Books to Die For

Sinister Seven: DAVID J. THIRTEEN on MR. 8

In the four years since I began serializing my YA horror series on Wattpad, I've had the opportunity to meet a whole host of fellow serial writers and see more than a few books graduate from online drafts to homes with traditional print publishers. Among those writers is genre scribe David J. Thirteen.  I recently decided it was high time to toss a Sinister Seven in his direction. Read on as we discuss the book, his publishing journey, his favourite reads and just where else you can sample his work on the weird wide web.

Hi David, for those who've never stumbled across MR. 8 in either its online or paperback incarnation, here's your chance to sell us on the story, go...

In the days leading up to Christmas, a killer is stalking a small college town. The killings themselves are straight forward, if gruesome, but strangely each victim went through a strange personality change right before their deaths. Psychology professor Denton Reed is brought in by the police and the mystery becomes an obsession, as he tries to make his town safe again and make sure his wife never ends up a target. But as he gets closer to the truth, Denton realizes that he's facing something much darker and more terrifying than a serial killer and even if he solves the case, it may be too late to save himself.

MR. 8 mines both crime fiction and horror for its telling, what is the appeal for you of stories that borrow from multiple genres? 

I enjoy the freedom of genre mashing but also defying readers' expectations. Most of us readers have read a lot. We know all the tropes and how genres are supposed to play out. So by mashing genres or genre switching, in the case of MR.8, gives the ability to create wilder storylines and create big surprises. When I read, I'm always looking for something new – something that will surprise me. This is a way for me to inject that into my own writing.

Have you always been attracted to horror and darker subject matter? Where did this interest come from? 

I was a pretty fearful child. I'd lie in bed at night waiting for the monsters to crawl out of the walls. But at the same time there was always a fascination with those monsters. When I was too young to read, I had this book about Dracula, the Mummy, and the Wolfman. I must have gotten it as a hand-me-down from one of my older siblings. It terrified me but I bawled my eyes out when I learned that my mother had gotten rid of it. When I was a little older, I'd beg to be allowed to watch horror movies even though it usually resulted in nightmares. I think horror stories were a way of dealing with the primal terrors. It was a way of sidling up beside the monsters and to get to know them. It diffused the fear and intensified it at the same time, making it enjoyable. Which is why, I'm still attracted to it.

Much like Alys Arden's THE CASQUETTE GIRLS, your book began as a serial here on Wattpad.com before landing a more traditional publishing deal. Can you tell us a little about MR. 8's journey?

MR. 8 started of as an experimental side project. I had put some short things up on the site already, but it was the first thing I wrote specifically for Wattpad. At the time, I was working on another novel but had this idea I couldn't get out of my head. So I decided to write one short chapter a week and do it as a serial. Something clicked with MR. 8. People really liked it. A lot more than I thought was ever possible for something I had written. But I was learning too. My writing grew by leaps and bounds while I was posting it. Once MR. 8 was completed, Wattpad featured it and its popularity exploded. That was when Booktrope offered to publish it. I look back now and there's no way I could have ever planned what happened with this book. I don't think I would have finished it, if I had written it without the support I got from Wattpad's community.

Did the experience of posting the novel online during the creation process change the story in any way? For instance, how much of a role did reader feedback play in the process? 

Writing on such a live and immediate forum as Wattpad effected the work in many ways. The instant feedback and knowing that there were people out in the world actually waiting for the next installment was a huge confidence boost and helped keep me motivated. Sometimes the hardest part of writing a novel is not giving up because of discouragement and thoughts that it's a waste of time. Having people reading and responding really helped overcome that. It also upped my game. I felt this sense of not wanting to disappoint and I had a few very talented writers reading it, so each week I sat down and thought: how can I make this better. The readers did play a role in shape the story too. The most direct way was the ending. Readers had such an emotional attachment to [my character.] In the comments, they wrote about him like he was one of their friends. It really changed my outlook on the way I saw him. About halfway through, I realized readers would cry foul if I went with my original ending. I didn't change my plan completely but I tried to make it more fitting for the character they told me he was. And there were probably dozens of other adjustments to the story which were more subtle. Having all those readers' thoughts and theories filtering through my mind affected things in ways I probably will never be able to dissect. But I believe it was all positive.

Of course, even when the MR. 8 promotion ends, there will still be stuff of yours that can be read for free online. Can you tell our readers a bit about those stories and where they can find them?

You can find all my works on Wattpad under the account DavidJThirteen. Since MR. 8, I've been working on a trilogy called THE THINGS WE BURY. There are a lot of storylines running through it, but at its essence, it is about a group of scientists in a secret lab researching a captured lycanthrope. Each of them are only there because the government has exploited dark secrets in their past. The humans are just as dangerous than the monster they're studying, if not more so. It's a real genre mash-up of horror, science-fiction, paranormal, and even a touch of fantasy. I'm currently halfway through posting book two of the series.

Lastly, we've all played the Desert Island Albums game at some point in our lives, so less play Desert Island Books. If water damage was not a thing, which three horror novels would you want with you should you become stranded on an island far away from any bookstores or the internet and why these in particular? 

Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House would always make any top three list of mine. It's such a smart, spooky haunted house story. I reread it recently and was still amazed by it. I'd have to put a Stephen King book on that list but choosing one is a challenge. I'll go with It. I loved the story when I first read it and have always wanted to go through it again but its size is daunting. A desert island would be a good opportunity finally do it. Finally, I'd pick The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft. It was the first horror novel (well, novella really) that I ever read. I picked it up from the library right before Halloween one year, thinking it would be a traditional ghost story. Instead, it opened up an entirely new and strange world and it has always been a touchstone for me.