Come Out & Play by Patrick Tumblety
Uncomfortably Dark (September 2024)
The Synopsis
Scott has not left his house since causing the accident that killed his mother. To keep himself from harming his remaining loved ones, he repeats daily rituals and abides by superstitious, compulsive, and intrusive thoughts. He is successful in the endeavor until the night of his eighteenth birthday when something comes to tear him from the physical and mental walls he has built against the world.
Something that Scott fears has been sent by his mother to avenge her death.
Scott is not the only one in danger. The lives of his close friends and neighbors are threatened by this supernatural family struggle. To save them, Scott will have to find the strength to survive even though he has already lost the will to live.
Come Out & Play is riddled with supernatural gore, scares, suspense, and mystery, but the thesis of the novel is to depict the horrors of living through untreated trauma, while also showing how trauma can be survived. Each character is struggling with their own unsolved issues (mental illness, loss, PTSD), which are reflected in the physical situations throughout the story.
(Interview conducted by Rick Hipson)
CEMETERY DANCE: Thanks so much, Patrick for letting me corner you long enough to pick at your brain. Since meeting you at AuthorCon in Williamsburg, Virginia this past year, I’ve been looking forward to getting to know you and your work better.
To start at the start, if I may, what comes to mind when you consider your earliest influences and attractions to this dark thing of ours? I’d love to hear what ushered you through the doorway to horror and what has kept you here.
PATRICK TUMBLETY: Like many ’90s children, the sequels of the slasher craze that started in the ’80s were my earliest introductions to horror, and I watched them with my Dad when I was way too young. When I exhausted the horror VHS section of the video store, I turned toward children’s horror books such as In A Dark, Dark Room, and the Goosebumps series. Then I searched out comics based on my favorite horror movies, like Aliens and Predator. During that time, Are You Afraid of the Dark? aired on television along with the Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror episodes, and I was hooked for life. Once I was old enough to read novels, writing horror was all I wanted to do with my life.
Who would you consider among your literary heroes, whether they include some of the earlier influences you mentioned or not?
My literary heroes include Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Christopher Golden, Edgar Allan Poe, and Michael Crichton. If I were to pick out one example of a writer that inspired me, Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles opened my mind to the meaning of being a “storyteller.” Having a book made of short stories that still told an overarching narrative introduced me to the infinite possibilities of what a story could be and how it can be told.
When remembering the first words you contributed to the dark fiction genre, what can you tell us about your early experiences of writing stories, what they meant to you, and when you first though, yeah, I can do this same as my literary heroes can?
Around 2010, Word Horde Press had a call for an anthology for short stories inspired by Jack The Ripper. I already had an idea for one, because I had a personal history of studying the subject, but I did not think I had a chance to get in because it was a more personal story and I didn’t think my voice was strong enough or that I was talented enough to pull it off. I was surprised when I received the message that not only did I get in, but every writer in the table of contents was someone I had read and admired. I honestly thought my inclusion was a mistake and that I would be rejected once someone realized it. I then received a message that the publisher, Ross Lockhart, sent out my story to reviewers and publications to represent the book because he felt it captured the spirit of the anthology. It was then that I stopped trying to guess what my voice/talent/trajectory should be, and instead just wrote what mattered to me and gave it my all. I still use a quote from a review for that story in my biography because it represents my mission as a writer. Having my first published story appeal to readers for the exact reason I aimed for affirmed my reason for writing and gave me the confidence to keep going.
Considering you found some success publishing short stories ahead of your debut novel, Come Out & Play, do you feel honing your craft with short stories was a necessity that paved the way for being a published novelist?
Like any job, creative or otherwise, starting is all about learning, getting rejected, learning from getting rejected, and experimenting. Writing short stories allowed me to (and continues to) hone my skills, get critical feedback, and try new styles. I wouldn’t say it is a necessity for everyone, since writers have their preferred format/length, but for me, it is the best way to grow.
What were the most important lessons and skills that you learned from writing short stories that you were able to incorporate into successfully writing and publishing your first novel?
The most important lesson I learned from writing short stories is that a story creates its length. You can mold a story to fit a word count or in a certain number of acts, but an idea has its demands on how it wants to be told. Some shorts ended up being novellas, some novels ended up being a series of shorts. Some ended up being told as three-act stage plays. A story will dictate how it wants to be told and you have to be willing to listen.
Following up on your early success as an author, I see that share an impressive lineup of fellow authors in Uncomfortably Dark’s anthology, Dark Disturbances. What can you tell us about getting to work with the publisher, Candace Nola, not only for this antho, but also, of course, for your new novel, Come Out & Play?
Candace Nola is the type of person, both professionally and personally, that I had always hoped would be the publisher of this novel. I remember following her on social media and feeling a kindred spirit in how kind she was to others and how supportive she was to fellow authors. That feeling was strengthened when I read her novel, Bishop, and loved the subject matter and the way she told the story. Working with her has validated those feelings, as I have never felt more supported and encouraged by a publisher, and she has helped me every step of the way. She was more than willing to take on a first-time novelist, and I am so grateful.
I remember my first experience working on a book with a seasoned publisher, getting that first draft back all marked up by their editor, there was so much red that I thought it would surely have a note telling me they changed their minds. Luckily, while there were several instances of grammar corrections, most of their suggestions involved shuffling, rearranging some of the sections I had, or expanding on some points I made, but didn’t make clear or thorough enough. Working through their suggestions truly helped to make my non-fiction book better. In working with Candace, were there any suggestions made to you that, looking back, helped your book in ways you may not have originally expected?
Candace helped me stay grounded when it came to the book’s presentation. At one point I had the story broken out into parts with a meta-titling for each section. She suggested I let the story (and the reader) make that connection and not force it, which was the better way. She also helped, as you mentioned, with certain areas that needed clarification or different wording, which is the most important thing an editor can do for a story and a writer.
What advice would you give to new or aspiring authors when it comes to honing their craft and best practices for finding and working with a publisher that you either learned along the way or wished someone gave to you when you started?
The best advice I can give is to let people read your work and to let people get to know you. It’s difficult to put yourself out there, but you will not grow as a writer if you don’t open yourself up to criticism and your work will not find an audience if you don’t try to actively connect with them. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Be open to learning and growing and make yourself someone that others want to support. Most importantly, as with every other aspect of life, be kind and respectful.
You new novel, Come Out & Play, offers up some pretty complex material that involves a teenager who not only loses his mother but has to live with the terrible guilt of being perhaps even partially responsible for her death. To top off this poor kid’s mental downward spiral, you take the story into some treacherous waters where we’re forced to question who can be trusted let alone trying to decipher who may actually be who we think they are. The notion that a mother would cast an evil upon her own son to avenge her death sends chills up my spine just to think about it. Can you walk us through the initial seeds of this story, how it manifested as you began working on it — either by outline or by the seat of your pants — to what it ultimately turned out to become?
This story has been evolving with me throughout my life. When I was younger, I wanted to write a story about a group of friends trapped in a suburban house. As I grew older, I wanted the story to be fun and dark. As an adult, I realized that I wanted it to be fun and dark, but also mean something. When I found my voice as a writer I made it a point to make my stories about real human experiences alongside the fiction. I realized that the setting, protagonists, and villains had always represented aspects of my life. When I wrote it with that in mind, the book found its final, and true, form.
What was your biggest surprise during the process of fleshing out the tale you needed to tell with Come Out & Play?
The biggest surprise while writing this was how it became a story about myself. I often joke (with sincerity) that the story was only able to be completed once I started going to therapy. I could not tell a complete, honest story about my childhood if I had not been completely honest with myself about my childhood. I didn’t know what the story was until I found out who I was, and began to heal from the horror I was depicting.
Were there any challenges while writing your novel that perhaps caught you off guard, that you’re most proud to have overcome and solved to your satisfaction?
I was trying to accomplish a few things that I knew were complete contradictions in terms of storytelling and genre. I wanted to write a story that was as hopeful as it was terrifying. A story where you were in the main character’s head the whole time yet still didn’t trust his actions. A story that seems so supernatural yet is grounded in human experience. A psychological thriller that is also a creature feature. A story that takes place in one location but is universal in its scope.
So many contradictions, but I feel confident in saying that I pulled it off. I think the reason for that is because I was honest about the core messaging, and I stuck that to thesis statement, not letting any element branch too far from the tree. In writing terms, I took “kill your darlings” to heart. If an idea didn’t completely support and strengthen the core concept, it was deleted. Doing so allowed me to explore the story without the risk of straying from what it was really about.
It would seem, at first glance by the synopsis of this novel alone, that your story could stand solid as an allegory for how mental health affects not only family dynamics, but anything and anyone who may be within radius of the family circle. Is that a fair assessment? If so, what do you ultimately hope to drive home to the reader by way of what you want them to reflect on once they’ve survived your vicious tale?
That’s a fair assessment, and it is what I hope the reader reflects on most after finishing the story. Your mental health dictates who you are and how you react to and interact with the world. I grew up not knowing what was wrong with me, and I’m still suffering from the trauma. I want the reader to feel that horror, not to make them feel horrible, but to drive home the importance of mental health and to seek help if you or someone you know is suffering from mental illness. It is horrifying, but it is survivable, sometimes even beatable, and no one should have to suffer.
I feel I would be remiss not to ask you publicly about something I asked you in the privacy of your DMs. It’s regarding your notorious surname. For those who not not have picked up on it, you happen to share this surname with none other than the number one suspect of England’s most feared, uncaught villain, Jack the Ripper, Francis Tumblety. When did you first become aware of your lineage, and how did you feel about it?
I might be related to one of the main suspects in the Jack The Ripper killings. The story I wrote about it is a bridge that leads to this novel, in a way. After college, I was suffering heavily from the OCD, anxiety, and depression I depict in Come Out & Play, but still had yet to see a therapist and be diagnosed. A big symptom of OCD (and anxiety) is “magical thinking,” which is believing in things strongly enough that it upsets your life, like superstitions that cause you physical debilitation. I was so depressed and felt like the world hated me, but knew I was a good person. So, I wondered if a version of me in a past life did something that I was being punished for.
Then I heard about the JTR suspect that had my last name, Francis Tumblety. He was an American doctor who was a notorious womanizer, tax evader, and was wanted for another murder that forced him to flee to London. It just so happened that the JTR killings began the month he arrived and ended the month he returned to America. The killings were said to have been done with surgical precision and know-how, by someone who hated women and prostitution. The idea occurred to me, that if this man was my relative and he was JTR, could I be paying for his bad deeds? I did research on my lineage, and although there is no concrete connection, there is only one line of Tumbletys that spell it that way and it has never changed. Still, I loved the ideas that came with the initial question, such as generational trauma, nature vs. nurture, and predestination. Are we just products of our past, or do we have the power to mold our future? So, I took the true story about why I started researching if I was related to this person and created a fictional story about someone feeling the same way, in order to answer the question. What the character discovers (and in turn what I discovered by writing the story) makes me proud to have that as my first published work.
Any chance we might see you exploring your lineage of your alleged serial killing relative in future stories?
I’d love to, because I love historical fiction.
What is in store for you as far as what you are currently working on and/or hoping to see the light of publication next?
I’m working on a new horror novel and finishing a collection of horror short stories. I also completed an all-ages coffee-table book based on my seasonal Halloween audio show called The October Children. I partnered with Drew Rausch, an incredible artist, and I’m currently pitching it to publishers. My main goal is to find an agent to help me expand into other writing markets.
Thanks so much again for your time, Patrick. This has been an absolute pleasure, my friend! Do you have any last words for us such as the best place to hunt down your work, or where we might be able to run into you in person, or whatever else may be on your mind?
Thank you so much! I appreciate the support! I encourage everyone to buy from their local bookstore or the publisher. I will be at Scares That Care’s Authorcon IV in St. Louis in October to promote the book with Uncomfortably Dark Horror. You can always reach me online, and I encourage you to do so! I love talking with readers, writers, and horror lovers!
