I live in Florida, Mikey Mouse’s land, and darn it if this story doesn’t take an even creepier angle for me… And because of that, I found the Author’s answer to my question very comforting and interesting.

Bennytown by Matt Carter released a month back in the Adult horror, thriller genre.

For nearly sixty years, Bennytown has been America’s most exciting family theme park destination. Under the watchful eye of cultural icon Benny the Bunny, the park has entertained generations of children with its friendly atmosphere and technologically innovative rides, acting as a beacon of joy and wonder, where magic is real and dreams come true.

Bennytown once saved sixteen-year-old Noel Hallstrom’s life, and to repay it, Noel has applied for a summer job. Though the work is messy and the hours are bad, Noel is happy to be a part of the Bennytown family, until he sees the darkness beneath the surface. Strange, mechanized mascots walk the park perimeter. Elegantly dressed cultists in wooden Benny masks lurk in the darkness. Spirits of the many who’ve died in the park roam freely, and every night the park transforms into a dark dimension where madness reigns and monsters prowl.

Noel is about to find out more about Bennytown than he ever wanted to know, and that its darkness might have designs on him.

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bennytown-matt-carter/1136895043?

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/bennytown

IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781945654534

The book is on sale for $0.99.

Darkness is all I can see in any direction. I see shadowy, moving shapes I know to be buckets around me and maybe an outline of the escalators but nothing in complete detail.

I am abandoned.

No, no, no. I can NOT be abandoned. Somebody has to know I’m here. Somebody will look for me. Any second now. Any second…

I grip the railing and scream, “HEEEEEEEEEEEY! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!”

My cries are pitiful against the wind and the rain. I doubt anyone can hear me from thirty feet away, let alone from the distance of the station. Despite that, I’m too scared to stop screaming.

Someone has to hear.

I scream again.

This time there’s a scream back.

Not a person. Not an animal.

I don’t know what.

It’s low, mechanical and almost organic. Only something large can make a sound like that.

Briefly, I hope that it’s the motors starting up, ready to pull me to safety.

I’m not that lucky.

And maybe it’s a good thing I’m stuck here. There’s something about that scream I don’t like, something that reaches into the furthest, most primitive recesses of my brain and tells me that whatever made that noise is hungry.

The wind picks up, and the steel cables above me creak and groan in protest.

A bolt of lightning flashes close enough to light up the sky. It’s so bright it burns my eyes, and the thunder sounds like the whole world is exploding around me. With spots and stars in my eyes, I wonder if I’m going blind, as the electricity in my bucket turns on again. The light is dull and yellow, flickering, and the speaker briefly comes to life. The voice whispers right into my ear.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Matt Carter has used his lifelong love for writing, history and the bizarre to bring to life novels like Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel, Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir, and the Prospero Chronicles young adult horror series (all co-authored with Fiona J.R. Titchenell). Bennytown,is his first solo horror novel.

He is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel and lives in the usually sunny town of San Gabriel, CA with his wife, their pet king snake Mica, and the myriad of strange fictional characters and worlds that live in his head.

What do you love about this genre the most?

What do I love about horror the most? A lot. Too simple an answer? Okay, I’ll go into detail, but be warned, this might take a while; I’ll try to keep it brief.

First and foremost, I find a controlled scare to be quite therapeutic. Once upon a time I was that kid who was absolutely terrified of everything, his own shadow included, and horror was high on the list of things I never thought I’d be able to face. As I got older, though, and began to explore pop culture more on my own, I found it to be an interesting genre. It was one that allowed me to face my fears and discover that I wasn’t the only one who had them, that many an artist had fears and demons that they needed to express, and that the horror genre was a healthy outlet for them. Being able to express fear and find a healthy outlet for it, rather than bottling it up, was something that appealed to me greatly. I’m not saying that there haven’t been growing pains along the way, and that I’ve never accidentally stumbled into something that was too much for me, but more often than not I’ve found it a wonderful escape. Sign on for an experience in the dark and the macabre, join in that social contract that says they will try to make you scream and that you are comfortable screaming, and enjoy the adrenaline rush from there.

Another main aspect of horror that I rather enjoy, at least from an analytical point, is how much horror, as a branch of genre fiction, focuses so much on contemporary issues compared to the others. When you have fantasy, science-fiction and horror as three of the main branches of genre fiction, I have a theory that they can be quite often broken up into three periods of focus. Fantasy focuses on the past, yearning for times gone by a simpler way of things and an era where grand adventure feels possible. Science-fiction on the other hand focuses on the future, the future we want or the future we don’t want depending on the writer and the story. Horror, however, focuses on contemporary issues and anxieties, again acting as an outlet for the fears of the day. Obviously I won’t call this a hard and fast rule (as horror films like The Witch and Alien prove that horror can live just as well in the past and future), but horror as a genre has offered a lot of insight into societal changes for better and worse, and the resistances to those changes as they’ve come. I love watching as the genre evolves over the years, seeing what it becomes and what it reflects about us and what we fear.

Fear gets a bad rap. While it’s true there is much that we do have to, and often need to, fear in the world, it is also one that we can tap into for healthy releases of adrenaline. Like stepping on a roller coaster, horror lets us feel fear in a way that is easily controlled and completely safe, and in a world that’s increasingly filled with real nightmares that can be difficult to face, what harm is there in a little spooky escapism?

Publisher: https://owlhollowpress.com/bennytown/

http://mattcarterauthor.weebly.com/

https://www.facebook.com/mattcarterauthor/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6599726.Matt_Carter?

Twitter https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

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