“What’s that?” Jake shouted. I crossed the boat to see what he was pointing at. There was something under the water. A soft glow was visible. Small and concentrated like a flashlight.
“Uh, fish maybe?” I said.
“Glowing fish?” dad rolled his eyes.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s called bioluminescence.” Dad stared at me the way he often did when he wasn’t sure if I was having him on. “Seriously, Google it when we get back.”
“First hums, now glowing fish,” dad said.
“It’s moving,” Jake said. The humming grew louder. I could feel it rumbling through my body. Smaller items on the boat were shaking. “It’s moving real fast.” I looked over the side of the boat to see Jake was right. The light was moving, it was racing back and forth under the boat and getting bigger with each lap.
“It’s coming up,” I realised. “Shit, we need to move now!”
March seems to have turned into the month of sharing my work with you. Below is a short which is my first, and possibly only, attempt at Sci-Fi Horror.
I was in my thirties when I saw the other ship.
It was a calm night, and the sea was quiet. Only the soft sound of waves brushing against the boat prevented total silence. The sound was rhythmic and soothing, adding to my sense of peace. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of the sea.
“We should have taken this up years ago,” my dad said, settling back in his chair and cracking open his third beer.
“Yup, told ya so,” Jake, my dad’s lifelong friend and current roommate, smirked. “You should have listened to me.”
“Night fishing hardly sounds glamourous,” I said. “Especially when the only experience we have of it is you getting in at 5 in the morning reeking of beer and fish guts with nothing to show for it.”
“Fish is not the reason I come fishing,” Jake said. “It’s for the peace, the beer and the atmosphere.”
“And now the company,” dad said. Jake held out his beer can for a clink and the two laughed.
“I have to admit,” I said. “This is peaceful.”
It was pitch black except for the moon, a few stars, and the light of the boat. Jake was right, this was peaceful. There was something infinitely soothing about a calm sea at night. I decided that I might have to take them up on the offer to tag along on a few more trips.
“This is nice, just the sound of the sea,” Jake said, echoing my thoughts.
“It would be even nicer if you’d shut up,” Dad said. Jake laughed.
We sat in comfortable silence, listening to the sea wash against the side of the small fishing boat.
I was drifting off when dad shook me.
“Did you hear that?” he said. I sat up, blinked the sleep from my eyes and listened, but all I could hear was the sea and Jake softly snoring in his chair. Nothing else.
I’m so thrilled with the feedback I’ve received for A Man in Winter and I want to thank you all.
Every now and then, when I need cheering up or reminding that imposter Syndrome is a total %^&*! I pop back on Amazon and give the reviews a read.
A smooth flowing structured story told from the rarest of characters-the elderly.
A Man in Winter made my heart weep for Arthur.
Katie Marie blends the line between reality and the supernatural.
I think I read this in two sittings and the ending is really explosive!
I loved the way the author takes us deeper and deeper into Arthur’s world. She skillfully weaves an elaborate web of threads, intertwining one with the other until the reader is as unsure as Arthur as to what is real and what is not.
A Man In Winter is also told with real heart.
So, yeah, I really want everyone to know just how much I really appreciate you taking the time to give me such lovely feedback. It really makes my days brighter.
Today I want to share with you the first few paragraphs of Walk in the Woods, these are subject to change.
Late afternoon turned into early evening when we got the call—another body in the woods.
A local hiker had found the body of a young boy seven miles out from Oak Heath, our remote small town, and a mile or so away from the road. The body was up a longleaf pine tree, right up in the topmost branches. While I had seen bigger longleaf pines in these woods, there was no way a child could have climbed that high.
“It was just random luck,” the hiker said when Roy sent me to question him. “I was taking a break, and I sat back against the tree. It was then that I noticed the gloves hanging from a branch.”
“I see.” I nodded.
“I was going to grab them. It was a pair of children’s gloves, the kind that ties together so that the kid won’t lose them if they take them off.” He paused, covering his mouth.
“Take your time.” I tried to hide my impatience; sound sympathetic.
“I’m fine,” the hiker waved his hand. “I jumped to grab them. They were on the lowest branch and hanging down. I thought I could get them.”
“Still a good eight or nine feet up,” I said.
“They caught on the branch. I pulled hard and a hat fell. I looked up, and that’s when I saw him.” He coughed, his fist coming up to cover his mouth again, his skin paled.
“All right,” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get you sat down.” I led him away from my team, who were currently puzzling over how to retrieve the body.
“I’m fine,” the hiker kept muttering as I sat him down.
“Just sit here. The police will be here soon, and we’ll get you back into town.”
“Thanks,” he said, his eyes distant. “I’m fine, I just don’t… I mean, how’d he get up there?”
“That’s what we’ll figure out,” I lied. “Stay here a minute.” I headed over to the team. The air felt thick, I could feel the woods around me, like a tangible thing, I could feel it’s glee at having killed this kid. This place was evil. The team was quiet, usually, they’d be making off-colour attempts at humour by now, to deal with the uncomfortable truth that we were retrieving a body rather than a person. But the off-colour humour never materialised when the body belonged to a kid. Everyone was quiet.
I stopped next to Roy, my boss. He was a short man, seeming wider than he was tall. His face was a permanent angry red beneath the immense moustache that I swear he was growing to compensate for the lack of hair on his head.
“Well?” Roy barked at me.
“Taking a break, saw the gloves and looked up,” I shrugged. “Just lucky.”
“Some luck,” Roy said. I couldn’t see his mouth move under the facial hair. It gave the impression that he was telepathic. At least it would have if I hadn’t been able to smell the nicotine on his breath. “Speaking of luck, I wouldn’t want to be the one to get the body down. Looks like it’s wedged in tight.” Roy turned to face the rest of the group.
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” Derek said.
“Shut up! Who asked you?” Roy snapped.
“What do you mean?” I ignored Roy and walked over to Derek. The hard set of his jaw and narrowed eyes as he looked up had ice running down my back. Derek, while being built like Hercules, was usually one of my more light-hearted workmates. His tone had me on edge.
“Look at the branches.” He gestured up. “And the ones above them.” I followed his gaze and saw the branches were all in bits.
“The top ones are broken. You think the body was up higher?”
“Yup.” Derek let out a sigh. “With the weather picking up, I’m surprised the kids is still as high as he is.” As if summoned the wind rose, making the topmost branches shake and the leaves rustle. We watched with bated breath as the tree moved and the slight form swayed in the branches. I half expected it to fall, but it remained stubbornly in the tree.
“The damn police better get-” Roy started but was stopped by a loud snap followed by a cacophony of branches breaking and cloth tearing. My stomach clenched as the slight frame, dwarfed by a pale blue raincoat, tumbled down out of the tree. The sound that tiny body made when it hit the ground will stay with me till I’m old and grey. The body was limp, a dead weight. It landed with an unnerving crunch as parts of the kid broke on impact and a popping sound as his skin split under the force of his landing. A bag of crisps burst apart under too much pressure.
“Fuck!” Derek yelled. Behind me, I could hear the new girl, Sandra, losing her dinner.
Lately, when I’ve been logging into the website to do housekeeping, check stats etc, I’ve noticed WordPress has been offering writing prompts.
I’ve been amused by some but mostly indifferent. But this one today seemed to be in line with my theming so I thought why not, I’ll throw my hat in the ring.
This is the entire theme around my current work in progress titled the Grey House. The opening few lines are as follows:
I was 37 years old when I died, and it was far more of an embuggerance than I was expecting it to be.
Not being religious, I always thought of death in simple terms. Death was the end of life, nothing more of less. Regardless of when or how death turns up for each of us, it is always the end. I did not think there would be anything after. To me, the nothingness after life is what made life important. This was all we got, so better make the most of it.
I certainly did not expect death to be the catalyst that would turn my steady and predictable existence into one of abject horror and danger. I take the entire experience very personally.
For my MC in this story death is the trigger which sets off his entire character arc and changes his perspective on himself, the people around him and the community as a whole.
Now, most people probably won’t get the kind of experience my MC does in this story, they might not (I say might because who actually knows) be able to contemplate their own faults after death and see how they went down the path they did.
Most of us experience death in a third-hand kind of way, when someone we know, perhaps someone close to us dies and we have to adjust to life without them. It can certainly change our perspective. I remember when my gran died and my mum lost the sole pillar of support she’d set herself up with. I got to see how her way of looking at the world changed. It was difficult to watch at times.
Some of us have closer brushes with death, perhaps an illness that we have to fight to beat, or an accident we must recover from.
Both of these are bound to make us more aware of our own frailty and that’s terrifying.
But then perhaps this is why some of us read horror, to expose ourselves to death, in a safe and controlled way, almost like CBT. A safe controlled exposure in order to lessen the negative effects over time. It’s the control thing that gets me most of all, we read these books and witness terrible and tragic events but are ourselves completely separate from it in all but an emotional sense.
A Man in Winter was featured on Alyanna Poe’s Indie Horror Website 😀
“Writing him taught me a lot, but most of all it taught me that I want to write more stories from the perspective of those the horror genre doesn’t always give the loudest voice to.”
I’m totally late to the party on this one. I didn’t realise the Strange Aeon 2022: Hopeful Monsters anthology came out in October!
Strange Aeon: 2022: Hopeful Monsters
Tales by international authors: Brett Venter, John Wolf, S. Cameron David, Damir Salkovic, Aaron Beardsell, Katie Marie, Tim Mendees, M. Stern, Victoria Dalpe, Conor Powers-Smith, Miguel Fliguer, Tias Teng andRoelof Goudriaan. With your host, M. Keaton and original art by Joel Martin.
Featuring my short story… The Painted Lady
It was accepted, by all who knew him, that my uncle, Marcus Finch, was an odd man.
His neighbors, when I had asked, described him as the quiet sort, the neighbor who might smile at you as you passed but who rarely spoke a word. He was small and fussy and never seen in the company of anyone. His curtains never opened, but his windows were clean. He never relaxed in his garden, but his lawn was well kept. He dressed in bland clothes and shuffled quietly when he walked, rarely speaking beyond the occasional polite acknowledgement.
In short, Marcus Finch gave no other human being a reason to notice or pay him any attention.
Until he died.
Then he became something of a local celebrity, and then an urban legend. So much so that when my history lecturer demanded we write a paper about an interesting ancestor, I immediately thought of my uncle.
I promise not every recommendation is going to be for my own stuff.
Honest.
But I did kind of get two books published this year 🙂
A Man in Winter
Arthur, whose life was devastated by the brutal murder of his wife, must come to terms with his diagnosis of dementia. He moves into a new home at a retirement community, and shortly after, has his life turned upside down again when his wife’s ghost visits him and sends him on a quest to find her killer so her spirit can move on. With his family and his doctor concerned that his dementia is advancing, will he be able to solve the murder before his independence is permanently restricted?
A Man in Winter examines the horrors of isolation, dementia, loss, and the ghosts that come back to haunt us.
The Gentleman has an interest in the paranormal, the unexplained and the bizarre. He uses his influence and power to investigate strange events and collect evidence. His collection is comprised of this evidence, as well as files and reports of the events.
My job is to build files, take deliveries and keep the place free from dust and mold.
Building files involves taking all the information and evidence the Gentleman has delivered to my door, and collating and annotating it to tell the story of what happened. Sometimes, when the Gentleman has got enough evidence, I can tell an entire story.
Two months ago, I took deliveries for an event we’re calling Firefly. It’s a very detailed case, and there’s enough evidence of a threat to warrant people being warned. This is a copy of the complete Archive report.
It all started when seven-year-old Simon Thompson vanished.
Who will forgive an author a shameless plug now and then?
Who doesn’t love a good ghost story around Halloween?
Oh look at that, a ghost story!
Arthur, whose life was devastated by the brutal murder of his wife, must come to terms with his diagnosis of dementia. He moves into a new home at a retirement community, and shortly after, has his life turned upside down again when his wife’s ghost visits him and sends him on a quest to find her killer so her spirit can move on. With his family and his doctor concerned that his dementia is advancing, will he be able to solve the murder before his independence is permanently restricted?
A Man in Winter examines the horrors of isolation, dementia, loss, and the ghosts that come back to haunt us.
The Gentleman has an interest in the paranormal, the unexplained and the bizarre. He uses his influence and power to investigate strange events and collect evidence. His collection is comprised of this evidence, as well as files and reports of the events.
My job is to build files, take deliveries and keep the place free from dust and mold.
Building files involves taking all the information and evidence the Gentleman has delivered to my door, and collating and annotating it to tell the story of what happened. Sometimes, when the Gentleman has got enough evidence, I can tell an entire story.
Two months ago, I took deliveries for an event we’re calling Firefly. It’s a very detailed case, and there’s enough evidence of a threat to warrant people being warned.
This is a copy of the complete Archive report.
It all started when seven-year-old Simon Thompson vanished.
Letters from a Horror Writer 