Horror is one of those genres that people seem to either or love or hate—and as
someone who’s enjoyed all things horror since I was a little girl (strange, I know) I’d never really questioned why I love the scare so much. When you think about it, fear sounds like a strange thing to enjoy! Yet, the way I see it, there is an escapism in reading horror novels and watching scary movies. It provides us with a controlled environment to experience that fear with the knowledge that we can turn it off or put it down at the end and walk away. Sure, the masked figure stalking us through the streets or the dead girl crawling out of the television are terrifying, but we know that we’re safe and out of harms way no matter how caught up we get in the story. So why do we do this to ourselves? Because the real world can be scary—and I don’t think we’ve seen any better example of that than this recent year. With so much ugly hatred and violence, sickness and uncertainty, to say the past twelve months or so have been horrific is an understatement. Even if you live in a country that hasn’t been as directly impacted by these events as others, there’s no escaping the ripples.
We all feel it. See it. Fear it. And so in fictional horror, we find an outlet to allow us to process those emotions with the knowledge that we’ll be okay once it’s over. Even if we need to go to sleep with the light on, we know that there isn’t really a boogeyman under the bed or an entity lurking in the shadows… Or is there?
As the death toll skyrockets, Jonah and his two best friends, the siblings Tristan and Ava Carter, find themselves at the epicentre of inexplicable phenomena—a stranded ferry transforms into a barge headed for the Underworld; young girls levitate to whisper ancient riddles; technology across the globe is controlled by some unseen hand. And it all seems to lead back to the woman with red hair. When a stranger finds them in the midst of a thunderstorm and offers his otherworldly assistance, Jonah finally unravels the truth about who he really is. And what it means for the rest of humanity.
Liz Butcher resides in Australia, with her husband, daughter, and their two cats. She’s a self-confessed nerd with a BA in psychology and an insatiable fascination for learning. Liz was previously the former Executive Assistant at the Horror Tree, which is a mainstream resource for authors and has published a number of short stories in anthologies including her own collection, After Dark, in 2018. Fates Fury was her debut novel and LeRoux Manor, her stunning new novel set for release, September, 2020.