dabbles — folk horror

I was invited by Ted (shredbobted) to join his Discord group to workshop some short fiction for cross-promotion amongst the participants. I’m only now getting some free time and energy to explore some ideas; it’s been a busy time for me, or I have been worn out.

A few weeks ago, I cranked out an exploration into an old theme that I wanted to revisit, called “Drifter”. The idea was that there are a group of folks traveling in the “in-between” spaces and using dolmen as doors to try and find their homes back in realspace. After a week, I looked at the first thousand or so words I had written and realized that I’d left the tale completely without an anchor. To remedy that, I would probably have to at least write it as a novella, and more likely as a full novel — neither of which am I prepared to do at this time.

A few days ago, I started working on a different idea, with the explicit intention that it would have a solid anchor prior to getting weird. And the weirdness was going to be quite a bit more grounded in nature. I’m a little more satisfied with this effort after drumming up around 2500 words because it doesn’t feel quite so airy and disingenuous (in places).

Instead of placing it on some imaginary plane of existence, I decided to root it in a generic small town at the end of ranching country. Instead of high-browed concepts about “the ‘Twixts” and subverting necromancy to suit my story, I am exploring latent secrets best left in obscurity.

Except, of course, where’s the fun in that?

The current piece is based on a phrase developed from a word mashup I’ve used a few times in my poetry: Wytching Tree. The first line came to me one night about a month ago and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I just jotted it down on a notepad and set it aside: “We all used to hang out down by the wytching tree back when we were young, but no one goes down there no more.”

As I got to thinking about alternatives to my ungrounded, sans-anchor earlier effort, I decided it was time to return to this idea and to dabble a bit in folk horror. It has been a long time since my writing has gone in that direction, as I have been more drawn to supernatural adventure fiction, scifiwesterns, and grimdark when it comes to such things, rather than the horror elements, but I liked the challenge that it presented with that first scrawled line. for this story.

I’m not sure if I am up to the task, but at least it is a break from my normal mode of writing, fiction or otherwise. Keep your eyes out for it, as I think Ted intends for us to publicly share our stories after this workshopping attempt. Okay, I know he intends for us to share our stories eventually.

Another unusual thing for me it attempting to hold back publication of my writing. Because I write primarily for my own enjoyment, I tend to post half-baked writing, assuming I’ll go back and clean it up if I decide to more formally publish something. It is a little bit of copyright protection by my reasoning; obviously incomplete, and typically requires some editing before I would dream of charging for any of my fiction. Alas, it is not my dream to charge for my fiction, so the spit and polish is lacking.

I’ll be interested in what you have to say about it when it goes live. If it ever goes live. The recommendation from others might very well be. “Keep it under your hat, Michael. Please?”