Woo hoo! I am very proud to announce that daily Halloween stories will start tomorrow at 9:30AM GMT/UTC 🙂 This year’s roster may seem shorter than the stories from the last two years (2023 and 2024)… but the overall word count is higher.
So, what can you expect? Well, it will begin with three short stories – a dark comedy slasher story, a serious psychological horror story and a hastily-written “Silent Hill” parody story (seriously, I ditched no less than three finished – but failed – stories before eventually writing that parody! It was the least-worst option!)… and then there will be something else posted here on the 30th & 31st October as well.
Will this other thing be in the horror genre? Sort of, maybe, partially. Will it be dark and cruel and filled with subtle insidious evil, slow-building dread, a grimly dark world, a dystopian hierarchy, an ominous mystery, quietly malevolent characters and some eerie places? Maybe. Will it be a cheerful piece of family-friendly “YA fiction” with likeable characters and a strong moral message? No, definitely not! Even if it might look like it at the very beginning.
But what is it? Well, if you haven’t worked it out from the clues, it will be a dark fantasy novelette in two parts. A novelette titled “A Witch Does Not Cower In Fear” which I originally wrote to de-stress after writing an – unpublished – splatterpunk/psychological horror novella (called “Apartment 116”) much earlier this year, when I got back into writing for a couple of months.
Yes, in an ideal world, I’d post this – much scarier – “Apartment 116” novella here instead. But, with the internet becoming increasingly censored these days, I probably shouldn’t risk posting something that gruesome and disturbing on here. So, it’s the more “PG-13″/”12A” chills of “A Witch Does Not Cower In Fear” instead. Still, it is more “Halloween-y” in terms of atmosphere, I guess.
Anyway, stay tuned for the first short story tomorrow morning 🙂
