Background on Bestiary – Part Two

As those of you who read the last Surviving the Crash update probably already know, I love monsters.

I’ve been a huge fan of the horror genre since I was a kid, cutting my teeth on everything from the classic Universal films to The X-Files. The latter also spawned an interest in legends and folklore that’s stuck with me to this day and occasionally leaks into my work.

The Beast of Gevaudan, the Dover Demon, the Mothman … these kinds of bizarre stories hold a special fascination because there’s that niggling grain of doubt, that desire to suspend disbelief despite the absurdity of so many of them. Because damn, wouldn’t the world be a far more interesting and mysterious place if they were real? It would bring the kind of awe that makes one question everything and darkens our view of night back to the primitive for it.

I’m talking about wonder. Amazement. A quality so often lost in a cynical age where everything speeds through the internet with the click of a button to be dissected by millions of different people until it’s raw, steaming fact (or one-sided opinions fighting it out).

Imagine the kind of spectacle it would take to make someone’s cell phone tumble from his hands and shatter on the pavement without him even noticing … because there’s something in front of him he’s never seen before–something that’s not supposed to exist anywhere.–and it makes his world stop.

In Bestiary, this effect, this feeling, is one character’s pride and joy, and caused another’s personal hell …