Yesterday I read through all my published Halloween stories so far and it was pretty wild! (I can see why my entry for Machine of Death Vol 2 was rejected... it does get good, by the end; maybe just chop off the entire first part I don't know.) They're all, in fact, far from perfect; Midnight Cat of Rustling Leaves is probably the best, and that's got some weird jank to it itself, where it takes a sudden swerve into comedy as the segue into introducing the titular feline. Funny House is pretty good, if you can see past the massive massive extent it wears its influences on its sleeve (The Machinist, Candle Cove.)
I bring all this up to say that a great deal of the jankitiness in a lot of these are artifacts stemming from the very specific imagery that inspired the stories, which I tried to build around or build from or shoehorn in, frequently running out of time to do them elegantly. In many an instance, taken straight from the dream that became the story ($20 is the only amount that isn't infinity dollars.*)
And I bring that up to say that tomorrow's story isn't based off a dream at all! I've been having dreams lately, quite vivid ones, many of them fueled with the specific strain of anxiety that powered what became "the rope slackening in your hand." So like, I could turn them spooky, I guess. But rather not: I like my idea too much.
It's going to be called something along the lines of, Here We See the Rather Long Hallway. It was inspired by watching security camera video, realizing it was an intriguing horror proposition, then taking that idea and making it as un-Five Nights at Freddy's as possible upon realizing that security camera video horror from the perspective of the viewer has already been done- and is in fact a major motion picture in cinemas now.
*BED SHEET has a very weird racial imaginary, and I find it utterly baffling that we didn't really go anywhere with the young Black kid in the old plantation-style home: I'm glad BED SHEET wasn't submitted to Machine of Death, I guess.
(Speaking of weird racial imaginary, if I can't work on my Rather Ongoing Project I guess I should spend November Nanowrimoing the revised draft of Anachronominion with all those ideas I said I have...)
No comments:
Post a Comment