On Camping and a New Book
Hi friends. Welcome to Fiction for the Cosmically Disturbed, a newsletter for family, friends, and readers of horror author Lucas Mangum. Hey, that’s me! In this issue of my long-running publication, we’re going to talk about camping. I love camping—I always have. My enjoyment of this pastime began with a series of trips I took with my dad and brother. This is a tradition I hope to continue with my son (and my daughter when she gets a little older).
This past weekend, I went with my son, my buddy Joe, and Joe’s son to camp on Lake Georgetown. We spent the first night at the Cedar Breaks Campground, then backpacked 4.5 miles to the “primitive” Cedar Hollow Campground. On the way, we gathered water from a natural spring and saw the remains of a house from 1870 (the stone foundation was the only part still standing).
For the uninitiated, “primitive” camping means the only amenities you get are a fire ring and a picnic table. No electricity, no potable water. “Just you and the animals,” Dad used to say. It can be a little intimidating for beginners, especially if you hiked in like we did. Even I was intimidated a little after we arrived at the second site.
That said, it was nice and relaxing once I talked through some of my concerns with Joe. We got in the lake, the boys played, the dads talked, and despite all the sounds of wildlife outside the tent, I slept hard that night.
The next day, we hiked the 4.5 miles back to our cars and headed home. Aside from gathering firewood, the kids had a lot of fun. This was the second camping trip I took with my son this year, and I’ve got one more lined up in June. Something about being out in nature puts me at ease in a way little else does. You’d think that after watching copious amounts of slasher movies set in the woods, I’d be averse to camping, but that is not the case.
I mention all this to remind people that whenever social media life gets to be too much, getting out of the house and away from your screens can do wonders. You don’t need to hike 9 miles or sleep on the ground, but you should maybe consider going outside, even if it’s just to the local park. You’ll be glad you did.
Barn Door to Hell is almost here, gang. The official release date is April 19, this Friday, but you can preorder it on Kindle or in paperback and hardcover. I’m proud of this book, as it’s me in peak pulp mode. I essentially wrote it as a gift to myself for my 40th birthday (which is also this Friday). If you prefer my more introspective stuff like Saint Sadist or American Garbage, you’ll probably want to pass on this and wait for Haunted Hearts to come out in October. The rest of you will not want to miss this.
Here’s the back cover description:
The barn on Alvin West's land houses a dark secret. It's the reason the crops grow so lushly on the farmland, while the surrounding farms lay barren. It's the reason the people of Reaper's Bend always speak of his family in hushed tones.
Carson Reid is new in town. A fledgling journalist still living with her parents, she sees the lore surrounding the West property and how it affects her new neighbors as fodder for what could be her breakout story. When an ill-fated trip to the property inadvertently releases the entity contained in the barn, she plunges herself and the town's population into a desperate fight for survival.
From the twisted imagination of Lucas Mangum comes a gruesome tale of diabolical evil.
Between the Kindle, hardcover, and paperback, I have so far sold 45 preorders. I’d love to get that to 50 by its release date. Let’s make that happen, yeah?
The pulp writer archetype is something that lives rent-free in my head. While in terms of content, I’ve got the formula down, I fall short when it comes to output. The pulp writer has an uncanny ability to get out of their own way (and stay out of it) and generate thousands upon thousands of words a day.
Here are the two things that get me stuck:
I have never written an 80,000-word novel. This is number one for a reason. I have a big chip on my shoulder over this. Part of it is that when I first started taking my writing seriously, Leisure Books was the place to get published if you wrote horror. Want to take a guess what their word count requirement was? Even though I’ve published over a dozen books and several dozen short stories, I still sometimes feel like I won’t be a real writer until I’ve done something of that length. That’s ridiculous, of course, but it’s something I wrestle with on a near-weekly basis.
Perfectionism. The line between “this book still needs work” and “it’s as good as it’s gonna get” is not just fine, it’s drawn in the mud at the bottom of a murky lake. I have both released books that needed work and sat on books indefinitely because I didn’t feel like they were quite ready. Both actions have been detrimental to my output. The good news is that once you’ve learned how to spot the difference between the two states of your book, you become not just a faster writer, but a more efficient one. This is something that doesn’t trip me up as much as it used to. I hope that means I’ve overcome this sticking point, but more than likely, it just means I’ve triumphed over it for now.
To tie this all back to Barn Door to Hell, I knew once I reached a certain point in that book that it was over. I’d planned on doing a full-length novel, but the final word count was about 36,000 words. There are other stories to be told, tales from before the time frame of the novel, from during the events of the novella, and even some from after, but they belong in another book. The primary story with the established main characters has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Anything else I could’ve done is just extra. This probably means you can count on a second book sometime down the road, but not that anything in the first book will feel incomplete.
Barn Door to Hell took about a year to write. I don’t usually take this long to write something, but between Dad life, other deadlines, and needing to rewrite from scratch, things shook out that way. I’m glad I rewrote it, as it’s a much stronger story now. I almost rewrote it a second time, but after some consulting and a heart-to-heart with myself, I decided the book was as good as it was going to get. Anything else I wanted to do could, again, be addressed in a second book.
I was able to find this happy medium through experience and by surrounding myself with people I trust. Honest feedback from people who know what you’re going for with a project is invaluable, and you can’t put a price on experience.
I’m excited about Barn Door to Hell, and I hope you are too.
Currently Reading: Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies by E.M. Roy
Recently Watched: Wrestlemania XL, Immaculate, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Congratulations on the release, Lucas! And happy belated birthday!