Fear is...

Fear is every where. It's all around us. Look over your shoulder, there it is. What am I talking about? I'm talking about finding fear. Monsters can be scary but rarely drive fear through us and, let's face it, we like to be scared to the core at times. This is where the real scare masters separate themselves from the scare mongers and those that favor gore.



Real life is where fear thrives and few capture that fear...which is sad and unfortunate. Stephen King captures it better than perhaps any author of the modern era. Recently I was chatting with a few readers that stated how creepy a book was. I asked them what made the book so creepy, here is the response:



"Because it makes you look at things in your life differently. For example, I'll never see my houseplant the same again. I sing to it so it doesn't kill me." One stated that it freaked her out to the point where she did not want to walk outside in the grass barefooted for fear green tendrils would grab her.



That's right, the author took a normal, everyday thing such as plants and grass and turned them into something to fear. This is something to remember when writing and developing stories. Although I did not do this for Born of Blood but I believe the element of fear is there I made an effort to build on this idea in Drago's Revenge and continue it in the third novel. I think there is one more area fear is hiding and that is within, internal, in the mind of the character. Many have wrote about psychosis and mental illness but I'm thinking more in the way of self doubt, lack of confidence and how it impacts decisions and the physical ability to do what needs to be done.



Take a moment and look around, think about your life and what surrounds you. Perhaps you will be inspired by an object or a routine to incorporate into your story or make the focal point to increase that fear factor and add that new level of creepiness. Don't underestimate the normal, everyday things...when added to the imagination of an author, they can easily take on a whole new meaning.