My Next Short Story: No Outlet

Or, at least, I anticipate it being a short story. And I should probably put “short” in quotations because I could easily see it pushing 40K+ words, which isn’t all that short. But I digress …

Whatever it turns out to be length-wise, I have started writing it. It’s going to be a sort of psychological thriller/horror story about four sixth-grade neighbors who decide to take on the Legend of the Witch House in their quiet suburban neighborhood. I think most kids (well, at least, most kids who grew up in the ‘burbs in the 1980s/1990s) had a creepy house in their neighborhood that was supposed to house a witch, or a ghost, or a guy who kidnaps little kids. I remember a couple of those houses in our neighborhood from when I was younger. I can’t recall if I seriously thought there was something sinister going on at the houses, but it’s easy to get caught up in the inertia of all the creepy stories from the other kids your age, and lose yourself in it. That’s a bit of the psychological phenomenon I’m playing with a bit in this story.

These are the first kids I’ve really written for. There was a kid in “Tomorrow’s News Today,” but I didn’t make much effort to make him a fully fledged character. He was too young to write much dialogue for, and his main purpose was to serve as the glue between the two main characters, and to be Walt’s cute little reason to go to work each day. He didn’t really have to do much. So yeah, this is the first story I’ve written with kids who are real people with real feelings, desires and motivations.

I don’t have kids but — believe it or not — I was one once. A long, long time in a galaxy far, far away. I grew up in a neighborhood blessedly full of kids roughly my age, since I was an only child. The kids who lived on the streets around me were my brothers and sisters in a way (mostly brothers because, well, because I was a kid, and there were a lot of boys too). I’m still in various levels of contact with most of them. Still very close to one, who was my best friend growing up. We’ve said many times that we had a pretty idyllic childhood, running around outside, playing sports, trading baseball cards, most everybody living there for many years.

So it may be a little weird for me to write a horror story about kids rather than, say, a story like “The Sandlot.” But that’s sort of where my mind tends to go. I’ll be borrowing from my childhood with the kids’ personalities. I could see some of that leaking in through the character profiles I wrote before starting the story itself. It’s a group of four kids, three boys and a girl. Aidan is the quasi-leader of the group, the one who’s good looking, somewhat cool, but a bit mischievous. He has a tendency to get the others into trouble from time to time, but he’s not a bad kid, and they get a thrill from following him into whatever adventure he drags them into next.

I have a general idea of how I expect the story to go but, as always, it’s up to the characters to drive the bus, not me. It’ll focus mostly on them, but their parents will come into play as well. To what extent, I’m not entirely sure. My hope is to finish the rough draft by the time my beta reader edits on “Separation” are due back May 20. Then I can put it aside and work on edits later in the summer. When will you see it? My guess is late 2017. So be patient, dear reader. But that’s a little preview so you have something to look forward to.