Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: two teenagers drive up to Lover’s Lane, and on the radio they hear the news of an escaped hook-handed convict. The boy hears a sound outside the car while they’re making out and goes to investigate, but finds nothing. The girl gets scared, so they drive off, but when they get to her house… she discovers a hook hanging from the handle of the car.
Okay, so that story is definitely better when it’s being told at night, with flames snapping at the air and the darkness of woods behind you.
There’s nothing more classic to horror than a story told around a campfire. It’s the quintessential childhood summer memory, and I imagine many horror fans got their first taste of the genre in between bites of a s’more.
In September, when I went on my horror writing retreat to Big Bear, I had the chance to experience that nostalgia as we—a group of horror writers!—sat around the fire telling stories. But how often do we really get the opportunity to beat back these cold autumn nights with stories around the fire? Sometimes we have to find a book that evokes the feeling or setting of a campfire tale, and try to put ourselves there. Maybe with a drink to help.
What else do folks do around a campfire? Sing songs, of course. With that in mind, I’d like to share a song I recently recorded with a friend. She asked me to write and perform the cello part for it, and it’s now up on Spotify. Check it out here:
In other news, I wanted to let you all know that the ebook of It Will Just Be Us is going to be on sale at the end of this month. On November 30 and December 1, it will be priced at $1.99 as a Kindle Daily Deal, a featured Nook Book, and through BookBub. I recommend snagging it while it’s on sale, as I don’t know when it will be this cheap again!
In the meantime, let’s turn our attention back to the fire as we take a look at this month’s recommended book and drink pair.
Cheers!
The Woodkin
The Woodkin by Alexander James is a wild ride that takes us deep into the mountains of Washington. Josh has decided to solo hike the Pacific Crest Trail as he grapples with betrayal in his marriage, but the peace of this trip is immediately broken when he discovers the body of another hiker.
Stranger still, when he heads to a small town to report the body, he discovers missing hiker posters all over. There’s something very much wrong with this town…
The woods are the perfect setting for a campfire tale. What is it about the woods that we find so unsettling, though? Is it the isolation? The knowledge of millions of years of evolution passing in this place that has been largely untouched by human development? Or is it the fear of what we may find lurking in the darkness…?
Pairs best with…
Campfire Old Fashioned
The basis of this drink, also called the Oaxaca Old Fashioned, is a riff on the traditional cocktail that uses chocolate bitters and smoky mezcal instead of bourbon. But I wasn’t content to let chocolate and smoke take the full focus here; I wanted to bring the campfire to you with this drink! So we’re going to take this cocktail up a notch by adding a roasted marshmallow.
I have to admit that the idea for this drink came directly from the author himself, but it sounded just too perfect to pass up!
The first sip was very mezcal-forward, so if that doesn’t appeal to you, then you might consider using the ratio found in many mezcal old fashioned recipes, with only 1/2 oz of mezcal and 1 1/2 oz reposado tequila. I just went for it with the full 2 oz of reposado mezcal, but it ended up working well with the sweetness of the roasted marshmallow (I simply placed a few marshmallows on a lightly-greased baking sheet and broiled until browned—keep an eye on them if you do this, as they brown very quickly). Once I dumped the marshmallow into the drink and let it dissolve a little, the sweetness blended nicely with the mezcal’s smokiness.
Ingredients
2 oz mezcal
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp water
2-3 dashes chocolate bitters
1 marshmallow
Directions
Muddle sugar, bitters, and water.
Add mezcal and stir, then add ice.
Garnish with a roasted marshmallow
Tips from a Writing Professor
Read your work aloud.
What’s one of the things we all love about campfire stories? They are engaging when told to us. They hook us in. They captivate us. Hearing a story is an excellent test for things like pacing: those elongations that draw out tension, deliberate pauses, and moments of surprise. It can be much more difficult to identify qualities of a story’s pacing if it exists strictly on the page and not in our ears. I’ve learned quite a bit from choosing selections of my writing to read for events. How does it sound? If I were in the audience, would this keep me engaged? I read aloud sometimes when I’m writing, too, which can help me immerse myself in a scene or get a better feel for how things are playing out.
There are other benefits, too. One tried-and-true method of teaching students how to identify issues of grammar and coherence is to simply have them read their writing aloud, which will make them much more likely to catch moments of confusion or error than if they were simply reading with their eyeballs. Not only do they hear the mistakes, but they stumble over them as they speak, which is a good signal that they need to pause and figure out what’s wrong with a sentence.
In my creative writing class, I also have students read their work aloud. Though we may not all engage in the oral tradition of storytelling, many—if not most—writers give readings of their published work, whether this is in a bookstore as part of a book signing or, as has become common in recent years, as part of a virtual reading that is streamed on a platform like YouTube. Giving readings is very much ingrained in the writing life, and there’s something special about getting to share your work aloud, in real time, for an audience. In the interest of inviting my creative writing students into this aspect of being a writer, I have them either participate in a live reading on campus/ Zoom or record a video of them reading a snippet of their work to post for the class.
There’s a performative aspect to reading your work, too, much like the gestures and performance that happen when telling a story around a campfire. After all, no one wants to hear someone read a story to them in a dull monotone. That’s a sure death sentence for any interest or attention. Varying pace and tone is integral to keeping listeners engaged. Even beyond the writing world, practicing this kind of performative reading can help one become a better speaker in general. Deliberately placing each word can have a significant effect on the audience’s reaction; I was recently listening to someone give a brief speech, and there were so many “ums” and “uhs” sprinkled throughout that I literally found myself failing to understand the key points being made. It was both distracting and frustrating as a listener.
So the next time you write something, whether it’s a poem or a story or an email, consider reading it aloud and seeing what you might get out of the experience!
Writing Update
Speaking of reading aloud… my writing update this month is mainly a podcast update, as I’ve made several appearances over the past month that are all available now on YouTube.
First, Daniel Braum, author of Underworld Dreams, often hosts virtual readings (his Night Time Logic series) with authors of horror and speculative fiction, and I had the opportunity to participate in a reading along with Brian Evenson and Christi Nogle to celebrate the release of the anthology A Darkness Visible, in which we all have stories. Check out the video below to hear our readings and discussion on horror in the postmodern, labyrinths, and more:
Speaking of The Woodkin… I did a horror writing challenge with my publisher’s podcast, CamCat Unwrapped, in which four of us (including Alexander James) had to collaborate on writing a scary story in just one hour. The prompt? Getting lost in the woods, of course! So it’s a fitting theme for this newsletter issue, and surprisingly, the story we created turned out pretty good. Watch the CamCat Unwrapped horror writing challenge here:
I also did an interview with CamCat Unwrapped about When the Night Bells Ring (which includes a shoutout to Books & Booze!), which you can watch here:
About Me
Jo Kaplan is the author of the horror novels It Will Just Be Us and When the Night Bells Ring. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Horror Library, Nightscript, and a variety of award-nominated anthologies (sometimes as Joanna Parypinski). Find her at jo-kaplan.com.