Horror Aficionados discussion
Group Reads: Guest Author Invite
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September 2019 Group Read with Guest Author, Jeremy Hepler
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Latasha wrote: "Hi Jeremy! I'm currently reading this and loving it so far."Hi Latasha! I'm so glad you're enjoying the ride!!
Ken wrote: "This is the thread for our September 2019 Group Read with Bram Stoker nominated author, Jeremy Hepler. Jeremy has graciously accepted our invitation to join us as we read his latest novel, the comi..."Thanks for that great introduction, Ken! I'm excited to chat with everyone, hear their opinions, and answer questions about Cricket Hunters or anything else!
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Ken wrote: "Jeremy, can you tell us how you got into writing and what attracts you to the horror genre?"Sure. I am attracted to the horror genre because I believe horror is a universal emotion that resonates with people worldwide. It comes in all shapes and sizes, can bend any direction, be anything to anyone. Whether looking to draw strength from someone else going through a harrowing situation, or to connect with someone with shared fears or experiences, or to feel a sense of hope given a seemingly insurmountable situation, or to simply exchange the grind and grit of daily life for something extraordinary, I believe people from all over, of all kinds, of all ages, can find a connection with the genre, whether it be on a social, political, religious, or personal level.
For me, I first connected with the horror genre on a personal level, through The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, which is also the story that set me on the path to writing.
Since no one was an avid reader in my home, I grew up with limited access to reading materials other than ones provided by the public school system. When I was in the sixth grade, my reading teacher Mrs. Close had us read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson as our first assignment for the year. I had never heard of Shirley Jackson or the story and had no idea what was coming. I remember the moment I realized they were about to stone Tessie Hutchinson like it was yesterday. I was blindsided. Shocked. Intrigued. Excited. I had never read a story with such a traumatic, unsettling ending. Up until then a majority of the stories I’d read in school were happy-ending, good-prevails, cookie cutter stories,
stories I found most of which didn’t relate enough to my world, to the chaos and tension that was my home life. Personal experience had taught me that sometimes situations in life end badly. Sometimes you get the short end of the stick whether or not you deserve it. Sometimes the world seems to want to hurt you. Sometimes people want to scare you. Sometimes the bad guy wins. The Lottery connected with me on those darker, visceral
levels. It was the first story I read where I felt like the characters lived in the same world I did—a twisted, troubled world—and I wanted more. Needless to say, I’ve been a Shirley Jackson fan ever since, and although I didn’t write my first short story until I was in my early twenties, I think it all started with her.
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Latasha wrote: "i'm interested in learning more about the magic in the book. do you care to talk about that?"The magic I use in CRICKET HUNTERS is a form of curanderismo: a mixture of Hispanic folklore and wiccan witchcraft. This real-world form of white magic, a form that is still used in many Hispanic cultures today, is viewed as more of a religion than a Harry Potter, levitating, lightning-from-a-wand, form of magic. The same way Christians pray for guidance, help, or divine intervention when facing difficult situations, and use ceremonies like communion and baptism to achieve purity, people raised like Cel are taught to whisper spells and perform rituals of their own to achieve the same ends; spells and rituals passed down from generation to generation that they believe in with just as much fervor as the devoutly religious. Of course, I embellish the use of the magic in the story and invent rituals and spells of my own, but the idea is based in reality for me. My wife is Hispanic, grew up in south Texas five miles from the border, and some of the beliefs and rituals I mention and/or use in the book are ones she grew up around. For example, when she was ill as a child, her abuela would make her lie on a table and sweep a broom over her to help brush away her sickness. Also, if she or her sisters or cousins were acting bad, she would roll an egg over them, hoping to draw out the evil. There are many more, but those are the first two that came to mind.
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But anyways, I love that you put those things in the book. I'm around the 60% area and I hope to finish it by Monday.
Latasha wrote: "I love learning about different religions & folklore. I grew up around all kinds of superstitions.We are all about omens and signs around here. Lol! When i started getting into wicca, I was surpris..."Cool! I look forward to hearing your final opinion on it!
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Latasha wrote: "Well I'm done! That was so good! After that first surprise I had to keep reading. This is going on my "best of 2019" list."You just made my day, Latasha! Thanks for reading and chatting with me!
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Ken wrote: "Jeremy, were the cricket sticks tied into any folklore that you had heard about it or was it simply your devious mind coming up with the idea?"The cricket sticks were definitely a creation of my troubled mind, but in an unintentional way. When we lived in the Texas Panhandle, where there’s zero humidity and winter temperatures often dip well below freezing for weeks at a time, crickets are only around for about a month each spring and fall. I am an extremely light sleeper, and one night in the fall there was a cricket chirping like a megaphone outside the window right above my and Tricia’s bed. At around 3 am, after hours of struggling to block out the noise, I finally decided I had to do something or I was going to go nuts. So I grabbed a flashlight and marched out back in my underwear. We had planted some oak trees the week before, and the sticks that had been tethered to the trees to keep them upright in the pots were leaning against the side of the house. I grabbed one, flicked on the flashlight, and started hunting the cricket. I eventually located it in the mess of English ivy under the window and killed it with the tip of the stick. Then I went inside and fell fast asleep.
The next morning Tricia was making fun of me, telling our then five-year-old son, Noah, how I was walking around the backyard in my underwear at three in the morning hunting a cricket like a crazy man. My son loved it and said he wanted to be a cricket hunter, too. So that night we took two of the sticks on the back porch, marked each of ours with a magic marker, and hunted crickets. Anytime we heard crickets after that, we hunted them. It actually became an art—knowing when to pause, when to move, how to twist your ear the right way to locate them. It wasn’t until years later that the cricket hunting meshed with other ideas and found its way into this story. Now we live in central Texas, where it’s extremely warm and humid, and crickets thrive nearly all year, so killing them is futile and I have had to learn to deal with it. But Noah and I, the only two “real” cricket hunters as far as I know, still go outside and kill a few every now and then just for fun. 😊
Nice to see Cricket Hunter is Septembers group read here, as it is already waiting on my stack, so I'll gladly join the discussion.This is the first year I really noticed crickets in our city neighborhood, usually I only see them when I'm out in the country.
Several weeks ago we actually had a cricket in our bedroom. At first we wondered about some strange rustling noise, which stopped immediately after we turned on the light to investigate its source. As we could not place it and it did not come back, we shrugged it off and went back to sleep. But when it recurred the next night, we found a large green cricket (~8cm) sitting on our curtain rod and staring down at us. I thought it looked very wise and like it was thinking 'hey guys, what's the fuss about'?! I then caught it in a bowl and put it outside.
Elke wrote: "Nice to see Cricket Hunter is Septembers group read here, as it is already waiting on my stack, so I'll gladly join the discussion.This is the first year I really noticed crickets in our city nei..."
Hi Elke! Thanks for joining in. We live in a small rural community on about an acre of land. Across the street is a wooded area with a creek. So we get all kinds of bugs and animals (possums, coyotes, snakes, scorpions, etc.) around our house.
I like the picture! Here in central Texas, we don't get crickets like that one. I've never seen a green one. Ours are black, and they can get as big as my thumb.
I'm reading this now, and skipped past the previous posts to say hello to Jeremy. So, hello Jeremy!! I'm enjoying the book so far! (I'll come back and read the comments above after I'm done. I'm afraid of spoiling things for myself.)
Char wrote: "I'm reading this now, and skipped past the previous posts to say hello to Jeremy. So, hello Jeremy!! I'm enjoying the book so far! (I'll come back and read the comments above after I'm done. I'm a..."
Hi Char!! Thanks for reading! I look forward to hearing your opinion on it!
Char wrote: "We're glad to have you here, sir. :)"Thanks! I'm enjoying it!
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The main characters in this story were not modeled after anyone in particular, but there are definitely little parts of me and people I know or have known in all of them. One minor character is based on a specific person, though. Mike Stabel, the kind-hearted neighbor of Yesenia's who only appears in one paragraph, is based on my late neighbor Mike Abel. He passed away in a tragic automobile accident while I was writing the story, and I added him in as a small tribute. Everything Mike in the story is--kind, helpful, not judgmental, a jack-of-all-trades,--is everything real-life Mike was.
Jeremy wrote: "Ken wrote: "Jeremy, can you tell us how you got into writing and what attracts you to the horror genre?"Sure. I am attracted to the horror genre because I believe horror is a universal emotion tha..."
Jeremy--that's very well put. I too had that visceral response to "the Lottery" in school. Interesting that they had us read that. I'm not certain it would be allowed today.
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Alan wrote: "Jeremy wrote: "Ken wrote: "Jeremy, can you tell us how you got into writing and what attracts you to the horror genre?"Sure. I am attracted to the horror genre because I believe horror is a univer..."
Yeah, Alan. I think some parents wouldn't like that. My wife teaches 7th grade (She's taught 9th, 10th, and 11th, too.), and she catches slack from having her kids read Monsters on Maple Street, which is way less horrific to me.
Latasha wrote: "I didn’t read it in school. We read a lot of Poe & An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge."Latasha, the same teacher who had us read The Lottery also had us read Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart and Masque of Red Death. She rocked!
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Jeremy wrote: "Alan wrote: "Jeremy wrote: "Ken wrote: "Jeremy, can you tell us how you got into writing and what attracts you to the horror genre?"Sure. I am attracted to the horror genre because I believe horro..."
With most horror, you know it is horror when you set out to read it. "The Lottery" ambushes a young mind--in a good way--as you described.
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Ken wrote: "Jeremy, why do you think the horror genre’s legitimacy is always under attack in ways that we don’t see in other genres, especially at the high school level?"I think as real world fears -- global warming, social unrest, political upheaval, economic collapse, terrorism, mass shootings, etc. -- have become more a daily norm, more parents have become helicopter parents, thinking that since there is so much fear and bad happening around their kids, they need to put an extra layer of protection around them. On an artistic level, this affects the horror genre first because it is has the stigma of being a strictly terror-based, bad-shit-will-happen, death-rules genre. Therefore, I think many parents see it as unnecessary exposure. Of course, I believe there is way more to reading horror than just being scared. There's a lot of good in it. Here's a link to an article I read on TOR.com a while back called "Horror is Good for You, And Even Better for Your Kids" that explains it better than I can.
https://www.tor.com/2018/08/31/horror...
Jeremy wrote: "Ken wrote: "Jeremy, why do you think the horror genre’s legitimacy is always under attack in ways that we don’t see in other genres, especially at the high school level?"I think as real world fear..."
Horror does seem to fall out of favor some during times of great social stress.
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I don't have a strict schedule, but I do try to write or edit at least a little everyday when I'm in the middle of a project, and I usually prefer to do so in the mornings or afternoons. When it comes to creating my stories, I'm not a strict outliner or pantser. I guess I'm an in-betweener. I like to have a general plot outline in the beginning, and a general idea my main characters (age, motives, bit of history), so I have a good idea of where I'm headed, but as I write I don't hold tight to those initial ideas. I'm always open to adding or removing characters, actions, plot twists, etc.
It's interesting to hear you talk of a more organic approach to the development of your plots. Do you find that leaving things a bit "open" allows for discovery that aids the telling of the tale?
About 30% in and puzzling over what has happened to Parker...my guess is some kind of revenge act against Cel, but I'm open to surprises ;)Very small footnote: as an avid tea-drinker, I shuddered when Cel used tea bags - I would have expected especially her to use loose herbs all the time.
I had to look up partridge tea, which seems to be a herb/plant not common here. I was irritated when the first translations of partridge related to special kind of bird - that I do know well ;)
Elke wrote: "About 30% in and puzzling over what has happened to Parker...my guess is some kind of revenge act against Cel, but I'm open to surprises ;)Very small footnote: as an avid tea-drinker, I shuddered..."
Glad you're enjoying it so far, Elke. I look forward to hearing your final thoughts.
I'd heard of partridge tea and partridge berries before I used it in the story, but I didn't know it was commonly used by Native Americans and in Latino cultures to help with female fertility, which fit Cel well. When I first looked up partridge online, I got links to the Partridge Family TV show, which also had pictures of the birds :)
Alan wrote: "It's interesting to hear you talk of a more organic approach to the development of your plots. Do you find that leaving things a bit "open" allows for discovery that aids the telling of the tale?"It certainly does, Alan. Leaving myself open has lead to changes that drastically alter and improve both of the novels I've written and many of the short stories.
Jeremy wrote: "Alan wrote: "It's interesting to hear you talk of a more organic approach to the development of your plots. Do you find that leaving things a bit "open" allows for discovery that aids the telling o..."Gotta love stumbling on things that work better than what you'd expected, huh? Without giving the story away, can you tell us of things like that that might've occurred in the writing of CRICKET HUNTERS?
Alan wrote: "Jeremy wrote: "Alan wrote: "It's interesting to hear you talk of a more organic approach to the development of your plots. Do you find that leaving things a bit "open" allows for discovery that aid..."I usually come across the parts that change for the better deeper into the story, and CRICKET HUNTERS was no different. Without giving anything away, a majority of the climax wasn't what I'd initially foreseen.
Do you find that your characters, once developed in your mind, have a way of asserting themselves, sometimes "insisting" that their idea for what to say or do should supersede your initial plans? That happens to me, and I tend to like their "ideas." When I pay attention to them like that, they weirdly come to life in my mind even more. Do I sound crazy? Do you experience anything like that?
I definitely do, so if you're crazy so am I :) My characters also tend to guide me more than I do them once the story gets rolling. I love that! And by the time I finish any story, my characters are pretty much real to me, their experiences fact. I'm sure that if I live long enough to have my brain start to misfire I'll probably confuse my characters and their stories with real events in my life :)
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Finished yesterday, and I didn't see that end coming (though I had a hunch about the past).This was definitely different from what I usually read, and I still have to think over it a bit more before writing my review...
How much of the 'witch' stuff is real or made up? Do you actually know about some spells mentioned in the book, like the ever-present protection spell?
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Really enjoying your book. I like how you emphasize faith as a vital part of the magic/religion in the story....a certain amount of respect for another person's/culture's belief system....and adds an edge to the darker practices mentioned, which, for me, enhances the mystery Cel faces.
Hi everyone, hi Jeremy!I started Cricket Hunters a few days ago and am really loving it. I wanted to read Boulevard Monsters before but thought it a good option to participate in this group read and start with your new novel :)
I love reading about different cultures and religion/believes and haven't read anything like this before. I am really enjoying it.
Thank you for your detailed answers here in this discussion, it is great to have some background info from you while reading the book.
I just read the Frito chapter before going to bed last night and this wasn't maybe the greatest of all decisions, it made me so sad and also a bit angry. But it's part of the story and I will get over it, haha. But it was hard to read for me.
Can't wait to see where all this is going (although I have an idea about one of the characters, but not sure yet). :)
Feli wrote: "Hi everyone, hi Jeremy!I started Cricket Hunters a few days ago and am really loving it. I wanted to read Boulevard Monsters before but thought it a good option to participate in this group read a..."
Hi Feli! Thanks for coming over and chatting! I'm so glad you're enjoying the story! And I'm sorry the Frito incident upset you. I love cats, too, have had many, and would never include animal violence in my writing strictly to add something gross or shocking. In this story, I wanted it to show the strength of Cel's and Yesenia's beliefs in magic, in the way they were raised, and the extent to which they will go in order to help someone they care about.
I look forward to hearing what you think when you're finished and if you're idea about the character is right! :)
And if you read The Boulevard Monster in the future and have any questions, feel free to ask here or message me on Facebook or Twitter!
Jon Recluse wrote: "Hi, Jeremy.Really enjoying your book. I like how you emphasize faith as a vital part of the magic/religion in the story....a certain amount of respect for another person's/culture's belief system...."
Thanks, Jon. So glad you're enjoying the read, and I'm glad you like the way I approached the magic. I really wanted it to be viewed realistically, more as a religion, a belief, which for many in the Hispanic culture it is, rather than a supernatural, lightning-from-a-wand magic. Look forward to hearing what you think when you're done!
Elke wrote: "Finished yesterday, and I didn't see that end coming (though I had a hunch about the past).This was definitely different from what I usually read, and I still have to think over it a bit more bef..."
I'm happy you enjoyed the book, Elke! Thanks for taking a chance on something different from what you usually read!
In a simple answer, the magic in the book is about half researched and learned from my wife's family, and half is made up. The protection spell is based on an actual spell, though. Here's a little more info about the magic from a previous question:
The magic I use in CRICKET HUNTERS is a form of curanderismo: a mixture of Hispanic folklore and wiccan witchcraft. This real-world form of white magic, a form that is still used in many Hispanic cultures today, is viewed as more of a religion than a Harry Potter, levitating, lightning-from-a-wand, form of magic. The same way Christians pray for guidance, help, or divine intervention when facing difficult situations, and use ceremonies like communion and baptism to achieve purity, people raised like Cel are taught to whisper spells and perform rituals of their own to achieve the same ends; spells and rituals passed down from generation to generation that they believe in with just as much fervor as the devoutly religious. Of course, I embellish the use of the magic in the story and invent rituals and spells of my own, but the idea is based in reality for me. My wife is Hispanic, grew up in south Texas five miles from the border, and some of the beliefs and rituals I mention and/or use in the book are ones she grew up around. For example, when she was ill as a child, her abuela would make her lie on a table and sweep a broom over her to help brush away her sickness. Also, if she or her sisters or cousins were acting bad, she would roll an egg over them, hoping to draw out the evil. There are many more, but those are the first two that came to mind.
Hope that answers your question!
https://www.amazon.com/Cricket-Hunter...