My thanks to Lucy Snyder for preparing a great post for todays stop on the amazing tour that is happening to feature the many new Seventh Star Press anthologies. Lucy’s story ‘I Fuck Your Sunshine’ is featured in the awesome Vampire’s Don’t Sparkle. I would also like to congratulate Lucy on winning the Stoker award.
She has prepared at my request because I like to weird authors out her top 10 what scares the crap out of me. Well I had to find out what frightens a horror author and here it is.
Edited by Michael West
Foreword by Michael West
“A New Life” by J. F. Gonzalez
“What Once was Flesh” by Tim Waggoner
“The Darkton Circus Mystery” by Elizabeth Massie
“Robot Vampire” by R. J. Sullivan
“Beneath a Templar Cross” by Gord Rollo
“The Weapon of Memory” by Kyle S. Johnson
“The Excavation” by Stephen Zimmer
“Skraeling” by Joel A. Sutherland
“Dreams of Winter” by Bob Freeman
“Dracula’s Winkee: Bloodsucker Blues” by Gregory L. Hall
“I Fuck Your Sunshine” by Lucy A. Snyder
“A Soldier’s Story” by Maurice Broaddus
“Rattenkönig” by Douglas F. Warrick
“Vampire Nation” by Jerry Gordon
“Curtain Call” by Gary A. Braunbeck
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to cancer research institutions to fight the real horrors of Cancer.
Lucy’s Top Ten: What Scares The Crap Out Of Me
10. Realistic Dolls
Some types of realistic dolls fall squarely in the uncanny valley for me, and I find them supremely creepy. I’ve written a couple of stories about creepy dolls; you can find one, “The Dolls’ Hearts”, in my collection Sparks and Shadows.
9. Space Travel
I’ve always been a huge science fiction fan. I think going out to the stars will be one of humankind’s greatest accomplishments. But for me? I started thinking about what it would be like to be floating in one of those cramped, smelly spacecrafts, knowing that there was only a few inches of fragile metal and plastic between me and the vast cold blackness of outer space … oh hell no. I’m staying down here on Earth. I’d be a nervous wreck up there.
8. Burning to Death
I’ve always been scared of being burnt to death. I can think of a few dozen ways to die that are worse, but they generally involve a psychopathic torturer or something exotic like dracunculus worms. Fire is common, and horrible. Ironically, I’m okay with the idea of being cremated after I die, because ….
7. Embalming
The whole modern embalming process creeps me out. I cannot bring myself to go see “Bodies: The Exhibition” even though I have a degree in biology. The idea of being a semiplastic corpse in the ground makes me all squirmy. And what if the technician started embalming before you were properly dead? Well, you’d be dead soon enough, obviously, but … ugh. Terrible.
6. Cockroaches
Speaking of biology, I’m fine with reptiles and most insects. Heck, I got my first job purely because I’m not afraid to handle snakes. But cockroaches just revolt me. It’s the skittering, and the disease and nastiness … yuck. I know they’ll hide in my shoes and my towel. I once had a 3-inch-long Texas cockroach fly at me and get stuck between my eye and my eyeglasses. I’m still shuddering over that.
5. Leviathans
I have a recurring nightmare in which I’ll be swimming in a beautiful tropical bay, all by myself. I’ll look down, and see the massive shadow from the cliff, and feel cold. And then I’ll realize that it isn’t really a shadow below me, and I’ll realize it’s moving up toward me, and there’s no way to reach the shore … yeah. Fun times. I don’t go swimming in oceans past the shallows. If I can’t feel the bottom and see what’s below my feet, I don’t want to be there.
4. Pregnancy
Now, don’t get me wrong: I’ve always wanted a kid. One I hatched myself, even. I was pregnant for a little over a month once, on purpose. And I spent the entire time scared to death. My body and brain were changing in ways I had no control over. A teeny tiny ball of cells was turning me into someone I didn’t recognize. And that little bunch of cells would be a baby in a few months, a new life I’d be entirely responsible for over the next 18 years … if things went well. But what if they didn’t go well? Never, ever look up the myriad ways that pregnancy and fetal formation can go horribly wrong, at least not when you’re pregnant. And never look at the pictures. Do all that before you conceive, or after the kid’s born.
3. Miscarriage
Mine was one of the worst 36 hours of my life. Holy crap it hurt; it was like someone took my regular bad period cramps and hooked them up to a massive amplifier. But it’s not just the physical stuff: there’s knowing that the child you wanted in your life will never exist. So you’re lying there, hoping you don’t start bleeding so badly that you have to call someone to take you to the ER, feeling like your guts and heart have been torn out … and you know you have to risk having this horrible experience all over again, or live knowing you’ve given up on your dream for a family.
2. Cancer
File this under “little balls of cells that change everything”, too. Cancer killed my mom. It’s killed some of my best friends like Sara Larson. It’s killing people like Jay Lake. Fuck cancer. I’ve seen what it does to people, and I hope to hell that won’t be my fate, but I’m scared it will be no matter what I do.
1. Clowns
Just because this list was getting way too grim. So, clowns. Whoa, they’re creepy. Especially when you wake up at night and find one looming over your bed. Am I right?
Lucy A. Snyder is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun 
Sorceress, Switchblade Goddess, and the collections Sparks and Shadows, Chimeric Machines, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. Her writing has appeared in Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Hellbound Hearts, Chiaroscuro, GUD, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. For more about her, visit www.lucysnyder.com.
