Lots of writers have an ‘orphan’ manuscript.

It sits in a file or in a box. The box has gathered dust, but there are fingermarks from where the writer has cracked it open on occasion, just to peer inside to see if the orphan is still there.

A year or so back, I shoved my orphan into a box. I’d had what I thought was a great idea. A story that would be relentless in its horrors, yet psychologically acute.

Reader, it didn’t work, despite major revision.

I was done with it. Or was I?

The thing is, I still liked the idea. It kept reaching its insidious fingers into my mind. Ouch. And still it sat in its dusty box.

The House That Screamed was published (people like it, hurrah!). I worked on getting The Forest Remembers ready for the world.

But still those insidious fingers.

So, I rewrote my orphan story. I didn’t revise it, I rewrote it almost from scratch. Sure, some scenes from the ‘original’ have made the final cut, but the architecture of the story finally works. Although the whole thing remains a relentless descent into nightmare and madness.

And now?

And now it rests.

Let The Forest Remembers enter the world, with other stories in its wake. The orphan’s time will come, and it might give you nightmares too.