OMG It's COMING MY WAY! (is it real?)
Skeered. In my neck of the (southern) woods, that's a real word. It means not just "scared," but "creepy freaked-out" or "spooky messed up" or "I ain't goin' in that there dark holler after midnight, not even if yo' mama goin' with me carryin' her AK 47." It means you're frightened beyond sophisticated notions of rational thought. You're. Just. Plain. Stupidly. SKEERED.
Stephen King's early novels skeered me. Skeered the CRAP outta me. Carrie and Salem's Lot and The Shining. So durned freaky spooky, mess-yo'-britches skeery I couldn't hardly nary turn the next page.
I remember a night in 19-mumble inarticle year-as a college student visiting home one summer weekend, in my narrow twin bed late at night, trembling as I read The Shining while a massive thunderstorm rocked the Georgia skies.
I swore I heard strange sounds in the wind that night.
I wasn't imagining them.
A half-mile up the road from my parent's house in our rural community, a small private plane crashed in the woods during that storm. All aboard were killed.
Sh*t happens. Not just in Stephen King novels, but in real life.
That's the underpinning of horror that makes novels not just frightening, but skeery.
A week ago the hubbie and I trekked down to the burbs (we live in Yokel Land)to see the new hot Halloween pee-skeery flick, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. I don't often vote for deliberate skeeriness in my info-tainment; I can skeer myself inside my own brain without Hollywood's help, thankyaverymuch.
But I'd read so many good reviews of PA that I had to go. So me and Mr. Smith drove down yon to Mall World, supped at the P.F. Chang's, then went to the cin-E-ma.
Oh, My, Gawd.
Since the invention of Wii Games, how many times have you sat in the latest "blockbuster" movie with just yourself and a handful of teenagers in need of their Attention Deficit Disorder Meds? How many time have you asked yourself, "Wouldn't I have enjoyed this more if I'd just waited for Net Flix on the flat screen at home?"
Not this time. The theater was PACKED. Old folks, young folks, folks in-between. Packed. Like the old days of JAWS and the first STAR WARS and BILLY JACK.
Packed. And skeered.
This movie, Paranormal Activity, is one of those low-budget winners that was filmed in the director's very-own California house in ONE WEEK with a budget less than Megan Fox's anti-cellulite creme for Transformers Two, Rise of the Dumb Uh?
In P.A., a young couple is trying to catch a demon on their home video camera. They set it up in their bedroom at night cause that's when the demon gets jiggy. At first the camera catches this kinda "oh, the wind just shifted the door" kinda stuff but SOON it's obvious THAT SOMETHING EVEN WORSE THAN AN INTERNET SPAMMER is stalking them while they sleep.
Oh, My, Skeered, Gawd. Invisible footsteps on the stairs. Bedsheets gettin' fluffed without obvious maid service. Demon tracks in the Johnson's Baby Powder demon-trap on the bedroom floor. AND WORSE.
No gore. No chain saws. No Lindsey Lohan.
Just plain, perfect, Alfred Hitchcockian, Spielburg-only-in-Jaws-omg-that-thing's-i
Omg. Omg. Was that a teenager shieking in the audience or my husband??
Oh. All right. It was me AND a teenager. And my husband. And the rest of the audience, too.
Such dark, skeery stuff lives deep in our brains where the cave people put it. So we'd stare deep into the shadows of the cave or the castle or the mansion and be sure to see what wants to eat us before it gets its wish.
So we'd be skeered but stay alive.
So the species could continue, and thrive, and progress to the point where humankind could reach its pinnacle and build the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World in Orlando.
(I have my standards. I do.)
All of which leads me to this simple, non-skeery point:
Please buy my new skeery novel. SOUL CATCHER. OUT THIS WEEK. On Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com., and all them other dot coms where books are discounted. I am so skeered by it that I wrote it under a pen name, Leigh Bridger, so my Deborah Smith fans wouldn't make voodoo dolls in my image.
www.leighbridger.com
I ain't skeered enough to be that stupid.
Skeered. In my neck of the (southern) woods, that's a real word. It means not just "scared," but "creepy freaked-out" or "spooky messed up" or "I ain't goin' in that there dark holler after midnight, not even if yo' mama goin' with me carryin' her AK 47." It means you're frightened beyond sophisticated notions of rational thought. You're. Just. Plain. Stupidly. SKEERED.
Stephen King's early novels skeered me. Skeered the CRAP outta me. Carrie and Salem's Lot and The Shining. So durned freaky spooky, mess-yo'-britches skeery I couldn't hardly nary turn the next page.
I remember a night in 19-mumble inarticle year-as a college student visiting home one summer weekend, in my narrow twin bed late at night, trembling as I read The Shining while a massive thunderstorm rocked the Georgia skies.
I swore I heard strange sounds in the wind that night.
I wasn't imagining them.
A half-mile up the road from my parent's house in our rural community, a small private plane crashed in the woods during that storm. All aboard were killed.
Sh*t happens. Not just in Stephen King novels, but in real life.
That's the underpinning of horror that makes novels not just frightening, but skeery.
A week ago the hubbie and I trekked down to the burbs (we live in Yokel Land)to see the new hot Halloween pee-skeery flick, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. I don't often vote for deliberate skeeriness in my info-tainment; I can skeer myself inside my own brain without Hollywood's help, thankyaverymuch.
But I'd read so many good reviews of PA that I had to go. So me and Mr. Smith drove down yon to Mall World, supped at the P.F. Chang's, then went to the cin-E-ma.
Oh, My, Gawd.
Since the invention of Wii Games, how many times have you sat in the latest "blockbuster" movie with just yourself and a handful of teenagers in need of their Attention Deficit Disorder Meds? How many time have you asked yourself, "Wouldn't I have enjoyed this more if I'd just waited for Net Flix on the flat screen at home?"
Not this time. The theater was PACKED. Old folks, young folks, folks in-between. Packed. Like the old days of JAWS and the first STAR WARS and BILLY JACK.
Packed. And skeered.
This movie, Paranormal Activity, is one of those low-budget winners that was filmed in the director's very-own California house in ONE WEEK with a budget less than Megan Fox's anti-cellulite creme for Transformers Two, Rise of the Dumb Uh?
In P.A., a young couple is trying to catch a demon on their home video camera. They set it up in their bedroom at night cause that's when the demon gets jiggy. At first the camera catches this kinda "oh, the wind just shifted the door" kinda stuff but SOON it's obvious THAT SOMETHING EVEN WORSE THAN AN INTERNET SPAMMER is stalking them while they sleep.
Oh, My, Skeered, Gawd. Invisible footsteps on the stairs. Bedsheets gettin' fluffed without obvious maid service. Demon tracks in the Johnson's Baby Powder demon-trap on the bedroom floor. AND WORSE.
No gore. No chain saws. No Lindsey Lohan.
Just plain, perfect, Alfred Hitchcockian, Spielburg-only-in-Jaws-omg-that-thing's-i
Omg. Omg. Was that a teenager shieking in the audience or my husband??
Oh. All right. It was me AND a teenager. And my husband. And the rest of the audience, too.
Such dark, skeery stuff lives deep in our brains where the cave people put it. So we'd stare deep into the shadows of the cave or the castle or the mansion and be sure to see what wants to eat us before it gets its wish.
So we'd be skeered but stay alive.
So the species could continue, and thrive, and progress to the point where humankind could reach its pinnacle and build the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World in Orlando.
(I have my standards. I do.)
All of which leads me to this simple, non-skeery point:
Please buy my new skeery novel. SOUL CATCHER. OUT THIS WEEK. On Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com., and all them other dot coms where books are discounted. I am so skeered by it that I wrote it under a pen name, Leigh Bridger, so my Deborah Smith fans wouldn't make voodoo dolls in my image.
www.leighbridger.com
I ain't skeered enough to be that stupid.
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