It’s creepy, and it’s true …

Wolf Rider: a tale of terror

Sometimes a writer writes a book because its inspiration haunts him. Such was the case with Wolf Rider: a Tale of Terror. Here’s the description for the book, “After receiving an apparent crank call from a man claiming to have committed murder, fifteen-year-old Andy finds his close relationship with his father crumbling as he struggles to make everyone believe him.” 

Strange but true: the opening episode in this book is something that actually happened to me. The telephone call came shortly after I moved into a new apartment and had just received my phone. It was in fact, the first call that came in—on a land line desk phone. The who, the why, and how, I never learned. It was nonetheless, very troubling, very disturbing. I could not get it out of my mind.

The way I worked my way free of the event was by writing about it—something writers sometimes do—inventing a who, a why, and how. Some of my readers tell me Wolf Rider is the scariest book I have ever written. Perhaps it is. It surely is creepy. And . . . it did really happen. At least the beginning.

Thriller

The word thriller seems to have come into the English language at the end of the 19th Century. Ken Follett cites the 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands (Childers) as the first modern thriller. I’d suggest The Turn of the Screw. James Patterson, by way of definition, speaks of the thriller’s “intensity of emotions,” the building of “apprehension.” I’m interested because I’m working on a thriller. Not easy. As I try to shape the emotions to build apprehension, I must focus, cut, sharpen, deepen. If I slip, if the pace slackens, if it gets confusing, the reader won’t turn the page. Sometime the term “page-turner” is used negatively. But what writer doesn’t want the reader to turn the page? If one is speaking of young readers, what could be better than turning them into turners of pages? Many of my readers tell me my best thriller is Wolf Rider. It’s based on something that really happened. But that’s a turn of another page.