If you’re following me on any social media platforms, you may have noticed the cover for DARKEST FEARS dropped today!
If you’re not (um, WHY NOT) here’s that cover.
I thought it would be fun today to dig into a little history on this amazing story.
WHERE IT STARTED
Darkest Fears began WAY back in around 2000. This is before I decided I wanted to commit to writing all the time. In fact, this is back before I was really admitting that I was writing to anyone. Darkest Fears was passion project REALLY early on. I was actually in college when I first attempted to draft this one. I never finished it. I remember writing it. I remember being really proud of some of the phrases and paragraphs. I also vaguely remember hitting a wall with it and leaving it alone.
I also remember finding it at some point after college when I was teaching. I think I was cleaning out files on an old computer. I stumbled across it and printed a copy so I wouldn’t lose it again.
Then, in 2019, I found that printed copy. I read it and even talked about it a little on social media. I was pleasantly surprised to realize it wasn’t so bad. It was rough but it had potential. I laughed about it and promptly put it away somewhere “safe” (read: I didn’t see it again for years).
In 2021, I found it again. I think I was cleaning because I was stuck in my room with COVID or something. This time, I started brainstorming ways to fix it. Ways I could bring in a few of the concepts I’d been itching to put into a book. I tore it apart, borrowed from it, and outlined something I actually liked.
Full Disclosure: Very little of the original idea survived. Here’s a few that did (no spoilers, I promise).
- The setting. I had been in Flagstaff, Arizona when I originally drafted the start of this one. I decided it would be fun to leave this one set in that same small town. There are loads of fun little facts and places that came directly from Flagstaff.
- ONE of the major characters. If you read this one and guessed, you’d probably be wrong. It’s not Sarah. She was added later and made the story a LOT better. The only character who survived all the drafts was Dan.
- The first murder. That original murder was written WAY back in 2000. Everything about that victim changed but the murder itself stayed.
- The scene the cover image is based on. Yeah, that one stayed too. The writing of it is (in my opinion) a lot more solid now. But I always knew that scene would be in there.
- The title! I kept scribbling down other ideas for titles but this one just kept coming back around. In the end, it’s the best title for it and I can’t believe it survived the years.
Anyway, after writing an outline of something I thought I’d like, I lost focus on this one again. One of the things you probably already know about me is that I like to have a lot of projects going. This one fell to the background as I tried to mentally wrestle with a few of the major plot points.
Some time in 2022 I decided to start drafting this one. My thought was that I could find some of the solutions while I was drafting. I even said it was going to be my NaNo July project (whatever that’s called). Really, all I did in July was create an aesthetic and write a few chapters. I talked about it on social media a little. I drafted (slowly). I was having fun playing around with this one. The story was less horror and more slasher. In fact, I nicknamed it the Slasher Project when I talked about it online.
To encourage myself to get even more done on this one, I made finishing the Slasher Project my NaNo plan in 2022. Like I said, I was having fun with it but the drafting was SLOW going.
During November is when something finally clicked. I had been struggling with a few of the major concepts and major deaths in the story (it is a slasher, the fact that there’s deaths doesn’t count as a spoiler) and something finally unlocked in November. I figured out the motive and how to use that to my advantage. After that, the draft just sailed to completion.
I finished the zero draft of the Slasher Project in November of 2022. At that time it was 42 chapters and just under 75000 words.
If you’ve been following the blog since then, you’ll know what happened next. Basically, the Slasher Project was just ONE of many projects I had finished that needed attention. I had zero drafted myself into a GIANT black hole of things that needed to be edited. Unfortunately, the Slasher Project sat in the background for YEARS because of this.
That all changed in 2025. I made it my goal to get this one on the publishing schedule. I knew it would be a BIG push, but I was up for it. The first round of edits went … rough. There were a lot of small changes a few big ones. I pushed through. The second round of edits went much smoother.
The betas LOVED it.
I LOVED it.
Sarah’s story came alive on the page. It’s scary, for sure, and thrilling. But there’s a decent message hiding in there and some character growth, which is always fun to see (and write).
If you’re a fan of the original Fear Street books, slasher movies (think Scream or Urban Legends), or the old school Christopher Pike books … this is one you’ll want to add to that TBR.
I can’t WAIT for you to meet Sarah, her story has been a long time coming.
That’s the story behind Darkest Fears.
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For now, Darkest Fears is Goodreads official … so go add it to your WANT TO READ!