I'm an arachnophobe. That’s to say I'm terrified of spiders, I mean really terrified of the creepy monsters. I
have a personal war against the critters that stretches back as far as I can
remember. I've no idea where it came from or if indeed I was even born with the
condition. Either way, if it has eight legs I’ll scream like a schoolgirl
catching a glimpse of Justin Bieber and develop a heart rate that would beat Usain
Bolt if it could strap on a pair of running shoes.
So why did I write a story about giant human eating spiders
that invade our planet and seem almost impossible to kill? Good question and I
have no real answer except one winter morning I saw frozen spider webs clinging to the rusty railings of our local church yard and had an idea. As a writer the ideas come and I have
the choice of developing them or tossing them into the recycle bin at the back
of my mind (collections now bi-weekly due to brain council budget cuts).
It’s not as though I considered it good therapy to tackle my
fear of spiders. I have no desire to rid myself of the curse as the only effective
method is aversion therapy with the damned things. In fact writing the story ‘Exit Bags’ for the May December Publications anthology ‘Spiders!’ only reinforced my fear.
Yet for
once the scuttling hairy backed ones did me a favour. I wrote what I consider to
be a really good story that was bought and published. Yes I did feel itchy
writing it. I felt scratches when editing it and I even saw black dots running
along the floor of my dreams. But I like it and I hope you do too. So please
check out my story ‘Exit Bags’ and the other twelve stories in this fine
collection edited by the talented TW Brown.
Buy Spiders! in paperback or Kindle version from Amazon UK
Buy Spiders! in paperback or Kindle version from Amazon USA
