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The Good Ones Haunt You

Some of the inspiration behind JACKAL

Erin E. Adams

20 Jul 2022 — 4 min read

(Sorry for the delay. Slow Wi-fi and travel drama got in the way.)

macro photography of person holding light bulb — Photo by Agustin Fernandez on Unsplash

Ideas are finicky things. Some like to nag you. Some can’t be looked at head-on. Others grab you by the nose. Occasionally they show up fully formed. Often they are only a few striking images. The good ones haunt you.

JACKAL haunted me for a full year before I put pen to paper.

It first showed up after I watched CROPSEY, a documentary about the urban legend inspired by a real-life boogeyman. The filmmakers effectively captured how a crumbling mental health system, abuse of power and rampant cover ups led to the kidnapping and murder of local children on Staten Island. It’s a fascinating and infuriating story. The man who murdered these children should have been caught years before. So many systems in place to keep people safe failed. Some families will never have answers. It stuck with me. An urban legend was made to explain something much more complicated than a boogeyman. The story was the way the community coped with an unknown horror. I wanted to write a story utilizing those same themes.

What hides in the stories we tell about ourselves?

My hometown, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, is a fascinating place. For a town in the “middle of nowhere,” it has a rich full history. From the flood, to the mountains, to the steel mill, it’s a very distinct slice of American life. It’s also a place I have a very complicated relationship with. Though I grew up there, I never felt quite at home. No matter who I tried to fit in, I never did. This wasn’t anything overt (In some ways, if it was it might have been easier). Instead, the feeling was subtle, gradual, and easily dismissed by everyone except me. (The perfect setting for a psychological thriller!) I always wanted to set something there or use some of the place’s unique past. More than the history, I wanted to write about this feeling. I grew up walking to school and the store. I stayed home alone. People didn’t lock always lock their doors. I grew up in a safe neighborhood with all the trappings of small-town suburbia. But there was always something that bothered me about it. It would take moving away and engaging with different aspects of American history for me to realize what I was picking up on.

How did this town get to be safe? How does it maintain this safety and at what cost?

My frustration with true crime was the fire that got pen to paper. I love true crime. Because I love it, I see the problems in it. So often the cases that get coverage uphold broken systems of power and erase victims in service of creating monsters. How often do we know the names of killers before their victims? What victims are named and why? I had to face that the same genre I loved could eat me alive and it wouldn’t care. Not just me, any marginalized folks. What do our harrowing serial killer, suspicious small town, horror stories look like? Only a handful came to mind. That wasn’t enough. I became compelled to write one.

What could be hiding in the safest place in the world? Who is it safe for and why? What happens when safety is forced to show its teeth?

All those questions that had been haunting me came together with Alice. “Alice” is the title of a short story I wrote out long hand one morning. The moment I finished it, I knew I’d caught the ghost. This story was victim-focused. It was structured like an urban legend. The entire passage posed the questions I wanted to answer. The voice the story came in chilled me to the bone. The narrator didn’t have a name, but they had a lot to say. I listened. After I heard it all, I knew I had one hell of an antagonist. My job was to make a protagonist who could give this dark force a fair fight.

Yes, it was my protagonist who haunted me.

I was tempted to make a strong, capable, and sure hero. Instead, every TV show, book, news story, and movie, begged for flaws. I needed a main character who was unsure, afraid, and desperate to leave. I needed a reluctant hero who was compelled to act. That’s when the true narrator of my book showed up: Liz Rocher. She didn’t want to go on the journey I set out for her, but she needed to. She was the only character able to answer the questions that haunted me because they were the same ones that haunted her.

Up Next: NOPE: A Meditation on Black folks in Horror.

Press

OMG. Y’all. There’s now a press section!

JACKAL’s first trade review is in!!

Highlights:

“[P]lentiful twists, keenly rendered characters, and atmospheric prose keep the pages turning.”

“Harrowing horror with a side of searing social commentary."

— Kirkus Reviews

The NerdDaily featured JACKAL in their Most Anticipated Books in the Second Half of 2022

Jo Writes Fantasy absolutely nails JACKAL in their ARC review

Marvelous Geek picked up what I was putting down in her ARC review