I write thrillers. More specifically, paranormal thrillers. Sometimes horror. My novel Seed should hit the virtual shelves just in time for summer vacation 2020.
Like most writers, I’ve been influenced by the masters. The following books and authors entertained me, enlightened me, taught me and scared the dookie out of me.
Here they are, in no particular order:
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury was one of the first authors I fixated on during my formative years (far to long ago to recall). I read this book like a lot of other books back then, with flashlight in hand and the covers pulled up over my head. Yes, kids really did that back in the day!
Looking back, that was probably a mistake. To me, the story started out surreal and rapidly built to down-right scary. The foreboding arrival of Mr. Dark’s carnival and Will and Jim’s subsequent adventures made me want to hide under the covers till morning.
Salem’s Lot
Of course, there’s Stephen King. How many writers have been influenced by him? I believe this was his second big hit novel (after “Carrie”), but I may be wrong.
To me, Salem’s Lot is one of the most terrifying vampire novels out there. King works magic in breathing new life (un-life?) into the somewhat tired blood-sucker genre. His ability to bring characters to vivid life, then put them into horrible situations where survival is questionable, is one of the things that make him shine.
King goes with a lot of the conventional vampire mythology brought forward into modern times. Kurt Barlow is no sexy, “sparkling” vampire, but evil incarnate. As are the townspeople he infects and turns into vampires. Most unsettling of all were the kid vampires. A scene where a pack of kid vampires trap their cruel bus driver on a school bus was especially harrowing.
I’ve always wished that King would write a sequel. Maybe he’s listening…
Summer of Night
I first read this book about 15 years ago. It was my initial taste of Dan Simmons. I really didn’t know what to expect. But when the horror begins to make itself known within the Old Central School, it was “grab hold of your seat” time, because the action and suspense seldom slowed.
Pre-teen Dale Stewart and his four buddies must work together to destroy the evil before it can take over the town and kill them all. Lots of terrifying scenes, and no character is safe. In fact, one of my favorites bit the dust (it hurt, Dan, it really hurt).
Don’t let the fact that five juveniles are the protagonists turn you off. This ain’t a kids “boo book”. Simmons throws a lot at you, including moldering walking corpses, a freaky soldier who spits maggots, giant worms, and more. The climatic battle kept me turning pages in a blur. One not to read on a stormy night.
I’ve heard Simmons has a sequel out (A Winter Haunting) but haven’t read it, so can’t comment. But Summer of Night is a must-read.
It
We’re back to Stephen King. It is one of those telephone-book thickness epic tales he’s famous for. It tells two parallel stories. We experience the first story through the eyes of a group of misfit kids called the Losers, led by Bill Denbrough. The kids must fight to stop an other-worldly evil that shows itself (most of the time) as an evil clown calling itself Pennywise. Make no mistake, Pennywise is one seriously psycho clown monster. It uses the kids’ (and other town folks’) fears against them, manifesting as whatever terrifies them the most.
The second storyline deals with the kids as adults, who must return to Derry, Maine to take on Pennywise one more time. Who will survive?
If you always felt a little queasy around clowns, this book will take your anxiety to a whole new level. As Pennywise says, “We all float down here…”
The Keep
F. Paul Wilson is one of my favorite pen-pushers. And The Keep is one of my favorite books by him. This novel actually kept me guessing right to the end (and fooled me about what the creature really was!).
The plot deals with a company of German soldiers sent to the mountains of Romania to establish a base in an old castle (or keep), where they awaken a monstrous evil that seems bent on destroying them all. The Germans bring Theodore Cuza, an old Jewish history professor, and his daughter Magna to the keep to try to find an answer.
Soon Cuza discovers that the adversary killing the Germans is a thing called Molasar, supposedly a vampire. Unfortunately for Cuza and the Germans, Molasar is using them all for his own ends, and looks to be winning…until an old enemy named Glaeken shows up and takes a hand.
The Keep will keep you on the edge of your seat, and the mystery surrounding Molasar will draw you in, each plot development adding to the terror.
This book is part of F. Paul Wilson’s fictional world he calls, I believe, The Adversary Cycle, where he attempts to tie together a slew of his novels, including books in his highly popular “Repairman Jack” series.
The Keep is a must read for horror aficionados — but read it with the lights on!
Jaws
This is the book that, pretty much literally, has kept me from swimming in the ocean (or wading any farther than ankle deep!).
Written by Peter Benchley in 1974 and than adapted to the big screen, Jaws perfectly captures that sense of claustrophobic horror: being out of your element (in the sea), hunted by a ravenous creature (great white shark) that intends to eat you.
The book starts out with the visceral killing of a young girl out for a solo swim. Everybody knows a shark did the deed, and Sheriff Martin Brody closes the beaches. But as all too often happens in real life, politics intervene, and the mayor and town officials overrule Brody, forcing him to keep the beaches open for the tourist season, which the town depends on for economic survival.
As might be expected, this is like opening a smorgasbord for the shark, which has developed a taste for tourist and town folk. The shark takes a few more victims, and Brody again pushes to close the beaches. When that effort fails, he investigates the mayor and finds connections to the Mafia and real estate values, the real underlying reasons the mayor wants to deep 6 the whole affair.
Brody brings in shark expert Matt Hooper, along with Quint, a rough fisherman who owns the Orka, a decrepit fishing vessel. The remainder of the novel deals with the 3 mens hair-raising attempts to find and kill the great white feasting on the community.
The book went on to sell 20,000,000 copies and perch atop the bestseller list for 40 weeks.
I think Jaws did so well because it was tied to stuff that really happens, real-life horror that make the news. Sharks are real, they’re out there, cruising the waters, and puny humans who dare to invade their watery environment have no real defense against them. Maybe deep down in our psyche, we equate that to our omnipresent government.
Infected
Infected, written by Scott Seigler, is actually the first book in a trilogy. This book caused my gut to ache the entire time I was reading it. It’s one of those “so you like these characters, well that’s too bad, cause all kinds of horrible shit is gonna happen to them” books.
The infection is caused by tiny parasites from space that lock on to their victims. As they grow, they assume triangular shapes and start to control their hosts. The protagonist (Perry Dawsey), already borderline crazy, descends further into madness while trying everything in he can think of to rid his body of the parasites. And some of his attempts are gory in the extreme.
Meanwhile, parasites have infected others, and the infection is spreading, taking over more victims and preparing for worse to come.
This book will make you want to be sure your vaccinations are up to snuff.
Intensity
Dean Koontz is one of my favorite writers, but I must admit I like his earlier books better than his later ones. Intensity falls somewhere in the middle, but is a great ride.
Chyna Shepard is a girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, visiting a friend when a serial killer comes to call. In one horrendous night, all the family is butchered by the killer except for Laura (Chyna’s friend) and Chyna, who hides and escapes the killer’s notice. Laura is subsequently raped and killed, and the killer, Edgler Vess, puts her body in his motor home. Chyna, not knowing Laura is dead, stows aboard the motor home and is trapped when the killer drives off.
Vess turns out to be a formidable adversary. At a gas stop, Chyna hears him brag to attendants that he’s holding a young girl hostage in his cabin. Vess then kills the attendants, but Chyna follows him and once again manages to get aboard Vess’s bus.
The remainder of the novel covers Chyna’s harrowing attempts to rescue the girl and take Vess down. Vess is truly vile, calling himself a “homicidal adventurer” who revels in the “intensity” of his experiences.
This is Koontz at his finest. Will make you look under the bed before you turn out the light!
Phantoms
Another Koontz classic, and his only true “horror” book – or so the critics say. I feel a lot of his books deal with horror and should be classified as such. Maybe what they mean is it’s his only novel with a classic type monster in it.
Two sisters, Jenny and Lisa Paige, arrive in a small California town to find everyone gone. The town is totally empty, like something out of the Twilight Zone. They search, but at first find no one. Then they begin to discover mutilated corpses
Jenny gets a call through to a neighboring town, who send police. The Paige girls and the police find one clue: the name Timothy Flyte scrawled on a mirror in an empty bathroom that’s locked from the inside. Further investigation reveals Flyte is the author of a book called The Ancient Enemy that speculates on what caused mysterious mass disappearances in widely separated areas throughout history.
Soon it becomes apparent that the Enemy is a seemingly unstoppable force, and the Paige sisters and others are now trapped in the town with it — and not likely to get out alive.
I was fooled and pleasantly surprised by the identity of the Enemy, and, as the body count rose, increasingly concerned about my favorite characters. Koontz pulls off something we novice writers strive for (veteran writers have this down pat). He develops his characters so expertly we find ourselves rooting and fearing for them early in the book.
Koontz masterfully ratchets up the suspense until you’re hanging on his every word. Better pee before you start this one, ’cause you won’t want to put the book down long enough to go to the bathroom!
They Thirst
I’m not all that into vampires (maybe because of all the “charming”, “sparkling” varieties that have hit the bookshelves lately. I’ve only written one vampire story, called Any Minute, and believe me these vampires don’t sparkle). But Robert McCammon’s They Thirst is one of the best.
This book is the first I ever read in what I call the “vampire army” sub-genre. I don’t know if that’s a real category or not. Conceptually, the sub-genre deals with master vampires who begin to turn others to vampires; the body count rises, the infection spreads exponentially, until there’s a vampire horde strong enough to lay waste to a city. Or a region.
Kind of like a vampire apocalypse.
In They Thirst, 4 diverse people must survive and fight to stop the vampire plague from taking over Los Angeles — and spreading to overwhelm the world.
A great, sprawling, action-filled, gory epic. Love you, Robert. Don’t stop writing!!!
Stinger
Well will you look at that. Another McCammon book!
Stinger has a science fiction element to it, but just. It’s a true horror book, and delves deep into our fears of monsters in the dark that invade our personal spaces. And our bodies.
Inferno (what a perfect descriptive word, that!) is a small isolated town in Texas, about to become a battleground. From deep space the alien creature comes, to maim and kill and destroy. It places an impenetrable dome around the town (pre-Stephen King’s The Dome) and attacks from below, from underground, systematically taking townsfolk one by one in its search for another alien life form housed in a small artifact and found by a little girl.
Cody Lockett and Rick Jurado are the leaders of two opposing gangs and bitter enemies, but must set aside their differences and fight along with the rest of the town to survive.
Who (or what) will prevail? Another must-read from a great author. Did I say don’t stop writing, Robert?
Midnight
Dean Koontz seems to be hogging my list!
Midnight is one on Koontz’s patented “cross genre” books, incorporating elements of science fiction, suspense, romance and horror.
Kind of a high-tech take on the werewolf legend, Koontz’s concept is simple. Mad scientist Thomas Shaddack discovers a way to create “super humans” from the folks living in Moonlight Cove. His creations will never age, tire, get sick or be restrained by anything as silly as emotion. Unfortunately for the folks he experiments on, there are side affects (aren’t they always, where mad scientists are concerned?). Subjects begin to revert into monstrous creatures ruled by their bestial natures, actually transforming into something resembling a were-creature.
Protagonists Sam Booker and Tessa Lockland, along with 11 year old Chrissie Foster, must evade both monsters and crooked police in an attempt to take down Shaddack and save what’s left of the town.
This book was a pleasure to read, fast paced and relentless with its thrills. One of the neatest parts from a writer’s standpoint was a scene set in a restaurant, where converted townsfolk were recovering from their nocturnal romp as beasts. The transformation burns energy to beat the band, and these people were shown mindlessly shoveling plate loads of food into their mouths in an effort to restock their depleted energy sources.
I thought that was cool. It was the first time I’d seen an author deal with the physical ramifications and consequences of shapeshifting. Neat.
Relic
From two of my writing “mentors”, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Relic scared the be-Jesus out of me. This is the duo’s introduction of Special Agent Pendergast, and from the start the novel (set in New York’s Museum of Natural History) develops an atmosphere of creeping dread and claustrophobia.
The museum is on track to open their premier exhibit, “Superstition”, and garner bookoos of media attention, as well as contributions from well-heeled benefactors. Unfortunately, something is killing museum patrons and employees in an extremely brutal manner.
Of course, museum big-wigs know of the murders and are trying to cover up the whole thing to protect the museum’s good name, (along with their chances for positive press, political favors and good old cold, hard cash).
Enter FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, NYPD police lieutenant Vicent D’Agosta, and museum employee Margot Green, who must solve the murders and uncover whatever is doing the killing.
A good portion of the later part of the book revolves around a running fight through the museum that racks up the tension considerably.
This is a great creature-feature, with plenty of the twists that Preston and Child are famous for. Highly recommended.
And that, my friends, wraps up my list — for now. Let me hear from you. What are YOUR favorite books that scared the shit out of you?
