My short story “For the Views” has been published in the My Friends In Hell horror anthology.
I originally began writing “For the Views” sometime last year. I think I might have seen an open submission call for a cult anthology or something along those lines, but I never finished the story in time to submit. In fact, I didn’t finish writing the story at all.
While the story was mostly done, I had abandoned it because I couldn’t think up an ending. It’s a story about two friends who investigate an old church for their YouTube exploration channel. The church is rumored to have ties to the occult (theme of the original call), and the friends want to see if there’s anything in the church’s basement worth checking out.
In my initial draft, I had the setup, the tension-building scenes, and pretty much everything before the climax. Not just a draft, but a near-complete final story minus the ending. I’m not positive, but I think I mainly abandoned the story because (as is usually the case with me) I went over the submission call’s word limit. Oh well, it happens. I moved onto other projects.
A year later, I received a random invite from a writer friend, A.D. Jones, to submit a story to this horror anthology he was putting together. The theme of the anthology was friendship. How about that!? I already had an almost finished story that fit perfectly for what he was asking for. I just needed an ending.
Of course, the word limit was still a problem. The limit he set was about 1000 words less than what I needed to complete my story. Being the calculating writer I am, though, I got work! I finished the final scene (quite brutally), and then I dealt with the hard part. Editing.
I shaved the story down as best I could, but I still ended up 200 words over the limit. Fortunately, Jones was fine with what I had, and here we are. Another gruesome tale for all you horror lovers to sink your teeth into!
Caleb James K. 