Mitzi Flyte

I have a short story (“To E. A. Poe”) in Tales from the Mist an anthology that’s now #2 on Kindle’s Fantasy list.
“That’s not my cup of tea” is the phrase I hear sometimes when I tell people what I write.
Okay, I write horror and paranormal. I’ve been known to write something with a bit of blood in it. But most of my stories have a psychological scare to them, not a physical one. Characters usually succumb to their own misadventures and wrong decisions. Yeah, sometimes there are supernatural entities, but they’re only part of the fun.
And that’s why I write horror.
It’s fun.
I can see some of you shivering right now, thinking, “How CAN she even think that stuff up?”
I follow the Stephen King logic. Writing about it is like drawing a magic circle around me and the people I love. If I write it, it won’t happen.
I grew up loving to be scared and being scared of being scared.
I used to have night terrors, my childish imagination at work in the small bedroom in the back of my family’s apartment on Main Street in Laurel, Maryland sixty years ago. To get to the safety of my parents’ room, I would have to cross a short hallway that lead to stairs down to the street and then through the dark living room. I was intensely afraid of what lurked in that hallway, what stood on those stairs with rank breath and long talons, just waiting to come up to grab me. There were many nights I must have imagined glowing red eyes in the dark.
I began to read horror and mystery by the time I was twelve.
Gothic romance with its supernatural elements was popular and I devoured them.
When I found Stephen King, I knew I was in love.
When I listened to him read his own “On Writing” with his painful trips to the “odiologist” to have his ears drained, I felt as if I’d found a soul mate.
So for my friends who say, “It’s not my cup of tea,” I just shrug and smile, knowingly.
I keep right on writing and drawing that magic circle around me and mine.