The Making of Eldritch Nights: Chapter One

The chapter that began it all.

The chapter that took me two years to write.

Initially, it reads as a sadist, misandrist fantasy -- this girl feeding a boy to a sea monster. What redeemed it, though, was the perspective of a teenage student girl I tried to adopt writing this book. Daphne's self-defense weapon was her house-key. Right away, I present Daphne as a victim. You think she's another horror-movie blond, about to be preyed upon by some ten-foot masked monster.

Teen Health! was a spoof this program at my hometown's gym called Teen Gym. I don't know if it had an exclamation point but it sounded like it did -- it was dumb and stupid. I didn't like having a attendant watching me exercise. That's a very private thing that I liked doing by myself, like praying, and I didn't want someone watching me and judging me. Did I voice these feelings? Of course not. But that's where Teen Health! came from. Because it was dumb. Really dumb.

I had a housemate called Rachel who studied Psychology and when I wrote the book, god knows why I made all the Psychology students existentialist and mysterious. These days I would say that's not Psychology, that's Philosophy. A few years ago, the bar I worked at was under a flat of Philosophy students, and the stink of weed from above there was omnipresent.

My housemate Rachel was shy and reserved like Megan but she wasn't a goth, by no stretch of the imagination. She hang out with my other housemate Courtney, who and an amalgamation of other people became Gretchen. I didn't like Courtney. Look, I think we just saw things from a different point of view and I was just a fucking awkward teenager prone to always, always, always saying the wrong thing. I was just a weird teenager; this weird personality poured into this gangly, awkward body. Me and Courtney didn't get along. But when I was that age, I was like, "why are you treating me like this? why are you judging me?" So, subconsciously, she became Gretchen.