Writing Fear – Tom Halford
Paranoia by Tom Halford
“The only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Fear is frightening.
That sounds like a silly thing to say. How can fear be frightening? Being chased by a stray Doberman with rabies is frightening. Nearly being struck by an oncoming transport truck is frightening. Having a stranger hold a knife up to your face is frightening.
That’s not really my point, though.
Being chased by a stray dog, nearly being hit by a transport truck, being threatened with a knife–these things don’t happen to most people on a regular basis. I’m guessing that they don’t happen to most people at all.
But worry is always present.
That’s what is actually frightening–to live in a state of anxiety when the world is a pretty good place.
My book Deli Meat is about paranoia and about conspiracies. There’s a serial killer and a cult wreaking havoc in the small border town of Plattsburgh, New York. At any moment, a person might be abducted or killed. It’s kind of like a lottery that nobody wants to win.
This sense of fear and anxiety is based on real experience. While my wife and I were living in upstate New York, two convicts broke out of a maximum security prison. These were not men you would want to run into in a dark alley. Both were serving time for murder.
You can look it up if you Google 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility Escape. Ben Stiller is making a TV series based on the incident.
Our apartment was only about a fifteen minute drive from the prison. For about two weeks, no one knew where the convicts were, so naturally, we assumed they were around every corner.
It was a time of extreme paranoia. A lesson that I learned is that one of the most frightening things is how such a situation changes the way you view your surroundings. We enjoyed living in Plattsburgh quite a bit. For those two weeks, however, the quiet border town where we were raising our kids transformed into the set of a horror movie.
The likelihood of us actually bumping into one of the escaped convicts was very slim. In our minds, though, it felt like we might see them at any moment. Our fear and our anxiety changed the way we viewed our surroundings.
Here’s an excerpt from Deli Meat that I hope demonstrates my point:
Effie wondered if the police had investigated this landing. Whoever was committing these crimes could easily put people aboard one of these boats and take them to a house along the shoreline.
Effie thought about how drastically fear changed one’s perspective. Even though she sat before calm waters under a broad blue sky, what she saw was a potential crime scene, an escape route for a violent criminal.
The threat to one’s self is frightening, but it’s living with fear that grinds a good spirit into something meaner; it’s paranoia that melts beauty into something ugly.
That’s why fear is so frightening.
It’s not what’s there.
It’s what might be there that keeps us up at night.
Deli Meat by Tom Halford is available to pre-order now for a September 17 release – click here
