Scariest Scene?

 

Hi, I'm Pippa Jay, author of scifi and supernatural stories with a romantic soul. And I do not like scary things. Nope. I do not like to be scared one little bit. No horror films, no big rollercoasters, not even one of my kids jumping out and saying boo. On an early date with my husband, he thought I was joking about not liking horror and showed me a picture from one of his horror books of a fanged baby. Not really a smart move when I then had a one hour drive back home alone in the dark in the country (and yet I still went on to marry him...).
                                         
The fact I've written two zombie stories and one Halloween themed, and list Warm Bodies as one of my top five films might seem to call me a liar. And you would think one of my scariest scenes would therefore be from one of them. But no.

It's not even a scene from my sci-fi novel Gethyon that one as my readers described as the most traumatic thing she'd ever read. No, for me the scariest scene is the one I didn't want to write in my debit novel Keir, but somehow wrote myself into the position where I had to. Spoilers. One of my character is faced with the death of a parent. When I wrote it initially, my beta reader commented that it was too flat, too emotionless. I worked at it, but she still pushed me, saying I could do better, that I needed to go deeper, to place myself in my character's position. The problem was, I had been there, and I didn't want to go there again. After all, I'd already lived through it once so didn't want to relive it! But I'd committed myself to writing it, and so I had to go back to that scary place in my past and use the experience to create the emotional impact my beta reader was demanding.
So for me, that was my scariest scene. If you prefer a more traditional scare for the upcoming spooky holiday, you can check out my books above or any of my other titles at my website.