The only thing we have to fear… is everything!
By JH Glaze
Last September I attended a large convention here in Atlanta called Dragon Con. This is an annual event for fans of Gaming, SciFi, Horror, Anime and the like. I was really there to promote my first book that had been printed and arrived two days before. I didn’t have a table, I was simply walking around handing out flyers and talking to people.
While I was there, I happened to attend a talk by a woman who called herself Paranormal Sarah. There was really nothing unusual about her. She wasn’t psychic or really even a ghost hunter or any of the labels we might put on someone with a name like that. She was just someone with a degree in Psychology who chose to focus her practice on fear and the occult.
Her presentation was based on the top ten fears that people generally suffer from. The fear of heights was one of mine, but the thing that impressed me about the talk was the fact that the things people fear most are not monsters. They fear normal everyday things. Things such as water, spiders, cats, balloons and believe it or not, even clowns.
I had often thought about fear in regards to my personal life. Things like trying to start a business, beginning a new relationship, buying a house for the first time, all stressful to most anyone, but all of that stress stemming from some type of fear.
As a writer of Horror/ Paranormal /Thrillers, my job is to take simple things or situations in your daily life and show you the terror that lies within them. If I can effectively do this, I can send those chills up your spine that you are looking for when you spend $12.95 on one of my paperback books.
My colleague, Stephen King is one of the masters at working with ordinary things and situations and turning them into objects of fear. For example when Cujo, a Saint Bernard contracts rabies, Mr. King took an animal that is associated with saving lives and turned it into a ruthless killer. Cujo was hell bent on killing innocent people. Or when the car, Christine, is possessed by demons and runs people over, you don’t expect to see that type of behavior in a classic car with no driver. Shit like that just doesn’t happen.
So I have decided to practice my SK skills and for a while, focus on writing very short stories about objects and situations that at once appear to be normal or the way we usually see them. I plan to put a twist on them to create something that you wouldn’t expect. I’m going to be posting these stories on my JH Glaze Facebook page for free, and you can follow along as I write them. While you are reading them, keep in mind that I am not spending days or hours thinking about these. I’ll sit at my computer, write for 20 or 30 minutes and you will get to see the result.
I hope you will join me for this experiment, and let me know what you think of the daily story. This is your chance to really interact with the author immediately, from my mind to yours. In the process, I hope I can send those chills up your spine and entertain you with my imagination. Thanks for reading!
You can purchase JH Glaze's books here.
You can stalk JH at his Website or Facebook, where he has The Spirit Box and NorthWest
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