Playing with Fear

I had nightmares while writing Afraid, and will probably need therapy to get over it.

Under the name JA Konrath I write a series of police thrillers. While those tend to have some frightening elements, the scares are interspersed with funny parts—tension breakers, to make the rough stuff more palatable.

But I kept getting letters from fans who wanted the books to be scarier. That got me to thinking, "What if I wrote a no-holds-barred horror novel?"

This led to some soul searching, to try and figure out what really scares me. While I love supernatural books and movies, I don’t really believe in ghosts or werewolves, and I’m not frightened by them.

I do, however, believe there are bad people in the world who enjoy hurting others. I believe that governments sometimes do bad things. I believe that the worst thing that can happen to a person is to be at the mercy of someone who wishes to do them harm.

I also polled my friends and family, asking them what their biggest fears are.

AFRAID is the result. I tried to include everything that we're afraid of in the book. Fear of the dark, of fire, of losing a loved one, of enclosed spaces, of drowning, of being chased, of pain, of illness, of authority figures, of making huge mistakes, and of course, fear of dying.

I didn't use any humor to break up the tension. In fact, I didn't even break for chapters, hoping not to give the reader any chance at all to put the book down.

On that last hope, I'm sure I failed. In fact, I'm guessing that at least 25% of the readers who pick up AFRAID will put it down, unable to finish the book because it freaks them out too much.

It certainly freaked me out while I was writing it.

I drew a lot of inspiration from my love of horror books. Certainly the "terror comes to a quaint little town" theme as immortalized by Stephen King (Salem's Lot, It) and Dean Koontz (Watchers, Strangers), as well as the "survival horror" of David Morrell (First Blood, The Totem, Testament.)

If you're a fan of scary books, I encourage you to check out AFRAID. But be warned. I tried to write the scariest book of all time, and by some accounts, I've succeeded.

What about you? Are you afraid of the dark?

You will be…

Jack Kilborn

Feb 12, 2009