Note from the Author, Not Another Sarah Halls by Haley Newlin

"At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may in fact be the first steps of a journey." -Lemony Snicket

Dear Readers,

I have found the stories that we hold closest to us reveal a lot about who we are and what we want to be.

For me, that story has always been one of misfortune, one about a reptile room that was home to the incredibly deadly viper, leeches laced with six rows of unforgiving razor-sharp teeth, disastrous fires both started and stopped, an ankle tattoo of an eye, a carnivorous carnival, a terrible actor and his irreverent troop with a repulsive hunger for wealth, and three orphans who endured it all.

While reading Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events I related to the Baudelaire orphans. I found comfort in the sanctuary they found within one another wherever their misfortune carried them, just as I do with my own siblings. But what really kept me going through all thirteen books was Snicket’s ability to evoke fear and dismay while still offering hope. This led me to an epiphany: I was not only drawn to tales of misfortune and fear, but I also wanted to create them myself.

Snicket’s juvenile scares, like nearly dying from a poisonous mushroom or falling down an elevator shaft, typically overcome with mild humor, served as a gateway for me into true horror. And in both A Series of Unfortunate Events and works from masters of horror like Shirley Jackson and H.P. Lovecraft, I found that same pull into manifesting fear while evoking hope, which I would later learn stemmed greatly from self-reflection.

What do we want to see in the world? How do we think we play a role in that? What must we change in ourselves to do so?

My journey into horror led me to the father of all things bloodied and damned, Stephen King. It was then that I completely fell in love with the horror genre, and King’s novels became my very own Holy Grail. While I find each of King’s works to be incredibly brilliant in their own specific ways, it was in reading his iconic tale It that I experienced captivation via evoking fear and inciting self-reflection in a way I never had before. It was downright horrifying and not just to my sixth-grade self. Pennywise has sunk his terrifyingly extraterrestrial teeth into my memory forever, occasionally nudging at the fear center of my brain. And yet, despite the scare I continue to want more of that psychotic clown, or rather what Pennywise was capable of - giving our deepest fears a living, breathing, walking mold; giving it life. A notion so exhilarating that, despite its scare-factor, we can't help but to peek.

Naturally, I'm not the only horror or King fan who was in awe of Pennywise the dancing clown. After all, It was published more than 20 years before my pre-teen-self had even discovered the Losers Club. But despite Pennywise's fame, I still felt that he was a wildly misunderstood character. I am in no way suggesting the possibility that maybe Pennywise wasn't such a bad-guy after all, because a clown with leech-like razor sharp teeth that can rip poor Georgie's arm clean off, is about as bad as they come. However, Pennywise exemplified the role of self-reflection in horror for readers of It. Pennywise executed his plan of gruesome consumption and slaughter with tact, playing on his prey's most fragile structures of their mind, pulling at the thread of sanity until the individual became so overwhelmed with fear, they were no longer a person capable of fight or flight reaction, but a piece in his game of horror. Much like we have to in our everyday lives, eventually, the Losers Club members confronted the darkness they had always tried to keep buried away, to finally defeat Pennywise and break his string of missing children in Derry.

And voila, King implanted the idea in the minds of readers everywhere that clowns are scary.

However, the scare was never about circus clowns, not even a carnivorous one, but rather the individual experiences of horror Pennywise manifested and thrived on, like abuse, fire, and losing a loved one. It and its individualization of fear exemplifies the beauty of horror: its unique ability to humble humanity.

People commonly and mistakenly believe horror is about tricks: a clown lurking in the sewers enticing children with a made-up circus or a red room that disguises its hints of imminent death within the character’s own idea of a sanctuary. But horror goes so far beyond jump-scares.

It’s a way for people to come to grips with themselves, reminding them as horror-monger Jordan Peele says, “We are our own worst enemy.”

So, it’s not Pennywise himself that builds the entirety of the scare factor in IT, but the individualized fear that makes readers question “What would Pennywise show me? And what would I have to do to overcome it?”

This is what connects us to horror.

Fear manifests from individual readers because it comes from within, from our unresolved issues or triggers from past experiences. Horror humbles us in that it asks readers to look at parts of themselves they often veil out of convenience or shame. It makes them look their fear in the face, in whatever shape it has adopted, and say, "This is how I beat you." It’s about debunking what scares us and why.

That’s what I love about horror.

It’s so revealing.

In writing Not Another Sarah Halls, I was faced with the difficult task of turning the light from the characters I was creating onto myself. I had to ask what I was afraid of and how that could contribute to the overall beauty of the self-reflection horror demands. This was something that I wanted readers to see in the same way King had showed me. The answer was clear: if I was going to do this, I had to commit, which meant make myself vulnerable to my readers.

While my main character Autumn is whole-heartedly her own unique person, I did her a great disservice of infecting her peace of mind with characteristics of my personal battle with anxiety. In doing this, I underwent the humbling experience of reflecting on my own anxious tendencies and what could be causing them.

Thoughts that, much like Autumn, I worked hard to keep tucked away.

Through delving into the deepest thoughts and insecurities of my characters, Not Another Sarah Halls thrusts readers into an unyielding trip through blood, murder, and possession that lies far beyond our understanding of the world as we know it. As Autumn tries to make sense of the disappearances in her town, Oakhaven, she is forced to confront her inner demons and the horror she unravels in the depths of her own psyche to protect the ones she loves.

In Autumn’s efforts to successfully navigate her past and her internal struggles with anxiety and fear, while making sense of the parts of her she’s always kept in the shadows, it is my hope that readers will see more than horror-tricks, jump-scares, and fear-induced visual manifestations. Autumn's character inspires readers to look inward in that she has to not only identify and accept her anxiety, but effectively identify real vs. not real — an ongoing struggle for her character that holds her back in defeating the demons that lie ahead. As readers cheer Autumn on to overcome her mental battles in hopes of saving the missing girls the rest of the town has forgotten, they are prompted to consider what holds them back in their own lives. What battles do they face that they can only hope to overcome in committing to changing something in who they are for the better? I want to inspire readers to reflect on how the story mirrors our inner need to come to terms with who we are and why—a humbling, yet noble feat in itself.

It is my hope that Not Another Sarah Halls will serve as a place for fans of horror to bask in the glory and beauty of the genre, while also serving as a fearsome and grotesque bridge that inspires those who have never dared to read horror to embark on the journey.

It is an extraordinary thing to be sharing my work with you in whatever way you have stumbled upon it. In it, I hope you will not only find parallels between yourselves and the characters that lie within these pages, but also encouragement to reflect on the reason why you found yourself drawn to the story. I urge readers to step out of their comfort zones and delve into the winding and fierce journey of self-realization that horror imprints on those brave enough to crack the book’s spine.

Yours (Horrifically),

Haley Newlin