September zipped by pretty quick, didn’t it? That must mean my ninth book is finished.
Well, finished is a strong word to use. I’ve certainly stopped writing it for the time being. I ended up with a word count of 21, 203 which is OK I guess, although a lot of the content was pretty un-good. I’m not saying that to be modest, by the way, I am saying it because it’s true – there’s some real nonsense in there. It didn’t help that I only really came up with a story that might work last Wednesday, with two days to go. Perhaps there is something to be said for forward planning after all…
Anyway, let us draw a gauzy curtain over that because now it is October which can only mean one thing – horror. How could I choose any other genre for the month of Samhuinn?
Last night my BFF came round bearing DVDs of The Thing and Fright Night, which seemed as good a preparation as any (although she didn’t bring them because of this, it was more that they are two of her favourite films and I’ve not seen them). I can now officially conclude they are both excellent pieces of cinema and the upcoming prequel/remakes are blatantly redundant.
They also got me thinking a bit about what on earth I’m going to do this month, because as yet I am sans plot, characters, setting, etc. My first inclination would be to try and do something scary but humorous, more Fright Night than Thing. But that would still require an idea that could run and run, which I don’t have. I have lots of little ideas that could perhaps be built into one narrative but to be honest my brain is a bit of a wreck and I’m not sure where to start.
Fortunately an epiphany reached me in the shower, in the bubbly embrace of Imperial Leather’s Softly Softly shower cream. I don’t have to force myself to come up with one narrative at all. In the great tradition of horror writers like H.P.Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, this month I am going to do a book of short stories. I will aim to do one every day of around 1500 words, and maybe out of 31 I’ll end up with some stories that can be knitted together into a novel when I come back to them later. If I don’t, who cares? Short stories are cool.
With that in mind, I have a few ideas for pieces to write over the next few days, but it would be awesome to get the rest of the world involved to. So here’s my suggestion – you leave me a comment below telling me your greatest fear, or a minor fear if you prefer, and I will write a story about it.
I hereby solemnly swear I will write a story for every commenter, and I will post it when it’s done for all to see.
Right now though I must leave – I’ve got a story involving Japanese spider crabs to do. Dear god they’re creepy looking.
12 Books in 12 Months 
October 1, 2011 at 4:44 pm
Minor fear? Hmmmmm… How about being infected with a virus that makes my own flesh the only thing I can eat?
October 1, 2011 at 7:14 pm
Haha, sure, that’s a pretty small concern.. consider it done 🙂
October 1, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Teeth and eyes – more specifically them coming out. I have a reoccurring nightmare about my teeth falling out, and it seems so real that when I wake up I’m surprised when my tongue touches my teeth and they’re there.
Also the fear of eyeballs has been there since I was young. I think it might have stemmed from Indiana Jones. I remember running out of the room screaming, though possibly I was already afraid of them.
October 1, 2011 at 7:18 pm
I have teeth dreams occasionally, and my sister has a dream dictionary, so: apparently it has to do with anxiety issues about how other people perceive you? Not sure I buy that… But it’s always horrific, thus a great horror story subject!
Eyeballs on their own are pretty freaky looking things too. I think you might have two stories here, Babs!
October 1, 2011 at 8:08 pm
I had heard that, well that it’s about anxiety – I heard it on loose women…
Saw this on QI and thought it could be fun: Anthophobia is the fear of flowers.
“The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some giant cat” SYLVIA PLATH (1932-63) Tulips
Ok I’ll stop posting now, I feel like I’m being a creepster.
lovingly from outside your window.
October 1, 2011 at 5:36 pm
Canulas, PICC lines, needles – basically anything that pierces and goes underneath the skin. Including bugs that burrow under the skin and you can see them moving around your body as moving lumps under the skin.
October 1, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Ooh, good thought. I remember reading in a magazine one of those ‘real life’ stories where a girl was on holiday and a spider had burrowed into her foot and laid eggs in there – horrible! Excellent way to make people go ‘eurgh’ though.
Actually to combine these two comments, there are a few horror movies that combine the eyes and the needles to terrifying effect – a Japanese one called Audition and an Italian one, Terror at the Opera, spring to mind. Think I’m going to freak myself out coming up with something for this one..
October 2, 2011 at 7:25 am
Great pic and post!
http://anilbalan.com/
October 2, 2011 at 9:35 am
You know those dog multi-leads? Well a man used to come into my bedroom with wolves on a multi-lead or sometimes… sharks. The sharks swam in air. Thankfully it hasn’t happened for 20 years or so, he’s probably working in Disney land (:
October 4, 2011 at 7:56 pm
That’s interesting, I like the idea of someone walking sharks instead of dogs… I’m not sure I’d want him unleashed on Disney Land though!
October 3, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Surely I’ve told you about my thing about wrists? How I have a weird thing about them because the veins are so exposed? People can’t touch mine, I shudder at the thought. I was watching True Blood the other day and sometimes the vampire’ll bite their own wrist and feed the blood into someone who’s dying because the vampire blood will help them live (as vampires are immortal, obvs…). And it’s horrendous. I can’t watch it. Imagine someone biting into your wrist! Or rather, don’t, because it’s awful. But I think you could get a creepy wrist story going…
October 4, 2011 at 7:58 pm
I’m not sure if you’ve told me about that or not… but I do seem to remember conversing about veins so maybe it was part of that. Maybe just a story about a giant, pulsating wrist, yeah?! Or something a bit more subtle/creepy. I will think on.
October 4, 2011 at 10:05 pm
I have a fear of going round a corner quickly and being impaled on a pointy thing, which I blame entirely on Dog Soldiers. Also falling into a disguised pit of spikes. Spikes and other big pointy spikey things apparently scare me.
October 5, 2011 at 8:43 am
To be fair, it’s a pretty rational thing to be wary of spikes.. Still, that has given me the beginings of what might be quite a good story idea. Thanks!
October 6, 2011 at 1:52 pm
When I was a teenager (when I lived in a house in the country, rather than on the top floor of a tenement in a city), I used to be creeped out by the idea that, on dark nights, when the lights were on inside and the curtains were open, someone could be standing right outside the window, staring in, and you wouldn’t see them. Maybe you’d get a glimpse of their shape the instant you turned the light out, in the split second it takes the filament of the bulb to stop burning, before the room went as black as the fields outside. How long had they been standing there for? Why were they just staring in? Where had they come from? Were they even human?
I could work myself into quite a state – so much so that there were some nights I simply couldn’t make myself turn the lights off at all.
Like I said, I live on the top floor of a tenement now. I know the city’s much more dangerous than the village where I grew up, but I’ve never been even half as scared here.
October 6, 2011 at 5:54 pm
That’s terrifying. I remember opening the curtains at night once and my sister’s cat was on the windowsill staring at me. I jumped pretty high.