Darlene Longo
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
EAST LONGMEADOW — After a two-year hiatus, horror author Darlene Longo, writing under the pen name D.M Siciliano, is back with a new book, “You Don’t Belong Here,” a collection of nine short stories set to be released Oct. 13.
Longo tackles women’s health, aging, mental health and grief wrapped with paranormal and suspense.
“It has been a long process,” said Longo. “Some of these stories were thoughts that were jotted down and set aside. Then there were a couple that really came to the forefront at the beginning of this year. I decided to turn some of these stories into expressions of what some of us go through in life. The doubts, the fears, the grief; all the things that normal humans go through on an everyday basis.”
She went on to say, “Over the past few months, I wasn’t sure if I should do this and if it was going to be good enough. After working with my editor and talking to some people about it, it just feels so right and so perfectly timed for me.”
Longo, an East Longmeadow native, told Reminder Publishing that she wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of horror when she was little, but of course, with older siblings around, she did anyway. The adrenaline rush of being terrified watching movies like “The Exorcist” or “Poltergiest” was unlike anything she experienced. She credits authors Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Graham Joyce, and Paul Tremblay as her biggest influences in her writing style and genre. The first book Longo read that got her thinking about writing was “The Eyes of the Dragon” by Stephen King. She thought, “how fantastic to make up something so wonderful.” She’d love to do that. Longo feels that horror is a misunderstood genre. When she tells people that she writes horror, they look at her with shock and ask if she writes slashers or crime/murder mysteries.
“For some reason, that’s what everyone jumps to when I say horror,” Longo said. “I write more of subtle horror, quiet horror and gothic horror. It’s not about the blood and gore. My goal is to make you feel uncomfortable, to make you feel unsettled and to make you question things. To me, there’s nothing more frightening than just feeling uncomfortable in your own skin or in your own setting. That’s the kind of horror that resonates with me and that’s what I like to create.”
Each story in the collection has a different quality to it. There’s one story where a teenage girl has felt invisible her whole life and, on her 16th birthday, her worst fear comes true. Longo feels it’s something that most of us, even just for a moment in our lives, have felt invisible, unseen, unheard, unrecognized and she takes it to the next level. Another story is about a woman suffering from uterine fibroids and all the chaos that erupts. Longo discovered at the beginning of the year that she had uterine fibroids and adenomyosis. She had a hysterectomy to remove all of it, so this story has been the most meaningful in her healing. There’s also a story of a gentleman who lost his wife and she comes back every year to visit him. And a couple of other stories where the ghosts have unresolved issues they didn’t deal with.
“If you look underneath the fact that it’s supernatural, paranormal or horror, you see that they’re suffering,” Longo said. “There’s humans being humans and failing and grieving or having health issues because that’s just real.”
“You Don’t Belong Here” will mainly be available through Amazon. Signed paperbacks will be available through Longo’s website at dmsiciliano.com.
