For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to stuff that terrifies me, especially if it’s from the area of the unexplained, paranormal, or supernatural.
I fondly remember the second grade when a classmate snuck a book from the high school section of our school’s library that retold all sorts of “true” ghost stories. Wow, I couldn’t believe it. Real ghost stories. And since it was from the high school section, it had to be the real deal.
In the next few years we discovered even cooler books; books detailing sea monsters in Scotland, Bigfoot in our own backyard, flying saucers, giant snakes, and more spoon-benders than you could shake a dowsing stick at.
I never outgrew the paranormal stuff. Sure, as I got older I had give up on some these things. (It was with a heavy heart that I had to accept the fact that the Loch Ness Monster was most likely not a reality.)
But some of these things weren’t as easy to write-off. Take Roswell, for example. Can any thinking person actually buy the USAF Project Mogul report from 1995? Or the even more ridiculous 1997 report claiming that bodies were 7-foot-tall crash test dummies? Doesn’t the very fact that the Air Force published this gibberish provide some pretty good circumstantial evidence that something did happen in 1947. Something that they really went through a lot of work to cover up?
Anyhow, I didn’t plan to spend this post discussing UFO crashes.
No, I just wanted to show that after all these years, my never-ending love of horror, sci-fi, and the unknown has never wavered. And even now, as an old married guy and father of there (going on four) that little kids still lives inside–the kids who wants to believe.
And when I write genre fiction–good genre fiction, the kind I’m proud of–I like to think that that kid comes back from my past and helps me write it.
Who is your inner child? How does he or she help you with your writing? Leave a comment and let us know!
