Richard Schiver

Tag: horror

  • A conversation with myself.

    I’m still working on figuring out how to do these interviews with my characters so please bear with me. I’ve renamed the post, after all when I interview a character, I’m having a conversation with myself. This week I talk to Susan, the lead character in my novel Cursed.

    Susan is a middle-aged woman in her late thirties who takes care of herself and has a positive outlook on life. Slender with straight brown hair kept at an average length. There is warmth in her smile, and her eyes. She seems open and caring to those around her. Yet she carries an aura of sadness, as if there were a weight we cannot see bearing down on her.

    RS: What brought you to Porter Mines?

    S: My husband died in Iraq.

    RS: I’m so sorry for your loss.

    S: Thank you. I wanted our daughter, Christine, to be close to his parents who live in Oakland. The farmhouse in Porter Mines was nearby and was listed at a pretty good price. But had I known what I know now, I would never have moved there.

     RS: Why is that?

    S: Every small town has its secrets. Most are harmless little tales designed to scare kids. Or secrets everyone knows about. Like infidelity among the members of the council. Or certain people looking the other way when members of the council get drunk. Things of that nature. But Porter Mines was different, its secret is dangerous, even more so for my daughter.

    Here Susan becomes visibly upset and struggles to control herself. After a few moments she gets herself under control and wipes away her tears. Christine enters the room, crosses to her mommy and climbs into her lap. She’s a cute little thing carrying a stuffed bunny nearly as large as she is.

    S: I mean I didn’t know my maiden name was associated with the founders of the town who lived under this old curse.

    RS: What curse was that?

    S: According to the stories an old woman in the late seventeen hundreds got sick. The area was mostly virgin forest and there were Indians nearby. The people at the outpost believed she was a witch. They got together and dragged her from her home to burn her at the stake. It was said that with her dying breath she cursed every generation that would stain this land.

    C: That’s the witch, but it’s okay, daddy will take care of us.

    Susan glances at Christine with an expression of sorrow.

    RS: The witch?”

    C: She’s real, I saw her, but nobody believes me.

    RS: How will your daddy protect you?

    Here Christine breaks into a wide smile as she pulls the bunny tight against her chest.

    C: He’s here, in my bunny. If you listen real close you can hear his heartbeat. He told me that as long as I had the bunny with me, he would always be with me.

    RS: Did you dad buy the bunny for you?”

    C: No, he won it. It had to be earned.

    RS: Earned?

    C: That’s what the man at the carnival said. Daddy said it would be cheaper to just buy one. But the man at the carnival said it had to be earned.

    RS: What had to be earned?

    Christine shrugged as she twisted around in her seat to look up at her mom.

    S: He won the bunny at a roadside carnival the day before he shipped out. I got so mad at him because he spent so much money to win it. But looking back I was wrong. The bunny helped us get through the worst of everything after he died. It was a constant reminder of his love for us.

    C: Yeah, that’s what I said.

    RS: What about your parents Susan?

    S: My father died when I was young, and my mother passed several years ago.

    RS: I sense you were not close with her?

    S: Not at all, she’s the reason my brother killed himself. She started listening to a TV preacher and made me and my brother’s life miserable.

    RS: I’m so sorry to hear that. It looks like you’ve adapted.

    S: You can’t live in the past.

    RS: So true. Is there anything you’d like to share with our readers before we go?

    S: If you have children, listen to them when they tell you things that seem made up. They see things we can’t, they believe things we’ve turned our back on, and because of that the night holds a danger we cannot see.

    Cursed

    Click on cover to order

    After the loss of her husband, Susan sought a safe place to rebuild a life for herself and her six-year-old daughter, Christine. Quaint and picturesque, Porter Mines seemed ideal, but Susan soon learns appearances can be deceiving. 

    Like many small towns, the history of Porter Mines was woven in a tapestry of dark secrets. One centered on a witch, who vowed with her dying breath to claim vengeance against those who wronged her. A ghost story rooted in grisly truth. 

    Can Susan protect Christine from a wrath even death couldn’t tame?

    Or will her only child fall prey to the curse of Porter Mines?

  • Embracing One-Star Reviews: A Writer’s Perspective

    Embracing One-Star Reviews: A Writer’s Perspective

    My apologies, I got so caught up in yesterday’s football games I failed to write today’s post. So I’m dredging up this old post from the stone ages of self-publishing and touching it up a bit for today’s audience.

    It was bound to happen eventually. It happens to every writer who puts themselves out there.  No one is immune.  Not even F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose novel, The Great Gatsby, has received a total of 162 one-star reviews. Stephen King is known the world over as a writer worth reading. Yet his novel, The Stand, considered by some to be one of the best post apocalyptic stories ever written, has gotten 245 one-star reviews. 

    Every writer gets them. Everyone. And I’m no different. I’ve gotten several on some of my earlier works, as well as my more recent works.

    Does it bother me? Not in the least, and I only mention it to make a point. If one wishes to be a writer, singer, painter, dancer, actor, or anyone who puts themselves out in the public eye, you need a thick skin. Because not everyone is going to like your latest masterpiece.

    But I as a writer do take one thing from these one-star reviews. The reviewer, for all their loathing, did finish the story. Even though they didn’t like it, they admitted to reading to the end.

    How a writer responds to a one star, or a bad review, can become the stuff of legend in this day of instant communication coupled with the anonymity of the Internet.

    I’m personally aware of a writer who used sock puppets to attack anyone who dared impinge upon the quality of his work. I discovered this when the author in question reviewed my work in a couple of different places. In one place he posted the review under his sock puppet, while in another place he posted the exact same review, word for word, under his real name. I guess he wasn’t really paying attention that day.

    Upon closer examination I discovered that the writer had reviewed his own work in addition to attacking anyone who dared give his work less than four stars. In case you’re wondering his work was self-published.

    Overreacting to bad reviews is not restricted to those who self-publish.

    Anne Rice is well known for her Vampire Chronicles that have sold millions of books worldwide. When Blood Canticle was released many of the readers who had been waiting for the book were less than thrilled and responded with negative reviews. At the time of the writing of this original post there were 109 one-star reviews out of a total of 406 reviews on Amazon. Anne’s response was not nice. I’m not going to share any links here but if you do a search you can find out everything that happened.

    While researching this post I discovered that self-published authors are more inclined to get into a fight with reviewers than those who have followed the traditional route. Sadly, this leads many people to frown on self-publishing. And reviewers may refuse to review self published works for fear of being confronted.

    I’m no expert but I personally believe it may be because those who have followed the traditional route have endured rejection by editors in the past, yet continued to submit, thereby thickening their skin, and preparing them for bad reviews. With some exceptions.

    While those who self-publish may not have experienced rejection until they are reviewed by the public who are known to not pull any punches when it comes to letting others know how they feel about a product they’ve paid for. Does this mean I frown on self-publishing? Absolutely not. Back when this post was written self-publishing carried a stigma that was slowly being erased. I’m just making an observation from my time in writing and publishing. I’ve been writing off and on since the early 90’s. A computer failure in 2001 wiped out ten years of hard work and put me off from writing for some time, but I’m back and going after it as hard as time and money will allow.

    I’ve self-published in the past and will continue to do so. Anymore it seems like the smartest route for most people. Yet I still submit to those publishers open to submissions, and I did get one of my works published by Severed Press that has since reverted back to me.

    As a writer, how does a negative review make you feel?

    If the book or story you read was bad, do you post a negative review?

    If not, why?

  • Weekly Writing Challenge 10/29/2025

    Weekly Writing Challenge 10/29/2025

    While working on today’s episode yesterday morning the purpose of the story presented itself to me. Quite frankly I can write novels easier than I can write short stories, hence the reason I started doing this challenge. To force me to buckle down and work on a short story until it was done. I chose to follow the alphabet format and have completed the first drafts of stories up to the letter G. As time allows I work on rewrites and edits of the past stories as I try to whip them into some semblance of a real story worth a read. One of these days I’ll release them for everyone to read.

    Without further adieu let’s get into the continuing saga of Jared and Eric in Hell Hole.

    Story begins where it left off.

    They didn’t look sturdy enough to support the weight pressing down upon them, and it appeared the wood had rotted away on the surface, making them half the size they had originally been.

    “You know why they call it hell hole?” Jared asked.

    Eric shrugged. “Rumor has it the mine went so deep you had to be careful which way you swung your pick.” He stopped as he maneuvered around an old coal car whose steel sides had rusted away to nothing, leaving a flat surface covered in debris.

    Eric pushed past the coal car, coming to a section of tunnel that appeared much older than what they passed through earlier. Here the jagged walls and ceiling were brown and in some places water leaked through the various cracks and crevices that covered the entire surface, filling the space with the incessant sound of dripping water.  It looked like the entire ceiling was about to collapse and he wanted to turn around right then and there.

    He was beginning to get irritated with Jared’s endless whining. If he didn’t need him as bad as he did he would never have spoken to him. He was no more than a means to an end, that of his continued survival. Promises had been made, so promises had to be kept.

    “Why?” Jared asked.

    With a deep sigh Eric turned back to face him and when he did he was struck by a deep anger at the lengths he had to go to. “Because you might hit the devils door,” he replied with a laugh.

    “That’s not funny,” Jared said, turning in a complete circle as if he were afraid someone, or something, were sneaking up on him.

    “Come on, let’s go, you said you wanted to see this room of crystals.” Eric turned and started walking into the depths of the mine. He heard Jared scrambling to get around the abandoned coal car.

    “Wait for me,” Jared said as he rushed to keep up.

    Eric smiled, satisfied he had set the hook firmly. Once they got deeper into the mine Jared would be attached to his hip, which was just as well, he didn’t want him wandering off until he’d gotten what he came for.

    The mine had operated from the mid seventeen hundred until 1890 when a cave in sealed off the lower portion of the mine, opening the passageway to the r0om of crystals. They called them the devil’s jewels, locked away deep beneath the earth.

    The miners of the time had been very superstitious, in addition to being God fearing men. But when the only exit from a mine collapses, and God does little to save you, promises made to others became sacred vows.

    Eric had learned all of this from his research into the mine when he first heard about the crystal room. Sure, he was an explorer willing to take chances, but they were calculated risks made only after he was certain about the facts. He had visited the crystal room himself, along with the mouth of the section of the mine where the collapse occurred. Someone had placed a plaque nearby listing the names of the men entombed within. It was rumored if you listened closely you could still hear panicked pounding coming from the other side.

    To be continued!

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  • New Release

    New Release

    Lilitu: Bloody Caleb by Jonathan Fortin

    Now available on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.

    Dante’s Inferno meets The Count of Monte Cristo in Lilitu: Bloody Caleb—a Gothic dark fantasy of murder, revenge, and the horrors of Hell.

    Caleb Schwartzenfeld, a 22-year-old vagrant violinist in the grim streets of Victorian England, is struggling to survive. But when his search for a patron leads him into the clutches of a sinister cult, he’s brutally sacrificed—and awakens in Hell, a nightmarish realm where death is impossible, and demons delight in torturing the living.

    Refusing to let eternal agony break him, Caleb vows to escape, reunite with the woman he loves, and exact revenge on those who murdered him. Yet the only way back to Earth may require becoming one of the very monsters who torment the damned.

    Under the dark tutelage of the depraved incubus Salem Sotirios, Caleb is seduced into the twisted pleasures and deadly politics of Hell’s elite. As he navigates a macabre underworld of power, lust, and vengeance, Caleb must decide whether reclaiming his life is worth risking his soul.

    Perfect for fans of Gothic horror, supernatural revenge thrillers, and dark romantic fantasy, Lilitu: Bloody Caleb delivers a chilling, seductive, and unforgettable journey through Hell and back. It is the newcomer-friendly second volume in the Lilitu saga, and can be read either before or after the first volume, Lilitu: The Memoirs Of A Succubus.

    Explore the Dark Depths: https://getbook.at/Lilitu2

    Add it on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/240624391-lilitu

    Lilitu saga series: https://geni.us/LilituSaga

    Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing— Where Stories Come Alive!

    About the author

    Jonathan Fortin is the author of “Lilitu: The Memoirs of a Succubus” (Crystal Lake Publishing), “Requiem In Frost” (Horroraddicts.net), and “Nightmarescape” (Mocha Memoirs Press). An unashamed lover of spooky Gothic stories,

    Jonathan was named the Next Great Horror Writer in 2017 by HorrorAddicts.net. He attended the Clarion Writing Program in 2012, one year after graduating summa cum laude from San Francisco State University’s Creative Writing program. When not writing, Jonathan enjoys voice acting, dressing like a Victorian gentleman, and indulging in all things odd and macabre in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow him online at www.jonathanfortin.com or on Twitter @Jonathan_Fortin.

  • Weekly Writing Challenge 10/22/2025

    Weekly Writing Challenge 10/22/2025

    Contd from last time,

    Approaching the opening, he looked up to see someone had painted the casing around the opening to look like the opened mouth of a skeleton with jagged white teeth prepared to crunch down on any who dared enter.

    He almost turned around right then, but didn’t, more afraid of what Eric might think of him than what might be waiting inside the mine. Unlike many of his other friends, Eric wasn’t into the whole macho scene. He was much more reserved and laid back, exuding this aura of relaxed invincibility that drew people to him like moths to a flame. A far cry from Jared who was socially awkward and lacked the charisma of his friend.

    At the entrance Eric stopped and had a good laugh at the sign someone had spray painted on the casing. The words made Jared want to turn around right then and go back home.

    Abandon all hope, all ye who enters here!

    “I don’t think this is a good idea,” Jared said.

    “It’s just someone’s idea of a joke. Come on man you need to loosen up.”

    “Have you been down here before?”

    Eric shook his head. “This is my first time.”

    “Then how do you know it’s safe?”

    “I just know it is, I’ve got a map. A couple of guys I know who do this all the time gave it to me and told me about the crystal room.”

    “How well do you know these guys?” Jared was searching for any reason he could to back out of this without losing face.”

    “Well enough, they wouldn’t steer me wrong, they’re good guys.”

    “I don’t know, I’d feel better if I could see the map.”

    “I forgot to bring it, but it’s okay, everything will be fine. The chamber is only a few hundred feet away from the end of the mine. It’s a straight shot, we can’t get lost.”

    Jared was about to turn around right then but stopped. This was the chance he’d been looking for. If he went in and word spread about what he’d done his whole life would change. He’d no longer be the afterthought, the last one called, if they called at all. He’d prove to the others he could be just like them.

    “The moment I don’t feel comfortable about this we leave, right?”

    Eric shrugged as he smiled. “You got it bro, the moment you feel afraid we’ll turn around.”

    “That isn’t what I meant.”

    “I know, I’m just giving you a hard time, man, come on let’s get going.”

    Still apprehensive, Jared followed Eric into the shadowy depths of the mine, glancing once at the clear blue sky above before it was replaced by the smooth concrete of the casing.

    Will I see the sky again? He worried as smooth concrete gave way to naked stone carrying the tool marks of those who once toiled in these depths.

    The comforting glow from the sun faded to a deepening gloom and Eric turned on his flashlight as they moved deeper into the mine. Every ten feet ancient timber formed arches that held the roof of the mine in place.

    To be contd!