New Short Story: “A Place of Peace”

Today, Terror House Magazine published one of my short stories titled, “A Place of Peace”. Now, in case the name of the literary magazine hasn’t already given it away, I’ll give you fair warning, the story is not peaceful.

If you’ve read much on this site, or follow me on Twitter, you know that my default state is humor; I find life to be a mix of light and dark humor with a bit of irony sprinkled in for fun.

The YA book I’ve been working on is a hopeful coming of age story. Granted, the setting is a post-apocalyptic landscape, but it is not a grim survival-against-the-odds kind of story. The children’s book I’ve just finished (thank you NaNo!) is a humorous fantasy about pixies in middle school.

So why dabble in horror writing? Great question and, after a little thought, an easy answer.

It’s fun.

Horror was the first genre I was drawn to as a reader; I read both children’s horror (RL Stein and Christopher Pike) and adult horror (Robert McCammon and Steven King) interchangeably.  Happily, as much as I enjoy reading horror, I’ve found that writing horror is fun too. Like comedy, you get to take the bumpers off and explore the bleeding edge.

This story was also fun to write because I got to explore #ownvoices a bit. I’m half-Japanese, so bringing in Japanese components to the story was fun- if you’ve read Japanese folklore, you may recognize an aspect of the story.

Take a read, and let me know what you think! Many thanks to Terror House Magazine for publishing my story. https://terrorhousemag.com/peace/ Trigger warning: Character with Suicidal Thoughts