#also found out some slightly scary facts about our internet from the woman who came to fix it

[spicyraeman]

Back from the void, got the power back on and the internet immediately went out ripp

[dailydnp]

YouTube stars and LGBT+ influencers Dan Howell and Jessica Kellgren-Fozard on how they and their queer fans have helped each other through “radical bravery”.

Dan Howell, a comedian and one of world’s most popular YouTubers, and Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, lesbian YouTube star and disability advocate, have had vastly different experiences as queer content creators.

The two LGBT+ YouTubers spoke to PinkNews to mark the launch of The Rise, a YouTube campaign that celebrates diverse UK creative talent on the platform.

Having already made YouTube videos for 10 years, Dan came out publicly in June 2019, in a 45-minute video titled “Basically I’m gay”.

He described his coming out story as “very strange”, and told PinkNews: “Me already being this kind of obnoxiously, omnipresent public figure, I had to kind of go on this process.

“I’ve known how gay I was since forever, but had to go on the whole journey of not just working out how I would communicate that to the world, but truly reaching a point of self-acceptance.

“Because on some level throughout all of my life, I’ve accepted it but not really acknowledged it. I said: ‘I’m not ready yet, now’s not the time, I don’t know how.'”

Jessica, on the other hand, explained that she has “never struggled” with her sexuality, having always known she would be accepted.

“I have a very different coming out story to most LGBT+ people in that I was raised in a Quaker family, and there was never the expectation that I was going to grow up and get a husband and that this was the way things happened… So I’ve never struggled with my sexuality in that way,” she said.

While Jessica uses her online platform to discuss her life as an LGBT+ person as well as queer history, much of her audience comes to her channel for her disabilities advocacy.

She has two rare genetic conditions, HNPP and EDS, which affect her nerves and connective tissues. She is deaf, visually impaired and her conditions can affect her mobility with varying severity.

“Being a disabled and chronically ill teenager, I had this big thing in my life that was really difficult, and a real struggle, and being gay just paled in comparison,” she said.

“There was obviously the drama, the girls that I liked didn’t liked me, they always turned out to be straight. But that was the biggest drama.

“When I started YouTube, I was already married, it was already very much like, this is who I am. I’m gay, this is my wife. There’s no question. There’s no worrying about it.”

She added: “I like to think that that does, in a way, represent what our future is going to be –  that we don’t have to have these coming out stories where people worry about how they’re going to be accepted, and worried about the response they’re going to get.”

Dan Howell wishes he’d had queer role models like Jessica Kellgren-Fozard when he was growing up.

Dan Howell said that YouTubers like Jessica Kellgren-Fozard could have helped him immensely when he was discovering his LGBT+ identity.

“If there was someone like Jessica when I was a young person watching YouTube, I just know I would have had a profoundly different journey through life and coming to accept my sexuality,” he said.

“I would have been represented, I would have learned about queer history, I would have been seeing different relationships, seeing different personalities.”

From LGBT+ issues to disabilities and mental health, both Dan and Jessica have used their platforms to share their experiences in areas that are vastly underrepresented in mainstream media, showing their viewers many facets of their identities.

In 2017, Dan used his YouTube channel to discuss his struggle with his mental health, in a video titled “Daniel and Depression”.

“There’s many aspects to a human,” he said. “I’ve always come from a place of just talking about whatever’s on my mind, or whatever is important to me.

“It was quite a jump for me to make that first video about mental health, opening up about depression out of nowhere was quite scary. Because even three or four years ago, it was still more of a taboo topic.

“I tried to do it in my own way, which is to kind of inappropriately joke about it at my own expense, and try to make it a storytelling experience. That’s just the same as everything else I do.”

Jessica said that from her point of view, “the best representation is always ‘happens to be'”.

“It’s the idea that you have a character who’s going on an adventure, you have someone who’s talking to you about makeup, and they just happen to be gay. Because otherwise we’re not really going to be reaching outside of our own echo chamber.”

She explained that some viewers end up watching 10 of her videos without ever realising that she’s married to a woman, which she thinks is “the best way to kind of have any change and effect on the culture and and people in the world”.

“Because if we’re always trying to preach to the choir, we’re not really going to get anywhere,” she said.

“But if people are thinking so-and-so on TV is absolutely amazing and then later find out that they’re gay, maybe they’ll be changing some preconceived notions.”

“It’s this kind of sneaky, insidious way that the gay agenda will thrive and inevitably take over the world,” laughed Dan. “Winning hearts and minds.”

One particularly heartwarming example, Jessica said, was when a fan used her videos to come out to their parents.

“She was raised in a very religious household and her parents were not at all open to the idea of homosexuality. In fact, if they were watching television, and something came up relating to the subject, they would immediately turn it off, change the channel, perhaps say something wasn’t particularly lovely.

“She was sat there feeling like, ‘Oh, am I ever going to come out my parents?'”

The fan decided to curate a playlist of Jessica’s videos to show her mother.

“It started with videos that I made about my religion,” she said, “and then transitioned to fashion and videos about history. And just slowly, each video was a slightly gayer video.”

“Her mother became a fan within the first 20 videos. She was like: ‘This seems like a good role model for my child.’

“Eventually [she realised] this role model has a wife and is gay, and is OK with this. And her parents are religious and OK with her being gay… I was able to provide a tool for someone to do that to come out in quite a safe way to their parents.”

The “radical bravery” of his queer fans helped Dan Howell come out.

Dan Howell, on the other hand, said that his fans were the ones who helped him feel safe to come out.

While still in the closet, he said he found it “difficult” that he viewers saw him as someone who was always “open and honest” with them, especially after sharing his experience with depression.

“I went on a world tour in 2018… I was doing these meet and greets, and people would genuinely pour their hearts out to me, and they would talk about everything they were going through in their life,” he said.

“They would talk about illness, they would talk about mental health. And so many people talked about sexuality, just because the community that had been created had this attitude of acceptance and growth and coming together and wholesomeness.”

While he understands that there was “no presumption [he] was a homophobe”, he found it confusing when people would tell him that he had inspired them to come out.

“It was difficult, because I stood there feeling like I was a sham. People were saying: ‘I feel strong enough to say this to you, because you’ve been so open and vulnerable to me.’ And I was just stood there like: ‘Well, actually, I feel like there’s the biggest part of me that I haven’t even yet gone on the journey to acknowledge myself.’

“I mean, I’ve had people that came out to me in front of their parents, because they felt like they were in a safe environment, and that’s crazy.

“The radical bravery of some of these people is what made me think if I was feeling like a little scared dog in my apartment, looking in the mirror like a chihuahua, thinking: ‘How am I ever going to come out publicly at this stage of my life?’ I would think well, actually, look at the younger generation.”

In the ‘chaos’ of the internet, queer YouTubers like Dan Howell and Jessica Kellgren-Fozard building valuable communities.

While the internet can be a scary place for queer folk, Dan Howell and Jessica Kellgren-Fozard are determined to use it to build community and acceptance.

“I think that we don’t talk enough about the wonderful sides of the internet,” said Jessica.

“How it allows people to come together and create a community, how it gives us access to education that might before been blocked to us, how we’re able to actually learn from people who come before us.

“I really like talk about queer history, because we’re one of the only communities and minorities that can’t pass down out knowledge through the generations. Because you know, gay people don’t necessarily have gay kids.

“We often miss out on learning from our elders and learning what’s come before us. And I think it’s really important and lovely that we talk about and validate and really cherish these communities that are available to us on the internet.”

Dan added: “When you look at the chaos of the internet and various online communities, I think it is good to see when people are creating content that can make people feel better.

“For all of the terrifying chaos of the freedom of the internet and creating on YouTube, it also lets people emerge that may not have been represented, you can create the content that you wish someone was making for you.

“And I think that’s one of the best things.”

[punkocalypse]

For commissions, they're going to be open, prices will go back to normal as of Monday or Tuesday, so take advantage of the sale while/if you can... Even if I don't get it done immediately, the sales are still going. 50% off of everything except line arts, which are $10 for a single full body and $15 for a couple full body.

Now onto the rest...

October 5th, 2018... Wheatley was the first to get skunked.

I don't know what he did or where he found it... but we were taking a break and had everyone inside and all we could smell was that signature skunk smell... so we sniffed and there is Wheatley... sad as could be... eyes kinda red... not SUPER smelly but definitely got it...

Poor baby... but it teaches him... so we gave him a bath and he's sticking close now. He's ready to rest... Everyone is. You give them a day of running willy-nilly outside and they're okay to sleep for the night xD

Meanwhile me? My shin that I busted open on the 4th opened back up and bled some more... so we used hydrogen peroxide and we did a dose of that maybe 6 or 7 times and it STILL kept fizzing... so we're going to keep an eye on that...

Aside from that, turned in the keys today and went to the postal office to let them know we moved... have to call some places Monday because we simply haven't had time to sit on a phone for 2-3 hours on hold to tell someone we've changed addresses :/ barely had time to go to the post office and let them know.

But everything is finally moved AND we took a photo of the mold in that closet just in case... as well as we have our therapist who we've been telling about all the crap that those apartments keep pulling on us over these couple o' years, just in case they try to pull one last screw you... Which they better not be angry about the mold because it's THEIR water closet and the only reason we know about it is that that's the whole reason they came into the apartment in the first place was to see if we had it cuz downstairs had it...

We just thought we were sick and couldn't breathe for no reason aside from stress... but no. We were being freakin' poisoned by mold spores going into the A/C and being blown all over the house. And then they never even took care of it, like everything else.

So goodbye. Now I can fix my problems. But so far the only problems with the new place is some of the doors are easily opened (old farmhouses are like that) and there's a crap ton of spiders everywhere... But when no one has lived here for who knows how long and the house is on 12 acres, you're going to get spiders... Cool thing is the laundry room has a super crooked door that can't be fixed because the threshold is too big for the door and since the floor it's on is crooked, you can't have a normal door there... but it looks cool af. We live in a crooked house and I love it.

Also, we've got like 3 types of grasshoppers, 2 kinds of crickets (One of which ALSO keeps getting inside), butterflies, moths, beetles, mosquitoes (we spray ourselves and pups have meds to deter them), other strange bugs, lizards, birds, deer, armadillos, skunks (obviously), I saw a possum the other night, turkey vultures, pigeons, and just a whole host of other critters... I heard screeching tonight, that might've been one of the possums just making noise cuz all pups were accounted for.

I also had to take an old abandoned bird's nest AND an old abandoned wasp's nest out of our mailbox so it could be used... I felt bad for taking down the bird's nest cuz there was NO way to remove it without breaking it apart...

Also, been looking more around the grounds, there's a bunkhouse out back just a tad (there's a walkway from the back of the porch to it, just has lots of overgrowth) that has electricity and is attached to the well-house by a wall but the shower in it is broken probably... has a bed in there and the light works though... we are just using it as storage.

There is also a wagon against the back of the house that I plan on taking out to the old garden and weeding soon, just toss them all in there so I can get them to the garbage easier... We want to go out and get a pumpkin sometime this month and just put it in the garden so it'll decompose and give us pumpkins next year (Okay... I want that and it was my idea lol... Grambo said we'll have pumpkins forever so probably just get one pumpkin)

I got my seeds though!! I ordered some seeds that were on sale... mostly herbs and some vegetables so in the spring I can start on it. If I can earn up the money I want to order more and maybe even order some grapes and other fruits that aren't trees. Ordered Lovey some sunflower seeds too so I can grow them to put in a vase. Also ordered like three kinds of carrot seeds cuz those are good treats for everyone...

Need to find someone who sells green beans, though... I don't know if those come in seeds or not... I've SEEN the plants when I was younger but I have no idea how they got planted or where you buy them here... but they're good dog treats and Wheatley loves them.

I want to start canning as well, next year so we can be slightly more self-sustainable, especially through the winter... I'm going to have a lot of work cut out for me but I think it'll be easier being away from everyone... I still need to clean out what we're going to use as a garage and the old chicken coop so I can use the coop/barn/thing as a workshop.

We're not ready for chickens. I want them... but we're not ready. Garden first. Plus, that coop would need a LOT of work and I still have to do the garden, the fence, and literally everything else... I'm excited about it though. I like to fix things, it makes me happy.

I'm also excited to get back to painting and drawing... traditionally. It'll be awesome to go outside and just do some sketching or maybe painting that American,I think he said Oak or Elm, tree outside in front... it is SO beautiful... Plus, the trees here aren't rotted or dead...

I have a lot of work cut out for me but it'll get me outside, so it's worth it. First thing tomorrow, since we finally have everything here, I need to take the pups out on a walk along the border of our property so they learn this is ours and this is home, don't leave this. Going to keep doing that so they learn... plus, it'll show me everything around here...

Sunday, we're going into town to see what all they have... Then Monday we have therapy and visiting Grambo.

And throughout all of that? Unpacking. BUT, we're already mostly done... It's much easier to unpack than to pack... Plus, we have space... and I hear a cricket inside, lol. Pups are sleeping, so he's lucky... Lovey stepped in cricket earlier.

Anyway, enough rambling... Will update another time... Internet is still spotty while we get used to it as well as we're super busy with home stuff and my muscles are sore and stiff so not much getting done outside of packing and unpacking... Now just unpacking, though so I can take my time...

I love this place so much... I'm actually excited and happy to come home... It's calming at home... I'm not constantly terrified... I can walk around my own home without feeling like I'm constantly in danger... Sure, for now, I have to check everything for spiders before I touch it but that's way minor to me and way less scary than people...

Speaking of people... apparently in her drunken state yesterday, Uncle's gf said she was going to fight me or punch me in the face or something... I don't know exactly... Uncle told lovey who told me that she was threatening to fight me specifically... and I just find that fucking hilarious because that happens so often... I don't do anything and people want to fight me and then never actually do anything...

Like, literally... I have NEVER done anything against this woman in my LIFE... I've been polite. I've never said anything to her. I've never said anything to her boyfriend. I've never said anything to Grambo... But she wants to punch me in the face... For not being involved whatsoever...

The last time this happened was some girl was being incredibly rude to a different Grandmother and I told her she needed to respect the woman allowed her to live under their roof, to which she told my friend's cousin she was going to punch me in the face next time I did that... which she never did and I didn't find out about the threat until after the fact...

So yeah... People always want to fight me and I'm losing the will to care at this point. I'm not a confrontational or violent person but everyone wants to fight me behind my back... Okay then, I guess? By all means, throw the first punch... I will pin you to the ground so you can't hurt anyone and YOU can go to jail for assault. I don't like bullies and I don't like fighting. I don't have time for this.

Have fun with it.

I'm writing this at 1:11 AM but will post it when I get up because my internet isn't working right now and I think computers will have to be permanently grounded to the bedroom to get any service because that's also the only place the wifi router works. No living room for you... I have to put a desk in there, we've only got one... Thankfully, we have our own desk... it's just outside while we're unpacking... And then it has to be checked for bug-life before it's allowed out of purgatory and into the realm of the living... Just like almost everything else.

Alright, that's the end, I'm done... Hope you're all good.

NEW NOTE: It's 4:11 AM and couldn't sleep so posting while I can

[char27martin]

Writing Monsters: What Makes a Monster Scary?

Editor’s Note: The following excerpt is composed of selections from the second chapter of Writing Monsters by Philip Athans. Don’t miss Athans’ live webcast, Scare and Share Alike: Writing and Selling Horror Fiction, on Halloween (10/31/17). 

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

What Makes a Monster Scary?

by Philip Athans

I’d like to meet the first person who ever ate a lobster.

Imagine being the first woman or man to pick up that horrible, red-brown spider-thing with terrifying claws and twitching antennae and saying, “Yum!” To me, a lobster is a giant bug with claws—I’d have run screaming from a lobster. But now we know what a lobster is and what it tastes like and that it isn’t really dangerous. The only thing scary about it is the unknowable mystery of its “market price.”

We’ll want our monsters to maintain a greater degree of mystery, or at least begin with a greater degree of mystery than that.

Start by asking …

WHAT ARE PEOPLE AFRAID OF?

I asked myself this question while working on a fantasy novel in which I envisioned a world overrun by demons. In an effort to build a sense of increasing danger in the book, each new sort of demon my characters meet is more dangerous, more powerful, and more frightening than the last. To do this, I decided to look at my readers’ deepest fears and inject those fears into the demons. So off to the Internet I went in search of the top ten phobias. This is what I found:

1. Arachnophobia (fear of spiders) 2. Social Phobia (fear of a hostile audience) 3. Pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying) 4. Agoraphobia (fear of an inability to escape) 5. Claustrophobia (fear of enclosed spaces) 6. Acrophobia (fear of heights) 7. Emetophobia (fear of vomit or vomiting) 8. Carcinophobia (fear of cancer) 9. Astraphobia (fear of thunder and lightning) 10. Taphophobia (fear of being buried alive)

… Phobias take common fears to the pathological level. If these are the ten most common phobias (and I’ve found a few different lists, so your search may yield slightly different results), then there’s a good chance that someone who is reading your book, seeing your movie, or playing your game will have one or more of them to some degree. And even if your readers don’t completely collapse at the sight of a spider, they probably share at least a common uneasiness in the presence of one … or worse, many spiders!

To create that sense of progression and escalation of danger, I simply reversed that top ten list so the final, scariest demon embodies the most prevalent phobia. That means the lowest-level demon comes up from underground and pulls you down and buries you alive, and the “boss” demon is a spider, or something that looks and/or behaves like a spider. As it turns out, those are fairly easy fears to apply to a monster or demon, but what about pteromerhanophobia, the fear of flying? Richard Matheson made quite a splash in 1961 with the short story “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” in which a poor soul suffering from pteromerhanophobia encounters the dreaded gremlin tearing pieces out of the wing of the plane he’s flying in. This story became one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone, a vehicle for a young William Shatner. […]

But please don’t think that triggering your audience’s phobic responses is the only way to make your monsters terrifying. In a broader sense, monsters are scary because …

Live Webinar | October 31, 2017 | Learn More and Register

THEY ARE UNPREDICTABLE

Can that lobster take your hand off with one of those claws? Turns out, no, but if it could and you weren’t expecting it … that would be pretty scary, right? In real life we know they can’t hurt us, and that makes them predictable, and predictability is the enemy of horror. But add an unexpected element to a predictable situation and you enhance the potential for fear.

Humans tend to have a pretty good sense of what another human is going to do next. We can tell via body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice when someone is getting angry or upset. We sense when things might get out of control or violent. But monsters don’t necessarily give out those human signals. This is a creature, after all, outside our normal experience. Who knows what it’ll do next?

We’ll discuss setting rules for your monsters and how important it is that you follow those rules, but keep in mind that while you know the rules that govern your monster, your characters don’t. In fact, the less your characters know about what a monster can and can’t do, the better. It’s this unpredictability that will keep your readers on the edge of their seats, playing into the power of the imagination.

THEY HAVE A DISTURBING CAPACITY FOR VIOLENCE

Monsters don’t just attack you; they attack you in particularly gruesome ways, as shown

in this paragraph from the short story “The Little Green God of Agony” by horror master Stephen King.

Melissa had seen where the thing came from and even in her panic was wise enough to cover her own mouth with both hands. The thing skittered up her neck, over her cheek, and squatted on her left eye. The wind screamed and Melissa screamed with it. It was the cry of a woman drowning in the kind of pain the charts in the hospitals can never describe. The charts go from one to ten; Melissa’s agony was well over one hundred—that of someone being boiled alive. She staggered backwards, clawing at the thing on her eye. It was pulsing faster now, and Kat could hear a low, liquid sound as the thing resumed feeding. It was a slushy sound.  (From the anthology The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four, edited by Ellen Datlow.)

Want to scare the crap out of someone? Go for the eyes. It’s up to you to set the degree of “goriness” your story will contain. Movies like The Blair Witch Project are terrifying without spilling a drop of blood, while some contemporary “torture porn” films, like the movie Hostel, are gross, even disturbing, but scary?

I tend to describe “gore” as unmotivated violence—a violent scene done badly, in which all the reader gets is a sense of the quantity of blood and guts without the emotional and psychological (read: character) connection of well-written violent action. … Take a second look at the example [above] from Stephen King. No blood. There is some yucky language in there (“It was a slushy sound.”) but mostly we get Melissa’s experience of this cringeworthy act of violence and her efforts, however vain, to make it stop.

Exploring truly disturbing events can be difficult for many authors to work through, in the horror genre in particular. But fantasy and science fiction—really any genre of fiction—can ask you to plumb your own psychological depths. So what scares you? A little creature that eats your eyes first? Is that disturbing enough for the psychological sweet spot you’re trying to hit? […]

OUR IMAGINATION MAKES THEM SCARIER

Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And the human imagination is pretty powerful. How many times have you imagined something will be absolutely terrifying—a roller coaster, a job interview, a scary movie—and when it’s over you immediately say, “That wasn’t so bad.”

And another great quote: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t talking about Godzilla or Dracula, but he may as well have been. This plays back to the idea of unpredictability and “otherness.”

We have no idea what to expect from this thing and no way to determine its motives, so we start to fill in the blanks with conjecture, which tends to make something quite a bit more terrifying than it should be. Our imagination, and thus our fears, becomes the true monster in this case.

This application of our imagination can work in many ways. As stated above, we can fear something we don’t know, but a lot of monster stories start with monsters that are scary and then turn out to be nice. Th e Beast from Beauty and the Beast is an example from classic fairy tales, and  Frankenstein’s monster is another, a creature who looks terrifying but is layered, emotional, and yearning for understanding … and later, revenge.

In another way, creatures may seem harmless because they appeal to the softer, friendlier side of our imagination, but become monstrous when their true nature is revealed. Star Trek’s tribbles are an excellent example for this. When the crew of the Enterprise first encounters tribbles, their assumptions take over. They imagine the tribbles to be cute and harmless but have no specific information about their true nature. The tribbles slowly reveal themselves over the course of the story to be a sort of plague, like a swarm of locusts. Assumption and imagination can be very dangerous.

Play with the assumptions of your characters in this way, and you’ll be playing with the assumptions of your readers right along with them. We also have a tendency to assume that many of the sentient beings we encounter have a certain sense of right and wrong, or at the very least a sense of their role in relation to other beings around them and what they must do to not just survive but coexist and thrive, but monsters can be particularly scary when they seem to lack these assumed morals. …

THEY ARE BEYOND OUR CONTROL

Humans generally like to be in charge. We spend a lot of time trying to control our weight, our relationships, our personal finances, our schedules, everything. We even try to control others by taking classes to learn how to train our dogs, motivate our employees, and so on. So what happens when a monster makes its way onto our starship and simply won’t follow our rules? It eats what and when—and who—it wants to eat. It bleeds metal-dissolving acid all over the place without regard for the hard vacuum of space just a bulkhead away. You can’t negotiate with a monster. You can’t calmly tell a Denebian slime devil, “Okay, wait. I’m going to go to the store and buy you a bunch of steak—don’t eat me in the meantime.” That monster does what it does, and it neither seeks nor respects your opinion.

Simply put, monsters don’t play by our rules—and that scares us.

THEY ARE TERRIFYING IN APPEARANCE

Here’s another example from H.P. Lovecraft , from the classic short story “Pickman’s Model.”

It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked one felt that at any moment it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. But damn it all, it wasn’t even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountainhead of all panic—not that, nor the dog face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn’t the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the half-hooved feet—none of these, though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.

Frightening, but here’s an interesting take on description: Lovecraft goes to great length to describe a foul-looking creature here, but it is made more ominous by also describing what it’s doing (gnawing on “… a thing that had been a man …”) and what it might do next (“… seek a juicier morsel.”). And it’s important to keep in mind that not all monsters have to appear classically “scary” in order to be so.

In Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, author Ransom Riggs describes a less traditional but no less unsettling creature.

But these weren’t the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around—they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.

This monster has the ability to hit closer to home, describing the human potential to become inhuman through political, military, and/or social assimilation. Not as frightening as a “nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes,” but equally monstrous on the inside.

Read more about what makes monsters scary and learn more about creating them in Writing Monsters.

This excerpt is from Writing Monsters by Philip Athans. Athans is the founding partner of Athans & Associates Creative Consulting, and the New York Times best-selling author of Annihilation and more than a dozen other fantasy and horror books including The Guide to Writing Fantasy & Science Fiction. Born in Rochester, New York he grew up in suburban Chicago, where he published the literary magazine Alternative Fiction & Poetry. His blog, Fantasy Author’s Handbook, is updated every Tuesday, and you can follow him on Twitter @PhilAthans. He makes his home in the foothills of the Washington Cascades, east of Seattle.

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