Towards the later part of 2015 I came across a competition. It was entitled Twisted 50, and they were looking for short stories in the horror genre. The fifty winners would be published in an anthology.

I’d never considered writing horror, although I’m a huge fan of horror books and films. I think it started when I was allowed to watch A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was eleven years old. I was hooked, that feeling of fear, of going to sleep and having someone kill you in your dreams! As I got older I wanted more, I wanted to push the boundaries of myself and my own fear, and I watched all of the ghastly films I could find. Ones that had been cut in order to comply with UK screening rules were always good ones, such as the uncut version of Human Centipede and A Serbian Film.

So this competition piqued my interest and I didn’t have much going on at the time so I sat down one afternoon and wrote a story of a woman who wakes up in a basement. She’s restrained, chained, and some of her fingers are missing…

Not really expecting it to go anywhere I gave it my all, I reached into the darkest part of my mind and unlocked the door to what I believe is everyone’s worst nightmare.

Towards Christmas I received notification that I’d been selected as one of the finalists. I was over the moon, but this was around the time that I was on a strict deadline to completing the manuscript for Exclusion Zone, so I was very aware that I wouldn’t have the time to further polish and edit my short story. I let it go on anyway, and at the beginning of this week the final fifty short story winners were announced. And my story was one of them.

I’m over the moon, considering that it was my first attempt at horror and I didn’t have the time to give it my full attention in the later stages of the entry process.

So, at some point Twisted; 50 tales of wickedness, evil and the paranormal, Volume 1, will be published, and my own effort will be one of them.

Jeanette Hewitt (J.M Hewitt)

My Profile is HERE.

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