*news anchor voice* This just in! Issue #2 of The Bleeding Margin is NOW AVAILABLE TO ORDER! It’s available in ebook, paperback, or hardcover, and it features my story Man’s Last Friend, which will NOT be appearing in Losing Air. It’s exclusive!

It comes right after the interview with Paul Tremblay, where he talks all about Horror Movie, so that’s insanely surreal. I own three copies of that book, and convinced my dad to read it. So this is kind of like playing a set after Green Day for me.

Anyways. Let’s talk about me some more.

Last week I told y’all about my high fantasy series, Scrolls of Malthea, that’s really been holding my attention for a few months. What I haven’t told you about yet is my third active project- a space horror called Stasis.

I mentioned in the Malthea article that all of my novel projects tend to start with a challenge or a question. For Malthea, I wanted to see what a fusion of fantasy and horror might look like, and whether I could write a romantasy that didn’t follow the old, tired formula. Stasis came about first with a what-if, then about three pages in, I realized what my challenge would be.

The what-if: What if you awoke from cryo sleep on a ship with brain damage causing amnesia, having no memory of your name or what you’re doing there, and you look around and discover something chilling: you’re the only one awake out of the whole crew.

Now, why did I call this Gerald’s Game in Space?

If you’ve read Gerald’s Game (or seen Mike Flanagan’s incredible film adaptation), you might be familiar with the concept: a woman is handcuffed to a bed for days after her kinky husband dies of a heart attack during the hanky-panky. But that’s not all. Not by far.

Gerald’s Game was largely considered “unadaptable” by directors and the King fanbase for years. Why? The entire thing, with the exception of the quick setup and the end of the story, takes place in one room, in one woman’s head, and she’s stuck in one place.

And it’s fantastic.

But, what does this masterpiece have to do with a space horror?

It’s become my homage. My flattering imitation. My, “Can I do something like this thing I really like?”

Because with Stasis, I wanted to try something out. Making the reader just as uncomfortable as our POV character. I’ve often found that the best horror doesn’t necessarily just throw gore and spooks at you the entire time; it does things that really try to get under your skin, make you uncomfortable. My favorite and most effective examples of this include such gems as I’m Thinking of Ending Things (both book and film), Nope (2022), and Hereditary (2018). All of these works present the reader with things they don’t see often, things that, when they appear on screen, we want to look away. Not because it’s a spooky ghost or gory body horror, but because it digs under our skin. The dinner scene in ITOET, the massive, almost megalophobic empty desert sky in Nope (plus those weird-ass monkey scenes that everyone but me hated), the very extended shot in Hereditary of the son just sitting in the car after the thing that happens (you know). There’s nothing jump-scarey about these, nothing necessarily gross, but all the same, they fill us with uncomfortable dread.

All this to say, that’s what I want to do in Stasis.

So, I’m taking away all the reader’s comforts. There’s no person-to-person dialogue (I’m not counting the unhelpful ship AI), there are no other characters in the room with our POV main, and the location (our “sandbox”, you might say) remains relatively quite small for the entire story.

What do you think would happen to your mind if you spent weeks, maybe months, alone on a spaceship, headed somewhere for a reason you can’t remember, with absolutely nobody else to interact with?

Well, I’m not a psychologist, but I thought, you’d probably start seeing some crazy shit. Also, I made the choice to eschew centrifugal artificial gravity (very common in space operas), because a.) these people weren’t expected to be awake for very long on this ship and b.) there’s a lot more opportunities for funny shit happening when there’s no gravity. I mean, we’ve all seen that great video of the astronaut who’s on earth after being in space for a while and he keeps dropping things because he forgets there’s gravity. Right? No? Oh, well here you go-

Love that video.

Anyways, Stasis is my dear youngest child right now. It presents me with a fun challenge as a writer, lets me play around with goofy and creepy concepts, and gets me an entry into my absolute favorite sci-fi subgenre: the space opera.

For a story with really very little actual plot (we’ll see how close to 60,000 words we get), I have an absolute blast every time I sit down to work on it. It’s what I use to take breaks from the vast, sprawling world of Malthea, the high-stakes and the vast stretching timeline. I love being able to relax with some isolation and goofy anti-grav physics.

Keep an eye on my writing goals updates at the end of every post- I’ll be updating y’all on my progress for Stasis specifically, along with both Malthea projects.

I’ll leave you with this: go watch Flanagan’s Gerald’s Game. I’m begging you.

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Monthly Writing Goals Update

15,481 / 20,000 words

I had some trouble getting inspired this week. I have been reading like crazy, so maybe that’s what’s taking up so much of my brain space, but the little progress I made this week was just a little over 2k words in Stasis. But you know- it’s totally okay to have a few unproductive patches. Plus, I’m definitely still going to meet my goal by the end of the month. Not to worry!

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