning after Sarah’s attempted assassination, two inconspicuous, blond-haired, blue-eyed, business-suited men with briefcases arrive at Sarah’s hotel room — the Yuppy Aryan Twins, as Sarah refers to them. While Sarah nonchalantly watches Saw on pay-per-view, the Yuppy Aryan Twins proceed to remove various tools and gadgets out of their briefcases, which they then use to dismantle the corpse, piece by piece. After each body part is removed the Yuppy Aryan Twins place the appendage into a device similar to those vacuum-suck-storage bags you can buy on infomercials, except these are a little more heavy-duty than the as-seen-on-TV models. With the T.H.E.M. model, you place an average-sized foot into the bag, and the vacuum compresses it down to the size of a tennis ball, which can be easily transported off of the hotel property without raising suspicion and properly disposed of elsewhere. Then all that’s needed is a bit of cleanup, and not even a Dateline blacklight would yield any clue that anything had happened in that hotel room.

Despite the difficulties with getting into the right headspace for Sarah, writing these books has been a rewarding experience and I look forward to further exploring how horror and espionage can be merged in the next book.

Sarah Killian: The Mullets of Madness: Amazon / Facebook page

Mark Sheldon: Facebook / Amazon Author Page

Mark Sheldon is the author of the Sarah Killian series, Sarah Killian: Serial Killer for Hire! and Sarah Killian: The Mullets of Madness. Prior to Sarah Killian, Mr. Sheldon has self-published Mores of the Maelstrom, a collection of short stories, and The Noricin Chronicles, a twelve-part sci-fi novel series that could be best described as a combination of Harry Potter, The X-Men, and The Da Vinci Code. Mr. Sheldon lives in Southern California with his wife, Betsy.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Daniel P. Coughlin, whose new novel is Satanic Panic. Here is the publisher’s description:

Satanic Panic, a mass hysteria created in the nineteen-eighties, has returned to a small college town in the Midwest. Ritualistic murders and the presence of the occult have bled below the surface of the town in the form of icy accidents and other coincidences. And when three lifelong friends find themselves on the radar of a killer — and leader of a satanic cult — they must fight for what’s good without being seduced by the evil that possesses their campus.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Daniel P. Coughlin:

Satanic Panic is a book about the progression and lineage of sin from inception to seduction to destruction. The scariest part about this book was presenting characters that make a steep departure from morality, but that a reader can still sympathize with and follow along their journey. Creating protagonists that need to be quickly connectable before being presented with moral conflict is not easy. The perception of Satanic Panic’s characters is left to you, dear reader, but know that many frustrating hours went into the “what if’s” of creating compelling characters that are flawed by age, new freedoms and basic biology.

The central characters are three friends who grew up together, Brock, Lance, and Brianna. Since an early age they’ve shared just about everything and are now budding into adulthood. Their bond is tight, but their bodies are developing sexually and they know each other too well to ignore their lustful thoughts. Honesty is something that they honor deeply and therefore, as maturing young adults, they will initiate the topic of lust and romantic feelings for each other. Quickly, they concede that attraction exists. Can they experiment without cracking the foundation of their bond, or should they suppress their secret desires?

The layering and complexities of pulling off a three-way sexual experience without insulting the reader’s sensibilities was a challenge especially since the conflict is presented very early in the book. Translating my vision into an effective experience for the reader was daunting. Good people conducting extraordinarily bad behavior is the basis of much storytelling, but crafting the complex nature of a relationship into a violent story needed finesse and precision. Wanting the reader to understand the devolving morality was key in understanding the voice of this piece. Evil is real. Evil is hungry. Evil will take everything. Before this evil devours the soul it shows its innocent attributes. “Its just sex, we’re being mature about it” segues into “who said this was wrong?” Once the characters lose their sense of morality their souls become subject to attack, both metaphorical and literal. Designing this kind of a relationship into the structure of a story about a murderous satanic cult was another terrifying strain.

College age loss of innocence paired with satanic sacrifice is a pretty blunt story idea so the book needed forms of relief at times. Dark humor seemed to fit. Flawed human beings self-destructing can be comedic.

So long as it’s you we’re talking about and not me.

Satanic Panic: Amazon / Powell’s / IndieBound

Daniel P. Coughlin: Website / Twitter

After graduating from high school in Watertown, Wisconsin, Daniel P. Coughlin joined the United States Marine Corps and served four and half years as an infantry Machinegunner in an Amphibious Raider Unit (Fox 2/4). After being Honorably discharged, Daniel attended and graduated from California State University at Long Beach. While studying screenwriting under the mentorship of acclaimed writer Brian Alan Lane, he also interned and served as a script analyst for his favorite director, Wes Craven. Daniel is the author of six novels and an anthology of short fiction. Daniel is a proud member of the Horror Writer’s Association (Los Angeles chapter). He holds a professional certificate in Technical and Professional Writing from Cal State Dominguez Hills and a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Full Sail University.

This week on The Scariest Part, my guest is author Elizabeth Hirst, whose new novel is The Face in the Marsh. Here is the publisher’s description:

Kenzie is twenty-five, with two degrees and no job prospects. When her parents offer her a job curating their museum, Ettenby’s Log Palace, she accepts out of desperation, despite their history of family conflict. She arrives praying that her secrets will stay buried, and her hard-won mental health won’t relapse. Once at the Log Palace, Kenzie is fascinated by an unsettling collection of junk dolls found on the property. As she follows the thread left by the collection, she discovers a history of poltergeist activity, witchcraft and death on the small island housing the museum.

And now, let’s hear what the scariest part was for Elizabeth Hirst:

The Face in the Marsh started as a vivid nightmare, the kind that causes you to jolt awake in the middle of the night, heart racing, veins filled with pure lightning. I tell this story a lot when I’m at conventions, recounting how I saw and felt the museum, the staring of the carvings, the decaying little people made of pieces of discarded junk that crawl around under the surface of a still, lily-covered marsh. In my nightmare, I was there, living my main character Kenzie’s most terrifying moments. And yet, that wasn’t the scariest part.

Even in those early stages, I knew that the museum collection menacing Kenzie, the shack across the river, and the strange way that Kenzie could pop through reality like a cut in a film were only symptoms of something larger. Even in the nightmare, the carvings and the little mechanical people had only scared me because I knew there was something behind them, something animating them that was vast and empty and hungry.  That emptiness is mirrored in Kenzie herself, and for a long time, it lived in me.

Like Kenzie, I am bisexual. I grew up in a rural area where even the offbeat straight kids had a hard time getting along, and where nobody understood people like me. When I realized my own sexual orientation, I searched for years for somebody, anybody that could act as a positive role model, who could show me that I could grow up to be the successful person that I always wanted to be. I found only criticism and misconceptions from the people that were supposed to look out for me.

Feeling like my only choice was to forget about being bi or to face a bleak future, I tried my hardest to forget. Doing so came with a price, and that price was a facelessness that dogged me in all aspects of my life. ‘Just be yourself’ was the cruellest and most confusing thing that anyone could say to me during that time of my life. They might as well have been saying, ‘Just step in front of that firing squad. You’ll be fine. They’ll love you.’ Deep down, I knew who I was, and I was thoroughly convinced that I was a monster. But I summoned my own monster, just as Kenzie did, and as I think we all do in different aspects of our lives.

The scariest part is that there is a monster out there that distorts our features until we can’t see our own face in the mirror. It slowly alienates us from everyone we love, until the bonds are so eroded that all we feel is emptiness. It isolates us from human emotion, as if we are trapped behind glass that no one else can see. It leeches away our sense of self-worth until we are just a hunk of colourless goo that might as well be anything else, some water or a goose or a few pieces of junk that rattle around at night. That monster is real, and it steals faces every day.

I tend to write stories from start to finish with characters and themes in place but no clear idea of what the end will be. I dive into the mystery in the same way that readers will, and much of the tension in my writing is derived from the fact that when I was writing it, I also did not know what would happen. I did not know if Kenzie would kill her parents or save them. I did not know if she would conquer the faceless void or surrender to it. Writing this book meant stepping out in front of that firing squad not knowing if the guns were loaded. It meant staring into the faceless void that destroys so many queer people, wading through it and finding out what happens.

Did I come out on the other side? You’ll only know if you read the book.

Sweet dreams.

The Face in the Marsh: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo / Chapters Indigo

Elizabeth Hirst: Website / Twitter

Elizabeth Hirst has loved fantastic fiction since her father read her The Lord of the Rings and other classics as a young girl. She has worked as an animator, online game writer and founder of her own small publishing label, and during that time, representing the people, places and culture of Ontario has remained close to her heart. Find her at the beach, the museum, or watching cartoons with her husband Robin.