Small Is Scary!
I’m more scared of bullets than bombs. I worry more about nanobots than I do an invasion of giant robots. Maybe it stems from the first horror I movie I saw as a kid that really and truly frightened me: Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (the original, not the remake!), in which a coven of diminutive demons terrorize a full-grown woman and eventually drag her to their dark lair. To me, that was more chilling than a 6’5” Jason Voorhees crashing through the woods.
But it’s not just me. Pretty much all people are freaked out by cockroaches scuttling in the dark and going up our leg or the thought of spiders crawling into our mouths we sleep. Mice and rats, cute as they are, are another tried-and-true trigger. It’s the idea of the hive-mind driving little creatures to attack in unison in an unstoppable wave that made Hitchcock’s The Birds such a classic. And to think of tiny beaks, teeth or claws tearing you apart… it would take much longer to die. Yikes!
It was this idea that sparked my desire to write the short story "Ankle Biters" (which is in my new anthology, City of Devils). It’s a scary yet darkly-comedic look at how a pampered Beverly Hills chihuahua transforms into a vicious mini-Cujo! Maybe I’m onto something, because the same week City of Devils was released, there was a headline about a woman who was mauled by a pack of wiener dogs! (I think it’s fake news… and so is my fictional story, but it’s fun in a twisted kind of way. And you won’t believe what the dog in my story does!)
City of Devils is at a low introductory price of $2.99 for the Kindle on Amazon (and paperback), so do check it out if you have a moment. I’d love to know what you think of the premise!
Other stuff I’m working on that may be of interest:
A feature-length documentary on guitar legends The Ventures – check it out at Facebook.com/TheVenturesMovie
The Tragedy Man, a horror novel for Kindle and via Audiobook (if you love audiobooks, please let me know as I am giving away *free* downloads …but only for a short time)
Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?
Lastly, if you are in L.A. on Sunday June 2, please come by and say hello at Dark Delicacies in Burbank from 4-6pm. The main event is the My Favorite Horror Movie signing, which is a complication of 48 fab essays, plus I’ll have a few of my own books there as well.
As always, thank you for reading - I know and appreciate how valuable your time is.
#smalldogattacks #horrorstories #dontbeafraidofthedark #StaciLayneWilson #cityofdevils
