What Book or Short Story With a Sinister Tone Has Had a Lasting Impact on You as a Reader or Writer?: From Our Readers (Comment for a Chance at Publication)
This post announces our latest From Our Readers question: What book or short story with a sinister tone has had a lasting impact on you as a reader or writer? Comment for a chance at publication in a future issue of Writer’s Digest.
Our formal question: What book or short story with a sinister tone has had a lasting impact on you as a reader or writer?
Listen, if you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m a huge fan of horror. So, when I hear the word “sinister”? I don’t think about Marvel comic villains or thriller novels. Honestly, when I’m not bingeing reruns of Supernatural or reading fix-it fan-fiction from Andy Muschietti’s IT film franchise (dare you to say that three times fast), I’m scanning the latest Locus magazine for upcoming horror reads or writing my own spooky tales. And don’t even get me started on the fact that my spouse and I listen to “The NoSleep Podcast” and “Old Gods of Appalachia” fanatically.
There’s a lot I could say about horror as a genre, but when it comes to a book that’s had a lasting impact on me, the very first one that comes to mind is Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians, which I read just last year. I was hooked from the start. There is just a pervasive sense of unease from the first word to the last, something that stayed with me every single time I put the book down. I’d long thought I was immune to the shifty, hyper-aware feeling you get when you read something scary, but this book made me feel like I was seven years old again, jumping at every little shadow in my parents’ 200-year-old farmhouse.
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And let me tell you, if you haven’t listened to the audiobook version, you should—Shaun Taylor-Corbett’s narration provides life to a story I didn’t think could get any livelier.
What book or short story with a sinister tone has had a lasting impact on you as a reader or writer? Share your answers with us in the comments below for a chance to be published in the September/October 2022 issue of Writer's Digest. Here are the guidelines:
- Provide an answer to the question " What book or short story with a sinister tone has had a lasting impact on you as a reader or writer?" in the comments below.
- Answers can be funny, weird, poignant, thought-provoking, entertaining, etc.
- Remember to include your name as you would like it to appear in print.
- Deadline for commenting this time around is June 2, 2022.
- Only comments shared below will be considered for publication, though feel free to share your answers on social media and tag us @WritersDigest
Note on commenting: If you wish to comment on the site, go to Disqus to create a free new account, verify your account on this site below (one-time thing), and then comment away.
Since obtaining her MFA in fiction, Moriah Richard has worked with over 100 authors to help them achieve their publication dreams. As the managing editor of Writer’s Digest magazine, she spearheads the world-building column Building Better Worlds, a 2023 Eddie & Ozzie Award winner. She also runs the Flash Fiction February Challenge on the WD blog, encouraging writers to pen one microstory a day over the course of the month and share their work with other participants. As a reader, Moriah is most interested in horror, fantasy, and romance, although she will read just about anything with a great hook.
Learn more about Moriah on her personal website.
