Guest Post: Dane Cobain

We're going international now, skipping across the pond to have a chat with kick ass Booktrope author and friend, Dane Cobain.  I asked him to drop by Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children and tell us what scares the crap out of him. So...

 

 

 

Five Horror Tropes that Scare the Crap Out of Me

 Hi, folks – Dane Cobain here! I’m a writer, a poet and a friend of Christian’s – in fact, we’re both represented by Forsaken, the specialist horror imprint of Booktrope. Forsaken will be releasing my debut novella, No Rest for the Wicked, on May 29^th.

When I found out that Christian was looking for guest bloggers for his site, I jumped at the chance – we writers tend to rise to the challenge whenever there’s some copy to be created. But I didn’t know what to talk about – the only rule that I was given is that there are no rules!

But because Christian and I were brought together by horror, I thought it only fair if I wrote about that, and so this blog post was born! Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be terrified.

 

5 – Injustice

Horror novels excel at this. Generally speaking, most fiction is rooted in justice – the good guy always wins in the end, the bad guys get their comeuppance, and no innocent bystanders end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. In horror, all of that goes out of the window, and there’s just something deeply sinister about a book in which the bad guy wins, the hero ends up dead (or worse), and little old women are getting bumped off left, right and centre for no real reason.

 

4 – Zombie Animals

Zombies themselves aren’t a problem – after all, they’re slow, they’re simple and they’re pretty easy to pick off from a distance. But once animals get infected, all bets are off – where the hell are you supposed to hide when there are infected birds and dogs knocking about? Especially when you consider that one little nip is all that it takes to become infected!

 

3 – Creepy Little Kids

You know what I’m talking about here – think of the twins in The Shining, or the possession of Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist. Perhaps it’s because I don’t like children, although there’s also something to be said about evil corrupting the pure, if you believe that children are ever really innocent. Either way, they creep me out.

 

2 – Computers Killing Stuff

I remember when I watched Resident Evil for the first time – I was absolutely terrified when the computer was killing people, but then I was fine once the zombies woke up. Well, until the zombie dogs, at least. The thing that scares me the most about computers killing people is that, unlike zombies, vampires, werewolves and the like, it could actually happen. It probably already DOES happen.

 

1 – Mental Illness

As a depression/anxiety sufferer myself, I’m allowed to say this. Fictional people with mental illnesses can be terrifying, if the author so desires, and it works whether you’re a sufferer of the same mental illness or not. If you can relate to the character, you know exactly what they’re capable of, and if you can’t relate to them then they can seem unpredictable, which is often even worse. But it has to be done tastefully, or not at all – that’s why it’s so effective.

 

So there we have it – now you know how to write the perfect story to scare the crap out of me! If you happen to pen a novel about a creepy little zombie puppy with schizophrenia, who develops a computer programme to kill everyone who isn’t a banker or a politician, you’ve got yourself a reader.

 

Author Bio:

Dane Cobain is a writer and poet from a place you’ve probably never heard of, somewhere in England. His debut novella, a supernatural thriller called ‘No Rest for the Wicked’, will be released by Forsaken in the summer of 2015. When he’s not writing books, he’s reading and reviewing them on his book blog, SocialBookshelves.com – Charles Bukowski, Graham Greene and Phillip Pullman are favourites. He’s very sad that Terry Pratchett died, and is hoping to come across Death in a Forsaken book so he can ask him what he’s playing at. Find him at Facebook.com/DaneCobainMusic or follow @DaneCobain on Twitter.

 

Make sure to show Dane, as well as all my guest bloggers, some love. Follow them on twitter, like their facebook pages, check out their books, and read their blogs. Also don't forget to follow this blog and the guy who puts it all together, Christian Jensen. Authors like to know what you think about them, so comment here. And always tell your friends about the cool things you find. Thanks!

Guest post:: S.E. Rise

S.E. Rise is an author I've gotten to know over the last few months. We connected over at the Forsaken team page and have a similar way of thinking about a lot of things. I've gotten to enjoy his posts and comments, and you should too.
Check out his book trailer to get an idea of who he is and what he writes :

http://youtu.be/N_SWQDbSgGg

 

 

S.E.Rise

The Neuron Universe and a Monkey’s Paw- A Thought Experiment.

 

There are a good amount of hours in the day. For most of those hours I am busy thinking about things that most people don’t want to contemplate or don’t care about. It’s not because I have a super brain or anything close to it. But, I do let my mind think and imagine things without parameters. To some this could be viewed as a thought experiment.

This is one of those thought experiments.

What if every book you have ever read or story you have ever heard somehow creates a small world inside your mind? A world or a memory formed on one of the trillion or so, neurons or neural pathways inside your brain.  What if those worlds or memories never go away? What if they keep growing and evolving without your input?

What if our own world is but a memory or a story that has been forgotten?

What if our brains in turn are but small universes?

What if, at our birth, we create a small world from a memory that then continues to grow independent of our conscious thoughts? Would we ever remember it? Would we ever be able to return to that small first thought and see what it has become? Would we ever want to?

I am a writer and I create worlds. When I write, I create places that I can see, hear, smell and touch. I know what the air tastes like and what the clouds in the sky look like. I can also leave this place inside my mind and return days or even weeks later and it will still exist.  Most of the time, I let the characters run amuck and figure out problems on their own. But, there are times when I return and they are waiting. They are waiting for me to fix their problems or situations so they can continue on with their story. At those times, I might give them a nudge or change the circumstances in which they find themselves. But rarely do I do this.

When I write, I try to let my creations do and figure things out on their own. I let them evolve into characters that are sometimes not exactly what I had envisioned for them in the beginning. But that’s okay, because if I solved every problem or guided them in every way then they really wouldn’t be that interesting. If I molded them into exactly the way they were supposed to be then what would be the point of the story. There would be no surprises, and the characters in this world would be cliché and predictable. There would be nothing new.

So, in a sense, I give them free will. (Wait…Don’t freak out just yet)

But though I have given them free will, I have also set into place certain rules and physics that they must abide by; only because it differentiates them from other genres in writing. Yes, there are many genres but without some sort of structure or rules it cannot stay together.

But not to get away from my original intent in writing this, I will steer back in the general direction.

These worlds I write about are places I have created within my mind. Who is to say that they do not exist?

What if....?

What if to them I am God?  

I am their Creator. I could be their Destroyer. I can, as well, be their Time Keeper. In fact, if I so wanted to, I could actually resurrect them from the dead. Does this not qualify me as a divine figure in its general definition? What if it does? Does that mean we are all, in some sense, Gods to the small universe that is our human mind? They say there may be as many neurons inside a single human head as there are stars in the universe.

Would a character on one of those small little worlds be able to look up at their Cosmos and see it for what it really was?  Would it see it as an ever expanding universe or might it recognize it as the trillions of bright flashing neurons of its own Creator?

Well, since I am the writer and the creator of these worlds…I guess that answer would be up to me. But, what if one of my characters evolved without my knowledge into something that could figure out its own existence? Maybe it’s one of those insignificant characters that I forgot about and just left it to run amuck?

Would it try to contact me?

If it did try would I hear it?

If I heard it would I answer it?

Or, would I leave it just as I found it? Leave it, because I was afraid of influencing it and in a sense possibly destroying it with my acknowledgment.  What if my presence changed the very genre that it existed in and inadvertently ruined the story?

I think I would not answer it directly. I think if I found myself in the same position as my hypothetical character I would really not want to receive an answer. Primarily, because then I would know that he/ she existed and if he or she existed then I would have to accept that they might be omnipotent and all knowing. This, of course, would lead down a line of thinking that does not have a positive outcome.

Not positive? How so you ask? Because, I would then have to ask the question “Why?”…Why would you have created so many things that are bad? And, if they are bad then why haven’t you fixed them? Why do so many have to suffer when in all actuality they don’t have too? The questions would continue on and on until one of us grew angry.

No…

If I were this created character that lived on a world within the universe that is my brain, I think that I would not want an answer from that kind of God.  I don’t think I would like this God entity very much if I did.

I would not want to have an all knowing entity to blame for the sadness, tragedy and travesty that happens to the world, to my loved ones or to me. I think that I would rather believe in a creator that has given us all the tools we need to succeed, left us on our own and then maybe accidentally forgotten about us.

I would rather not want to rely upon on a God that does not or cannot answer everyone’s prayers. But then, as we know, that doesn’t work very well either. Who would win the Super Bowl? And, don’t forget the story of the Monkey’s Paw by W.W. Jennings.

But in conclusion, this was not meant to piss off the entire God fearing world. This was a thought experiment and it was designed to make you think outside of the box and maybe see the Cosmos and yourself a little differently.

I think I like the thought of being a writer. I create worlds that exist in the universe that is my mind. I think that the best thing I can do for the characters of my created worlds is to let their stories unfold as they will, to continue writing the stories that I see, and to offer them up for the world to read.

And of course learn how to edit them better.

 

-S.E.Rise

 

S.E.Rise is a writer of Erotica, Horror and Thrillers. He lives with his family in Anchorage, Alaska. He has written a dozen or so books in various genres and is currently republishing them with Booktrope Publishing. His first release with Booktrope is an Erotic Thriller. Simmering is due out on May 16^th and his first Thriller/Horror is due out in July with Booktrope Publishing as well.

seriseauthor.com
@s_e_rise13
https://www.facebook.com/S.E.RisewriterEroticThriller