Creepy Crawleys

When my husband and I are welcomed to a new neighborhood in a strange way, we must confront the strange old couple and their disturbing gesture.

Excerpt:
"There were a bunch of these in a basket on the porch this morning with a note. 'Welcome to The Bay State. Your neighbors, The Crawleys.'" "Isn’t that nice!" Instantly brightening at the kind gesture, I cut a portion from the stack, slathered it with preserves, and took a bite. Nodding and raising my eyebrows in delight, John took a cue from my approval, and picked up the jar. As I lifted another forkful to my mouth, he suddenly swatted it out of my hand, sending it skidding in a crimson streak across the floor."

Genre: horror

Type: Flash Fiction

Publication: Northern Haunts Anthology

Publisher: Shroud Publishing

Date Published: October 2008

Format: Hardcover, Paperback

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INKLINGS: The Making of Creepy Crawleys

My Motivation:
Despite never having been to New England, I was determined to submit a piece to the Northern Haunts anthology. Shroud Publishing is considered the crème de la crème of horror fiction, and I knew that snagging a spot in Tim Deal's stellar anthology would be a great way to get my publishing career started.

Other than a few poetry submissions to (and subsequent rejections from) Prism International, this was the first time I had sent my work out into the publishing world.

My Idea:
I came up with this idea after reading about an old superstition about eating spiders in pats of butter to ward off illness. Being arachnophobic, this both grossed me out and intrigued me. And knowing how many other people out there hate or fear spiders, I knew that this piece would definitely cause a reaction. What else can you ask for?!

The Story
This piece actually turned out to be a bit more of a challenge than I had previously thought.

700 words. That was all the room I had to tell this tale. 700 words to work in plot, character, and the right creep-to-gross-out ratio.

My first draft was double that. It started with a scene that was inspired by a middle school end-of-year party at Lori Hawthorne's house where someone killed a spider with a hammer in Lori's backyard. Ah, the memories.

That part had to be cut, unfortunately, as I realized I had to start the story much later. The good thing is I already had a vision (or should I say "heard") of exactly how the story would end. I could literally hear my own voice in my head reading the story aloud and the final line…"And when Mrs. Crawley…" well – you get the point. I can't very well post the final line here, no matter how many of you are immediately-turn-to-the-last-page-of-the-book readers. You'll just have to read it for yourself. Then let me know what you thought of it!

The Acceptance:
I found out that my story was accepted after a camping trip where our tent was bombarded with countless (seriously!) Daddy Long-legs. At the time, I was overwhelmingly terrorized by the disgusting little creatures – but in hindsight, I look at it as a sort of skin-crawling tiding of what would soon be great joy.