Fear Lives in the Minds of Men

I didn’t think I would ever write horror, but here I am, writing horror. It’s not violence-forward horror, by the way. I’ve taken the thesis from this poem and made it the thesis of the horror story as well: fear lives in the minds of men and the bodies of women. And even more importantly, I will show them fear. They can keep their dust.

In case that thesis isn’t foreboding, this story is psychological and dark. The horror is the fact that the serial killer could be anyone. You may even recognize parts of yourself in him, and there’s nothing scarier than that—seeing yourself in the monster.

If you read my work, you know that I’m heavily influenced by Faulkner and Eliot, as well as many, many others. I’m structuring this like The Sound and The Fury, which means multiple first-person narrators. Read it here while you can—when I finish the draft, I’ll pull all of it while I query agents. If I’m going to write horror, I intend to get a return for freaking myself out with this disturbing story. By the end, it will make your blood run cold.

I’m in the process of organizing it and cleaning it up today—there are some discrepancies that drive me insane as a reader. If you notice one I missed, forget about my feelings and call it out. If I don’t know it’s there, I can’t fix it, and like everyone, I get too immersed and can’t tell the difference between what I want to be on the page and what is actually on the page.

I personally detest horror and don’t like reading it, so I fully understand if you want to sit this one out, but don’t be surprised when you see it on the NYT bestseller list.