Sarah Palin and the New Uncertainty
Right-of-center thinkers love to throw around the word “uncertainty.” As in, “Regulatory uncertainty deters entrepreneurship.” The argument is that would-be entrepreneurs are less likely to take the plunge if they are operating in an unstable or excessively zealous regulatory environment. You also hear things like “Macroeconomic uncertainty deters investment.” Presumably, the argument is that companies invest less when they feel less confident about the reliability of GDP projections.
I’ve felt uneasy about this conservative shibboleth for a while, and now the time has come: I’m calling bullshit. If uncertainty actually deterred people from acting, we wouldn’t have an economy at all. Life is uncertain. Death is uncertain. I am not even certain the sun will rise tomorrow. Every decision is faith-based. But you don’t have to get ontological to see that the notion of uncertainty as a deterrent is really just self-serving hot air from the mouths of statist corpocrats, the sort of people who bloviate about free trade and then turn around and blow millions of dollars on lobbying for tax breaks for themselves. People like Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of the White House’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and CEO of GE, which pays virtually no tax in America.
1st Indian entrepreneur: "Oi, d'you feel uncertain about potentially excessive regulation?" 2nd Indian entrepreneur: "Less gobbing off, we've customers waiting." Photo: Jan Chipchase/Nokia
Let’s take the “regulatory uncertainty” argument first. The Economist likes to use the term “the License Raj” to describe the situation in the United States. Hang on there, Schumpeter. The word ‘Raj” comes from India. Kafka-esque regulations, not to mention corruption and cronyism, have not noticeably deterred Indian entrepreneurs. From Narayana Murthy of Infosys to Balram Halwai, antihero of Aravind Adiga’s brilliant comic novel The White Tiger, subcontinental entrepreneurs appear to get it: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. So do you really think it’s silly rules about licenses that are oppressing a multitude of aspiring businesspeople in the West? Or could there be other forces at work?
Macroeconomic uncertainty, for instance?
Nah. Before starting Knights Hill Publishing, I worked in and around the semiconductor industry for years. The investment cycle has sweet F.A. to do with macroeconomic uncertainty. Chip-makers may use global growth forecasts as an excuse for being stingy with their capex dollars, but the truth is that they never, ever want to invest a penny, regardless of macroeconomic conditions, and will only do so when spurred by existential terror that the other guy is going to get the drop on them. And the other guy is usually a company from China or South Korea that is being massively subsidized by their government. So ultimately, it’s Big Brother driving investment in this booming $400-billion industry — but not through regulatory tweaking… through direct infusions of social-engineering cash that mostly gets snarfed up by existing giants.
And that brings us to Sarah Palin. Well, almost.
Here’s arch-conservative Cato Institute scholar Chris Edwards inadvertently giving the game away: “High levels of uncertainty tend to give the edge to small and new companies.”
Yes, well, exactly. And although Sarah Palin didn’t reference the uncertainty meme in her September 3rd, 2011 speech in Iowa, she didn’t need to. She proves the truth of Edwards’ statement every time she opens her mouth. The woman is a walking double-slit experiment. Will she run for president or won’t she? Is she a moron or a hardnosed politician? With all due respect, her private life proves that she thrives on uncertainty. So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when I read the following excerpt from her speech (H/T James Delingpole):
Sarah Palin: all you need is a crash helmet and a smile. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America
“They derive power and their wealth from their access to our money – to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. This is the crony capitalism that destroyed Europe’s economies.” [Hear, hear.] ”It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest – to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners – the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70% of the jobs in America, it’s you who own these small businesses, you’re the economic engine, but you don’t grease the wheels of government power.”
Frankly I never thought I would agree with a word Sarah Palin said, including “and” and “the.” But this? More, please. When she talks about crony capitalism, Palin (or her speechwriter) sounds eerily like Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, who in his book Griftopia coined the phrase “vampire squid,” and described Alan Greenspan as a “gnomish bug-eyed party crasher,” “that one-in-a-billion asshole who made America the dissembling mess that it is today.” Right, so Palin is not nearly as witty as Taibbi. But she’s saying more or less the same thing. And when the populist left and the populist right start finishing each other’s sentences, there’s something very interesting going on.
Could we be learning to live with uncertainty again — out of necessity? Could the West be waking up at last from our long 20th-century sleepwalk towards Huxley’s brave new world? Could the levelling effect of the information technology revolution have brought a lot of us at once back to the common sense of the monarchist era, that our rulers are only men, and don’t really give a damn about us?
I keep thinking about that scene in The Hobbit when Bilbo finds the dwarves trussed up and hanging from the trees of Mirkwood in the giant spiders’ larder. The dwarves don’t want to wake up; they were having such lovely dreams of elven banquets. But to survive, they have to shake off the effects of the spider venom and get back on their feet.
In this new age of uncertainty, we need books more than ever. For a fun, escapist read, my short story collection Black Wedding and Five More Funerals includes six horror stories that are honest, creepy, and life-affirming. In keeping with the theme of this post, I also recommend my suspense novel Music to Die By, the story of a gaijin girl in Japan whose past is closing in on her. Nous sommes tous des gaijins — we’re all gaijins now. But Japan is still the place where you can really find out what that means. Suspenseful and intelligent, Music to Die By is an authentically good read.
Remember that when you buy direct from Knights Hill Publishing, not only do you get a deep discount on the retail price, you also support a small business!
The Immortals
Do you remember where you were on March 19th, 2003? That was the day America invaded Iraq.
No, me neither. But I remember the sensation of incredulity, quickly followed by rage. I’d thought they wouldn’t go through it. Then they did. Since then, we’ve gotten used to stupid wars inspired by enlightened utopians with one eye on the stock markets. But back then it felt like the laws of common sense and morality had been broken. Or maybe I was just naive.
Anyway, that rage made its way into The Immortals, a new novella by Rose Nanashima. Our story takes place in Tokyo, where you’re never far from a television. The narrator of this one is Tamsin, the bassist in the eponymous indie rock band. She’s one of my alienated, sarcastic gaijin heroines, with a difference. Tammie really deserves her own novel, like Shanti from Coming Clean, who went on to star in Music to Die By. But this story is complete as it stands, unlike Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).
You will like this if: you dig this indie rock ‘n’ roll in Tokyo stuff; you’re still angry about Iraq; or you think the invasion was necessary for humanitarian and/or strategic reasons, in which case read the story and then let’s talk about it. You will not like this if: you have a problem with reading about violence against children. Fair warning given.
Music to Die By
I almost titled this post “Autobiography With Violence,” but that would have been going a bit far. Music to Die By is not autobiographical. However, a lot of it is drawn straight from life — mine, and people I know or used to know.
In the official blurb, I compare this one to Alex Garland’s The Beach and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I didn’t do that just because I’d like to have their sales. (Gosh, it wouldn’t hurt, though. Buy a copy and we’ll get there sooner rather than later!) The basis for the comparison is in the formula: first-person narrator more or less loosely based on the author + exotic milieu = murder. Astute readers will notice that this adds up to something pretty nasty. Let’s call it paranoia for the sake of appearances. But right or wrong, politically correct or not, it’s paranoia that drives kick-ass suspense novels, and that’s what Music to Die By is. Emphasis on kick-ass.
Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. For me, Music to Die By was that book. I wrote it during a period when I had decided to stop being a fantasy writer. I was frustrated and angry that I couldn’t write about the real world… so I did. This book exposes Japan in the naked, dripping, lovely raw. Mind you, this was before I got bitter about certain things. So in the end, this is a passionate, loving portrayal of this country. Murder and all.
If I wasn’t a fantasy writer, this might have been my only novel. Luckily for my readers, friends, and family, I went back to being a fantasy writer almost immediately. I may well write more straight-up suspense in the future, because writing Music to Die By was fun as hell. This is probably it for the autobiography with violence, though. Get it before I change my mind and unpublish it.
You will like this if: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in Japan sounds like your idea of a good time; you’re into page-turning suspense. You will not like this if: you’re only here for the fantasy. This has no supernatural stuff in it.
Good Money
The cover of this novella (by me, with quite a bit of help from the legendary Shiketa) suggests the bubble era in Japan. That’s deliberate. The hostesses who work in the nightclubs of Tokyo exist in a perma-bubble of bad music, overpriced drinks, and mindbogglingly irrational decisions. Good Money is a story about what happens when the total irrationality of that world meets the total rationality of the Catholic faith, and one girl is trapped in the middle.
I haven’t written many stories that are explicitly about being Catholic. It’s bloody hard to do, that’s why. I love Good Money because in this one, I really pulled it off. Yes, there’s also troubled romance in here, and a whole subplot about the vile, breathtakingly fatuous ”consumer loan” industry. But this is essentially a story about Catholicism.
It’s also a sort of prelude to my novel Vampire Democracy, set in an alternate universe. Here, Ruth is the narrator — but she’s not the same Ruth who gives Clare so much trouble in Vampire Democracy. In fact she’s got a lot of Clare in her. Dorothy appears very nearly fully fledged. The key difference is that in the universe of Good Money, there are no vampires. Except the human ones.
You will like this if: you’ve always wondered what it’s like to work as a nightclub hostess; you’re Catholic or Catholic-curious; that picture of the Tokyo skyline makes you nostalgic for the days when 10,000 yen (about $100) was a mere tip, not a significant chunk of the rent. You will not like this if: you enjoyed Vampire Democracy and want more of the same. Requests for a sequel should be addressed to me through the contact page. If I get enough of them, I’ll write one.
Length: this is a novella of 25,000 words, which would make it about 70 pages in print. So a real steal at the KHP Direct price of $1.99.
“You wanted Europe, you got Europe.”
Quick word association game. What do you think of when you hear “EU” or “eurozone”?
Me, I think of the highway through Newgrange. This jobs scheme for Irish building contractors will stand (if it ever gets built) as an Ozymandian monument to Ireland’s membership of the EU. It’s the aid curse in action. Demolish a world heritage site to keep the euros flowing for a few more years? Oh hell yeah. Ironically the EU courts have now condemned the road but that won’t stop the patronage machine. It never does, as long as there’s any money left.
I grew up in Ireland in the ’80s, when our money still had harps and Irish heroes on it.
A quick recap for those who have been living in Laos without an internet connection: Ireland got into the EU early, while the getting was good. And for a while, it all worked like it was supposed to. Irish politicians pilgrimaged on their knees to Brussels, and generous Eurocrats doled out cash and credit to the “negroes of Europe.” The economy boomed. The boys I went to school with, who used to drive their dads’ tractors or help out with the fishing on the weekends, became software developers. The coastline vanished under a tsunami of McHoliday Homes built on spec.
Then it all went tits-up. Brian Lenihan, then Ireland’s minister of finance, offered a blanket guarantee to the bondholders of Ireland’s over-leveraged banks. It was a gesture of heartbreaking heroism: so bloody Irish, like the man in the pub who’s just lost his job and drunk his last paycheck, offering to stand a round for everyone. “Sure something’ll turn up.” As it turned out that was the last heroic gesture any Irishman will make for some time, as Eire is now a nation of debt slaves.
Mr Lenihan died of cancer last month at 52. Pray for him.
Now Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have taken the next big step towards founding the United States of Europe. And guess who’s ready and waiting to back the truck up?
Papandreou: "All your euros iz belong to us." Enda Kenny (not pictured): "We were here first ye goat-herd." Photo: Reuters
Actually we could use another United States. It would make the world less lonely for the one that already exists. But the chances of such a thing coming to pass look fairly dim. Will the good burghers of Mitteleuropa go gently into a Transferunion? I don’t know. No one knows, because no one has bothered to ask them.
The EU is antidemocratic, anti-liberty, and anti-diversity. About the only people it’s good for are human rights campaigners and wind turbine vendors.
I never used to pay any attention to this stuff myself. My earliest books, written as Felicity Savage, are full of political intrigue, but economic problems make nary an appearance. I was quite naive about power: I thought it mostly boiled down to sex, which is what makes those books so entertaining. This Weltanschaung was and is somewhat wide of the mark however, as perceptive readers will have noticed.
In my mid-twenties I began investing in stocks. Get some skin in the game and you very rapidly figure out the truth about the economic foundations of society, or you get your ass handed to you. (The digested version, digested: ”Who whom?”) I do not recommend playing the short side unless you want to turn into a doom-and-gloomer who twists Lenin quotes for their own purposes, like me. For the record, I am defensively invested at the moment with no positions in eurozone stocks or bonds whatsoever.
The Incurables, my upcoming epic fantasy written as Felix R. Savage, first in a trilogy, cleans the floor with the utopianism that underpins the EU project. A Song of Ice and Fire… as if it took place in the 1980s. Oh yeah. This is The Bonfire of the Great Houses, with a side of black ops. Fantastic fun.
However The Incurables is not out yet, so I recommend my short story A Natural Phenomenon to anyone interested in this stuff. (Go ahead and buy the collection.) This is a glancing treatment of the eurotragedy and I will probably come back to the subject again, but A Natural Phenomenon does offer a taste of the corruption that was to come to light after 2008. One of the main characters expresses the sense of disillusionment that I felt when I was last in Ireland. “You wanted Europe, you got Europe,” he says sarcastically. Of course this is a horror story so things then take a very nasty turn, but you can spot the economic allegory all the way through if you’re looking for it. Here are links to A Natural Phenomenon on Amazon; Barnes & Noble; and Smashwords.
If you’re interested in a more balanced account of the Irish banking crisis than I am able to give, I highly recommend What Went Wrong in Ireland, a paper written for the World Bank by former Bank of Ireland governor Patrick Honohan.
Delta City
My first novel ever published, Humility Garden, featured a utterly original, deeply grotesque art form known as “ghosting.” It also had a fiendishly twisted plot hinging on the antagonism between humans and gods. The New York Times said in their review of Humility Garden that they hoped the sequel would have more art and less politics. They must have been disappointed, because it has much less art and a lot more politics. If a world war counts as politics, that is.
I was an atheist when I wrote these books and it shows. The Garden of Salt duology is theological fantasy, in the same sense that Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is. But the gloriously imagined world of Salt is worth the price of admission to Delta City. Readers of Humility Garden will enjoy a couple of new viewpoints from characters who did not get their own viewpoints in the first book, and one new protagonist.
You will like this if: you liked Humility Garden. You will not like this if: you haven’t read Humility Garden yet. In which case, you should.
Black Wedding and Five More Funerals
This collection of short stories by Rose Nanashima includes, in order: Black Wedding, Walking All the Way, The Kingdom of Darkness, In the Black Desert, A Natural Phenomenon, and The Forest of Sincerity. And an exclusive extra in the back. That’s a total of more than 140 pages, available to you for the exclusive KHP Direct price of $2.99. It costs $3.99 – $4.99 elsewhere. Still bloody good value but I like to give my friends bigger discounts.
Most of the stories in this collection are suspense. A couple are straight-up horror. Might give you trouble sleeping, but they won’t turn your stomach unless you’re the sort of person who can’t watch a Greenpeace video without feeling ill.
One major theme of Black Wedding and Five More Funerals is Japan. Sometimes a misguided sense of loyalty deters me from saying exactly what I think about this place, but quite a lot of it made it into The Forest of Sincerity. By contrast, Walking All the Way is an affectionate take on Japan that saves its nastiness for gaijins. Gosh, I could have written twice as much about them. In fact I have, in my next short story collection Good Money (forthcoming).
For a change of pace, this collection also includes stories set in England, Ireland, Egypt, and New York City.
You will like this if: you enjoy the brand of nastiness found in Roald Dahl’s stories for grownups; people getting what’s coming to them; authentic scene-setting and painfully realistic characters. You will not like this if: you’re expecting secondary-world fantasy. In that case try some of these.
KHP is a part of Smashwords’ July Summer/Winter Sale!
For the month of July only, my story Walking All the Way is FREE at Smashwords! Click on the cover to grab your copy.
Vanishing Point (A Wruinworld Story)
This is the second of my Wruinworld stories, set 247 years after the events of The Unburied, in a different country. The main character is Art Rateniver, a luckless solicitor with alcoholic tendencies. His luck really takes a turn for the worse on the day a wruin tries to hire him to track down a runaway slave. I’m very fond of this story, as it features a pair of characters with great things ahead of them, Art and Touch. A professional extractor, Touch specializes, as you might expect, in extracting things — sometimes from their rightful owners. This is an origin story, explaining how Art and Touch first met. It’s also a mystery with a sting in the tail. Recommended.
You will like this if: you like stories that fuse the fantasy and mystery genres; original magic-tech concepts; medieval noir. You will not like this if: that giant talking bears thing didn’t grab you the first time around.
The Unburied (A Wruinworld Story)
Take a close look at the cover of The Unburied. Go on. Look at the meat hanging in the butcher’s shop… The maltreatment of dead bodies is something that crops up again and again in my work. Maybe it’s because I’m Catholic. Anyway, it’s cannibalism in the literal sense that drives the plot of The Unburied. This is the first of two stories set in my Wruinworld universe that are currently available — the other is Vanishing Point. I got the idea for the wruin (that’s one on the left there, the big off-white chap with the harpoon gun) from reading Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, which features a talking, armor-wearing polar bear, and thinking, “Come on. He would just eat that little girl.” And as we have all observed in life, the weak emulate the powerful…
You will like this if: you like fantasy with a gruesome edge. Set in a late-medieval milieu, this one is gritty. You will not like this if: you have fixed ideas about talking animals that date back to your Beatrix Potter days.
Humility Garden
This was the first book I ever published. It’s bloody good for a debut novel, even if it does have a few of the flaws you’d expect, given that I wrote it when I was 17. The concept of “the salt” — deserts whose cruelty people embrace in a tradition of voluntary religious suffering — is quite fascinating and well worked out in the plot. I used to blather on about Humility Garden and its sequel, Delta City, being “theological fantasy.” I was a pompous little git in those days but the description is not inapt. You could equally well describe Humility Garden as the manic-depressive lovechild of Robert Silverberg and Mary Gentle, with more sex. Gosh, I used to put a lot of sex in my books. Nothing too terribly explicit though (I hadn’t had any myself yet and was afraid of getting it wrong).
Well worth a read, all in all: there’s nothing quite as fresh, strange, and manically inspired as a first novel by a teenager. You will like this if: you like your fantasy with lots of politics, art, and religion in; if you enjoy traditional farmboy-to-king coming-of-age stories, with a major twist. You will not like this if: you prefer gritty modern fantasy. There’s lots of death in here but not much guts ‘n’ gore. Length: about 400 pages.
Vampire Democracy
My first full-length novel written as Rose Nanashima is now available in print and ebook editions. Vampire Democracy isn’t actually Rose’s first novel — that would be Music to Die By — but it is the first to appear through Knights Hill Publishing. I love this thing. It’s narrated by Clare Standing, one of my wretched yet boundlessly game upper-class girl characters. Clare’s got a lot to cope with: vampires that may be the real thing or may just be faking, black magicians, and Tokyo, doing its usual star turn as itself. This is scarily close to a naturalistic portrayal of the city, vampires and all. There aren’t quite this many shootouts in real life, though.
I started Vampire Democracy in 2007, around the time the vampire boom was really taking off, just before the genre vanished up its own arse. It grapples with all the conventions of the genre (vampire slaying, seduction by sexy vampire, tragically baulked romance, metaphysical jeopardy, etc., etc.) and twists their arms until they cry. It’s white-knuckle serious, and as suspenseful as hell. You will also learn a fair bit about network theory, the real-world history of magic, a new theory of the elements, and Japanese men.
You will like this if: you like vampires, complicated magic systems, twists you can’t see coming, books set in Japan, first-person female narrators, books with a jaundiced take on academia. You will not like this if: you’d rather watch infomercials than read another book about vampires.
KHP Direct Price $3.99
In the Black Desert
This is the only story in the collection Black Wedding And Five More Funerals told from a Japanese point of view. In the Black Desert takes place in Egypt before the overthrow of Mubarak. I love Egypt – I met some marvellous people when I was there, although I did end up undergoing surgery in a Luxor public hospital. The doctor was a nice chatty bloke and I made a full recovery from the hospital as well as my injury. Anyway, this story has one of the nastiest endings I’ve ever written. Only recommended for people who are not easily kept awake at night.
You will like this if: you’ve ever been to Egypt, or wanted to go; or if you’re into photography. You will not like this if: you don’t like reading about nasty people. Length: 3,800 words.
Mercy
I love medieval fantasy. Love it. Which makes it odd that I haven’t
written much of the stuff myself. Mercy is, for now, unique. It’s got wizards and monsters and knights and a besieged city. I’m awfully fond of the main character, Rab. He’s a bovver boy and part-time thief, so of course he’s going to end up playing the hero, you might assume. Well, there are heroes and then there are heroes… There’s some great cavalry vs. archers action in here, too. I personally think this one is worth the price just for the battle scenes.
You will like this if: you dig medieval fantasy, gritty military fantasy, slightly skewed heroism. You will not like this if: you’re sick of wizards, monsters, knights, etc. Length: 13,200 words, so closing in on novella length.
The Kingdom of Darkness
This story is set in my Midnighters universe (sadly, no other stories in that universe are out yet; a novel exists but I haven’t decided whether to publish it). It takes place at a university in New York City which shall remain unnamed since I still have a bit of a grudge against the place. But you should be able to figure it out. The Kingdom of Darkness is superficially one of my most conventional fantasy stories. Girl meets boy and falls in love; boy is already taken. What to do? Easy, if your best friend is a witch… You might be forgiven for expecting a happy ending wrapped around a Life Lesson(TM). But in the Ivy League, everyone is used to doing whatever it takes to succeed. And that means trouble.
You will like this if: you remember what it was like to be a college freshman, are one now, or hope to be one soon. You will not like this if: you prefer happy endings. Length: 7,600 words.
Black Wedding
Black Wedding was one of those rare stories that come to one completely formed on waking up from an ill-advised afternoon nap. Actually, I had recently attended a friend’s wedding when I wrote it, but that was a lovely occasion despite intermittent rain and poetry. I chose this one as the title story of the collection Black Wedding and Five More Funerals because it’s the purest example of the collection’s theme: hopeful young
tourists getting into a world of trouble.
You will like this if: you like stories set in rural England, stories about house parties going wrong, creepy horror stories. You will not like this if: you think Lilith is a positive role model. Length: 4,500 words.
A Natural Phenomenon
I wrote this story after a trip home to Ireland in 2008. I hadn’t been back for a few years, and it was quite an unsettling experience. I’m not going to crow over the subsequent fate of the Celtic Tiger, because I’ve got friends in misery there now. But it has to be said that even before the banking crisis, there was something unwholesome in the air. I tried to capture that in A Natural Phenomenon. I admit this story is a bit hard on the Irish. But we can’t blame everything on the bankers. Anyway, it’s horror… in fact, it’s a fairly traditional horror story, except for being set in 2008.
You will like this if: you dig Irish horror, painfully embarrassing culture clashes, or if you think you know what really went wrong with the Irish economy. You will not like this if: you have no sense of humor. Length: 3,600 words.
Walking All the Way
I have not actually seen the movie Lost In Translation, but I’ve been to a bar in Shinjuku that supposedly appears in it. That bar makes an appearance in this story, too. Walking All The Way is Japanese horror, but it’s more subtle than The Forest of Sincerity. It answers a question I found myself asking a couple of years back: What happens to those naïve young Westerners who pitch up in Japan and fall in love with the country? Where do they end up? Well I was one myself, and fortunately grew up before serious damage was done. But others are not so lucky.
You will like this if: you like ghost stories, Japan, stories about Americans getting into trouble abroad. You will not like this if: you never want to read another word about Japan. Length: 6,000 words.
The Forest of Sincerity
Aokigahara Jukai is a place that could only exist in Japan: a national suicide mecca. It’s a forest in the foothills of Mt. Fuji, near Tokyo. I went there a few years ago. We had planned to explore, but ended up getting scared and staying within sight of the road. I’m still glad we did. The Forest of Sincerity is my attempt to make some sense of the place. This is straight-up horror. It’s a novella of 15,500 words, which is quite hefty for this price. I’ve got a soft spot for this one: the narrator, Lily, is one of the most hardcore girls I’ve ever written. I think the horror stands up to the Big Reveal, too.
You will like this if: you like Japanese-style horror such as Ringu (The Ring), maddening mysteries, and characters with surprising depth. You will not like this if: you don’t like scary stuff.