Darkness Rising

Teaser Tuesday: Darkness Rising, part 2

~ Sonia Lal ~ 15 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read

* Open to a random page

* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Still reading the same book as last week! I haven’t made much progress, but the week’s been very busy.

My Teasers:

He nodded, glancing at me. “You sound relieved.”

“I am. I mean, vampires can be nasty, but I wouldn’t put them in the same league as something that’s crawled from the gates of hell.”

– Darkness Rising by Keri Arthur

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My Creepy Meter is Off

~ Sonia Lal ~ 4 Comments

Yesterday for my teaser Tuesday, I posted the first couple of lines from Darkness Rising by Keri Arthur.  A lot of people said it was sad, which I agree with.

But a lot of people also said it was creepy, which I didn’t see until people pointed it out. I thought those lines were a little sad and lot interesting. It makes me wonder if my creepy meter is off.

It could be. I mean, some people think half the stuff I read is horror. I think it is urban fantasy. I mean, you find it on the SF shelves. But some people also think vampire=horror.

Beyond that, I submitted a story for a flash anthology and the editor accepted for a horror anthology (she’s the editor for both). I thought my story was urban fantasy. But, no, it is apparently horror. And horror is supposed to be creepy, right? It’s not just about gore and monsters. It’s the scary and creepy factor of a story that makes it horror (you don’t need gore for that).

I am thinking now I misjudge how creepy stories are in general, both the ones I write and the ones I read.

I mean, I loved ghost stories, monster stories and mystery stories as a child. A good chunk of my childhood reading came from the library’s horror section. The children’s horror section was pretty small and there were never enough ghost/demon/monster stories. The mystery section was much bigger, so I read a lot of mysteries, especially the ones about haunted houses.

I guess what I am saying since I’ve spent a good chunk of time reading stuff like that, I just don’t see it as creepy anymore. Maybe stuff that other people read and think “creepy”, I go “ohhh interesting.” Maybe stuff I think of as creepy, other people think of as scary.

It’s a little worrisome, because it means I can’t judge my own writing effectively.

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Teaser Tuesday: Darkness Rising

~ Sonia Lal ~ 32 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read

* Open to a random page

* Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teasers:

The house still smelled of death.

Two months had passed since Mom’s murder, but the air still echoed with her agony and I knew if I breathed deep enough, I’d catch the hint of old blood.

– Darkness Rising by Keri Arthur