Brain Matter

Rainy Season is a dark, tense supernatural thriller that succeeds because of the emphasis on the tension rather than on the supernatural. Rainy Season Based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name, the plot is deceptively simple: a young couple has come to the town of Willow, Maine for some alone time at a cabin. But when they stop to buy supplies in town, they are warned by a pair of elderly locals to get as way as fast as possible. You see, Willow has a secret: every seven years it rains carnivorous toads and some unlucky visitors get eaten as a sacrifice to the evil gods that keep Willow prosperous and happy. Naturally, the young couple laughs it off and goes back to the cabin, only to discover the awful truth that night when the rain starts and the old cabin can’t be sealed tight enough. This is the type of story that is both familiar and difficult to pull off. King does it well by focusing on the small-town feel, gradually building the tension, and t...

 Catherine Cavendish is the author of  several novels and novellas, including The Devil's Serenade, Dark Avenging Angel, Saving Grace Devine, and The Pendle Curse. Today she's here to talk about some rather unsettling imaginary friends. When you were growing up, did you have an imaginary friend? Did they seem real to you? Maybe sort-of-real. You could talk to them, imagine their responses, play with them - but you probably kept the ‘relationship’ within certain boundaries, however young you were. In my case, I invented an entire family of siblings – three sisters (two older, one a few years younger) and an older brother who looked out for us girls. Being an only child, I found them comforting, and fun, but I never imagined them to be real. They, in turn, kept themselves firmly lodged in my own mind and never attempted to cross any boundary into the real world. In my novel, The Devil’s Serenade, my central character also had an imaginary family when she was a chil...