I had never really imagined myself writing horror. In honesty I don’t really care for it and would gladly toss it to the trash can. But to paraphrase someone well-known in the game development field “Things just happen when in the game development process. This is one of those things.”
Horror only caught my attention when I made two radical discoveries; discovering Markiplier’s “The Witch’s House” playthrough and the reddit /nosleep board. These tales did catch my interest, resounding with a challenge to try to top it with my own.
More or less I had come up with a certain set of characters for what was supposed to be a historical adventure. I drew a lot of inspiration from some of my classmates and had them setup, but was left stumped with what to do with the characters in terms of story. A romance novel even crossed my mind (you can imagine me trying to throw that together). But after me combing through “local lore” and finding out about happenings at a particular location, I knew I had hit the jackpot.
The place in question had a very simple story, but there were tons of people who had come up, claiming much scarier things and lot of hearsay. I saw this as an opportunity; what if I mixed all of these together to make one larger horror tale? Many of the comments of “I was there and saw this” were quite intriguing despite possibly not having happened.
At the time I was still managing production of Michiko Bates and Dawnstar’s art production. It was the last week of October 2014, NaNo was just around the corner and I was itching to throw the characters in to see what I could do with them. I sat down one evening and just began typing…
The Story
October of 2010 becomes real interesting for ETSU college student Kaven. When a classmate invites him to a ghostwalking masquerade in the rural community of East Tennessee, he can’t help to not resist when two of his female friends decide to accompany him. However things take a turn when it seems their hosts have ulterior motives; before they know it they find themselves left to brave the horrors of the famous Rotherwood mansion. Left with a cryptic riddle to survive, can the trio manage to find their way out of trouble? Find out for yourself!
Overview & Info
The Haunting of Rotherwood was part of my NaNo entry in 2014. Topping at 23k of words, this was my first full-length horror piece that was composed during the demanding deadlines of the event month, later edited out to be a concise story. It’s one of the few pieces that emerge from NaNoWriMo that I am pleased with and I consider publish-quality work.
Updates and Release
The Haunting of Rotherwood was completed in May 2015 and released onto Amazon and other retail markets in March 2016.
Amazon: http://amzn.com/B01DONGHLK
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/626660
Gumroad: http://gumroad.com/l/mjYG