Tag: Fiction

I asked fellow Midnight Garden anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.

Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to Midnight Garden (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).

And now, Ell Rodman’s The Drummer:

Four hundred years ago, settlers left the complicated histories of Europe behind for what appeared to be a vast, unblemished frontier. What they found, of course, was far from empty. Colonists settled a land with history as old as the one they’d left behind. Rivers, lakes, and mountains that already had names received new ones. Cull County residents didn’t know who first named the three-headed rock formation Satan’s Rock. By 1988, that’s just what people called it. It was an unnatural sight; a towering jumble of black rock jutting out of the forest floor, covered in mossy vines, topped with a handful of old trees. Two lovers, the legend went, fell from its peak. Or a runaway slave that vowed revenge. Or a witch hung by the neck. No, an Iroquois shaman cursed the land. The story changed every few decades, but one feeling remained:
Something about Satan’s Rock was just plain wrong.

Continue reading “Ell Rodman’s “The Drummer” in Midnight Garden“

I asked fellow Midnight Garden anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.

Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to Midnight Garden (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).

And now, Kaye Lynne Booth’s The Puppet Man:

“I had to pee. That was the first thing I was aware of upon waking in the dark room. I rubbed the sand from my eyes as I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat up to get my bearings. Where was my night light? The room was as dark as pitch.
A thin sliver of light coming in under the door clued my memory. I was in the guest bedroom at my grandma’s house. That was where I slept every summer when we visited Grandma. A cool breeze from the open window did little to break the stifling summer heat. My older brother was in high school, and he got to sleep out on the screened porch, but I got stuck sleeping in the muggy room at the end of the hall.

How the story came about:
The Puppet Men was inspired by a friend who told me about a scary experience he had as a little boy, which haunted him throughout his life. The puppet men he saw weren’t real puppets that sat on the mantel, and he believed them to be just a dream, until he saw them again various times, when in a state of altered consciousness. I, being a Stephen King fan, had to ask myself, “What if?” What if he hadn’t been dreaming? What if the puppet men were real? And so, “The Puppet Men” came into being.

Continue reading “Kaye Lynne Booth’s “The Puppet Man” in Midnight Garden“

I asked fellow Midnight Garden anthology contributors to share some things about themselves prior to publication and those generous enough to do so will be appearing here for the next week or so.

Each entry gives a taste of their contribution, a little about them, how to contact them, how their story came about, and definitely a link to Midnight Garden (which you should purchase because it would make each and every one of us happy.
you do want to make us happy, don’t you?
i mean, considering what we wrote, you want us to know you’re a good person, right?).

And now, Paul Kane’s Drip Feed:

She’d been hanging around most of her life.
Hanging around at auditions, waiting for her big break. Her one chance.
Just not like this, never hanging around upside down. Like some sort of bat. It was the first thing that had struck her when she blinked open her eyes. Not because of her surroundings, because it was dark, and she wasn’t even sure where she was (like a bat… in a cave?). But because of how she felt. The heaviness in her ‘upper’ body.

How the story came about:
I’m not sure where the idea for ‘Drip Feed’ originally came from, but it’s been kicking around in my head for a while.
The start of it mirrors a story of mine from about 12-13 years ago called ‘Rag & Bone’ in which a guy is hanging up in what he assumes is a serial killer’s basement, along with a bunch of other bodies, some alive, some not so much. That has a twist to it, and so does ‘Drip Feed’ when main character Daniele eventually figures out what she’s doing ‘hanging around’.
There are key ideas that were influenced by certain movies, but if you read the story you’ll see what those are – and to mention them here would give the game away. What I can say is that I was keen to do a tale where the victim turns the tables this time, a sort of more hopeful horror… or is it?
I’ll leave that for you to judge.

Continue reading “Paul Kane’s “Drip Feed” in Midnight Garden“