EP03: Introducing An Entity In Your Midst - TRANSCRIPT

Hi! You're listening to Hyba is Writing, and I am your host, Hyba. In this first handful of episodes, I've been going through and introducing all of my active projects. In the last episodes I've introduced my two current fantasy novels, and in this episode I want to shift genres a bit. Today, I'll introduce An Entity In Your Midst, which is my standalone horror novel.

This project has been a really fun one for me to write because I've never written horror. I've written unsettling stuff, and I've written suspense and thriller and generally weird literature, but I've never written horror. If you've been following me on Tumblr for any amount of time, you might have read my short story, Brittle Teeth. That's pretty much as close as I've gotten to horror, and I really enjoyed it - and even then, I would say it's more unsettling than it is scary. I'll talk about that short story - or maybe even do a reading of it - at another time.

I've got the blurb here for you and I'm going to read it out loud:

When three girls sit down to play a game one snowy night, they unwittingly allow something terrifyingly dangerous into their world.

Soon, strange happenings and chilling events become the norm in the sleepy little town of Kostya, and people being to suspect evil forces at play.

This book features a number of chilling figures from popular Eastern European/Russian urban legend and folklore. Actually, I really enjoyed discovering urban legends and folklore from this general region, but I have to almost admit that I've taken a lot of artistic license. I've chosen about four main 'entities', we can call them, and the story is split up into four parts, each one detailing the events that can be attributed to one entity and focusing on specific sets of characters from the town of Kostya.

The first part of the novel is called Darling Fyodora, in which the perfect family meets a horrifyingly imperfect end. Fyodora is the name of one of the three girls that plays this game that they shouldn't have, and without giving too much away, there's something very wrong with Fyodora. This part actually deals with a piece of folklore or an entity from folklore that isn't only exclusive to Eastern European/Slavic/Russian folklore, but that can be found in various other cultures around the world as well.

The second part is called Lover Mine. This one's about the town doctor and a particular entity that starts to cause trouble in his life. This one in particular deals with the rusalka. The rusalki are apparently these female creatures that seem to be connected to water, and as a result are often compared to sirens or mermaids. I'm playing around quite a bit with the fact that there are a lot of different retellings of this particular piece of folklore, with different versions listing different characteristics and powers. This is one of the parts of the book that I'm really very excited about - and the one I am currently working on.

The third part is called Hell's Car, and it deals with a Soviet-era urban legend called the Black Volga, and the general idea behind this urban legend was that these specific car make and model were used to kidnap or abduct people, and apparently, most of the abductions were of children. So, in Hell's Car, a lot of children go missing. I played around here a bit with the idea of the car being its own entity, and not really guided by any particular actor, as is the assumption with the urban legend.

Finally, the fourth part is called Skinny Bride, and it's all about a young engaged couple that feature throughout the novel, so this actually acts as a nice way to bring things full circle and tie things up, in a way. The being in question here is an interesting entity from folklore called Koschei the Deathless. I found his story intriguing.

It's really interesting to include these entities in ways that they all work together to drive this larger plot of what is happening to the entire town of Kostya and the people within it. I also try to include, within each part of the book, a little peek into the motivations and inner thoughts of these entities, no matter how disjointed or perhaps nonsensical they may seem, and I think that in a way, that makes it even scarier. There's the fear of the unknown that is played upon quite a bit in traditional horror, but in this case, I want to highlight how scary something can be when you don't completely know it or understand it, or only have limited access to it.

That's pretty much all there is to say about An Entity In Your Midst for now. If you have any comments, suggestions, thoughts, or questions, feel free to contact me via my Tumblr, which is hyba.tumblr.com, or via my Twitter, which is @HybaIsWriting.

Thanks so much for listening, and I hope you tune in next episode where I introduce the fourth and final active project, Neon Vape: A Vaporwave Odyssey. This one again is a genre shift - it's a scifi story. Until next time!