A Cabin in the Woods Horror Story
Something different today. I have been working on a rerelease of a novel I wrote when I was starting out (2015). Actually, I wrote my first ‘novel’ when I was 16 or 17, spending evenings at the desk in my bedroom inventing a story that I wanted to happen to me, writing longhand, and producing absolute drivel. I hope I’ve improved since then, and I certainly didn’t write ‘Lonely House’ wanting the events depicted to happen to me.
This story came about when I was writing for a small film company that wanted to produce a low-budget film. Low budget, in this case, was around £20,000 for the entire budget. They wanted one location, a small cast, and lots of horror. The cast of this novel numbers six, and there is, apart from flashbacks, only one location. It’s a classic ‘cabin in the woods’ scenario: a single house surrounded by a forest, and miles from anywhere. Yup. A classic cliché on which such horror films are built. However, there had to be something different about it, and so I came up with my two main characters.
Two young drifters, bound by a strange friendship and a terrible secret, with one being a criminal and the other an easily led younger chap who everyone thinks is ‘special’ or ‘slow.’ An accident in the lonely house leads to the unravelling of the horror, which only gets worse when the twists start and the past is revealed. Today, I wanted to point you towards Lonely House, which you can get on Amazon (KU, paperback, Kindle). Follow this link if you dare: https://mybook.to/LonelyHouse
How much horror can one friendship take?
Drover and Pete are two hopeful drifters looking for a better life. Desperate for food, they break into an isolated house deep in a forest. There, they accidentally shoot an old man just as the rest of his family arrive for a birthday gathering.
Under intense suspicion from the family, the boys attempt to cover up the accident. But they are not the only ones keeping a murderous secret. Mistrust and deception unearth a primaeval ritual as the lies give way to a terrifying truth.
With time running out and a deadly force closing in, Drover and Pete’s survival rests on the strength of their friendship, but they must face some horrific choices in order to stay alive.
I should warn you, though, that I am not one for peppering my blurbs and info with trigger warnings. The fact that you are in the horror section, reading a blurb about a horror novel, should be enough to tell you you’re in for some disturbing descriptions.
You’re also in for a book that is written in the style of a film treatment, though much fleshed out and, after a recent edit, I hope, better than the original. It is not my usual Jackson Marsh style, because I wrote it before Jackson was born; it’s set in the present day, and… Well, you will see. It is still me, though. As for the original film idea… In the end, the production company went for another of my stories, The Judas Inheritance, which is set on the island where I live. The production went ahead, and they spent their 20k on getting everyone here, filming, falling out, and putting together something that resembled my story in no way whatsoever – but that’s another story for another day.
Monthly Newsletter
The monthly newsletter with other news and book promotions will be out next Saturday, so make sure you have signed up for it. You can do that at the top of this page.