The End is the Beginning!

Most dreams play out over a matter of seconds. Some nightmares last far longer. So was the case with one I experienced twenty years ago, in which I found myself trapped with other survivors in a house hidden among tall Douglas firs, located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. We moved around the house quietly, ever mindful of an unidentified danger lurking outside the walls of our fortress and prison. It rained nonstop throughout the nightmare; it was always night beyond the windows.  I only caught glimpses of the faceless horrors lurking on the other side of the door, which was even more effective -- my imagination has always responded to instances when what you don't see is more terrifying than what you do. Before dream's end, the situation inside the house degenerated to a level as dangerous as the one outside, and there was something else I remember quite clearly: the trees, and the rich smell of the needles and pitch.  It burned in my nostrils.

The dream quickly got recorded on a note card and went into my catalog of ideas, but was not so quickly written.  Not until 2010, when the longhand manuscript was dashed off in a matter of days and then went into my file cabinet, part of the 'inventory' I keep of completed first draft manuscripts.  Out it again came in December of 2013, and off it went to Firbolg Publishing's latest anthology call, Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, a collection of environmental-themed horror fiction edited and compiled by the brilliant Dr. Alex Scully. I'd already appeared in their amazing previous release with my story told from the perspective of H.P. Lovecraft's ultimate big bad, C'Thulhu, Dark Muses, Spoken Silences -- and which featured reprints by Poe, Polidori, Lovecraft, and Washington Irving, along with a lineup of some of my favorite contemporaries.  And I was beyond thrilled to learn that my tale, "Every Seven Years, Give or Take", would be part of this important book.  As with the previous release, End features reprints by such notables as Mary Shelley, Lovecraft, M. R. James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mr. Poe, my favorite writer of all time.  And again I share an incredible Table of Contents with many of today's most talented scribes, many of whom shared the back stories behind their stories.

Eric J. Guignard on "She Will Rise Again":  "As a lover of fairy tales and Greek mythology, I delight in the fantasy concepts of invisible gods and elements surrounding us, spirits residing in trees and flowers, animals, and even inanimate objects. Mother Nature, in particular, is a wonderful personification of the life-giving and nurturing aspects of the world we live in. I wanted to explore the idea that if she were a real being, what would be the circumstances or effects of her existence as one of substance but who is hidden from civilization. After a few failed envisionings, she ended up with a C'Thulhu-esque element, as one who slumbers while the planet turns, rising only with sacrifice and when she is needed."

B. E. Scully on "Nothing But Skin and Bones":  "I was living in the eye of the urban hurricane known as Los Angeles when life picked me up and threw me into the whirlwind. When I landed, I was in hill country, West Virginia. Mountaintop removal had been going on for years by then, and right in the middle of lush, blue-green mountains you’d see these flattened, barren stretches, like the surface of the moon. It sometimes happens with mountaintop removal that old family cemeteries get wiped off the mountain along with everything else. The dead get discarded like trash in a landfill. I left West Virginia years ago, but those displaced bones and that dark, disturbed earth stayed with me. When I sat down to write a story for The End Is the Beginning, I went back to those mountains and found a man sitting alone in one of those blasted moonscapes. The rest of the story is what happens when the living and the dead get pushed too far, and start pushing back. As for me, I’m putting my money on the birds, the bees, and the bones."

Tais Teng on "The Art of Losing Wars Gracefully":  "When pigeons awoke me one morning with their insistent and deeply annoying cooing I realized that, though, we built the cities we never really own them. For the pigeons our proudest high-rises are only cliffs, nesting places. Fire ants gnaw the timbers of our homes and have their own highways in our walls. Below us rats rule the sewers and there are urban foxes hunting in our back-gardens. All my life we have been at war with the animal kingdom: mice steal our cheese and nibble our bread no matter how good we hide it. There was a wasp-nest once in our front garden; the exterminator had to come back three times before those insects were gone. ‘You should not plant anything edible there for at least  a year,’ the exterminator told us. ‘The poison I used is rather strong.’ That skirmish with the wasps didn't feel like victory and we knew they would be back. I got it: never try to win a war with animals, a draw, a temporary stalemate is the best you can hope for."

Kenneth W. Cain on "Her Living Corals":  "My story came to me while studying my Nano-reef tank. There are many mysteries in this tank, which make my mind wander.  I’ve always had a fear of the ocean. Not the water itself, but the haunts in its depths. These waters often frequent my stories. Who knows what exists in the deepest recesses of the ocean? What a man or woman is capable of within those areas? With this story I wanted to explore the ongoing ruin of our coral reefs. While keeping and maintaining reef tanks can be a rewarding experience, it can never compare to the real thing. The seas are full of life, brimming with extraordinary creatures, some of which can barely be seen. Besides millions of beautiful fish, there are copepods and amphipods, many varieties of snails, tiny anemones and feather dusters, limpets and chitons, starfish, and so much more that we need to preserve. Do yourself a favor, if you haven’t explored these reefs; check it out before its too late. In the meantime, do your part to help."

K. Trap Jones on "The River":  "The inspiration came from the idea that sometimes we take nature for granted. We look upon her with beauty, but often times ignore the power that she can possess. I wanted to tell a story of how easily something bad can happen. With one slip of a foot, a traditional fishing trip can go horribly wrong. Mother Nature, to me, can be a gentle loving soul, but then unleash rage at any given moment. Through this narrative, I wanted to give both sides of Mother Nature almost like a wonderful woven spider web. From afar, the web is spectacular, but once it has you in her grasp, the situation alters from beauty to dismay. Through the depressive narrative tone and the mental anguish of the narrator, the story comes off as a battle between the will of man and the overall endurance of Mother Nature. One slip was all that it took."

Rose Blackthorn on "Consequences":  "My story is set in a small town on the Oregon coast, not far from where I once lived. I have an abiding love of the ocean and its wildlife, including not just those who live in the water but the myriads of birds and animals who live near the shore. I think people for a long time have thought that the renewability of the ocean was boundless, but it’s becoming clearer now that over-fishing and the indiscriminate dumping of waste is building to a possible point of no return. With the nuclear plant in Japan bleeding toxins into the Pacific, it just adds another layer of worry about what is happening to our natural planet. So, I wrote a story about a woman who is dealing with general life issues -- aging, divorce, trying to make ends meet -- who is lucky enough to live in a beautiful place that she loves. Then I added in one variation of a worst-case scenario to the changes wrought in nature, and the possible consequences. Honestly, the whole idea scares me, too."

Julianne Snow on "There Is No Wind That Always Blows":  “When I saw the call for Enter at Your Own Risk: The End is the Beginning, I was immediately struck with a number of ideas that could work. After discarding all of those I settled on the premise for a wicked little apocalyptic tale that asks what would happen if the winds picked up to the point they wiped most of humanity from the surface? In Chaos Theory there is a statement: It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. But what if more than one butterfly flapped their wings in unison? Could a cataclysmic event actually occur? And what would the remnants of humanity do to survive? ‘There Is No Wind That Always Blows…’ explores the physical and emotional strain such an event wreaks and leaves you wondering if the next gust of wind will ever end.”

Mark Patrick Lynch on "The Mourning Worm":  "A pleasure of writing SF is the world building. Creating planets, alien moons, and exotic space stations can be great fun -- but sometimes a little demanding. In 'The Mourning Worm' I went for a real location, a place I’d actually stayed in. Gregory’s cottage is as described (though as yet awaiting the interior refit), surrounded by the dense woods and rolling countryside of Wiltshire. It is enchanting in almost every aspect. But real locations bring with them their own hazards. In this case it was the low beams of the ceilings. I’m 5’11 (and a half). The cottage was built hundreds of years ago, when people were shorter in general... Yeah, you do the math. I didn’t come out of that stay with a concussion, but my head was like Braille for someone who reads the bumps and orbits of skulls. Maybe it was as I was wandering around a wee bit senseless that the notion for 'The Mourning Worm' came to me: holes in the world, absences…like the memories and minutes I seemed to have lost after I forgot to duck while walking from one side of a room to the other."

Sydney Leigh on "Rabenschwarz":  "There’s something about the fact that while intended for children, fairy tales are actually rather terrifying -- their settings, mood, atmosphere, and messages are all fascinatingly macabre. I felt this might make for an interesting backdrop for an environmental horror story, and loosely based ‘Rabenschwarz’ on 'Foundling-Bird', one of the lesser-known tales from the brothers Grimm. The unknown has always been the most frightening possibility for me in terms of natural disasters, ecological horrors, and the infinite list of environmental threats -- and the first thing that comes to mind when I worry about what the future brings is always the extinction of animals. The idea of them being removed from their natural habitats by mankind is the driving force behind this story, which plays on the idea that an unseen presence dwelling in the forest is not taken into account while some fairly grisly events are unfolding and no one quite knows who to blame. I’m afraid the supernatural element in the story allows for a happier ending than I think the animals in our world will have...so the presence of this force, raven-black and understandably sinister in nature, was my way of illuminating that for the reader."

Lawrence Santoro on "So Many Tiny Mouths":  "Someone said horror starts when innocence sets foot in the forest.  Shakespeare’s Forest of Arden for example; the forest primeval. Pennsylvania, 1950-something:  Summers, mom, dad, cousins and I would hop into the old man's Chevy and head toward the Atlantic Ocean.  Three hours later our first half-dozen layers of winter skin would have blistered to a sweat-slick peel and salt-water taffy would have yanked the year's fillings from our heads. Before becoming beach-blanket brisket though we had to cross inland Jersey, eighty-plus non air-conditioned miles, me in back meditating on undertow, riptides, and sand sharks.  Thus occupied, I didn’t notice that most of Jersey was trees.  Those eighty-some miles, the whole of central Jersey, was a geo-political entity: the Pine Barrens. Nighttime, homeward-bound, cousin Fred (who knew about such things) whispered tales about the woods that unspooled by our car in the dark.  They were inhabited by six-fingered folk who lived in caves, who prayed to odd and grubby gods, made their own gas from pig shit and ate lost travelers.  They were "Pineys” and you stayed away from them. Much later, I made a film in the Barrens.  Alas, Pineys turned out to be garden-variety Americans.  I got to know them -- somewhat -- and the Barrens -- a bit -- and have tried I don’t know how many times to get the place down on paper.  I keep trying.  Love, I think.  This is one such effort.  I think I’m closing in, but wouldn’t bet that I’ve got it.  It’s an elusive place.  The forest always is. By the way, Earl Sooey?  He's fiction, a coincidence.  No one I met.  Really."

BEHOLD: D.O.A. II!

I'm the least violent person on the planet.  I'm a Taurus -- meaning that by all astrological indicators, I should have a fiery and miserable temper.  I don't, however; I think that whole writing-as-catharsis thing rings true, at least for me. Doesn't mean that when I'm pushed against my will into a corner, the Taurus won't emerge.  And once that bull is out...be warned, for it takes more to get it back under wraps than to release it from the pit. I try to live an upbeat literary life, to be both the writer and the person who is generally sunny and all-smiles, with a harm-none mentality.

Violence in my stories is a whole different matter. I don't write gratuitously, simply for shock value. But I've never been much of a referee when my characters decide to take swings at one another -- if the tale requires it, let the rivers run red. I've often said I'd rather squirm in my chair reading or hearing a story read to me when things get bloody and intense than be bored, which is the worst reaction to a writer's fiction possible.  So with this in mind, one humid Saturday afternoon in May of 2012, I put the nib of my pen to page and began an usually gory tale called "Game of Golf."

Earlier in the day, we meandered the back roads of our former town, headed to the cinema to take in Marvel's blockbuster popcorn flick, The Avengers.  We enjoyed a lot of movies until our move north (now, we watch them in the living room, on our flat-screen TV -- there are no movie theaters within easy driving distance of our new home digs in New Hampshire's north country). The roads wandered through countryside and sparse neighborhoods, before coming upon one of those elite golf courses, where the well-to-do parade about in wingtips and jaunty colorful outfits.  While crossing through the country club grounds and continuing toward the rear entrance of the movie theater, some five miles down the road, I jokingly remarked how someone needed to take a golf club and start bashing in heads there upon the pristine green -- and an entire story-line instantly materialized, including the hows, the whos, and the whys.

I wrote "Game of Golf" to completion later that afternoon and into the early May night, and was thrilled when it was accepted on its first time out at the follow-up to Blood Bound Books' D.O.A.  I'd placed stories in two BBB releases previously, the brilliant Steamy Screams and last year's Blood Rites. The press is renown for bringing together top talent between the covers of beautiful books, and D.O.A. II continues the tradition, with twenty-eight of the ugliest-beautiful tales a reader of extreme and unapologetic horror fiction could hope to devour.

Many of my fellow D.O.A. II authors shared the back-stories behind their stories.

Ken MacGregor on "The Proud Mother":  "I had originally written the story for a Lovecraft erotica anthology. I wanted to see if I could pull off that sort of thing. My female protagonist is a mortician in the 1920s . She falls in love and marries, but she is already pregnant with the child of a corpse. The anthology for which I wrote the story rejected it, so I removed the flowery romance language, amped up the horror and subbed it to D.O.A. II. It's your basic 'what if'' story -- what if a living woman had sex with a dead man and he got her pregnant? The answer, as I interpreted it ain't pretty."

Raymond Little on "Scream and I'll Come to You":  "There was a big debate in the British media at the time of writing this tale, and I've found that Horror is the most flexible of genres -- a useful framework to explore many social and political themes.  The seed grew from there, but I needed a suitable horrific apocalyptic  catalyst, and came upon the idea of a virus whose symptom is fear -- an unaccountable, overwhelming sense of terror that causes the victims to simply scream themselves to death.  Once I had that world established, I was able to explore the relationship between Beth and her daughter, and what they were capable of through their mutual love.  The title is a nod of respect to the classic M.R. James ghost story, 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad.'"

K. Trap Jones on "Burn the Witches":  "The inspiration came from a lyric within the Rob Zombie song, Dragula. The lyric reads, 'Dig through the ditches  and burn through the witches.' For some strange reason, I immediately envisioned a truck barreling through a muddy ditch and steamrolling over a bunch of witches without concern. From there I went with a southern narrative tone and wanted to break away from the common witch stereotype by creating a demon type personality for them.  As the story unfolded, a comedic and sarcastic undertone revealed itself based on the old 80s horror movies. To have a small southern Georgia town be overrun by demonic witches and the Mayor creating a Witch Hunting Season was extremely enjoyable to write about because I actually pictured this scenario happening.  It’s a horrific situation for any town to have to endure, but when the townsfolk actually enjoy it, it makes for one hell of a demented, wild ride."

Daniel I. Russell on "Linger":  "I was unsure on sending this story in as I worried that it wasn't extreme enough to compete with some of the names in the Table of Contents. 'Lingers' is pretty much a dark humor story, with our protagonist stuck in an awful job and a little older and out of touch with his workmates, struggling to keep up with life. To make matters worse, he started a relationship with one of the ladies there that didn't turn out so well, and he just can't shake the smell of her perfume... Based on a true story (to a point). I used to work in a law firm and one of the female workers overpowered a room with her perfume when she walked in, so much so that you could still smell it when you arrived home. As for the gore...well, rather than have the page drip, I went for a more subtle, squeamish approach, inspired by the great Graham Masterton. It's the little details that count!"

Robert Essig on "Dr. Scabs and the Hags of El Cajon":  "Growing up in El Cajon you get used to seeing tweekers riding bikes everywhere. For years I would see them and wonder how it was they didn't keel over and die. They just looked so burnt-out and sickly. I ended up moving into a house that had been a tweeker pad. I had to remove all of the junk they left behind and I found it interesting to see how they lived looking from the inside out. "Dr. Scabs and the Hags of El Cajon" is a sneaky peek into a fictionalized drug underground here in my hometown, an idea that I had been harvesting over a long period of time."

Kristopher Triana on "The Devouring": "I wrote this short story after reading about the Armin Meiwes case in Germany, where a man took out an online add for a volunteer for him to cannibalize. All the more shocking was that Meiwes eventually received a willing victim in Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes. The two even videotaped the slaughter, which is said to include footage of Meiwes and Brandes eating Brandes' penis, as well as Brandes being willingly stabbed to death and then stripped like a deer carcass in Meiwes's 'slaughter room'.  I found myself thinking about how this footage must be the most vile thing ever recorded on film. A story began to form in my head wherein a couple desired to make the world's nastiest video, and this got me thinking about an article I had read about UK's age of the video nasties when certain horror movies where made illegal and even prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act.  I began to envision a sickening romance that was dedicated to creating the ultimate in snuff art. For a long time 'The Devouring' was my own little nasty that I kept locked up. After having it rejected by a horror publisher who deemed it 'twisted and misogynistic', I thought perhaps it was taking the genre too far. But it just kept gnawing at the back of my file cabinet. I'm glad it finally found an extreme horror home with D.O.A. II. I can't think of a more fitting way to unchain this rabid beast of a tale."

Thomas Pluck on "Slice of Life":  "Slice of Life began as an attempt to describe crippling depression and what would snap you out of it, and the ‘sleeping beauty’ aspect took hold. Paralysis has always been one of my greatest terrors, and I made the most awful thing I could think of come through that window once the depression took hold. The swan made of razor blades is because I know plenty who've overcome brutal childhoods and I wanted it to symbolize that, the beautiful thing that it hurts both you and her to touch, because of how she was made."

John McNee on "Skunk Jr.":  "I have a friend I speak to sometimes when I want to kick around story ideas (or, more often, when a deadline's looming and I have NO ideas). It was this friend I turned to when I was trying to come up with something for D.O.A II. All I had was an opening scene -- a guy waking up to the aftermath of a brutal car crash. We talked things out over the course of a half hour, various ideas were voiced and I eventually suggested that the guy wakes up and looks around to see his pregnant wife being ripped open by someone or something that snatches the baby out of her womb and takes off into the forest. It's then up to a ragtag posse to head into the trees and try to get the kid back. My friend didn't seem all that enthused when I proposed it, then qualified himself by saying, ‘But now I've got this image in my head of these guys getting a mile or so into the woods, looking around, and seeing a shitload of baby skulls nailed to trees.’ So yeah. That's how that happened."

Kelly M. Hudson on "Fat Boy":  "This story came about from a lifetime of being made fun of for being fat.  It started when I was a kid, of course, and how I'd cope with it then was to mock myself before others could.  It was humiliating, but it worked.  Now, I'm too mean-looking for most people to ever try, but they still do from time to time.  Fat people seem to be the only segment of the population that is acceptable to laugh at, and I consider it cruel.  Sure, some people are fat because they're lazy, worthless slobs, but the majority of us are fighting genetics and other factors.  I've worked my ass off dieting and exercising, and I can only get down to a certain weight.  I am who I am, and I'm fine with it, but I feel for others.  Look at Marlon Brando, the greatest film actor this country has maybe ever seen, and the first thing anyone says about him is some jab about his massive girth.  All that genius and talent is belittled because he was fat.  So I wrote this story out of frustration for those of my kind as a bit of vicarious revenge on those who won the genetic lottery.  And I also wanted to remind you skinny, pretty freaks of nature: there's more of us than you.  Get it?"

David Bernstein on "STD":  "The idea came from wanting to write something gross, cringe-worthy, and nasty, yet have a bit of mystery to keep the reader turning the pages. What better way than having a guy wake up after a one-night stand and discovering a huge, and I mean huge, pimple on the end of his penis -- and it only gets larger as the story unfolds. Minor spoiler ahead: Then I asked myself, what about a spin on the usual… Do monsters have STDs? And if they do, can they pass them on to humans?" 

D. Lynn Smith on "Anointed":  "When I was eight-years-old, my family moved from one part of my hometown to another.  This meant changing churches as well.  The new church didn’t believe in infant baptism, so I was no longer saved.  It also didn’t believe in sprinkling or pouring -- you had to be totally immersed in order for your sins to be washed away.  This was rather confusing to an eight-year-old and it made me wonder if sin stuck to all of our skin like some kind of rash.  A while later I ran into a fundamental Christian who believed everything in the Bible was literally true -- Adam and Eve, The sacrament turning into Jesus’ blood and body, the sins being washed away by baptism.  Combine the two and you have a girl wondering what happens to all the sin that washes off in the baptismal pool.  I wanted to try a second person story, but didn’t relish the idea of writing from one person’s point of view.  The trinity was a logical choice.  And there you have it."

BEHOLD: BLOOD RITES

Recently, we bought our dream house, far from the familiar, high in the hills of New Hampshire's White Mountains.  Before the momentous move (which tabled most other responsibilities, like updating my beloved blog) we rented a vast, two-bedroom apartment in the very house where local favorite son and native legend Fritz Wetherbee grew up (I interviewed Fritz in 2008 for a regional magazine, and found it somewhat neat that my now-former office was located in his then-former bedroom).

In the master bedroom of our previous home, placement of my antique dresser with its beautiful mirror and our gigantic antique oval mirror on a corresponding length of wall created an eerie multiplicative effect when viewed from certain angles.  It struck me that my reflection was performing a modern version of that old stage schtick where two actors ham it up in front of a mock mirror, one pretending to be the other's reflection.  Until, of course, the fake reflection messes up, and the game is revealed.  This concept dogged me until Thanksgiving Day of 2011, when I sat down to write a story's longhand draft based on some very bare bones. Thanksgivings are a special time in our home.  We always host an open house and a monstrous meal, with more side dishes and homemade pies than our guests can fathom or devour.  Since I was a teenager, I've also had the running tradition of penning a complete short story in honor of the day -- thanks offered up to the Muse, as it were.  I dashed off most of the first draft of my story "Phantomime" before dinner got served, finished it after dessert and the departure of our guests, and then filed it away until a personal invitation arrived from visionary publisher Marc Ciccarone and the fine editorial staff at Blood Bound Books, who'd previously featured my story "The Libidonomicon" in their brilliant erotic horror anthology, Steamy Screams.  A select list of writers were being given a shot at appearing in a new project, one which would literally drip with pedigree.  I fired off an edited draft of "Phantomime", which made it into an impressive Table of Contents in the stunning end result, Blood Rites: An Invitation to Horror.

Many of my fellow luminaries within the covers of this incredible book shared the back stories behind their stories.

Mark C. Scioneaux on "The Lady with Teeth Like Knives": "I had just watched the movie Insidious, and there is a part where it focuses on this horrific ghost lady, smiling with a row of sharp teeth.  That image stuck with me the most from the movie, and I decided to make a story around it.  In fact, I wrote the entire story while sitting in my truck at work one day.  Just penned it out quick on a yellow paper tablet, went home, and then typed it up.  The tale is simple, and follows the story of a man who thinks he got away with murder.  However, he finds himself haunted by a sinister ghoul, a lady whose teeth resemble knives."

Lisa Morton on "The True Worth of Orthography": "The idea behind ‘The True Worth of Orthography’ -- that the actual practice of writing is a magical act -- stems from my love of a series of books called the Abrams Discoveries series. These are beautifully designed little non-fiction books that cover everything from the history of rock music to the Aztecs to vampires, and they did one on the history of writing that was especially good. While I was reading it, I had this thought that writing is like telepathy -- we exchange thoughts without speaking - and that led to the notion that it's essentially a form of magic. The story, which centers on a magician who enacts spells by the physical act of writing them, grew out of that."

Maria Alexander on "Saturnalia": "In 1999, I had a really effed-up dream.  The dream was not only scary as hell, but extremely detailed and well plotted. It included an entire ensemble of strangers, a brother named Joshua who had died, and a town with a secret so dark it could only hide in a Louisiana swamp. The details of the dream were so deeply carved into my memory and psyche that I even named the main character after myself. I didn’t act like myself in the dream, though. I was naive, trusting, religious, forgiving…a person sure to find trouble."

Aric Sundquist on "The Candle and the Darkness": "This story originated from a central image of a mother and daughter fending off a growing darkness with nothing but a candle's flame.  For three months, I pondered where the story would go, until one day while doing research online for another story, I came across an old Roman Catholic prophecy called 'The Three Days of Darkness'.  The content fit perfectly with the story, so I infused the two together, added a bit of creepy back story, and completed a rough draft within a week."

John McNee on "The Lullaby Man": "The Lullaby Man was the title of the first horror story I ever wrote, back in 2006.  At the time, I wasn't sure if I was even capable of writing a real horror story, so I challenged myself to come up with the darkest concept I could.  What I arrived at  was the notion of a supernaturally-gifted pedophile who masquerades as the imaginary friend of his young victims to gain their trust.  That original draft (which took the form of a patient-psychiatrist confessional), is completely unpublishable, but the central idea stayed in the back of my head and, when Blood Bound Books invited me to submit to Blood Rites, I decided to revisit it and try to do it justice.  By this point, I'd developed the idea of telling the tale from the perspective of an adult survivor who had written her experiences off as childhood nightmares.  When she discovers the Lullaby Man really exists, she feels compelled to seek him out, whatever the risks."

Chad McKee on "Sleep Grins": "The source of inspiration for this story was, at least indirectly, my newborn daughter.  The whole process of having a child was fascinating.  As a biologist by training, I took that sometimes-irritating habit of close observation home with me and basically studied my child. The way she slept was especially interesting -- the little mannerisms and ticks and so on.  One thing was the way she made occasional smiles while napping -- the neurologist will tell you that it's not intentional, just the brain processing something, making more connections.  Totally subconscious. Yet, she also sometimes screamed and thrashed about as if in a nightmare prior to those grins.  It got me thinking: what was deep in your mind, even as a baby?  Memories or even memories of feelings?  As an adult, maybe you could have those little grins in your sleep, too. Maybe even when your subconscious mind is plotting revenge."

Daniel O'Connor on "The Binding": "I like things.  Real things -- books, vinyl albums, CDs, DVDs. Things we can hold., smell, and put on shelves.  Not a fan of downloads of any kind.  I also love classic rock, mystery, and horror.  I wanted to meld all of that into a story that could evoke past, present, and future, so I came up with this: 'Every Thursday night, four guys would meet at a local bar.  Watch some football.  Play some darts.  This Thursday, the fate of the entire human race rests in their hands. They also enjoy the jukebox.'  Astute rock n' roll fans might notice that, in a way, the entire story was inspired by a certain classic album.  Let me know if you get it!  My email address is AuthorDanO@aol.com."

Douglas J. Lane on "The Trapdoor":  I live in a pier-and-beam house like the one in the story, which is how many of the older bungalow homes in Houston are constructed.  Because it sits on pylons a couple of feet off the ground instead of a foundation, I hear house-settling noises in the night -- thumps, pops, creaks -- or animals in the crawlspace or, occasionally, in a wall.  One night, I heard what sounded like a door closing, and started thinking: what if there was a way to get inside from under the house that I'd never noticed?  But nothing interesting came through the door when I imagined it.  So I flipped it around: what if there was a trapdoor in the floor that led somewhere other than the crawlspace under the house?  Where would it go?  And as I wrote, I understood it went to the place of my characters' secrets and guilt.  Once I discovered what was waiting for them, the story came together quite quickly."

K. Trap Jones on:"The Butterfly": "To me, there's nothing scarier than the unknown.  True fear happens during a situation that is uncontrollable.  'The Butterfly' is a narrative told through the eyes of a common villager who is caught within the path of God's fury.  With no remorse and no sympathy towards those it devours, a mysterious storm barrels through a peaceful village.  I chose to wrap this horrific tale with imagery of a beautiful butterfly, which symbolizes the good in life even within times of death and decay.  There are events that we humans will never be able to explain and never be able to outrun.  'The Butterfly' was inspired by the song, 'Creeping Death' by Metallica."

Matt Moore on "The Leaving": "Sometimes, we don't know why, just what is.  This could be the friendship that's lasted decades.  Or, for the people of Jefferson Hollow, you don't go out after dark when a barnyard stink pervades the small town.  As a small town boy, I watched box stores force mom-and-pop shops to close, local restaurants fold while chains sprung up, and woodlands cut down for cookie-cutter developments.  Replacing centuries-old Yankee traditions with cultural homogeny was itself a horror story.  For years, I've wanted to explore these themes.  Good horror needs to be grounded in reality, providing an accessible and emotional anchor for the reader.  'The Leaving' was the perfect story for this.  And I wanted to explore one more idea: small town legends.  As a horror story, the legend needed to conceal something monstrous.  Haunted houses and the boogeyman have been done, so I turned to something innocuous into a deadly object of terror.  'The Leaving,' set in a grown town thanks to a new highway, balances secrets the locals keep from new arrivals with the secrets we keep from the people we love.  We tend to believe that concealing an awful truth will hurt less than revealing it -- this rarely ends well."

Desmond Warzel on "The Final One Percent": "I recently had another story ('Cosmetic Procedures') performed on an episode of  Cast of Wonders, the fabulous young-adult-oriented podcast featuring stories of the fantastic.  I took the opportunity to dispense a small bit of advice for would-be writers: 'Don't waste time being bored.  Look around.  The pieces of your stories are everywhere, and only you can make the connections.'  'The Final One Percent' is one example of such a story; its inspiration lay in a single observation, made in passing and then stored away for mulling over at leisure: a book review website titled Blood of the Muse.  The site ceased updating nearly two years ago, but the name has always stuck with me.  The Muses are classical goddesses; I'm no expert on mythology, but I know that Greek gods perform human biological functions (such as eating), and they also possess bodily fluids.  What, I wondered, would the blood of a muse be like?  If it could be extracted, would it retain the essence of its former owner, and how might it be put to use?  Interestingly, one major online magazine includes 'Muse' stories in a lengthy list of fictional topics they see too often among their submissions.  Certainly my memory is not beyond question, but I'm well-read enough to have encountered most major cliches at least once, and I'm almost positive I've never actually seen such a story.  Perhaps writers and editors shy away because it seems as though it ought to have been done before.  In any case, I'm rather pleased with my interpretation of the idea, and its appearance in Blood Rites is a welcome vindication."

Nathan Crowder on "Cold Comfort of Silver Lake": "The story comes from an unexpected list of influences.  The primary one is a long-established dislike of swimming in lakes.  The dream in the story is a dream that I had as my last marriage went through an especially rocky patch.  The setting is loosely modeled on the small mining town I grew up in -- and who knows what's lurking in the water there?"

Adrian Ludens on "Life and Limb": I enjoy researching and writing weird western stories.  That research naturally led to the topic of the Civil War.  I had published a story a couple of years ago that involved Confederate zombies and I had so much fun that I wanted to revisit the era.  That period in history lends itself well to supernatural/horror fiction, in my opinion.  I read that the term 'Sawbones' originated during the Civil War.  Thanks to a combination of projectiles (not bullets but mini-balls) that did a lot of physical damage, and the lack of cleanliness and hygiene in the tent hospitals, many a soldier lost his life -- or at least a limb.  Doctors found it easier to actually saw the limb off rather than try to repair the extensive damage.  The title and the final sentence of the story popped into my head first, and from there I hammered out the rest of the tale with zeal.  My local critique group suggested some minor revisions, and the Blood Bound Books editors (who are always excellent about offering helpful critiques) asked me to clarify one key point.  I hope readers enjoy the end result."

Brad C. Hodson on "The Philosopher's Grove": "Ancient Greece and Rome have always been obsessions of mine.  I've also always been interested in the origin of words and concepts.  Reading about how our modern idea of 'demon' was just a corruption of the Greek idea of 'daemon' (a corruption that happened largely through an misinterpretation of the Bible when translated from Greek to Latin to Englilsh), I started to wonder what it would have been like if the corruption of the concept had been a very real thing.  Xenocrates (and later Aristotle) both wrote about evil spirits and how the daemon could be subverted, so it seemed a natural fit.  Plus I love the idea of taking famous figures like Aristotle and Menander that we think of as stuffy old men in pristine robes standing around all day and showing how they really were: lustful, arrogant, raging drunkards.  In other words, they were just like us."