Postcards # 8- Everyday People, Extreme Challenges

Many characters in my rural horror stories are like you. Or me. Everyday people you'd meet on a street. The challenges my characters face are unlike any we might encounter and that's where it gets interesting. What is happening? Why is it happening? What are they going to do? Are they scared? Angry? Disbelieving? How will that affect their decisions?

Merla, the pregnant woman in Pig, a story from my collection Well Water and other odd tales, is facing a serious dilemma. She and her husband are living on the knife's edge financially. And there's been a feud of sorts, and an altercation that's landed her husband, Ray, in the hospital. All because their neighbor, Davy, won't pen his pigs. They are a threat. They're enormous. They're wrecking her garden, which they count on for food, creating wallows everywhere, lurking under the porch. She doesn't know what to do. She feels pushed into a corner. She plans. She acts.

In Ni-Bo, a story from my book Bluebud: A Collection of Fears, Garsted, who used to be a local celebrity in his small town, finds himself in a cave, seriously injured. And he's not alone.

What will he do? What if help doesn't come?

Short stories offer you, the reader, bite-sized adventures and scares. I'm presented with the challenge to get a character through a complete story, in an entertaining way. With an economy of words, perhaps, but by no means shortchanging the reader. If you like cryptids, creatures, urban legends, vampires and mythical beings wrapped in folk horror, rural gothic themes, fantasy and the like, my books are for you.

Back to the story,

Lyndsey

Photo: Josh Duncan, Unsplash