Marblehead author Jim Nemeth’s love of the horror genre began, just like so many other authors, at an early age.
“I grew up in the 60s and I became addicted to the classic horror films,” said Nemeth, a native of Chicago. “As I grew older, I pursued the literature behind these films and ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker became my all-time favorite novel.”
Inspired by the films and books that held his imagination as a child, Nemeth began writing his own horror stories in the 1990s, winning first prize in a national magazine’s short story contest judged by his idols Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury in 1993.
What sets Nemeth apart from other horrorists, however, is the speed at which he tells his stories. Rather than spending hundreds of pages setting up a plot through a novel, Nemeth writes “drabbles,” self-contained stories written in exactly 100 words.
“I have more difficulty writing a long story than I do a drabble,” said Nemeth. “Give me thousands of words to work with and I struggle. It can take months to write a story. There’s just something about being confined to 100 words that I just gravitated to. It came very easily to me.”
The form takes its name from a game first mentioned in Monty Python’s 1971 “Big Red Book,” in which characters challenge each other to write a novel with the first one to finish being declared the winner.
Another writing challenge in 1816 (to pen a ghost story) spawned the first work of the horror and science fiction genres when Mary Shelly wrote “Frankenstein” at Lake Geneva.
What drew Nemeth to write drabbles was the difficulty of fleshing out an entire story in exactly 100 words. With previous drabbles having been published in anthologies, Nemeth chose to up the ante for his first solo project, “Stay at Castle Dracula,” by attempting to tackle the classic vampire story in a unique way.
“I was intrigued by the challenge because, for one, what can any author bring to the vampire genre nowadays that’s new and unique,” said Nemeth. “I came up with a comical twist on Count Dracula, that’s the title story, and the story just came out in 10 minutes.”
The 23 drabbles Nemeth has written for his latest release cover the whole spectrum of the horror genre, including murder mysteries, tales of wicked witches and even end-times prophecies.
“Stay at Castle Dracula” released on Amazon on Jan. 23, but Nemeth is already working on a longer take on the legend of Marblehead’s screaming woman of Lovis Cove. However, even as he works on bigger stories, he hopes to see drabbles become more mainstream for both readers and writers.
“Years ago, Lays potato chips had a slogan ‘Betcha can’t eat just one,’” said Nemeth. “Drabbles are just as addicting.”
