In the Rainforest, Everything Wants You Dead

Sorry to any arachnophobes who stumble upon this. I used to be a massive arachnophobe until I had a kid and a husband who is rarely home. You learn to get over stuff real quick because you don't want your children to learn your phobias. I still don't LIKE spiders, but I can tolerate them (or squish them if they are unusually large and/or aggressive- I can live with spiders in the corners, but if they're strolling across the living room floor and give me the 'wassup' head nod...that's a little cocky).

All that to say, I have a new story available! "Spawn of the Spider God" is now out in Fantastic Horror's new "Mythos Revisted" issue now on the Amazon Kindle store and in paperback from Createspace. My husband said this story of mine is particularly disturbing because, being a cringing arachnophobe at the time I wrote it, I knew exactly how to describe my beasties for maximum reader discomfort.

What's it about, you say?

Hundreds of men have vanished into the Amazon while searching for the fabled Lost City of Gold. Perhaps that's because...they found it.

The idea struck me while reading The Lost City of Z, a book about famed explorer Percy Fawcett who, along with his son and a friend, disappeared into the jungle around the turn of the century. It's a great book if you like vanished explorers. In addition, after reading River of Doubt (about Teddy Roosevelt's near-disastrous jaunt into the Amazon) I became consumed with the idea that, in the rainforest, everything wants you dead. Every animal, every plant, every bacterium, every speck of dirt that will work its way into a wound, infecting it so you die painfully and slowly.

In my story, the things that want you dead are a little bigger than a speck of dirt.

But enough about me. What do you think of me?