Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X7QBJDM

I’m honored and pleased to be included in Havok’s anthology entitled Casting Call. This book of flash fiction—one thousand words or less for those who are wondering—was released in April 2022. Havok is one of the most popular and admired in the writing industry. They publish primarily speculative fiction under themes every half-year. During the months of July to December 2021, the theme centered on archetypes such as Caregiver or Rebel. The writer had a choice of two archetypes per month and could include one or both.

When I read the theme, I scoped out October as one of my goals each year is to write a scary story in the Halloween month. I’ve always loved horror stories and was an early reader of Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, and Peter Straub. I remember reading King talking about Richard Matheson and sought him out too. I consider Matheson to be one of the pillars of the horror novel community.

Matheson was nearly perfect at taking an archetype and twisting it into an original, often terrifying, alternate. He was the first to see a monster as a plague in I Am Legend, long before Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. He was the first to imagine gremlins on a commercial airliner in “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” Murderous dolls? “Prey.” And other stories which aren’t in the public’s consciousness like “Born of Man and Woman.”

Taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary, whether in fantasy (Dorothy’s tornado transferring her to Oz), science fiction (a DeLorean time machine) or horror (a small Maine town infested by vampires) has always attracted me. I know tornados, cars, and small towns exist and can connect to them as a reader. But then the author infuses in them something supernatural like a dash of unexpected seasoning in a familiar recipe. The flavoring transports me into a world I could believe in even though I know it’s not real.

So, what scary story could I write for Halloween? I had the archetypes of Everyman and Jester. I decided on the Jester type to be central to my story, but what kind of jester? And then I thought of a stand-up comic, and the plot started falling into place.

Mimicking Matheson, I started the story in a familiar location. A park, the end of a successful first date, possibly a kiss? This could be the trappings of a romantic tale, but my goal was to transport the reader. Something familiar, turned on its head, into something memorable.

Happy reading.