Halloween I.F. – “Going Dark” – Author Q&A
And we’re done! Thank you SO much for joining me for another year of fun, mystery, and horror.
I cannot express enough how much I appreciate everyone who contributed suggestions, whether once, occasionally, or on every single part. It wouldn’t be the same piece without all of you, and I’m so, so grateful for all of you. I really have fun playing these story games with folks every year!
The full story ended up being ~42000 words! A tidy novella.. If you want to read it again from start to finish, the Index will stay up, and you can find the whole thing linked off my Interactive Fiction page.
If you enjoyed reading and/or participating in this, please consider leaving me a tip over at my ko-fi, and I’d also love it if you checked out more of my work! I do this particular project for free but I’ll never say no to getting to enjoy a cup of tea (or some magic cards) after a long month of writing.
Now… ask me questions! You can ask me about the story, about the characters, about the writing process, about how something looked in my planning doc and how it changed to now, what would have happened if you’d done x instead of y, any background details about a character that you’re curious about, whatever! AMA! (And if you don’t have questions, feel free to share some part of it you enjoyed and I’m happy to talk about that part at random!)
Here are a couple teasers to get you started:
- While certainly not a retelling, elements of this novel were inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest! I’m sure some of you picked up on that but hopefully it snuck past for a few!
- Aris is actually just short for Pinus Aristata, not an actual name.
- Fern did in fact end up having to take antibiotics for 2 weeks.
Feel free to ask follow-ups, come up with your own questions, or just talk to me :> It’s been a lot of you suggesting things and me turning it into story, but I’d love to just chat.
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8 Comments
c
I’d love to know how your setup went! How did inspiration strike, and what exactly did you prepare back in September for the commitment of updates every October night?
Thank you, this was such a delightful story to be part of.
MeredithKatz
So basically! How I work on these is coming up with a thematic concept/whatever worldbuilding I need, and a list of the characters, places, etc that can exist in the story, and an idea of what the protag will first be presented with and then I Stop and do not write more.
In this case, I knew I needed the following to get through the month which I knew would be super busy:
– A really confined setting for the protagonist (I always love doing Uncanny Valley, for example, but that’s an entire world where you can just ask things like “surely there’s a council of mages who can handle this” and I have to be like yeah, you’re so right, and I needed one where I didn’t have so many individual situations to possibly manage. The more isolated the protagonist was and fewer unplanned characters there were, the easier it would be to stay on top of.
– I also wanted no internet because I wanted no chance for you to have the protag research things; I like it in less scary, more just paranormal stuff, but it tends to make a long series of beats where you’re not really ‘doing’ things, just receiving info dumps, and for something to lean more horror you need to have a lot more tight management of story beats.
– I knew I wanted to do a haunted house story of some kind, and I wanted several different kind of threats where you could unleash anywhere from one to all of them. I also wanted some of the threats to be able to become allies, but also be able to turn against you (or be used against you) as needed.
So all that led to an isolated place. Then I wanted to figure out the threats, and I was like, ok, a ghost for sure, then what? A sorcerer as the big bad, maybe controlling a demon and something else, and then I thought about the Tempest and was like oh. ok! I can pull some ideas out of… hmm. My thoughts about the Tempest too. One of the things I’ve always felt about it is how interesting it is that Caliban deeply resents Prospero, while Ariel is anxious and eager to please, and I wanted to play that off not as character traits in this per se, but as part of the threat. Essentially everything Aris and Bannick are doing are played off their resentment at being controlled/used as enforcers while also wanting to please the sorcerer enough to be let free, so if you don’t win them over well enough they might act on their own to hand you over. Meanwhile, Miranda’s sort of an odd case in the Tempest, isn’t she? She was banished at age three in that, and Caliban has been the family slave (leading to very dark feelings for each other in either direction), yet the play begins with her challenging her father’s power to try to save the people who had shipwrecked here. Again, I wasn’t doing this directly as a retelling, but Miranda’s push-pull with innocence, defiance, being fully under her father’s will felt like it’d work well for a ghost who sought vengeance.
anyway my notes look a bit like this:
THEME:
Disconnection/isolation/being trapped/warded/locked away
PROTAG:
person renting a cabin in the woods to ‘get away’.
they’ve become spiritually sensitive after an incident, hearing ghosts around and so on. Getting away is just the thing.
They do need to focus on their art though. (Novels? Historical fiction/essay? Visual art?)
THE SPIRITS – theme of isolation/disconnection from something of themself.
THE DAUGHTER – a young woman haunting where she was murdered, used as a sacrifice. She haunts the locked room she was murdered in, but can whisper through her previous belongings, primarily the portrait of her. Her rage needs to be appeased but she no longer remembers
THE DEMON – summoned and warped beyond measure, sealed into a demon jar. He wants out, he’s hungry, he’s distressed, he’s now isolated from heavy AND hell, he cannot return until he’s carried out his summoner’s last wishes but the summoner is dead and he does not know what those wishes are. (Bannick)
THE FEY – A fey lord, twisted and strange. Their will has been taken out of them as a budded flower and locked away. They are bound to their lord’s service until it is found. (Aristata – pine tree- split down the middle with an iron railway spike embedded in it)
THE HORROR – the sorcerer has become a twisted horror who split himself too many ways to remain earthbound so that he could take over someone’s life. Think nowhere king & eldritch horrors.
THE CABIN
Was originally used by a mad sorcerer (think Prospero) who had been outcast (maybe willingly) from his small town, took his daughter with him. Killed her as a sacrifice to summon spirits to serve him. Victorian?
He has since died but has been searching for an artistic person to try to possess and come back as, he left the cabin in his will with explicit instructions and it’s been rented out since then; the last person who stayed there stayed a long time but wasn’t sensitive until she got very old, died of a heart attack after experiencing the spirits
His grandson is now renting it on Air B&B
The default area
THE DISCONNECTED COURT
What’s left of the fey lord’s realm
Think 12 dancing princesses in the descent
it’s detached from the fey lord’s will and falling into ruin
THE UNHELL
The incubus’s portable domain
he has no access to heaven and no access to hell and he’s not of earth
it’s like a personal bubble he’s made to continue to exist
THE LOCKED SUITE
A murder prison ruled now by an angry spirit
Had originally been pitched to the daughter as her own inlaw suite
traditional haunting area. If unlocked the hauntings spread to the whole cabin.
THE UNDERGROUND CELLAR
A complex too wide and deep
a dungeon that keeps growing, becoming part of the sorcerer’s body
Obviously I didn’t use all of this, or didn’t use it exactly as written in the original plan, depending on what felt better at the moment/worked more as the beats developed and I saw what you were and weren’t doing, but yeah it looks like that.
c
gawd this all rules
Was the river ever meant to be anything, or was being able to go check it out just an opportunity to emphasize the isolation of the setting?
Did Aris and Bannick talk to each other after Fern freed them and come up with their plan to help out by pretending to still be bound? What were their key moments in deciding they wanted to prioritize protecting Fern?
MeredithKatz
It was the isolation! Technically when told you didn’t have any phone access any more you could have tried walking to where you’d seen the neighbour up that way by the river but you would have had a woods chase in that case.
They did chat and come up with the plan! It was a lot of plusses and a few minuses throughout that I sort of want to leave a little vague, but the biggest one for each was a. talking honestly with Bannick instead of fronting (though yeah if something had swung the other way he’d remember and use those details) and b. willingly entering Aris’s power (though Aris was a little pissy about Fern being so blatant about the checks and balances there which was why they did the drink trick at the end)
c
Cute /////
I love that, thank you again for such a great story!
ng
What DID it mean that Bannick was a beast of the earth?
MeredithKatz
He’s a ‘beast of the earth and the realms beneath it’ because he’s actually not fully demon; he’s got human ancestry in there as well! This ended up not coming up particularly much so I guess it’s not canon but that’s where I was going with that.
fordatspoff
I have a couple of what-if questions! What if Fern had broken into Miranda’s room first thing? What if he’d freed her before either of the others?
I’m also curious about what the impact of Fern giving Bannick the freedom of the house based on their sacred laws of Airbnb was! He clearly felt it, but what did it do to him? How did it change his relationship with Fern? That was just such a fun moment, and I’m hungry for details from Bannick’s perspective.
Also. I would like to know more about the landlord. Did he ever go in the Owner’s Storage room? What the hell was in his inheritance stipulations?