What if I told you a young black kid from the Southside of Chicago would grow up to be a titan in the indie horror community……
Ok, so I’m not a titan but I love this community so much and I am so thankful to have found it. So, here’s a little about the kid from Chicago and how his love for horror has transformed his life in so many ways.
So, like any true horror fan, my introduction to horror was a traumatic one. I was 4 years old and saw the music video for Thriller by Michael Jackson. Yes, you read that correctly the king of pop had me scared with his group of dancing zombies and I swore off anything even a tiny bit scary until I was about 8 years old. It was at that point I discovered the Goosebumps book series, and I was hooked and forever changed. I was completely enthralled by these damn books, and I would devour them daily.
My favorite was Night of the Living Dummy, and that’s probably why Dolls and Muppets freak me out to this day. With my new found love of horror I started staying up late and sneaking to watch horror movies, the first being The Exorcist which completely fucked me up but to this day remains one of my favorite movies of all time.
As a teen, I discovered Stephen King. I know cliché but I think a lot of us started with him and I’m no different. The first book I ever read by him was “It” and I absolutely loved it even though it took me a good three months to actually finish it. It is also that book that led me to start writing my own short stories as a teen for fun. His overly descriptive writing style just stood out to me so much and challenged my mind to see if I could do that as well. Turns out I could, just not very well, but I was 14, so I had to go through some growing pains.
As I grew older, I started reading less and less until at one point after college. I wasn’t reading at all and just focused on life and finding a career. Fast forward to October 2022 and I discover the horror side of book Tok and I am bombarded with so many books that I have never heard of being out of the loop on horror and absolutely clueless to the indie horror scene.
Here we are now, May 2023, and I’ve made so many amazing friends with book lovers of all genres but the people I’ve met in this indie horror community have been some of the kindest, funniest, and downright weirdest people I’ve ever met in my life, and I finally feel like I’ve finally found my people and I’m not the weirdo that loves horror anymore. Well, I am a weirdo, but I’m surrounded by fellow weirdos, so it all works out now.
So here I am, thirty-five years old, finally finding my place in the world doing something I’m passionate about, finding my voice, and writing again. I want to say thank you so much for this opportunity and I can’t wait to share my thoughts on some of the most fucked up, twisted and brutal books that are out there!