Let’s talk fears.
Seriously. Fears. Phobias.
I’ve always enjoyed fears, but it wasn’t until January of this year did I realize just how cool they could be. Those who know me know that I am always writing, always picking up new projects, working on old projects, and doing anything that I can to expand myself and my company. I was watching one of my favorite shows on SyFy and they had an episode where they went to Linda Vista hospital and on the walls were fears written. Each person had to pick a fear without knowing what it was until they picked it. Something about seeing that wall just made my eyes go wide. I gave my wife ‘the look’ – and no, it wasn’t the same look that yielded us two, zombie loving boys – but rather the look that meant a new idea had been born.
I realize that to take on a fears based project alone would be hard, considering my schedule, but I couldn’t let it go. I mean, how cool would it be to have a horror series based on fears? More so, I wanted to take those fears and twist them, turn them, make them my own. But I needed help. It didn’t take me long to come up with the perfect writer to team up with (and no, it’s not because we talk every day…). If you don’t know who Rebecca Besser is, learn. Skip your $10 Starbucks tomorrow morning and grab a copy of her book, Undead Drive-Thru.
I talked to Becca about the project and as fate would have it, she fell in love with it too. She was game… and better yet, we already had a story going. We collaborated little by little last year, so we took an old project and revamped it. We had this story about a glass factory that explodes, killing all the workers. There’s something in the water that makes the glass that brings the dead back. We quickly realized that we had a book for ‘crystallophobia’ which is the fear of glass. This is the way we are designing the fears series… the fear is in the book, somehow.
Our next book is the fear of technology and features a man who grew up Amish and is trying to adjust to a different life after getting engaged. His fiancée gives him a cell phone and that’s where his troubles begin… because the technology seems to be coming to life, and has a mind of its own…
It’s been fun writing with Becca and the more we talk about the fears, the more ideas we come up with. So far our list has some of the common things like fear of heights all the way to the strange such as fear of beautiful women… all the way to the extreme like fear of trees.
Right now, Crystallophobia is for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, with some great reviews coming in. We’ve even had the honor of Bram Stroker winning author, Joe McKinney writing a review for the book, saying “Crystallophobia is a tightly written anatomy of a terrifying disaster. Jim Bronyaur and Rebecca Besser have really twisted the thumbscrews down on the little town of Streinersburg, Ohio, and their zombies, emerging as they do from the smoke and wreckage of an earth-shaking explosion, glass shards protruding from their mangled faces, are as frightening as any creature I’ve seen since Clive Barker’s Pinhead. You’ve got to read this. Your nightmares will never be the same.”
The second book in the Series of Fears is due out in May 2012.
From the minds of Jim Bronyaur and Rebecca Besser comes a new series that explores some of our darkest – and strangest fears.
Book #1 – Crystallophobia (fear of glass)
In the small town of Streinersburg, Ohio a normal Tuesday morning begins, but it doesn’t stay that way. As the workers of Walker’s Glass — a struggling factory — settle in to their daily routine, all hell breaks loose when there is an explosion.
Millions of shards of glass are blasted through the factory, cutting and killing all the workers. As help arrives, something terrifying starts happening… The bodies start to come back to life. Soon a horde of zombies ravenous for human flesh are walking the streets of Streinersburg, shimmering in the sunlight as they look for their next meal.
The town must find a way to survive as they all ask the same question: What was in the glass and where did it come from?
Author Jen Wylie's Blog 
The first book in the Series of Fears is Crystallophobia (fear of glass), and its now available! The series will be novella sized books based on specific fears, all with a horror element, and are co-written by Jim Bronyaur & Rebecca Besser (ME!).
I talked to Becca about the project and as fate would have it, she fell in love with it too. She was game… and better yet, we already had a story going. We collaborated little by little last year, so we took an old project and revamped it. We had this story about a glass factory that explodes, killing all the workers. There’s something in the water that makes the glass that brings the dead back. We quickly realized that we had a book for ‘crystallophobia’ which is the fear of glass. This is the way we are designing the fears series… the fear is in the book, somehow.