Spooky season is no match for Walker County native Vic Kerry, who has been writing horror stories since he was in the third grade.
“I started writing all the way back in the third grade because I liked telling stories. I continued doing it because it provided me with an outlet for my imagination. I’ve always had a lot of imagination, and as an adult, it’s hard to get rid of that energy. Stories and writing do a fantastic job of doing that,” Kerry said.
Horror writing is a way to express his creativity, according to Kerry.
“I write to free my imagination. The horror genre provides a lot of ground to spread that imagination on,” he said. “You create monsters and scenarios that take a lot of creativity to dream up. I’ve also always liked monsters.
“As a kid, I imagined being a monster in a world of monsters,” Kerry added. “Halloween was and is my favorite holiday. I love horror movies not because I like being scared–I’m actually rarely afraid of anything in a movie–but because I love the creativity of it.”
Kerry’s first professional publication was in 2007, and he has been writing and creating ever since. Kerry’s writing combines the creative fantasy of the horror genre with inspiration drawn from real, local places.
“‘Children of Lot’, my debut novel, was set in a renamed and fictionalized version of Fayette. Many of the characters were drawn from actual people I have encountered,” Kerry said. “My first short novel, ‘Decoration Day’, features a church building inspired by St. Andrews in Prairieville down in Hale County.
“My novel, ‘Jubilee,’ is probably the book that has the most characters based on real people,” he added. “The Bellflower Sisters in the story are based on my grandmother and her two sisters. If you knew them, it’s very obvious. The only book that has an actual true-to-life location as the setting is ‘Revels Ending,’ which is set in Mobile.”
Story ideas come from many places, and Kerry finds inspiration in many ways.
“Every story is different. Oftentimes, they are simple what-ifs. ‘Children of Lot’ — ’What if a group of hillbillies kidnapped me; what would I do?’ Other times it may be that someone gives you an idea. In my award-winning short novel, ‘A Place That Should Not Be,’ the inspiration comes from my wife daring me to write a story featuring a tiny haunted house,” he said.
Sometimes, a story is an image that pops into Kerry’s head or something he reads or hears that sticks with him.
“Right now, I have this written on my dry-erase storyboard: ‘What kind of person collects portraits of strangers?’ I’ve not written a story based on that yet, but I hope something will pop in there,” he aais. “Sometimes, a title will pop in my head, and I write a story from that. Other times, it comes out of nowhere.”
Kerry’s latest work is a novel that he is very excited about.
“My latest novel is called ‘I Alone.’ As a teenager in the late 1990s, it came about because I’m fascinated by the school shooter phenomenon,” he said. “The main character, Jory, is a survivor of a pre-Columbine school shooting. She suffers from PTSD from the event, and 25 years later, something revolving around that event comes back to haunt her in the form of a shadow figure. This figure is determined to possess her body and soul. The monster in this story isn’t what you might expect. I wrote ‘I Alone’ during the lockdowns, which gave me a lot of time to write. It’s published by Macbre Ink and is available in print and digital form from all major online book retailers.”
More information about Kerry and his books can be found on his website: https://vickerry.wordpress.com/about/.
