Forlorn Harbor came from a simple idea—what if I were stuck in a horror anthology that I had seen before? Could I change the ending, and if I did, would my changes make the ending better? Could I save Jordy Verrill’s life, or prevent the Santa Claus murders in Tales from the Crypt?

In Forlorn Harbor, seven teenagers break into an abandoned theater to retrieve something for an old man. Inside, they become trapped and an anthology movie starts playing. Each one is transported into an episode, and must deal with a particular challenge.

Writing Forlorn Harbor was a lot of fun. I had to envision characters whose flaws matched the episodes, and a framing device that stood on its own—the novel’s plot. The episodes had to standalone, and at the same time, integrate into the main narrative. I had a vehicle where I could shift perspectives logically, usually a no-no in novels.

One thing I had to do was build a background for the movie. I wrote notes on who created the series and why. This turned out to be a story in itself. The novel includes seven episodes, but I created eighteen. The outline of all the segments allows me to quote some of the other episodes to give the novel that flavor that the anthology existed. In one of the revisions, I was able to use these notes to build a scene outside of the episode chapters. I’m proud of most of these tales, and may make them into short stories in the future.

The other writing challenge was to create the original Forlorn Harbor program in my mind and then twist it when someone enters it, knowing the details. It’s a challenge to write a story with a twist ending, quite another to write the same story with two endings.

Forlorn Harbor is a YA novel of 73,000 words.

(Update November 2024) Rowan Prose Publishing will publish it in 2026. At this point, if you’re interested and it’s before publication, you’ll have to wait. Contact me at jim.doran.author@gmail.com. When the pre-order link is available, I’ll make sure it’s posted. And if it’s past it’s publication date, I will list where to purchase it.

And if you don’t know who Jordy Verrill is, go watch Creepshow. You’ll be glad you did.