John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller will potentially change your life. You need this book, if you haven’t read it yet! His surgically precise analysis of story cuts deeper than what you would normally find in any other how-to writing book on the market. His industry knowledge will forever change the concept of three-act structure for the reader, and offer you 22 steps to a more masterful story. My copy of this book is underlined to death. Initially I found this mentioned in a conversation about screenwriting, but my thought was that anything which works for the screen can also potentially work for a novel. With a short story, as he mentions, you may not run through all 22 steps he lays out, but you may hit on the first 7 at least. Outside of his 22 steps, there’s a lot of other interesting concepts and analysis mentioned throughout the book that might activate your creativity in some new way.

Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is such an important book for any horror novelist or writer in general to read. It is part autobiography, part writer’s guide. In his book King discusses the importance of making writing a daily habit as well as the grind every author will go through with both failures and success. His is an amazing struggle-to-success story. Kings writing style is more intuitive, and his books tend to be based on situation rather than story. King says, “I want to put a group of characters in some sort of predicament and then watch them try to work themselves free.” He never places demands on his characters. This book covers an array of information and insight that I think any writer would find useful.

So, I finally got around to building my horror author website. I’m pretty close to having book one finished. And also pretty close to having another project *finally* completed for my publishing house, Caliber Press. I decided to give myself the goal of trying to do most of the site’s main features in one day, that way I can begin to populate it with flash fiction, short stories, and other content as it happens. The main purpose right now is to have a networking fingerprint, but I also need a site for marketing when my books finally roll out one day. I like the idea of being able to share everything that inspires my journey into horror for now.

There was no long-term plan for me to write horror, though I’ve always been a fan of the genre. I knew since I was very young that I wanted to be a writer. When I was living in Germany as a child we had limited channels on television and relied pretty heavily on VHS tapes for American visual entertainment, though we did watch our fair share of German cartoons. My mom had a mountain of Disney, but she also had a lot of other VHS tapes. My favorite of these was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. I used to make my mom watch it nearly every day. I knew I wanted to become a storyteller like Melissa Mathison and Steven Spielberg one day, even if I never caught that level of fame. Stories are a gift to share with others, even if its an audience of one.

I’m not really a ‘scary’ person by nature, so in the beginning I looked at this genre as a challenge ~ an Everest of sorts. I have a tote of unfinished manuscripts in other genres that might even be easier for me to complete, but horror seemed elusive, and yet I had a story to tell. Darkness had always been just at the recesses of everything in my life, and I’ve managed to live through some crazy experiences. My idea for my upcoming debut novel came one winter day in December. My father was looking for a place for us to get our Christmas tree, and he found a farm on Craigslist. The ad was sketchy. I thought, Great, we’re going to be murdered! And here was the start of my dive into a novel that has since grown horrors of its own. As I’ve been working on that project, I’ve been developing other ideas for future works in horror, so my arsenal is ready to go.

I found myself in a strange gray room with no entry or exit. Inside the room was a hooded figure behind a massive gray desk with only enough light to illuminate us.

“Welcome, welcome. We’ve recently renamed hell to The Deeply Deep, and you’re going to be sentenced to an eternity there for beating a horse to death with a spoon. The name change is part of our rebranding strategy to make Hell seem less unwelcoming. We are, after all, just below where most people already are. We’re not even sure how you managed it. Spoons aren’t exactly blunt objects, and horses are relative sturdy creatures.”

I gave the hooded figure behind the desk a long, hard stare. “It was an oversized spoon. And the horse was really just a foal, no bigger than a pony.”

“Where does one even get an oversized spoon?” It tilted its head quizzically.

“From VastMart. It was decorative, you know, for the kitchen.” I explained.

It sat behind a desk with a quill and ink, busying itself on a long piece of parchment. I wasn’t sure if I should be looking at him, speaking, or doing something else. I felt uncomfortable just standing there.

“What do you suppose hell will be like?” I asked the figure. The color had left my face long ago, and I knew for certain I had died.

“Remember, it’s the Deeply Deep now. Oh, we try to fit the punishment to the crime, so there will be a bunch of horses there with spoons to bash your brains in for all eternity.” It said matter-of-factly.

“More than just the one horse?” I grasped my chin with my right hand, thinking deeply about the equity in that.

“We try.” the cloaked figure said flatly.  “I think you’ll find that just as life isn’t fair, death can be even less so.”

“We have a program if you don’t like that option,” It added, scribbling away on the parchment.

“Of course I don’t like that option! What’s the program?!”

“Why’d you kill a baby horse with a spoon anyway?” It set the quill down on the desk.

“I thought the horse was already dead.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No, it was sleeping. I was drunk and thought it would be funny to beat a dead horse because of the idiom. Had I known it was just sleeping, I wouldn’t have done what I did.” I gazed down at the floor, shamefully.

The cloaked figure took the piece of parchment and ripped it into several pieces that disintegrated into dust.

“Well, unfortunately, it seems that you murdered this horse, therefore you don’t qualify for the aforementioned program, but you do get to roll a D20 to determine how much damage you’ll take for eternity.” It skipped a glowing black 20-sided die across the ash-colored desk towards me.

Staring down out at its 20 different possibilities, none of which were 0, my heart beat quickened. The best I could hope for in this situation was a low number. I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, picked up the die and held it in both of my hands, praying silently for all the luck that I could muster. I jostled the die inside my palms and shaking it into my right hand, I released it onto the desk. It bounced once, twice, and then once more before settling on the table. I could not believe the final outcome. The die had landed on the largest possible number. “Re-Roll!” I yelled, indignantly.

Just then a door appeared in the side of the wall. And several hooded figures with scythes drifted into the room and escorted me away. The matter was hopeless. My fate of eternity sealed by a mere roll of the die. “Please, once more! Any number is better than 20!” I pleaded.

“Enjoy your accommodations in the Deeply Deep!” the hooded figure yelled through the doorway.

Back in the gray room, the hooded figure tossed the die in the air, it landed on the desk. The figure didn’t even need to look at it to know that it landed on twenty again.

It always lands on 20 here, in the Deeply Deep, it thought amusingly.

It turned to the other wall, calling out, “Next!”