One of my 2020 goals was to read more books. I have a to-be-read pile of both physical and ebooks that is ginormous! I'm definitely in the category of people who like to buy books which may or may not ever get read. However, I'm trying to make a steadfast effort this year to make a dent into that pile. The first book I finished, was Let Sleeping Gods Lie by David J. West. 

The back cover blurb reads as follows:

Louis L’Amour Meets Lovecraft
​Porter Rockwell, wanted for a murder he did not commit, is hiding out in Old California selling whiskey to thirsty forty-niners. When his friends dig up some monstrous bones and a peculiar book and offer to sell it for a helluva price, Porter can’t resist the mystery.
But when both his night bartender and the sellers are murdered at his saloon Porter has to find out what the mysterious artifacts are all about. With some Native American legends, Sasquatch, Lovecraftian horror, and murderous bandits thrown in, not even bullets and blades can stop Rockwell from leaving a swath of righteous carnage in his wake.
Let Sleeping Gods Lie is a weird western fantasy in the vein of classic pulp fiction and Louis L’Amour books. If you like frontier justice, larger-than-life characters, and witty humor, then you will LOVE the first installment of the Cowboys and Cthulhu series.
Buy Let Sleeping Gods Lie to get lost in a horrific weird western adventure today!

I've read several of West's other books, to include his other Porter Rockwell stories. I enjoy West's style of writing as it is very reminiscent of the old pulp adventure stories from back in the day. Now, unless you're new to my blog, you'll know that I'm a sucker for Lovecraftian tales, so when I saw that West was finally merging his Old West stories with Lovecraftian mythos, I was all in. His other Porter Rockwell stories merely touched at the weird and dark, while this one plunges right in with both feet. Here's the review I left on Amazon and Goodreads:

West delivers a story that reads like it's a masterful blend of Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft! I'm a sucker for weird westerns and West never fails to deliver. This story is action packed and hits all the right notes. I loved all the nods to Lovecraft.

West can also paint a scene. All throughout the book there was some wonderful imagery, but this one bit stuck with me:

They rounded a bend and came head on against a like-minded group of riders. Stoney’s men, the Mountain Hounds. When a hard rain falls, who was hit with the first drop? Impossible to say, but the thunder certainly sounded. Pistols and rifles were drawn and fired. Horses and men screamed as they careened together, an avalanche of flesh and lead.

Bottom line, if you like westerns and if you like Lovecraft, then this is the book for you. Do yourself a favor and read it. 

​I recently watched the Netflix Original, In the Tall Grass which was based on a short story written by Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill. After I finished viewing the film, I decided to catch up on the story since I had never read it. In this blog post, I will give a review of both the film and the story, as well as offer some comparisons. We will get into spoilers, but I’ll let you know when those are coming so you can veer away if spoilers aren’t your thang.
 
Let’s dive into the film since I watched it first. The basic premise is that Becky and Cal DeMuth (siblings) are traveling across country on their way to San Diego. Becky is pregnant and she is giving her child up for adoption to a family there. On the way, they stop along the side of the road because Becky gets nauseous and has to throw up. While parked, they hear the voice of a child in the nearby field of tall grass crying for help. They decide to go after the boy and find that getting out of the tall grass is much more than it seems. 

While they are in the field, they eventually meet up with Tobin, a small boy who called them in, his mother, Natalie, and the boy’s father, Ross. The field seems to move things around, making navigation quite difficult. In the center of the field (and quite frankly, the center of everything) is a large standing rock with strange carvings on it.
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I can’t get into much more without spoilers, so I’ll just give you my spoiler-free review on the film. I give it 3.5/5 stars overall. It was a fun premise, it was shot well, and there were some fairly horrifying scenes. Patrick Wilson plays the father of Tobin and does a bang-up job. I like him in almost everything he plays in and he didn’t disappoint in this film. However, it was confusing (more on that below) and I was distracted trying to figure some things out. 

I read the short story hoping it would explain some things, but it didn’t. As I first started reading the short story, I felt as if it were rushing through things too fast and not spending much time with the characters and after reading the first third, I thought the movie was better than the story.
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However, once I finished reading the story, I definitely enjoyed reading it more than I did watching it. It was shorter than the movie (of course) and only took about 20 minutes to read. I can’t tell you how many pages it was, as I read it on my Kindle. However, King and Hill didn’t mess around with the convoluted plot that the film introduced, and instead get right to the root of it all and offer up an extremely horrifying tale. For the short story, I give it a 4/5. There were some very disturbing scenes in the story. I would have given it a full five stars, but I subtracted one mainly because I wanted a little more and I think it could have been made into a novella easily. 

To compare the two, the premise of the story is the same as the movie, and the movie did a good job following the story in the beginning. However, after about 30 minutes, the movie goes off the rails into its own territory and even introduces characters that didn’t appear in the short story. If you like King or Hill’s stories, give the film a watch. I found it enjoyable despite some of the confusion. It’s kind of creepy and has some Lovecraftian/Cosmic vibes.
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Now, let’s get into some nitty-gritty details. WARNING! Spoilers ahead.

Okay, so in the movie, we have Becky and Cal going into the tall grass to look for Tobin. They get separated fairly quickly and the grass doesn’t let them come back together for a while. Meanwhile, Cal finds Tobin, or I should say, Tobin finds Cal. The boy is burying a dead bird and mentions something that the grass doesn’t move dead things and it’s easier to find dead things and all that creepy lore. The statement adds flavor to both the short story and the movie. Although in the short story, Tobin states that the birds stay away and must talk to each other, except the crows, as he finds more crows than any other bird.

Tobin says that to find Becky, Cal will have to follow him to the rock. Once he touches the rock he can see and find her easily because basically the rock knows everything. The same thing happens in the short story.

While Becky is trying to link up with Cal, she runs into Ross, Tobin’s father. He’s acting kind of strange but seems somewhat helpful. Long story short, Ross is linked with the rock and wants to bring Becky and everyone there so they can touch it too. Obviously, Becky doesn’t want to, which I don’t blame her.

Here’s where some confusion sets in. In the movie, we see Tobin touching the rock, which means he should be crazy like Ross. However, later on, Ross acts like Tobin never touched the thing and we gloss over the earlier scene like it was a figment. Also, later on, Becky’s ex-boyfriend, Travis shows up and ends up touching the rock to save her, because apparently once you touch the rock you know all the things, including how to get out of the grass. But instead of going full dark side, he helps her and gets her out. Are we to believe that he fought the influence long enough to save his love? Who knows?
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Small details I suppose, but I kept wondering what the hell was going on? They play with time loops, so perhaps there was a loop where Tobin touched the rock and another one where he doesn’t? I dunno. Anyway, it’s worth a watch, and for sure worth a read. 

I finally finished drafting Alpha Protocol, and I have to say, thank the gods! It's with the editor and a couple beta readers at the moment, but we're on track for a February release. However, once I finished and could release my brain from scramble and write mode, I started daydreaming. What if I had the ability to pick the cast for the hypothetical movie version of Alpha Protocol? Any else ever do that with their books? Anyway, here's who I chose for the main characters:

Captain Thulisile. Lupita Nyong'o. Thuli is the leader of the Alpha Team and has supernatural powers, but she's fighting a shadowy spirit that wants her to give in to her dark urges.

I've seen Lupita Nyong'o in various films and she's awesome in everything she does. I think she could portray Thuli very well and bring a lot to the movie.

Following Thuli, we have everyone's favorite, Special Agent Doyle Johnson. He's appeared in the other two Dark Tyrant books. I needed someone who was older and could play both action and comedy well. I wracked my brain thinking about this for awhile, but then my wife said, Woody Harrelson. It was perfect!

Think of Special Agent Johnson as a Deadpool-esque character that is equal parts badass and insane. 

Next, we have the rest of the Alpha Team. Here we have Sergeant Fergus. A large man with ginger hair. He's quick to anger but takes care of his friends. I picked Kristofer Hivju, or as many of you know him, Tormund from Game of Thrones. 

For the team's sniper, we have Kenshin. He's quiet, funny, and is very into origami. I chose Hiroyuki Sanda. He always shines in everything he's ever been in.

For the team's medic, let me introduce Hanna. As a former Navy corpsman, she brings a lot to the table. I needed a strong actress to play her, so I chose Jessica Chastain. She's amazingly talented. 

Finishing up the team, we have Cheryl, a Crow woman who is also a demolitions expert. She's not one to trifle with so I needed an actress that could bring that kind of seriousness. I chose Native actress, Devery Jacobs.

Next, we have Frank and Holly Phister. They are siblings and lead the Phister & Phister Paranormal Research Squad, or PPRS. I needed another strong actress and someone who could play a funny sidekick. So I chose Brie Larson and Josh Gad.

There are more characters in the book, but these are the ones that get most of the spotlight. For those of you who have read my books, who would you cast for the role of Special Agent Johnson? 

​Today we get to talk with Stephanie Wytovich and learn about her writing and her upcoming poetry collection, The Apocalyptic Mannequin. 

• Who or what inspired you to become an author and poet?

I’ve always loved storytelling, and I’ve been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember, but I became a poet out of necessity for my mental health because I needed a way to process my trauma and the act of writing was extremely therapeutic to me. When I got to high school, I started getting into horror and monsters, and that’s when that part of myself started to grow and howl and get its teeth. Aesthetically, I knew that I loved the genre because it was dark and honest and all about surviving to the end, and so I started writing longer pieces because I wanted to participate in a genre that made me feel so alive. By the time I got to college, I knew that was going to be my focus point, and honestly, I haven’t turned back since.
 

• Tell us about The Apocalyptic Mannequin and what inspired you to write it?

The apocalypse is something that I think—to some degree or another—is on everyone’s mind lately (climate change, policy changes, nuclear threats, etc.) and whether we’re watching it happen in real life, or seeing it spoon-fed to us in entertainment with fantastic movies/TV shows like The Silence, Annihilation, A Quiet Place, Chernobyl, etc., the notion of who/what we became when it’s all been taken away has kept me up thinking most nights.
 
For this collection, I wanted to explore the definition of self when one is pushed to extreme trauma and revelation. I tried to define bodies when the idea of “body” has been lost among the rubble, and through a series of possibilities—whether environmental, religious, monstrous, or human—I performed lobotomies to erase the trauma, and then shocked my characters back to life as they were reborn in a world unfamiliar to them. In a lot of ways, this collection was one of the scarier ones that I’ve written because I put a lot of personal fears, anxieties, and nightmares into it, and while I’ve written about death and grief as a subject matter before, this one felt darker to me in a realer sense because the threat of destruction in a moral or physical sense is something that I feel like I confront every day when I walk outside, when I read a newspaper, when I pick up my prescription at the pharmacy…
 
Lately, the horror just feels more present than it has in the past.
 

• Is your process for writing poetry different than your process for writing short fiction or novels?

 
Very much so! When I write fiction these days, I tend to heavily outline the entire project—with extra attention spent on character and setting description, whereas my poetry tends to be a little more freeform with some light meditation beforehand. For instance, when I have a subject for a poem I want to write, sometimes I storyboard the idea with visuals/art that helps foster that emotion, and other times, I write done words that I associate it. I’m not necessarily outlining the poem itself, but rather my response to the emotion and imagery that I want to convey. In the end, fiction has always been harder for me, so I need a more regimented approach to it opposed to poetry, which has always felt more organic.
 

• I’ve seen online that you practice witchcraft, has that impacted how or what you write?

Since I’ve started practicing, a lot of routines in my life have changed and evolved, and writing has certainly been one of them. But writing is a fickle beast for me these days, because I’ve had to/chose to take on a lot over the past few years (commissions, teaching gigs, editing projects, mentorships, etc.), so for the better part of my life recently, writing has been a do-it-when-you-can, where-you-can occurrence. I write a lot on my breaks at work, in the evenings, sometimes I even talk out loud and record my ideas on my commute in and out of work. So lately, the magic is just in making time and honoring a practice that brings me joy. However, when I do have time, I do like to make a bigger ritual out of it, and a lot of this helps with stress-management, allowing myself to be vulnerable, and most importantly, it gives me permission to relax. In that regard, I like to make my favorite tea, spend some time journaling/working in my visualization notebook, and even light some palo santo.
 

• What’s one of the most surprising things you’ve learned in creating your books and poetry collections?

Oh, this is a hard one! Well, some things I learned over the years and then specifically in my most recent collection, The Apocalyptic Mannequin, are: 1) sometimes you have cut poems that are good but don’t necessarily belong in the collection, 2) don’t write toward a magic number of poems—when the collection is done, it’s done, 3) the order you place your poems in matters and it’s something to spend time thinking about after you’ve finished writing the book, and 4) poetry often comes from a place of intense emotion or feeling and sometimes it’s going to hurt pulling that out, but it will always be worth it in the end.
 

• What’s your next project?

I’m finishing up a project that I’d honestly hoped to have out last year but life kind of snuck up on me and got in the way there for a bit. It will be a novelette titled The Dangers of Surviving a Slit Throat, and it will be a bizarre horror story about a girl and a radio that she picks up at a yard sale. After that, I have a few short stories and essays that I’d like to finish up, so that will keep me busy for a while.
 

• Where can people follow you online to keep up with all your amazing accomplishments (like the fact that you have a selection of poetry out in the recently resurrected Weird Tales)?

I’m active on Facebook, Twitter (@swytovich), Instagram (@swytovich), LinkedIn, and my blog (http://stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com/ ) and my author website (https://www.stephaniemwytovich.com/). 

About The Apocalyptic Mannequin
Doomsday is here and the earth is suffering with each breath she takes. Whether it’s from the nuclear meltdown, the wrath of the Four Horsemen, a war with technology, or a consequence of our relationship with the planet, humanity is left buried and hiding, our bones exposed, our hearts beating somewhere in our freshly slit throats.
This is a collection that strips away civilization and throws readers into the lives of its survivors. The poems inside are undelivered letters, tear-soaked whispers, and unanswered prayers. They are every worry you’ve had when your electricity went out, and every pit that grew in your stomach watching the news at night. They are tragedy and trauma, but they are also grief and fear, fear of who—or what—lives inside us once everything is taken away.
These pages hold the teeth of monsters against the faded photographs of family and friends, and here, Wytovich is both plague doctor and midwife, both judge and jury, forever searching through severed limbs and exposed wires as she straddles the line evaluating what’s moral versus what’s necessary to survive.
What’s clear though, is that the world is burning and we don’t remember who we are.
So tell me: who will you become when it’s over?
What They’re Saying -
“Like a doomsday clock fast-forwarding to its final self-destruction, Wytovich’s poetry will give you whiplash as you flip through page after page. The writing here is ugly yet beautiful. It reads like a disease greedily eating up vital organs. The apocalypse has arrived and it couldn’t be more intoxicating!”
—Max Booth III, author of Carnivorous Lunar Activities
“In this hauntingly sensuous new collection of poetry, you’ll long to savor every apocalyptic nightmare you have ever feared. Blooming in the beauty of destruction and the terror of delight, Stephanie M Wytovich’s poems remind us that we feel the world better, love the world better, when we recognize the ephemeral nature of everything achingly alive beyond our mannequin minds. Here, we are captive to our deepest velvet snarls, zombie songs, and radioactive wishes, at the mercy of a neon reaping. Reading this collection is like dancing through Doomsday, intoxicated by the destructive, decadent truth of desire in our very mortality. In these poems, you will find revelry in the ruins of everything you once held dear — and you will love it to the last as you watch the world unravel around you.”
—Saba Syed Razvi, author of Heliophobia and In the Crocodile Gardens
“Beautifully bleak, Stephanie M. Wytovich’s latest collection posits scenarios of the apocalypse and the horrors to come thereafter with language like fragrant hooks in your skin. Vivid, each word a weight on your tongue, these poems taste of metal and ash with a hint of spice, smoke. She reminds us the lucky ones die first, and those who remain must face the horrors of a world painted in blisters and fear. Leave it to Wytovich to show us there’s beauty in the end, just beneath all that peeling, irradiated skin.”
—Todd Keisling, author of Ugly Little Things and Devil’s Creek
“Set in a post-apocalyptic world that at times seems all too near, Wytovich’s poems conjure up frighteningly beautiful and uncomfortably prescient imagery. Populated by a cast of unsettling, compelling characters, this collection is one that stuck with me.”
—Claire C. Holland, author of I Am Not Your Final Girl
“A surreal journey through an apocalyptic wasteland, a world that is terrifyingly reminiscent of our own even as the blare of evacuation alarms drowns out the sizzle of acid rain, smiling mannequins bear witness to a hundred thousand deaths, and “the forest floor grows femurs in the light of a skeletal moon.” Stephanie M. Wytovich’s The Apocalyptic Mannequin is as unsettling as it is lovely, as grotesque as it is exquisite.”
—Christa Carmen, author of Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked
Pre-Order Available (First 30 receive FREE personalized copy) -
Pre-Order Now!
Stephanie Wytovich, Biography –
Stephanie M. Wytovich is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been showcased in numerous venues such as Weird Tales, Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Fantastic Tales of Terror, Year's Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2, The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 8, as well as many others. 

Wytovich is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Point Park University, and a mentor with Crystal Lake Publishing. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection, Brothel, earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press alongside Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare, and most recently, The Apocalyptic Mannequin. Her debut novel, The Eighth, is published with Dark Regions Press. 
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I recently saw the movie, Ready or Not and I have to say, it was well done. It lived up to all my expectations from the trailer. The synopsis reads: A bride’s wedding night takes a sinister turn when her eccentric new in-laws force her to take part in a terrifying game. Actress, Samara Weaving plays the main character, Grace. She’s marrying Alex Le Domas who is a member of the Le Domas family which is a rich family who made their living making games dating all the way back to the Civil War. However, it’s much more than just simply making it big with games. The legend says, that one of the Domas ancestors struck a deal with the devil to make it rich. However, to keep their end of the bargain, every new member of the Domas family has to pull a card from this mysterious magic box and play the game the card says. Apparently, most of the time the games are benign like Chess or Old Maid (WTF is Old Maid [inside joke from the movie]). But, if the new family member pulls the Hide & Seek card, then that means they’ll be hiding from the family and if found, will be sacrificed for the devil. The catch is that if the family can’t make the sacrifice by dawn, then the family will all die.

It’s a loose storyline; however, a movie like this doesn’t need a lot of depth. The characters carry this story along anyway. First of all, we have Grace. You find out that she came from the foster system and didn’t have a lot growing up. She’s totally in love with Alex and wants to make a good impression with his family even though she’s convinced that they hate her and think she’s a money-grabbing whore (her words). Grace is pretty funny and very resilient. After the initial shock of what’s going on wears off, she pulls on some serious inner strength and becomes that kick-ass protagonist we all want.

Second, we have her newly acquired husband, Alex. Alex we find out has somewhat left the Domas clan and his mother wants desperately for him to come back into the fold. At the beginning of the movie, Grace and the mother have a chat that could have been heartwarming if you didn’t know what was about to go down. She basically begs Grace to help bring Alex back into the family.

Next, we have Alex’s brother, Daniel. He’s alcoholic and quite disillusioned with the whole family. However, he remains loyal (somewhat) to what they are doing. Daniel is a funny character and portrays a wounded, broken shell-of-a-man well.
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There are a lot of other characters in this tale, most of them are somewhat throw-away, but a few stick out. There is drugged out sister that is hilarious, an in-law brother that is equally funny, but I think the best is the Aunt. She plays this dour, old woman who is hell-bent (see what I did there) on maintaining the status quo with the devil. The crazy thing is, they give her this massive ax that looks comical with her. I mean, how the hell is she supposed to swing that thing, it probably weighs 1/3rd of her body weight!

Throughout the entire movie, you are left questioning whether or not the devil is real, or if the family has all just accepted the legend as fact. We get to see what lengths people will go to in order to survive (both by Grace and the rest of the Domas family as the clock continues to tick).

Overall, this movie was awesome. There are gruesome death scenes; comedic relief (full disclosure, it’s very dark comedy…but come on, you should expect that seeing how this is a story about a family ritualistically hunting down another human), and lots of blood.

Also, the filmmaker did a great job with tension and anticipation. There is a scene (I’ll detail it later in the spoiler section) that had me squirming. You fully know what is going to happen, but it’s in that knowledge that the scene works so well.

I give this movie 4.5/5 dead bodies. If you like campy, funny, horror movies, then go check this one out. You won’t be disappointed.
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Now, on to the spoiler section.

Okay, still here? Cool. Throughout the whole movie, Alex is trying to save Grace. He didn’t want to bring her back and do the wedding there, but he was afraid of the potential curse. At one point in the movie, Alex is talking with his mother on why he left, stating that he realized slitting a goat’s throat in the name of Satan wasn’t a normal thing to do, but that he was starting to feel normal about it. His mother makes a comment at that point that if given the choice between family and a woman he met 18 months ago, he’ll choose family. At that point I kind of figured he would turn Darkside and I was right, even though it was the last moment he decided to turn against Grace.

We ultimately find out that the deal with the devil was real all along. Because they fail to sacrifice Grace by dawn. However, it’s super funny what happens. Because the sun comes up and the Domas family tries to hide from the sun’s light like they are vampires, but nothing happens. Then they all look at one another with an expression of, “Oh shit, we are just psychopaths and this wasn’t real, but we need to do something about her (Grace).” Then, as the Aunt lifts her ax to try and kill Grace, she explodes. Then, one by one all the Domas family explodes in a bloody mess. Kind of funny actually.

As for that tense moment…holy shit! So at one point in the movie, Grace gets shot in the hand and it puts a big honking hole in her palm. She then proceeds to fall down into this pit of dead goats and bodies. Because…yeah, we need a dead body pit. She tries to climb out, but obviously her hand is all fucked up. We then cut to a shot of the edge of the pit, where we see nail sticking out of the wood. You can put two and two together on that one…
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Not much for spoilers here. Go see this movie! 

I just finished this collection of short stories by Betty Rocksteady and I have to say I’m impressed. Most of the stories contained within have been previously published in other anthologies with a few brand new ones for her fans. Many of the stories are very short and quick reads, however, a lot of them stuck with me for long after I was finished reading them. Rocksteady has an uncanny ability to weave a tale that is equal parts ambiguous (in a good way), visceral, and disturbing. A lot of her tales hint at things ancient and deadly and part of a bigger mythos all her own.

Rocksteady is described as an author of cat mythos, cosmic sex, and bizarro fiction and after reading this collection, it’s not hard to see how she came by those descriptors. I got a big kick out of her tales involving cat mythos. My favorite was near the beginning titled, “Tiny Bones Beneath Their Feet” about an enormous colony of cats and a mysterious path of bones leading away from the house.

Some of the stories were downright disturbing. I found “Postpartum” particularly chilling about a single mother dealing with postpartum depression. She soon finds some purpose in taxidermy and that purpose begins to overtake her very being. Rocksteady’s voice blends real-world horrors such as depression, anxiety, loneliness, and the awkward with frightening horrors. The horror she pulls from is mainly cosmic, speaking to creatures and beings that are unknowable and make you feel very insignificant. Her horrors creep (and sometimes wriggle or crawl) in and take over your sense of self until there is nothing left. Some of my favorite reads in this collection that really tapped into the cosmic horror were: “Elephants That Aren’t” about an artist who starts drawing strange creatures but doesn’t have any recollection of doing so; “The Language of Mud” about a spot in the grass that makes people disappear; “The Taste of Sand on Your Lips” which is a small collection of 55, 55-word stories that are bizarrely interconnected and tell a tale that could possibly make you go mad.

If you like strange, well-written horror, then you need to check out, In Dreams We Rot as you won’t be disappointed. Rocksteady’s voice is unique and she is elevating horror fiction with her words. Her collection has made me reevaluate my own writing and challenged me to make my future stories even better.

Well done.
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You can pre-order In Dreams We Rot here:

​Also, if you want to see my earlier interview with Rocksteady, you can check it out here:

Today we meet Betty Rocksteady who writes stories about cat mythos, bizarro, and cosmic sex! What more could you ask for? I'm currently reading her collection of shorts, In Dreams We Rot for a review. Once finished, I'll post that as well, but so far I'm really digging it. It's worth grabbing once it comes out. Now onward to the interview!

1)      Who or what inspired you to become an author?
 
I can't pin it down on one particular author so much as just… books, as an object, as an escape, as my main way of learning about the world as a kid. As an introvert growing up in the 80s, writing and art were always a huge part of my life. Surprise though, I didn't start REALLY writing until I turned 30 and realized, oh heck, it's now or never.
 
2)      Tell us a about your upcoming collection, In Dreams We Rot, and what inspired you to write it.
 
In Dreams We Rot is a collection of my best short stories that have been published over the last few years. The bulk of my writing thus far has been short fiction and I've had a lot of pieces published by cool indie publishers that I'm so excited to share with my readers. In Dreams We Rot bleeds with imagery you'll recognize from your nightmares, inspiring the title. I take a lot of writing inspiration from my dreams, and I really dig weaving surrealist themes and creatures into my work.
 
3)      Your writing is categorized as cosmic sex horror and bizarro. What attracted you to those genres?
 
A reader described my novella, The Writhing Skies as cosmic sex horror and it seemed like the perfect description to me! I don't think about genre a whole lot when I'm writing unless it's for a specific call. I mostly just think of my work as the very general "horror." As for bizarro, it's a really wide genre but the whole cult movie/Eraserhead vibe is definitely something that gets me going.
 
4)      Tell a bit about your writing process. Do you have a special space you like to use, or do you have to be in a certain mindset?
 
I'm still trying to figure this out, but no matter what I do, writing rough drafts is always absolute torture! I much prefer brainstorming, and then the editing process. The first draft is just a skeleton that I try to bang out as quick as possible. Lately I've been using a little laptop to type on, but I think I actually focus better when I'm sitting at the desktop computer, so I guess I'll have to keep fine-tuning there. I do usually listen to music while I write, either movie soundtracks, or trip hop playlists on YouTube, or, very often, Aesop Rock's soundtrack for Bushwick.
 
5)      What’s one of the most surprising things you’ve learned in creating your books?
 
Well, my first novella, Arachnophile is about an arachnophobic guy in a world where giant spiders coexist with human. He accidentally falls in lust… or maybe love with a giant spider. So, not only did I discover how to write sex scenes for the first time in the most bizarre way possible, but I discovered that uh, a surprising amount of people will read those sex scenes and see spiders in a way they never expected, at least according to the reviews it's gotten.
 
6)      What’s your next project?
 
Right now I'm working on a kidnapping book about the depths of female friendships and doppelgangers! It's inspired by John Fowles' The Collector and its shaping up to be the best thing I've ever written.
 
7)      Where can people follow you online to keep up with all your updates?
 
I'm all over twitter and Facebook as Betty Rocksteady, and my website is www.bettyrocksteady.com! People should feel super free to reach out and hang out.
 
If you're interested in checking out my work, I have a disturbing cat mythos story available to read free here: https://theoutwardinn.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/the-backwards-path-to-the-limbus-by-betty-rocksteady/
 
In Dreams We Rot is being released October 17, 2019, and you can preorder it here! http://journalstone.com/bookstore/in-dreams-we-rot

1) Who or what inspired you to become an author?
 
Great question. Great mystery. Really, it’s something I’m still trying to answer for myself, but, here’s what I’ve got so far: I think I have a hard time making sense of the world. Writing scary stories gives me the opportunity to at least pretend that things make sense, or, at least examine why they don’t. I think that’s probably the purpose of any story, really, no matter how horrific; to help us overcome the things that threaten to overcome us.

When I was a kid, I loved stories for that reason. I think I had a lot of hidden anxiety that didn’t make sense to me, something to do with growing up gay in the 90s in a small town, I’m sure. I wrote a lot. Then, I was seduced by film and I pursued that instead. So, most of my formative years were ruled by the likes of George A. Romero, Clive Barker, Dario Argento, John Carpenter, and, of course, Wes Craven. Craven is probably the one whose work inspired me the most. I often thought to myself that I’d love to make a movie that was as smart as Craven, poetic as Barker, fun as Raimi, gorgeous as Argento and politically charged as Romero… Big shoes. After attending film school in Toronto, I figured out just how expensive my ideas would be to make. Thus, I decided to return to writing so that my stories might live somewhere other than just in my own head (where they had begun gnawing).
 
2) Tell us about your book, Worship Me, and what inspired you to write it.
 
So, Worship Me is my first novel. It’s a novel that’s supposed to scare you, challenge you, and maybe make you puke a little, like any good horror does. But, that’s not the only reason why I wrote it; I wrote it because I had to.
 
The story came about as part of my grieving process. Now, this part of my journey with Worship Me gets a little dark, as a warning. 12 years ago, my sister was diagnosed with a brain tumour. 7 years ago, she died from it. Before she died, she suffered quite a lot, as anyone who has had experience with brain tumours would know. It’s harrowing. Slow. Torturous. And something I decided a while ago to speak bluntly about. Watching someone you love go through something like that rips apart everything you think you know about life, death and spirituality. I found that in order to deal with that horror, I needed a place to put it; and that place became the little country church in Worship Me.
 
3) Take our readers through your writing process. Do you have any spaces you always write in or anything special you do to get into the right mindset?
 
My writing process is erratic. I rarely sit down to write; it’s more like the writing sits me down. I can be riding a bus, cooking, sleeping, and my mind just starts rambling. And I’m like, “Okay, that’s nice. Sleepy now.” And it’s like, “Sleep is for the weak. I have words for you.” I have yet to be stricken with writer’s block. That doesn’t seem to be a problem for me. Writer’s laziness, on the other than, I have suffered from that.

I find that music really helps to bring me back to a character if they’ve gotten lost. I will often write different pieces of music for my stories, scoring them like a film. That’s been a great help. You can check out a few of the tracks on my website if you’re interested:
 
https://everythingcraigstewart.com/2017/06/29/featured-content/
 
 
4) Your writing deals with the themes of religion and atheism, care to expand on those topics with regards to your projects?
 
I was raised as a church goin’ boy. It didn’t stick. For me, it was partly due to my sexuality. It’s hard to buy into an organization that doesn’t really want you around. Things are different now; churches seem, at least on the surface, far more accepting. But, that’s just because they’re in their death thralls and are desperate to fill those pews, and collection plates. Do I think that if progressive society didn’t pressure them to open their doors to LGBT people, that they would have opened them on their own? Seems unlikely.
 
But, that was only half of it; the other half concerns what happened to my sister. When someone has a brain tumour, they go through many traumatic changes. These changes are brought on by a small piece of tissue in the brain that shouldn’t be there. In other words, it becomes terrifyingly clear that the whole of a person is contained within their fragile brainpan. Nothing more than that. Nothing less. And if that’s true, if we are altered when our brain is altered, then where does that leave spirituality? Or, God? I didn’t set out to write a book that was aggressively atheistic, but, I did want to explore the issues of flesh vs. faith. And I think the book speaks for itself on that matter.
 
5)  What’s one of the most surprising things you’ve learned in creating your books?
 
Sometimes, characters don’t want to shut up. It’s a wonderful surprise. I was writing a chapter a while back and introduced this character named Zelda. She was a side character, just supposed to serve the plot. In and out. But, she stuck around. She kept talking. Before I knew it, a pivotal scene was hinged on her. How did that happen? Where did she come from? Is there a fine line between split personality and writing?
 
6) What’s your next project?
 
So glad you asked! My new book, Follow Him, which is a sister novel to Worship Me, is being released by Hellbound Books in the fall of this year. It’s about a man who joins a mysterious cult called The Shared Heart, but is kidnapped by his ex-fiancé, who attempts to deprogram him with horrifying consequences. If Worship Me is about religion, then Follow Him is about love. I’m very excited to see how people react to it.
 
7)  Where can people follow you online to keep up with all your updates?

I’m fairly active on twitter. You can check me out @TheCraigStewart. I also have a website, everythingcraigstewart.com. There’s also a little Facebook thing, www.facebook.com/CraigStewartAuthor.

So what's been going on with me lately? Where to begin? First off, I'm getting ready to retire from 20 years of military service. That alone has been eating up a lot of my time and energy. Who knew retiring was a full-time job? So many damn appointments, getting documentation and records in order, all that jazz. I've got so many plans for post-retirement, I'm pretty sure I won't have any extra time at this point. What are those plans you might ask? Well, for starters, I'm super excited to start my life as a stay-at-home dad and help raise my two kids. 

Second, I'll be writing full-time. That's right, full-time. I don't plan on going out to get a job anywhere (although raising kids is a full-time job, but I have the help of family). I will be carving out a portion of my day to dedicate to nothing but putting words on digital paper. At the moment I'm actively working on the third book of the Dark Tyrant Series, my grimdark/post-apocalyptic fantasy serial, the second Terrence book, and a couple of other secret projects. In the queue is a fantasy western serial, a horror short story for an upcoming anthology, a haunted house novella that takes place in three different timelines, a YA/horror series involving a high-school ghost hunting team that always seems to get involved with dark and scary entities (think Ghost Facers from Supernatural meets Scooby Do meets Lovecraftian horrors) and a choose-your-own-adventure style of horror books that involve gruesome deaths.

I finally made some headway with book three of the Dark Tyrant Series. My biggest hold-up was I didn't really know how it was going to end, so a lot my writing speed slowed to almost nothing because I was floundering. Well, I figured out where it's headed, so now we're making headway again. 

Moving on to another aspect of my life that I enjoy--hunting. This year I'll be retired when hunting season starts, which means I can be out in the wilderness longer, which means hopefully a better chance of harvesting something. Over the years, I've come to find being up in the mountains is my zen place. I love it. The sights, the smells, the connection to nature. It's amazing and magical for me. I'm taking my oldest daughter with me elk scouting this year and I can't wait. I'm tempering my expectations of what I'll be able to accomplish as far as distance and area covered since she's still pretty young, but the memories and experience that both she and I will gain will more than make up for it. 

Anyway, what are you up to these days?

“There’s something up there. Something that dates way back. Those woods belong to something else.” Jud Crandall uttered those words to Louis Creed in the book. I remember when I first read Pet Sematary back in the early 2000’s (I know, I was late to the party), the fact that there was something out there roaming through the trees stuck with me. I’m a big fan of the strange, unknowable things that lurk in the darkness. At that point in my life, I was reading all sorts of Lovecraftian tales and just wallowing the cosmic dread.

What I like most about the remake of the movie, is the heavy nod to that thing in the woods. It plays a bigger part than the 1989 version. I won’t spoil it here, but the new version even goes so far as to really delve into the motivations of the characters. Like, why would Jud ever in his right mind lead Louis to that burial ground to bury Ellie’s cat, Church? Deep down in his gut, he knew what would happen. Well, this rendition digs into that sour ground and sheds some light.

Fair warning, while this post avoids any major spoilers, it does get into what I consider perhaps minor spoilers if you aren't familiar with the story. Read at your own risk.

The remake does a lot of things very well, but it also falls flat in a number of places. Let me break them down. First and foremost, I think the 2019 version did a great job setting the atmosphere for the story. The first act is very well done, and we learn about all the characters. We get to see the Creeds try and adapt to a rural lifestyle. The road by their house and the trucks are almost a character, a villain lying in the background. This movie knows you have read the book or seen the older film, as it plays off those expectations, at times with a sly grin and wink, and at other times with a devilish smile and crazy eye. I loved those moments in the new film. Secondly, it doesn’t rely on too many jump scares, instead tries to build dread and eeriness.
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Second, let’s talk about Jud. I love Jud as a character and while I missed the accent from the 1989 film, John Lithgow does a fine job portraying him. He’s a likable character that you fall in love with right from the get-go. However, that love starts to turn stonier as the movie moves on, making you question his real motives, or what really happened to his wife. 

So we all know (or you should get from the trailer) that if you bury something in the old burial ground, it comes back…but as the saying implies, sometimes dead is better. It starts off with the Creed’s cat, Church. I felt as if the motivation to bring this version of Church back from the dead isn’t as fully developed as the book or the older movie and this is a problem with the movie, as it kind of rushes through the second act. I think an extra 15-20 minutes added to the film would have lent itself well and given us the few extra scenes or moments needed to fully realize some of the backstory. One thing the film does to redeem itself, is the ramping up the creep factor when they bring the child back from the dead (again, not really a spoiler). Some of the creepiest stuff isn’t the crazy serial killer version of the undead kid, it’s the just-got-back-from-the-woods-what’s-wrong-dad version of the kid.
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Another great point in this film is the expansion of Rachel and her fear of her late sister, Zelda. The original scenes of Zelda in the 1989 version of the film scared the living shit out of me as a kid (yeah, I saw the movie as a young child, probably explains my penchant for horror and scary shit). I think the directors realized that Zelda was scary for a lot of folks and ramped that up to a 10 in this film. 

The ending is different than both book and the 1989 version of the film, and I’m not really a fan of what they did. I read an article where the directors explain their idea behind it all, but I think the film could have been a lot better if they had stuck closer to the source material. I won’t spoil the ending here, but I rolled my eyes more than once.

Overall, was the movie great? No. It wasn’t. It did an excellent job setting things up, then went too fast through the rest of it. It does delve into some material from the book that I found to be great, and as mentioned before, Lithgow does a fine job playing Jud. Overall, I give it maybe 6.5 dead cats out of 10. I enjoyed it and was happy to see it.