All in the suspense, thriller, horror genres, Fragments of Fear, is a collection of flash fiction, short stories, and longer stories including Twilight Zone, Tales from the Crypt. Will you find yourself suspended in horrific and thrilling fear as you flash through this collection?
Will the flashes of fast fiction in the Fragments of Fear collection tempt you to leave the light on at night? Michael Kelso, author of this collection has flashed over to ItsWriteNow.com to chat about the journey of writing these thrilling tales. Michael, what inspired you to write and then collect your scary short stories to create ‘Fragments of Fear’?
I began writing short stories years ago. A friend convinced me to put them together into an anthology.
As you look over the tales in the collection, are there any tales that you feel have been inspired by events in your life.
I certainly hope not, even on an unconscious level.
I’m glad to hear that those tales are pure fiction! As you’re not casting your mind to your own life when you write, I’m curious to find out what you are thinking about. What’s at the forefront of your mind as you write?
The short stories are born out of idle thoughts from daily life. Lots of ‘what if’ types of thoughts. The novels are usually short stories that I realize have much more story to tell, so I’ll turn the short story into an outline and write the rest of the novel from that.
What if questions are fantastic tools for creating new stories and can lead to many new paths of discovery. What did you learn by exploring these what-if questions?
That writing short fiction can be just as challenging as writing a novel.
And there’s only one question I can ask after that answer. What writing challenges, be it novels, short stories or anything else are you currently working on?
My first YA novel, along with two sequels for my debut novel, ‘One on One’. I also have a screenplay in the works and a few more novels in some level of completion.
With so many different projects on the go at the same time, do you feel that writing energizes or exhausts you?
Most times it energizes me. Sometimes to my detriment as I look at the clock after having written thousands of words and realize that I need to be at work in a few hours and I haven’t gotten any sleep.
Whoops! Sounds like you might want some alarms to make sure that your writing energy doesn’t take over your sleep. Despite missing a few hours of sleep here and there, do you feel that this writing energy has also lead to an improvement in your voice as an author?
Most definitely. I’ve looked back at my older writings many times and changed the stories to make them better.
I love that you’ve reviewed your past work to improve your writing, skill and creative choices. One way I like to keep those creative juices flowing is to employ the use of crazy and quirky questions that get you thinking. Let’s see if we can give your creative process a workout with our thought-provoking questions like, can you cry underwater?
Yes, but who would know the difference.
And if you can’t tell the difference, is it really crying? As there are still questions surrounding that question, let’s move onto the next question and see if we can straighten out our next question, if space is a vacuum, who changes the bags?
The ship from Spaceballs.
Oh, I forgot all about Spaceballs! Here’s another question that might also be answered in Spaceballs, why is a square meal served on round plates?
Because the restaurants cut corners.
*Laughs* As long as they don’t cut all of the corners with food hygiene then it’s all good! On the topic of all that is good, what is your favourite word?
Yes.
An awesome word, and awesome attitude to life. With that attitude and a history of keeping readers reaching for the light-switch, I’m sure you’ll give us a great answer to the next question. If you invented a monster what would it look like and what would you call it?
It would look like a normal person. Emil Sorn. (From ‘One on One’)
Those normal people are terrifying! Emil isn’t the only scary normal person in ‘Fragments of Fear’, but we can’t too much else away, so we’ll move on the next chilling question, what happens if Batman gets bitten by a vampire?
His voice gets a little raspier and he becomes even more of an antisocial night owl, otherwise, no one would know the difference.
It does sound like he would be largely unaffected. I’m not sure if that makes him a very strong or a very boring superhero. So, let’s create something better than Batman with if you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature what new animal would you create?
An Elephant/Hummingbird.
Now that is something I want to see! And on that note, we’ve covered everything that I wanted to see to see today, obviously apart from that amazing animal combination. For the final question, I’d like to turn the question power over to you. What is a question that you want to see answered?
What if the Hokey-Pokey really is what it’s all about?
*Laughs* Well, I think it if the Hokey-Pokey is really what it’s all about, then everyone needs to go and get shaking! And when they are shaking, they should shake their way over to Amazon to pick up a copy of ‘Fragments of Fear’. Michael, thanks for dispelling a little of the fear in your book, while creating some a few new tingles under our skins!
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Excited to read the book we discussed today? Find it here on Amazon: ‘Fragments of Fear, Collection ( ASIN: B072HMBGJH )‘.
Want to find out more about Michael Kelso? Connect here!