Bewildering Stories welcomes...

Sarah Downey

We have few contributors from Ireland, and we’re all the more glad to welcome Sarah among them. Sarah says she’s young. Since she’s looking forward to beginning college and studying English, history, and French, we take her at her word. Her reading preferences include the old classics, but some are more unconventional: Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson.

In a side comment, Sarah has mentioned that she finds that horror fiction and fantasy are clichés compared to the true horror stories in the human psyche. Indeed, the news headlines never cease to remind us of that. Perhaps horror fiction is a way of facing our fears without facing them even as we sneak a surreptitious peek at them.

We sometimes read about addictions, but we seldom have a depiction of what one actually feels like. “Silly Sally” goes into the mind of a stalker who becomes an inadvertent murderer. The character understands himself to a limited extent, but he senses — and almost necessarily skirts — a “larger story” that he cannot understand.

Sarah’s bio sketch can be found here.

Welcome to Bewildering Stories, Sarah. We hope to hear from you again soon and often!