FRIDAY THE 13TH NEWSLETTER
The Fifth Dispatch
Hi, friends! Happy October and happy Friday the 13th!
Welcome to the fifth Dreadful Dispatch. Having written five issues of my newsletter now, it feels like a decent time to ask my readers and friends: Is there anything in the Dreadful Dispatch that you’d like to see more of? Anything not in the Dispatch that you think would be good to include going forward? I’d love suggestions—I might not implement every one, but I would be happy to consider any ideas.
Halloween is just around the corner and I’m in full swing with horror movies and planning my kids’ costumes and a trip to a pumpkin patch. Between all the fun events and the spooky vibes and the relief from summer’s heat, Fall is my favorite time of year.
THE WRITING
Drafting OVER THE RIVER is going well! I am so…close…to being done with this first draft, but with the return to school last month (which also means, for me, the return to my day job) and Life Stuff happening, writing time has slowed down a little, but we’re back in the swing of things now! I’m hesitant to predict when I’ll be done with this draft with too much specificity, because I’ve made such predictions before and they seem to invite the universe to send disruptions, but it won’t be long now.
I will say, I’m at the part of any of my horror novel drafts that is my favorite to write, which definitely helps.
I outline my books really extensively before I begin drafting. Plotting isn’t for everyone (writing methods are not one-size-fits-all), but it’s a framework that works best for me. Having the plan laid out helps me keep on track and it also helps me stay excited—I can look a little ahead and remind myself, “Ooh, right, in the next scene I get to write this weird stuff I’m really looking forward to!” I’m at the point in this draft when every new scene is an “Ooh, nice, I get to write that next” scene.
While drafting of OVER THE RIVER has slowed down a little, my final tweaks on These Familiar Walls have been pushed back a bit. I’m still really excited to jump back into that book and look at it again with fresh eyes—I first wrote the book a little over three years ago and then participated in a mentorship and novel revision program called Pitch Wars with it, which meant spending a lot of time rereading and revising the same book over and over. There sometimes comes a point (my writer friends, you get it) where you just have to put it down and step away, so that you can come back to it like it’s new again. I’m so looking forward to coming back to These Familiar Walls soon.
And of course, in the meantime things are moving on The Cut, which will be my debut from St. Martin’s Press. I don’t have any big, sharable news on that front yet, but progress is being made and things are happening. So far that progress hasn’t meant putting new projects aside temporarily to focus on The Cut again, but if/when it does mean that, then the other books will just have to wait for me. And it does mean that we’re closer and closer to the fun-to-share parts!
A STRANGE AND TRUE STORY
I saw this post on Twitter the other day and was all set to reply to it when I realized the story would never, ever fit into a single tweet. And since it’s October, and Friday the 13th, and Halloween is around the corner, I figured instead I’d share one of my most unsettling real life stories with you here, instead.
(Quick caveat, this is a true story and also something that I am recalling from nearly twenty years ago; I’m not going to be writing this with the prose I would use in a short story or in my novels, this is just me sharing an unsettling memory with you all.)
This happened back when I was somewhere in the 18 to 21 age range, and across the way from my mom’s backyard was a relatively new church with a small parking lot out front and a large parking lot out back. The back of my mom’s home faced the side of the church, so from our house and our neighbor’s houses both of the church’s parking lots and the small, barren hill behind the back parking lot were easily visible.
Next door to my mom lived one of my younger sister’s best friends, and my sister, her friend, and her friend’s boyfriend spent a lot of time together between the two houses. I lived with my dad at the time, so I spent a little less time with all of them, but we all hung out pretty regularly anyway.
One night I was there chilling and the three of them exchanged a significant glance before the friend’s boyfriend suggested we take a walk. It was a small town on a fall weeknight and there was not much else to do, and we often went on walks when we were bored, so I didn’t think anything of it.
The friend’s boyfriend led the way around a drainage ditch and across to the well-lit back parking lot of the small town church. From there we headed for the hill.
It wasn’t a normal hill, it was wide and low and flat on top, almost rectangular, probably a byproduct of the construction of the church in some way. Mostly bare dirt and scruffy grass, it was bordered by a thin line of mostly bare trees on three sides, with a cluster of pines forming a particularly shadowy corner. As we climbed up onto the hill, a feeling of foreboding filled me. A tightness in my chest, a quickness to my breath. I stared up, ahead, at where the easy way up the slope reached the hilltop. It was a clear night and the moon was bright but not full, and I could easily see that nobody waited atop the hill, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they did.
At this point the others had hung back, let me take the lead. I reached the top and a powerful shiver crawled down my spine. I stared around at the quiet darkness and said, “Something feels wrong here.” We wandered around the wide, flat hilltop for a few moments and I drifted in the others’ wake as they made their way closer to that shadowy corner. Before we’d gone far a sense of panic flooded me. I couldn’t take my eyes off those shadows. Nothing stood there, nothing watched from the darkness, I could hear nothing strange breathing or moving, and that absence felt all wrong. Something should have stood there, eyes should have gleamed out of the shadows, a shuffle or breaking twig should have broken the silence. The spot was empty but it should not have been. I pointed at that corner of the trees and I said, “I will not go over there.”
Shortly after that the anchorless fear grew stronger, clawing up my spine and prickling my scalp, and I said, “We need to leave, now.”
The others agreed. Halfway down the hill another shiver took me and, without thinking about it, I told the others, “Don’t look back.” We made it halfway across the parking lot and I said, “The lights are all about to turn off.”
They did.
We hurried the rest of the way back to my sister’s friend’s house in darkness.
Once inside, they told me that they had set that walk up on purpose. The friend’s boyfriend was something of a hobbyist ghost hunter in his spare time, and on a night like that one earlier in the week they’d been bored and had decided to go for a walk. On that earlier night their decision to go to that parking lot and the hill behind it had really been spontaneous, not orchestrated. But the friend’s boyfriend and my sister had felt uneasy the moment they’d begun climbing the hill. At the top of the hill, both my sister and her friend’s boyfriend described a shivering sensation of fear, and one of them had announced that there was something wrong there.
They said they’d walked a little way onto the hill and again my sister and her friend’s boyfriend (though not the friend, and she was jealous to have missed it) both felt a sense of menace from the same corner I had. Both said they felt like something was watching them though nothing was there. And the friend’s boyfriend had pointed into that corner and announced, “I will not go over there.” Shortly thereafter, my sister had said, “We need to leave, now.” Halfway down the hill my sister added, “Don’t look back.” On their way across the parking lot toward home, the friend’s boyfriend had warned, “The lights are about to turn off.” And then they did.
My sister and her friend and her friend’s boyfriend had discussed simply telling me about this strange night they’d had, but instead they wanted to see if I would experience anything similar.
And I did. Down to saying the same exact things they’d said, verbatim. Down to the lights turning off on us.
I’m sure there are logical explanations for everything that happened that night. I’m sure there are logical explanations for everything that happened a couple of weeks later when I took a friend of my own onto that same hill. I’m sure there’s some reasonable way to explain what happened when my sister, her friend’s boyfriend, and I took a tape recorder to that hilltop a few weeks after that. But that night and the evenings that happened there later remain among the eeriest things I’ve ever experienced in real life.
(And if readers would like, I can tell the story of what happened after that in a later newsletter!)
RECOMMENDATIONS
I’ve been listening a lot to the Talking Scared Podcast lately. I’m a few years behind on it so I began with the first episode and have been working my way forward. In this podcast the host, Neil McRobert, talks with a different horror author in every episode. McRobert is a good interviewer and, at least at the point I’ve listened to, he brings in great guests. I’ve definitely enjoyed listening to it, and I recommend it.
Right now I’m in the middle of reading Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison (pictured above at the top of my precariously piled TBR stack). I’ll probably review it fully in my next newsletter but I’ll say this right now—it is absolutely on par with her other amazing horror novels, and even though I haven’t finished it yet I’m happy to tell anyone who will listen that they should read it, along with her other books.
A FRIDAY THE 13TH CONFESSION
I have never seen any of the Friday the 13th movies. I know about them, I’m familiar with Jason and his backstory and motivations and his MO. And I like slashers! But somehow this franchise has just kept slipping to the sidelines when I’m picking what to watch next.
And I realized yesterday that this feels like a waste.
So tonight I’m going to watch Friday the 13th for the first time! (I do wish I could go into the movie without knowing so much about it already, but I’m sure it’ll still be fun.)
AND NOW, WHAT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR…
…pet pics
Jupiter, for once not sitting in a chair with her front legs dangling over the edge.
I left an empty box on the counter a few weeks ago and now I can never get rid of it because Noodles has claimed it forever. The box is her home, she loves it, and it is now a permanent part of our kitchen.
Archer, the very best dog, relaxing in the sunlight (not pictured, the cat who jumped on her head for no reason three seconds after this picture was taken).
Okay, no, this is not a pet pic. It’s just a cobweb that I found really aesthetically pleasing.