I Lived with a Ghost

Then there was the time I lived in a haunted house . . . for reals. And I have to say, it wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Actually, it was quite unsettling.

This was back when my husband and I lived in Salt Lake City, Utah. We moved into this big old house (practically a mansion for my twenty-one year old self) in the foothills. My sisters-in-law were housesitting the place for a friend, so we didn’t even have to pay rent. And the house even had a pool! Score for us. But, like all haunted house stories, they start out with a “too good to be true” scenario.

It began right away, the “bad” feeling. The “someone is standing behind you” sense that makes you whirl around only to find . . . nothing. There were the doors that would slam for no reason and the objects that would mysteriously disappear, only to be found in some random spot. One of my favorite necklaces went missing, and I searched everywhere for it before finally giving up. A few days later, I found it shoved behind a bookshelf, completely rusted like it had been soaked in water.

Only after living in this house for months did we find out about out about the tragic event that had happened there decades earlier.

Remember that pool I mentioned? Well, we never went in it. No matter what we did, we couldn’t get the filter to work, so the pool remained a disgusting, sludgy cesspool in the backyard. But when we found out what had happened in that pool, we were quite happy never to have gone in it.

You can probably guess where I’m going with this. Yeah, a little girl drowned in the pool. Her parents found her floating facedown in the water. It doesn’t get much more horrible than that.

After we learned about the drowned girl, everything made sense. The presence we felt. The way we’d get nervous if we were alone in a room, because we never quite felt alone. The missing necklace that turned up rusted.

So there you have it. My haunted house story, and the reason I’m now suspicious of anything that’s too good to be true.

Happy Halloween!

Jennifer Bosworth is the author of STRUCK (FSG/Macmillan, May 8, 2012) a novel about what happens when a teenage lightning addict meets an apocalypse. Jennifer no longer lives in a haunted house, but she is still obsessed with all things scary, and watches a horror movie every day in October.

http://www.jenniferbosworth.com

@jennbosworth

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10647702-struck

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jennifer-Bosworth/198817690150452

Why So Serious?

Two days ago, on October 1^st, I began my second annual BoHoMoMo (Bosworth Horror Movie Month). For the entire month of October, I will watch at least one horror movie a day. There isn’t much that makes me happier than finding a truly great horror movie, and afterward dissecting it to find out how it ticks. You see, I want nothing more than to scare people. If I create a story that gives you nightmares, I will smile evilly and rub my hands together, and if I had one I’d twirl my mustache.

But I don’t just want to dole out the scares. I want to receive them. So let’s examine a month of horror movies together. When I find something that teaches me how to scare, or how NOT to, I’ll let you know. And perhaps you will do the same for me.

I started out the month with a French zombie film titled “Mutants,” about a woman who is trying to keep her husband from going full zombie after he’s infected with the virus. It’s just the two of them for most of the film, trapped in a huge, empty building in a snowy wilderness. The woman loves her husband so much she refuses to give up on him, even when he begins to vomit gouts of blood, his teeth and hair fall out, and he chases her around the abandoned building naked, trying to eat her.

This movie was . . . no fun. It was depressing, and for me I find it hard to be depressed and scared at the same time.

What does fear feel like? To me, it’s my heart pounding and my breath speeding up and my muscles tensed like I’m on a rollercoaster about to roar down. Fear is exciting! It reminds you that you’re alive! That’s why the horror industry is still thriving today, because most of us do not live exciting lives, but we still want to feel that rush of adrenaline from the safety of our couches.

So, what I learned from day one of my thirty-one days of horror is that a story won’t give the audience that pulse-pounding thrill they’re looking for if it’s a complete downer.

If you want to write tales that thrill, lighten up. Just not too much.

Jennifer Bosworth is the author of STRUCK

(FSG/Macmillan, May 8 2012), a novel of post-apocalyptic proportions. She wants you to have nightmares, so she's kind of a bad person.

How I Met and Charmed My Agent - Agent Story # 9

When I met my agent, Jamie Weiss Chilton of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, I was drunk on crappy white wine and told her a story in which the use of the “C” word was absolutely essential.

Errrk!

Let me back up.

I met the fabulous and wise JWC at the Santa Barbara Writers conference three years ago. Or has it been four years? I can’t remember. Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’, as the song says. I want to tell you I chose to attend the Santa Barbara Conference because I’d done my research on the agents and editors who would be there, and because that conference has an excellent YA track. But the truth is I went because it was a two-hour drive from L.A., and I wanted to spend a week in Santa Barbara.

At the time, I’d written a practice young adult novel, and was about halfway through writing my “for reals this time” young adult novel. I decided to pitch this uncompleted masterpiece during the conference’s pitchfest, and deal with the consequences if anyone actually asked for the book.

The day before the pitchfest there was an agent meet and greet, one of those wonderful events that are probably an agent’s worst nightmare. It was my worst nightmare, too. I didn’t know ANYONE at the conference. I showed up at the meet and greet and tried to avoid the crazy dude who’d locked on to me the first day. I stood in a corner and sipped my white wine. I don’t normally drink white wine because it makes me silly, but red wine stains my teeth, and on the off chance that I actually spoke to a single person during the conference, I didn’t want to scare him/her away with a purple smile.

Miraculously, a group of wonderful YA writers––who will get a special thank you on the acknowledgments page of my book––invited me to join them. I made friends! I didn’t care about meeting agents at that point, I was just so relieved to have been invited into the fold. I relaxed. I had another glass of white wine. And then another. I was lots of fun at that point. And then . . .

Turns out, the writers who’d adopted poor socially awkward me knew a few of the agents already. Our group merged with an agent group. I wasn’t nervous anymore. I was drinking white wine in the hot sun and I was downright gregarious. The YA writers introduced me to JWC. We talked. Or, I should say, I talked . . . at her . . . a lot.

I had another glass of white wine.

I told the story in which the use of the “C” word was absolutely essential.

I did not feel the least bit embarrassed about this until the next day, when I had to pitch my half-finished novel, STRUCK, to JWC with a white wine hangover hammering at my brain.

But, hey, she asked me to send her the first 50, and after she read that she asked for the rest of the novel. We did some revisions together, yada yada yada. She sent the book out April of 2010. It went to auction between 4 publishing houses a month later, and has gone to auction in Germany, and sold in several other countries.

I love my agent.

I have since told her many, many more scandalous stories . . . some of them fictional.