Getting Darker, with Robert Ottone

Fear is such a weird thing. 

Conquering fears is apparently easy, according to a variety of self-help and psychology books. Repeated exposure to the thing one fears, over time, will lessen the overwhelming effect that specific trigger has on your brain. Pretty simple, right? 

Horror, like fear, is subjective. What scares me won’t scare you, and vice-versa. That’s the beauty of horror, or comedy, really. Those two are remarkably subjective. So, when I start thinking about the concept of “darkness” in a story, what it means to go to those “dark places” within all of us and put them on paper (or Google Doc/Microsoft Word-paper, anyway), I wanted to make note of one commonality. 

One thing we all feel in one form or another.

When prepping my new collection, Her Infernal Name & Other Nightmares, I first looked at the prevailing theme of a few of the stories I had written to that point. There was some connective tissue to various concepts, but overall, the theme emerged relatively quickly: fear.

Over the years I’ve listened to authors talk about where their stories and novels came from, and I’ve always found it to be not only a neat insight into who they are as people, but also how their creative process works. Taking a strand of an idea and turning it into something so much more. The strand here, concepts surrounding various fears and how the characters in those stories deal with them, felt like exorcising demons. 

Each story was me releasing a fear into the world to the point where even though I’m still wary of the concepts, I no longer feel the anxiety circling these issues.

For example, one story in the collection is “The Last Goodbye,” which is about a supernatural connection between a son and his deceased father, sharing one final exchange before they can both move on to their respective next chapters. It deals with fear of loss and the fear of disconnection from losing a loved one. This particular story, in many ways is a follow-up to the themes of grief I was exploring in my previous collection, connected to the passing of my dad.

From there, I entrenched myself in a variety of worries, allowing my mind to go to as dark a place as possible while still being palatable to a reading audience. Fears of infertility, technology, the environment and sexuality are touched upon, but overall, across a wide spectrum, I allowed myself to get my hands dirty playing with these fears, which was exactly what I needed, and I hope exactly what readers will enjoy.

What I found, by going darker, was that it opened my mind up to possibilities to explore concepts I might not have previously. The fear of writing, itself, can be paralyzing, so to allow that final fear to melt away through exploring darker concepts was so liberating and exciting, that upon finishing this collection, I’d already begun preparing my first full-length horror novel that deals with a remarkably uncomfortable subject. I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s definitely something that, in conversations with folks, has had the intended reaction of making them cringe and scrunch their faces in disgust, so, I already know I’m on the right track, at least in the early planning stages.

Don’t be afraid to go dark with your writing. An author I really admire, Michael David Wilson, said on his podcast (I’m paraphrasing here) that you almost have to write like your family and friends are dead, and you won’t feel the pressures of getting dark or getting uglier with your writing. I’ve really taken that to heart, and as writers, we all really should. Writing without limits, writing without fear of getting darker, that’s the goal. And I hope everyone feels free to do that, because you’ll be surprised at the results that might emerge.

The darkness we suppress can be unleashed on our readers, and that’s a beautiful, transformative thing.

Her Infernal Name & Other Nightmares is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and wherever fine books are sold. 

About Robert P. Ottone

Robert P. Ottone is an author, teacher, and cigar enthusiast from East Islip, NY. He delights in the creepy.

He can be found online at www.SpookyHousePress.com, or on Instagram (@RobertOttone).

His collections Her Infernal Name & Other Nightmares and People: A Horror Anthology about Love, Loss, Life & Things That Go Bump in the Night are available now wherever books are sold.