Publisher, Rural Fiction Magazine; publisher, The Chamber Magazine; founder, the Farmington Writers Circle. I have written short stories and poetry for many years. In my careers as a Naval officer and in the federal government, I have written thousands of documents of many types. I am currently working on a second edition for my poetry collection and a few novels.
Go to 15 Creepy Two-Sentence Horror Stories for a few quick thrills. Some of these have been floating around the Internet in different forms for a while, but some are original. All demonstrate how to pack a lot of meaning in a very small amount of space. See my article on “Baby Shoes” for a lengthier discussion on the art of compressing meaning into as few words as possible. While you’re visiting “15 Creepy…Stories” compliment the editor for selecting some truly creepy photos to accompany the article.
I am pleased to announce that I have accepted the first work of fiction submitted to Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine. Although some might not consider it “horror” per se, because it is not supernatural in nature and does not contain horrific gore, it does meet the stipulations I have set out for this magazine, in that it contains a horrific element and it pushes a nebulous boundary between horror and another genre, which in this case is mainstream literature. I like the story and its understated element of suspense, its thoughtful wording, and its ability to draw the reader into it for a vicarious experience. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
NOTED
by Steffany Willey
Asha was my spur-of-the-moment walking buddy. She lived five houses away, and if one of us suddenly needed a break from our mom lives we’d give the other a call. Winter and summer we’d plod the two-mile loop, often grumbling about what our kids did or didn’t do, sometimes bragging about the grandkids. We’d pick apart the neighbors’ landscaping, which often amounted to little more than plugging in a feeble row of Home Depot arborvitae, and made suggestions (to each other) like clipboard horticulturalists.
Our route passed a house I’d visited many times. It was a trim two-story colonial with a wing on one side that had once been a garage. The lawn was thick then, lush, the sidewalk edged, the shrubs mulched. Inside, the rooms lulled sweetly in this tidy castle.
Over the years it had changed hands a number of times but to progressively disinterested owners. Now it had deteriorated into such a mess it brought us to a halt. We scowled at a tree skeleton and overgrown shrubs that shrouded the windows. That same grass was choked with weeds that were well beyond a lawnmower and a gallon of Weed B Gon. Even the sidewalk fought to hold its own. It was a shame. It brought down the neighborhood.
photo by D Sharon Pruitt
It was during that scathing appraisal that we saw the girl. She was at a front window and seemed to be struggling to open it. She looked like a young teen. When she saw us she waved. We waved back. She kept on waving.
Suddenly a man emerged from the front door. He was fortyish and lean, a swimmer or runner possibly. In jeans and a pressed shirt and a stylish day-old beard, he couldn’t have been more at odds with this sorry house. Or that was our impression until he marched our way.
“Everything OK?” he demanded in a no-nonsense tone. His laser eyes pinned us down as if we’d been trespassing. The message was clear: Move on ladies. Were neighbors giving him heat about his property?
“Yeah,” I think I mumbled, and turned away to walk on. When I glanced back the girl was gone and a shade pulled. The man stood firm, watching.
It bothered me. Asha too. Had the girl been waving or beckoning, asking for help? We hemmed and hawed. Should we do something about this? Or was she just a kid sent to her room and trying to sneak out?
We made a point to check out the house the next day. This time I jotted down the address and name on the mailbox, but weeks passed before I contacted the community association and was told to share my concerns with the police; in turn, they took note, made a written report.
So it was. We did our bit, said what we saw.
Fall brought birthdays and holidays and deaths in the neighborhood. We squeezed in our walk when we could, offering up our critiques. A couple houses went on the market, polished it seemed overnight. Asha’s neighbor built a lopsided shed on a twenty-degree slope in his backyard that was supported on one edge by stilts; it and his new John Deere riding mower crashed to the bottom of their lot two months later. We might have told him so.
And sometimes I would drive by the house with the girl and see a light on, but usually it was dark, to itself.
The winter was harsh, the land hidden under a glaze of snow that leaked all day then morphed into black ice at night. Our walks were few, and we didn’t get back into the swing until March. By then neighbors were emerging like hibernated bears, poking into gardens and washing cars. One afternoon we slowed to admire a ’57 T-Bird, its owner in the driveway stroking it like a cat. I’d seen him before, similarly entranced, touching up flaws only he could see. His house, as it happened, was across the street from the house with the girl.
“Do you ever drive it?” I asked pleasantly as we came even with his driveway.
Snatched from his reverie, he offered, “Fourth of July parades. That’s about it.”
“I’ll have to look for you. I never miss the Catonsville parade.”
“‘I’ll be there.”
I glanced behind me. “I was wondering about that house. It looks abandoned.”
He wrung out a chamois that looked dry.
”Yeah. He … ah … isn’t there.”
“He moved?”
“I guess you could say that.” He honed in on the passenger-side door, buffing an area under the handle. Asha and I traded looks.
“Were there children living there?”
“No. Why?”
“We saw a girl at a front window a while back. Something seemed … off … not right …”
He sighed and turned to us. “I figured they were relatives.” Then: “He was arrested a few days ago on child pornography charges. He’s … he was …. a teacher.” He didn’t meet our eyes.
“Oh no!” I said.
Asha touched my arm. “Sweet Lord,” she croaked.
We stood looking at each other, the three of us. There was more but he wasn’t saying. Guilt was written on his face as if in Magic Marker.
“I’ll look for the car at the parade,” I finally said, backing off and pulling Asha with me.
“I’m sorry,” he said as if he was to blame.
Later it made the news, and in a month a For Sale sign was stuck in the mud by the driveway. No one had bothered to tame the property, so someone was going to get a good fixer-upper deal. Families clamored for homes in this school district so it would sell easily.
Though we still walk, we never speak of the girl or remark on the house as we pass. In fact, it’s as if it isn’t even there
Nicholas Grabowsky’s novelization of Halloween IV unfolds much like the film, with rapid-fire pacing and editing that keeps the bloody saga of Michael Myers firing on all cylinders. Though movie novelizations often fall victim to heavy cricitism for following the source material’s plot too straightforwardly, Grabowsky’s effort includes several additions to the Halloween universe that make picking up a copy worth your while.
Most, if not all, readers of this novelization will be already familiar with the story of the film, but Grabowsky includes some distinctive touches that make reading the book just as suspenseful as watching Michael Myers torment both Dr. Loomis and Jamie Lloyd in the movie. The cat-and-mouse sequences between Loomis and Michael prove quite effective in the novel, with Loomis always falling just one step behind in his pursuit of the diabolical killer. Meanwhile, young Jamie is taunted by both her horrific…
Ernest Hemingway Thought I do not know who the creator of this work is, I must ask that you respect their copyright.
The primary influences on my writing have always been Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Based on what I have read, neither was a fan of metaphors. Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to recall Hemingway once calling metaphors “the weakest of animals” or “the “weakest of literary devices” or something like that (I have searched for this quote and haven’t found it yet). Ergo, I have always shied away from metaphors and I have found that it has helped my writing immensely by forcing me to be creative in my comparisons and analogies. While searching in vain for Hemingway’s quotation on metaphors tonight, I ran across this quotation from George Orwell which makes a few good points:
“By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images dash [sic] … it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking.”
Metaphors are a bridge to another idea; they take the reader onto a tangent. If I say, “The hunter stumbled through the woods like a wounded bear,” I am shifting the reader’s visual image from that of the hunter to that of a bear. Yes, I give the reader a concise description of how the hunter was stumbling, and the reader can probably visualize the stumbling rather accurately, but wouldn’t the reader become more involved with the hunter and be able to visualize the scene more precisely if the hunter is described as if he were a wounded bear stumbling. Wouldn’t it also be a bit more of an intriguing psychological puzzle for the reader to solve and come to his own sudden epiphany of something like “Oh, he’s moving like a wounded bear!” For example:
The hunter, half-dazed from a blow to the head, his dark eyes fixed on some point on the dim horizon, staggered back and forth, bumping into trees, sometimes leaning against them to keep from collapsing into the hard-packed snow, dropping to one knee then rising slowly, painfully catching his breath, limping, often groaning, sometimes bellowing out in a desperate hope that someone passing through the distant shadows might come to his aid.
Isn’t that more dramatic? Doesn’t that involve the reader more into the actions and situation of the main character? Yes, it’s considerably longer, but now the reader can visualize precisely the hunter’s agonizing movements. Now, instead of having to visualize a bear, all attention is focused entirely on visualizing the hunter. Now you are forced to be creative, to use something other than Orwell’s “stale metaphors, similes and idioms” and have to use something more dynamic. No one can accuse you of not really thinking or of being lazy in your descriptions.
In short, if I want to compare two objects, I describe one using the characteristics and attributes of the other. If I have done it well, the reader will see the likeness between the two, but will still remained focused, and maybe even more intensely, on the subject.
Painting of a Dog by Kim Duryang Sapsalgae, 1743
I have used this method for some time now, and I believe it has strengthened my works considerably.
Good story from The Drabble. If you are not familiar with them, they are dedicated to publishing fiction and non-fiction of 100 words or less. They occasionally post a story that breaks into horror, such as this one (reminiscent of the French conte cruel), but the site is definitely worth visiting just to see how writers handle the challenge of extreme brevity. The Drabble generally publishes one story per day, and you can be included in their feed to have it sent to you. You can find them at https://thedrabble.wordpress.com.
“Drafthouse Films will release Tetsuya Nakashima’s acclaimed thriller The World of Kanako in select theaters on December 4th, as well as making it available on multiple digital VOD platforms including Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vimeo, and VHX. A home video release on Blu-ray and DVD is slated for early 2016.
“An uncompromising revenge thriller of operatic scope, The World of Kanako is a non-stop visual and emotional assault to the senses as it follows troubled ex-detective Akikazu (Kôji Yakusho, 13 Assassins, Babel) on the hunt for his missing teenage daughter, Kanako. What he discovers in his search is an unsettling and harrowing web of depravity––surrounding both Kanako and himself. As Akizaku stumbles along a shocking trail of drugs, sex and violence, he finds himself woefully unprepared for the revelations that affect all he holds dear.” (Description from horrorunderground.org)
Drop over to horrorunderground.org and check out what promises to be first-rate Japanese horror.
horror flash fiction isn’t quite short enough, these tweets seek to elicit a shudder, shock, or wicked laugh within the strict limit of 140 characters.” I look forward to @tweetsthecreeps submitting to this blog. Here are four samples:
The smell of death was something the neighbors got used to. When an arm came unearthed, everyone assumed it was a Halloween decoration.
I’m applying for a job at the blood bank but #MyResumeDoesntMention any of my early job history covering the period from 1837 until 1972.
I finally decided who I want to be for Halloween. Her skin will fit me beautifully if I get it off in one piece.
I always thought my bed’s warmth was just a matter of quality, ’til I turned in early & saw someone scramble out of it, into the crawlspace.
Writing at Hasting’s Hardback Café in Farmington, NM, late evening of October 16, 2015 (self-portrait)
After some consideration, I have decided to change the format of this blog from publishing only my own thoughts on the horror genre to that of a magazine printing submitted articles and works of fiction. I would like to explore the breadth and depth of horror as an art form, but that will never happen so long as I am showcasing only my own works, viewpoints, discoveries, and analyses, for which my other commitments allow little time. I am doing this for my own education and enlightenment as well as for that of my readership. Please visit my Submissions page to read the guidelines for what I would like to publish.
The schedule pulled us away from the net again yesterday, but we’ve got another killer recommendation for you on the 18th of October. Today’s pick comes from the talented Benjamin Kane Ethridge, who delivers a serious winner with Black & Orange. You need to check it out!
You can order the book right here. Check out the cover and synopsis below!
Synopsis: Forget everything you know about Halloween. The stories are distortions. They were created to keep the Church of Midnight hidden from the world. Every October 31st a gateway opens to a hostile land of sacrificial magic and chaos. Since the beginning of civilization the Church of Midnight has attempted to open the gateway and unite with its other half, the Church of Morning. Each year they’ve come closer, waiting for the ideal sacrifice to open the gateway permanently.
This year that sacrifice has come. And only two can…
Working on a play in Hasting’s Hardback Café, late evening, October 16, 2015.
As I was preparing to go to the local theatre this evening, I was thinking about how I can improve my writing and what distinguishes the great writers of horror. Of course, the first two that came into my mind as being easily discernible from all others were Poe and Lovecraft. Obviously, what distinguishes them is their use of language. Both use very intense, muscular language with a distinctly archaic tone. Not knowing if there a precise term already exists for this style, I decided to call it “the dark language”, because of its tight connection with the horror genre and with the horrifying in general. For me, there seems to be something archetypal about this, arising out of the Jungian collective unconscious. Perhaps it is just that Poe bound the Dark Language so intimately with scenes of horror, terror, and suspense, which is also bound with genres such as the Gothic novel, that the sound of it automatically brings forth societal memories of dread.
I need to finish dressing if I am to dine at my favorite local sushi restaurant before heading to the play. Somehow, I just have the taste for something raw tonight.
Just now, I created a facebook page for the Art of Horror at https://www.facebook.com/slatterysartofhorror. Drop by, check it out, and friend me. Posts from this blog should feed automatically to Facebook as well as from my Twitter account.
If you would like to submit an article or book/movie review on the art of writing horror fiction or just on the art of writing, please send it to horror@philslattery.com. Everything must be submitted by e-mail either in the
With Iced Tea, Farmington, New Mexico, March 20, 2015
body of the e-mail or a Word document (.doc or .docx). There is no pay for any submission at this time (maybe after I win the Pulitzer or Nobel, but probably not before then).
I am seeking:
Articles under 1,000 words on the art of writing horror (fiction of any length, poetry, screenplays, etc.) or on writing in general, but material along the lines of horror is preferred. Articles on foreign horror are encouraged.
Book and movie reviews, the more recently published or distributed the better, but I will consider reviews of classics works such as those of Poe, Lovecraft, Blackwood, etc. all the way back to Walpole (and before if sufficiently interesting). These must be under 1,000 words also.
Articles on horror in other countries are encouraged. These must also be under 1,000 words.
Translations of articles, stories, or poems from French, German, or Spanish are considered, but the original article/story/poem and its translation must not exceed 2,000 words.
Horror poetry (under 32 lines) or articles on horror in poetry.
Flash horror fiction (i.e. under 1,000 words).
Guidelines
Be professional.
Use standard manuscript format. The easier it is for me to simply copy and paste into the website, the more likely you are to be published.
With submissions include your website, twitter handle, or any other social media identification you like. A short bio of 100 words or less (including a list of previous publications) is nice, but not required. Knowing your publication history won’t influence whether or not you are accepted, but it might be nice for the readership to know. If you don’t want to include any social media contact info, don’t include it. Pseudonyms are fine, but please state them as the byline and include your actual name and contact info in the top left of the first page of the submission per standard manuscript format.
In the subject line of your e-mail state whether this is an article or review or poetry of fiction submission, your name, and the work’s title. For example: Article by Phil Slattery “Poe’s Raven: an Analysis”
No hardcopy submissions. Everything must be submitted by e-mail either in the body of the e-mail or attached as a Word document (.doc or .docx).
I would like to reach as large an audience as possible, so please keep profanity to an absolute minimum.
I will try to respond to submissions as quickly as possible, but please allow at least a couple of weeks before querying about your article/story.
There is no pay other than the honor of being published on this website.
I am not taking multiple submissions or simultaneous submissions. Once you have submitted one article/story, please wait about a week before submitting another.
You may submit on piece of artwork or a photo to accompany your article/story. I will edit it (mainly re-sizing) as needed to fit the space available. I will not publish any form of what I deem pornography or in bad taste. If you do not submit artwork or a photo, I may select something appropriate. JPEGs, TIFs and other formats accepted by WordPress are okay, but keep the number of bytes to a minimum. I have only a limited amount of space available.
Artwork and photos may be submitted on their own and you must own the copyright to them. There is no pay for these either. If I do not use these right away, I may keep them until a use arises, but please let me know if this is okay. If you no longer wish me to use them, please let me know as soon as possible.
Do not send advertising (no matter how cleverly veiled it is). It won’t be published.
Gratuitous sex, extreme violence, violence to children, rape and anything else that offends my personal sensibilities will not be published. Anything that seems to reflect an actual crime (past, present, or future) will be immediately turned over to the proper authorities.
If I like your submission, I will publish it as soon as possible, probably within a week. This will depend on the backlog of submissions and other factors. Don’t ask for a timeframe.
Reprints are okay, but you must tell me when and where the article/story/poem was first published.
I do not want fan fiction.
Always re-check the guidelines before submitting. I may change them at any moment without prior notice.
I will update these guidelines as time allows and events warrant. This page was last updated on October 15, 2015.
Please contact me via horror@philslattery.com with any questions.
Over the years I have read and viewed Mr. Stine’s Goosebumps stories and loved them. And yes they could prove to be very frightening. Since that time this well-known and beloved author has also decided to compose three other mighty fine adult stories. Red Rain just so happens to be the one I recently stumbled upon. If you’re wondering whether or not Stine is fit to terrify the adult crowd, make no mistake he has no problem sending chills down the spines of older folk.
Off of South Carolina’s coastline there is a small Island known as Cape Le Chat Noir. Lea Sutter, our protagonist decides to pay a visit, which turns out to be quite untimely. Unfortunately she is welcomed by an unexpected hurricane and a massive amount of death.
While many of the Island’s inhabitants meet an unfortunate end, it’s actually who Lea meets…
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 