Inspiration, Characters, and Chilling Horror – Guest Post by Robin Winter

Let me give you a picture of how this novel Watch the Shadows began. We were sitting by the fireplace at night, stroking the cats on our laps, and I was thinking about science fiction horror novels and movies, considering what in my own life would most terrify me. I realized that the common thread in all the horror I enjoyed was the ordinary made terrible, your senses deceiving you even as you try to escape. Doesn’t Stephen King do this superbly?

I define science fiction as literary fiction with the lid blown off. Character informs good science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and that, after all, is the requirement for literary fiction– that the work be character driven. The best isn’t about plot or device or magic, it’s about people changing over time, through stress and trial– including the ultimate challenge of dealing with fellow living beings.

Characters? Hey, I already had them in the fire-lit room with me. I use people I dream, and in my dreams all kinds of curious persons inhabit my head. They always have problems and fears and are trying to get somewhere. Three of them popped right up, worried about what I was going to think of next. I shook hands all around, asked them a few questions, and then turned to crafting a story line.

I began spinning speculations out loud to my husband. I wanted to write a story with the ordinary turning awful. I had just been talking about the homeless world with a friend who has worked for a non-profit in outreach for years, and I’d become keenly aware of how easily men and women come and go, even disappear into death, with little attention paid. They could fall prey to an alien enemy rising, and few in the residential community would know, more fools we.

trash on New York City’s streets, wikimedia commons

My husband and I had returned from a long walk that evening, and this gave me another idea. We pick up trash on the streets when we walk, and you’d be astonished at what we find, even in our quiet area with its steep ways and scant drive-though traffic. I’ll add that I’m one of those odd Americans who doesn’t drive, in part because I want to minimize my footprint on Earth, and encourage my own sustainable choices. So using trash, our casual pollution, as a source of horror came naturally! Think of me the next time you toss a paper coffee cup out the car window.

In reading horror, we want all senses engaged on edge, in a world where impulse and the desire for normality lead to the escalation of risk. Where normal responses turn upside down or sideways, and normal acts become appalling.  Like feeling hungry for a split second when you see a piece of meat before you recognize it as road kill. Or enjoying a bright floral bit of color before you realize that’s not a petal at all, it’s the opening maw of a monster in the earth at your feet. You smile at the sound of a folk tune, cheerful and brisk, but it’s coming from the pursed wet lips of the murderer; he’s strolling around the corner of the barn, the bright glint of his machete casting a dancing reflection on the spring grass at your feet.

blob fish, youtube.com

I’m a fan of science in fiction because it grounds our horror. It’s the check on reality. As a society we believe it corrects for the inaccuracies introduced by belief and perception; it should put us on the straight and narrow of knowing where the safe ground lies. When in horror fiction, science instead reveals the worst of our suspicions and then triples them, there’s no safe place to turn. We love this spinning off the cliff– so long as it remains fictional!

I want a logical science-based horror, where I can trace back in the book all the threads of suggestion and find that the core of the fear was accompanying me all the time. Right at my elbow, like a friend walking with me, I want to have the ordinary, the familiar, turn on me with a suddenly dreadful face and try to eat me alive. The solution to the escape needs also to be intrinsic to the problem, so that the threads weave together.

I hope you enjoy the product of my blend of influences, and all my heroes’ journeys. Happy reading to you all!

Recommended Article: Watch the Shadows – a Review

Enjoy some real-life monsters in the below video.