When I was younger, I used to dread the arrival of September because it meant going back to school.
After a summer of (relative) freedom, school meant my life would become rigidly scheduled again, and I would have to sit through boring classes and be tested on things I didn’t care about, all while being forced to be around people I didn’t like.
School can be hell, especially if you don’t have many friends to lean on, so it’s no wonder there are so many compelling scenes in horror movies that take place there.
One prime example appears in Wes Craven’s classic 1984 slasher A Nightmare on Elm Street, when our heroine, Nancy, falls asleep in class and dreams she sees her dead friend Tina in the hallway outside the classroom, wrapped in a body bag and beckoning to her. Spooky!
Unaware that dreams are where villain Freddy Krueger is at his most dangerous, Nancy follows Tina out of the classroom, only to be stopped by a hall monitor demanding to see Nancy’s hall pass.
“Screw your pass!” Nancy yells in a moment of such 1980s-era defiance it could have been dressed in Benetton.
Nancy runs off, but then comes the kicker: Brandishing Freddy’s bladed glove, the hall monitor says, “Hey, Nancy, no running in the hallway!” — only it’s Freddy’s voice coming out of the girl’s mouth. Even spookier!
Have you got a favorite high school horror movie scene? (Or middle school? Or college?) Leave a comment on the Web version of this newsletter and let me know!
Sneak Previews
I’m still neck-deep in writing The Mind Worms, the third book in the Dr. Laura Powell series, and I expect that will continue until the end of fall.
But here’s something fun: In August, my wife Alexa and I saw Chuck Tingle in conversation with N.K. Jemisin at the Strand, celebrating the publication of Chuck’s new novel Camp Damascus!
In addition to being really funny and charming, Chuck is absolutely reinventing the book launch on his tour!
Instead of the usual reading and Q&A, Chuck had hilarious Powerpoint presentations to show and an interactive game show for the audience called “Date the Slashers,” in which audience members tried to guess which well-known movie slasher is on which dating app. (Love is real!)
While I certainly don't mind readings and Q&As, Chuck definitely took things to the next level.
The whole audience was engaged and having a great time. We laughed ourselves hoarse!
Oh, and of course we purchased a copy of the book!
In the Flesh
Also in August, I took part in “An Evening of Wonder and Terror,” reading alongside fellow speculative-fiction authors Karen Heuler, John C. Foster, and Chandler Klang Smith at Shade Bar NYC in Greenwich Village.
Audiobook reviewer and good friend Amy Goldschlager was kind enough to be our M.C. for the evening, introducing the readers, hosting the Q&A, and handing out raffle tickets. Lucky winners won free books!
I believe an event is only as good as the audience that shows up for it, and we had a great, standing-room-only crowd that night! My thanks to everyone who came out!
In case you’re wondering, the story I read was “Spawning Season,” which first appeared in Tor Nightfire’s audio-only anthology Come Join Us by the Fire. Its only print appearance so far has been in the Necon XL commemorative book given out at Necon 40 in 2022.
I’m happy to say the story went over very well with the crowd and the whole night was a blast!
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The next place you can find me will be the Merrimack Valley Halloween Book Festival!
It will be held on Saturday, October 14th from 10 AM - 4:30 PM at the Haverhill Public Library, 99 Main Street in Haverhill, MA.
Come join me and other great authors like Gabino Iglesias, Jennifer McMahon, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Eric LaRocca, Jeff Strand, and many, many more for a day of bookselling, book signings, and fun panel discussions!
Even better, it’s free! No tickets necessary! Click here for more info!
Weird Science Fact for September
Here’s a cool thing I discovered while doing research for The Mind Worms:
Did you know that although earthworms are solitary, they form herds when they’re on the surface?
A resident of Hoboken, NJ found this out in a rather alarming way during a morning walk in a park near the Hudson River back in March of this year.
She spotted hundreds of worms spread out along a walkway, which isn’t unusual after a heavy rainstorm like the one they’d had the night before, but what surprised her was that the worms had formed a perfect spiral shape on the ground.
So, how did this “wormnado” come about?
Worms don’t have lungs. They breathe through their skin in a gas-exchange process called cutaneous respiration, but that means when heavy or persistent rain water saturates the soil, they’re forced to tunnel to the surface or risk drowning.
Once on the surface, the worms form clusters and communicate with each other (through touch — so cool, and also so icky!) to decide upon a common direction in which to move, a collective behavior that scientists theorize helps earthworms survive environmental threats, such as flooding or arid soil, as well as predators. (Without eyes, worms can sense predators approaching through vibrations in the ground.)
Still, no one had seen this “wormnado” shape before, but Saad Bhamla of the Bhamla Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering had a surprisingly simple theory.
Worms have been observed forming all kinds of paths on the surface to follow trails of water. The ground where the where the worms were arranged in a spiral might have had a slight dip to it, and if the water drained that way after flooding, the worms could have simply followed a water gradient in an effort not to dry out, resulting in this spiral shape purely by accident.
But a bigger and perhaps even more surprising mystery occurred just a few hours later when the same woman returned to the park only to find the worms gone!
Where did they go? I suppose they made their way back into…the hungry earth.
Until next time!
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