Writing Horror With Boris Bacic

What are some of the key elements in writing horror? How can you be successful writing and self-publishing in the genre? With Boris Bacic.

In the intro, ISBNs made easy [Self-publishing Advice];
Written Word Media’s 2024 author survey; Taylor Swift self-publishing [Morning Brew]; Thoughts on audiobooks [Seth Godin]; This is Strategy: Make Better Plans – Seth Godin;

Plus, Orna Ross and I talk about our response to Google NotebookLM, while the AI hosts discuss indie author myths [Self-Publishing Advice Podcast]; Seahenge: A Short Story available now and on pre-order.

This podcast is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, which helps authors self-publish and reach readers in global markets through the Kobo eco-system. You can also subscribe to the Kobo Writing Life podcast for interviews with successful indie authors.

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Boris Bacic is a bestselling horror author from Serbia, with more than 30 books and short stories.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Unique platforms for publishing horror short stories
• Subgenres of horror and how they have evolved
• Catering to an English-speaking market
• Finding inspiration from personal experience and place
• Deciding whether an idea is best for a short story or full-length book
• Different channels to earn an income from short stories
• Why some books succeed in KU and others flop
• Considerations when writing a horror series
• Networking and community for horror writers

You can find Boris at AuthorBorisBacic.com.

Transcript of Interview with Boris Bacic

Joanna: Boris Bacic is a bestselling horror author from Serbia, with more than 30 books and short stories. So welcome to the show, Boris.

Boris: Thanks for having me here.

Joanna: I'm excited to talk to you. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Boris: I started writing when I was a kid. Back then, it was fantasy. This was before the era of computers and whatnot. I was writing in my notebook. I guess somewhere along the line, it just kind of morphed into horror.

I didn't get into publishing until I was in my late 20s. I had started writing short stories for Creepypasta.com, for Reddit's NoSleep forum, and after about 20 or so unsuccessful stories, one of my stories went viral.

This was a big thing for me because so many people wanted to collaborate. YouTube narrators, Creepypasta animators, and so on. So this was a big thing for me. Somewhere along the line, one of them had asked me, like, why don't I publish a book? I said, no, no, that's not for me. I'm not cut out to be a writer.

After some time, after more successful stories, I said, okay, I'm going to take the plunge. I knew nothing about publishing, and after unsuccessful attempts to find agents and publishers, I ran into 20Booksto50K.

This gave me a completely new perspective on self-publishing, because up until then, I had thought that self-published authors did not earn any money at all.

So this was a new thing for me, and that's eventually how I got into publishing my novels. Right now, I have more than 30.

Joanna: Wow. Okay, a few questions to come back on. First of all, explain to people what Creepypasta is. Because I think a lot of people won't know.

Boris: So Creepypasta.com, this used to be very popular back in the day. This was a website where lots of scary short stories would be hosted. So anybody could write, anybody could post them there. If they were good enough, they would be approved.

Eventually, a similar sub-reddit came out, which was NoSleep. This is exactly what it is, how it sounds. It is a forum where people can post short stories.

This was very popular back in the day because so many YouTube narrators started adapting them into narrations, and they start adding creepy music over there. This was a very good way for aspiring authors, and even established authors, to reach new audiences.

Joanna: I thought Creepypasta stories also had a sort of internet meme thing, in terms of the sort of tropes.

Are there tropes specifically for these forums?

Boris: There are definitely lots of tropes over there, and one of the popular ones that arose from there was the type of horror where there are rules you need to follow. It became so oversaturated with this after a while, that it's like if you enter a church, don't look over your shoulder. Don't enter after 3am and so on.

So this became very popular. It was very scary back in the day, and so many stories arose from it. Even my first published anthology was exactly like that. A security guard, because I used to be a security guard, who is working in a paranormal place, and he needs to follow a set of rules. There are lots of these that are sort of outdated now, but I can see that even trad authors have started using some of the Creepypasta tropes.

Joanna: You've said “back in the day” a couple of times. So is this not a viable place now? Is Reddit kind of—well, it's not done, is it?

Is Reddit still somewhere that somebody starting out now might have a look at?

Boris: Oh, absolutely. Reddit is an excellent place. Creepypasta, not so much. The last time I checked, it was just not the same. I can see that most of the interest is coming from NoSleep. We've even had a lot of aspiring authors, like me, who wrote short stories to Reddit, then they had them published into novels.

I've even seen a few authors who actually got really big movie deals. So NoSleep, Reddit generally, and stuff like WattPad, these are very good platforms for that sort of thing.

Joanna: Interesting. So let's just take a step back into horror in general. In fact, as we record this today, my folk horror novel, Blood Vintage, finishes on Kickstarter. I've had so many people—I mean, it's folk horror, which is a very small sub niche—but people say, “Oh, I never read horror.”

Then I say, oh, well, it's more a sort of eerie sense of place with folklore. Then they're like, “Oh, okay. Well, that sounds interesting.” So I wondered if you'd come across this in terms of, “I never read horror,”

Horror is not just slasher/gore. What else does horror encompass?

Boris: Well, unfortunately, there's still a lot of stigma around horror, even in today's era. When people see horror, they think either a bloodbath or occult Satanism. This kind of dissuades them from reading because this is the two stuff that has evolved from the 80s.

Horror has advanced a lot. It has evolved a lot, and it has branched out into this multifaceted thing where we can see it in so many different genres. It blends with everything.

We see it in psychological thrillers. We see it in romance and fantasy, everywhere.

It's no longer just about whatever gore is going on over there. It has sort of evolved into this psychological thing. Lots of people who say they don't read horror, chances are they do, they're just not aware of it because it's such a personal thing. It's such a unique thing, and we each experience it in our own way.

Something that is scary to you may not be scary to me and vice versa. This is the beautiful thing about it. I personally like the type of horror like you mentioned in your book. This buildup of suspense, the atmospheric buildup, this is my favorite kind.

There's nothing more beautiful and harder than that, when it just sort of builds up to a crescendo that by the time you realize what's going on, it's already too late. It's not always going to be about cutting off limbs, or being chased by monsters, or seeing boogeyman in the closets.

What terrifies me more is this personal kind of thing, like loss of a loved one. It can be claustrophobia, like being stuck in an elevator. To someone that is absolute horror. It can be isolation.

So for the people who say they don't like to read horror, they don't want to read it because of this, I can say they're probably already reading it. They're already seeing it every day. They're just sort of desensitized to it.

Joanna: Yes, I know what you mean. The word still has the stigma, as you say, but often people are labeling things differently. For example, dark fantasy, I think, has a big crossover. Do you ever label it as anything else?

Boris: So sometimes it's really difficult to categorize it. That's the thing. Since I write so many different subgenres, horror specifically, it goes into so many different directions. Sometimes somebody who reads a thriller, he's going to say, “This was a scary book. This was horror.” Whereas for me, it might be a different experience.

Oftentimes, it's really difficult to label what exactly it is. It's not clear cut. It's not like cut and dry that we know exactly what's going on. It's very abstract. I sometimes write abstract stuff that I don't even know what genre it is going to fit in.

It, again, comes back to what the reader feels about it. So some people are going to tell me this was a very good thriller book. So I tell them, okay, but I didn't have in mind to write a thriller book. This was supposed to be horror, but for them, that was what they saw.

Joanna: Yes, I think it's interesting. Now, one of the subgenres I love—I love some really small niches—and one is merfolk horror, so bad mermaids and bad mermen. So I have your book, They Came From The Ocean, on my to-be-read list at the moment. I wondered—

What are some of the horror tropes you love and come back to?

You said you write all over the place, but what do you come back to? And what do your readers love best?

Boris: The good thing is that my readers are very diverse, and I'm very grateful for that because when I did start writing, I didn't want to write just one subgenre. I believe that just like we have mood readers, we also probably have mood writers.

I'd say that I'm a mood writer. I'm going to write maybe two or three paranormal books, then I'm going to get bored of it, and I’m going to move on to something else. Let's do, for example, cult horror.

Then I'm going to get bored with that and move onto some something else, maybe a creature feature because creature features, in my opinion, they don't require as much planning. I guess it's more straightforward.

When I want to get into something complicated, I go back into, for example, you mentioned They Came From The Ocean. This is still one of my most popular creature features. I think one of the reasons for that is the fact that we have not explored the ocean almost at all. We have mapped maybe 5% of the ocean floor.

The same thing with space. We're pretty much playing in our backyard. I believe that this kind of creates grounds for fear of the unknown. So you can play with sci-fi and fantasy over here, and you can leave it ambiguous because there's so much going on there which we don't know. There's so much we can find.

We discover thousands of species in the ocean every year. New species that we didn't even know exist, alien-like creatures and whatnot. There's just so much going on there. This has given birth to so many conspiracy theories about merfolk and so on.

I believe this fear of the unknown, it's one of the strongest fears. I think it's very easy to bank on that in sea horror, space horror, but pretty much anything where you're just staring sort of at the abyss.

Joanna: Yes, it's interesting.

Just as you were talking now, I was thinking about the sense of awe.

I mean, I go to the gothic cathedrals of Europe, and you walk in and feel this kind of awe at the majesty of this building. I've done quite a lot of scuba diving, and I felt the same sense of awe on the edge of the drop off with the deep ocean ahead of you. Like, oh my goodness, I am so small. I am so insignificant on the face of the earth. I find that feeling quite liberating, in a way.

As you were talking, I was like maybe that is why I like merfolk horror because the sense of awe, in a terrible sense, is kind of where we go with horror. You know what I mean?

Boris: Exactly, exactly. I totally agree with you. It's like you said, you go to this place, and you can just sort of feel the echo of what might have happened. Now, it doesn't need to be necessarily true. I think it's just our imagination conjures all sorts of different things.

Like when we both stare at the dark room, you and I are going to see different things. I think that's the beauty of it, that we can conjure so many things that might have happened there. This can, especially for writers, be very good, but also for readers.

Joanna: Yes, absolutely. Now, I'm also always interested in sense of place in writing, and one of your books, I think, is based upon your hometown. So tell us more about Serbia because many people listening are in the US or the UK and might not know that much. Also—

Tell us why you turned your home town into horror.

Boris: So Serbia is a very superstitious place. I think all Slavic countries are. Not all of it ties into horror, some of them are innocuous. Some of them are like, don't walk through the cornfield, don't go out after thunder, and so on. Then there are also the scary parts.

My grandmother, who lived most of her life in a small village, she had a bevy of stories, scary stories. My mother, also, because she was told by her mother. So they told me stories, and they were very nonplussed about this. The way they told me these stories, it was like it was a normal occurrence.

There was a case I remember that was right after my grandmother had passed. On the day of the funeral, my mother came to me and she said, “Tonight you might feel a presence in your room.”

I asked, “What? What do you mean?” She said, “Oh, you might feel like somebody is touching your face. You might hear your name being whispered. Don't worry, that's just your grandma probably visiting you.” So I thought, okay, well, that's not nightmare material at all.

So there were lots of superstitious beliefs over here, like those. Then on top of that, my hometown, it was actually and probably still is—I haven't looked into it lately—it was number one by suicides in all of Europe.

So there were lots of rumors as to why this was happening. We knew that people are very negative, they're very pessimistic, but what was going on? The town was built on top of a swamp, so there were rumors maybe noxious gasses causing them to have mental breakdowns or something.

Then there were rumors of cults, very secretive cults, that were hiding in the woods, leaving clues for people who can join if they manage to solve those clues, and so on.

This all inspired me to conduct an investigation during the writing of Suicide Town, which was my book inspired by my hometown. When you're in a small town like this, I believe there is always something going on.

It doesn't need to be a dark history or anything like that, sometimes it's just the way the people look at outsiders. Whether they're polite, whether they're rude, how they communicate with each other, there is just so much going on.

I got so much inspiration just from interviewing people there, and that helped me to kind of put together a book which blended the old Creepypasta stories along with something that was a full-fledged novel.

Joanna: I like that.

Where we live obviously has such an impact on us, whether it's earlier on in life or whatever.

When I moved here to Bath, I was really struggling with this place. Like, do I want to live here, and what does that mean? My book Map of Shadows has a dark side of it, and it opens in Bath.

Then I found that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in Bath, and I found out all this dark stuff about Bath, and that it wasn't just famous for Jane Austen. I was like, I can't live somewhere that's sort of Jane Austen and Bridgerton. Then I discovered this dark side of Bath, and I was like, oh, yes, okay. I can live here now.

Boris: Exactly, and that's what I mentioned earlier. It's like you can see horror everywhere. Sometimes you've got to squint, but it is everywhere. Back when I lived in my old apartment, there was a radio tower across from it. Every night at 9pm the lights would turn on, and they would blink for a while, and then they would stop.

I would see it every night, and I would start to wonder—and this was the paranoid part of me—what if they're now releasing some kind of a signal to brainwash us? Maybe this is like a secret government experiment.

This actually eventually gave me an idea for my book Radio Tower, which was a very popular book back in the day. Anywhere you go, everything you see, you can see horror if you just look hard enough. I think it's just that our brains are desensitized and they are protecting us from the scary stuff.

Joanna: Yes, I think you're right. I laugh because I have the same mind. I mean, people listening will write other genres, and I think perhaps somebody who, let's say writes romance, and they're seeing that tower, that message, maybe their mind says, “Oh, that is someone signaling their love in space.” Maybe it's a sci-fi romance or something. Whereas you and I would see something darker.

I think we all have our natural tendency as to what we see, and where we find ideas.

It's just being open to them.

Boris: It's like exactly what you just mentioned now. I had one example where I had mentioned my lighthouse horror book, which I'm going to write.

A romance author had contacted me, a friend of mine, and she asked, like, “Okay, but my brain is not comprehending what's going to happen next. Is he going to fall in love with someone? Is he like alone there, and he's going to find somebody, the love of his life?” I was like, oh, boy, do I have news for you.

Joanna: Yes, feel free to write your own romance in a lighthouse!

Boris: Exactly.

Joanna: I mean, I guess I know a bit about Serbia. I'm in my late 40s and European.

Serbia has a difficult political history. Do you find that ever comes into your work?

Boris: That is interesting. That's an interesting question. I do find that the current situation, like the difficulty with the economy and all that, sort of slips into my stories from time to time.

There were a couple of books that I wrote which were set in Europe, but luckily, most of my books that I write are set in America. So it's sort of detached from the political and socioeconomic situation in Serbia. However, since I've lived here all my life, obviously, it's going to be impossible to just completely eliminate that.

So there are cases where I'm going to try to hint at certain things, but I try not to do it too often because I think it becomes obvious when an author tries to insert his own views into a book.

Joanna: Yes, it's one of my sort of things is I really enjoy the research about places. It's a fascinating topic. So I mean, on that, we should say your accent, you have an American accent, basically.

Boris: Well, thank you. Yes, and lots of people wonder how I learned English. What happened? Basically, back when I was a kid, when we had cartoons, we didn't have subtitles, we didn't have synchronized or anything. I had to watch in English. So if I wanted to understand it, I had to learn English.

So at an early age, up north where I live, we speak Serbian and Hungarian. These are the two main languages. Unfortunately, my Hungarian is terrible. I'm learning it right now. My parents had tried to force me to learn it, but I was more into English.

They said that I refuse with every atom of my being, and I instead focused on learning English. This was very beneficial for me because I write books in English. I'd even go as far as to say that my English is better than my Serbian these days.

Joanna: Do you translate things into Serbian?

I mean, it must be quite a small book market.

Boris: Exactly. Writing in Serbian, I guess since I grew up with all these American movies, Hollywood movies, cartoons, read books in English, it felt more at home for me. The Serbian market is very small, but the Serbian horror market is minuscule. It is not existing pretty much.

As I said, there are so many people who are very much against it. I've even had people in Serbia, since certain parts are very religious, many of them are going to ask me, like, “Oh, but what do you think? How would God feel about you writing horror?”

I would need to explain to them that I'm not writing manuals for summoning demons, I'm just writing horror books.

Joanna: I laugh, because with Blood Vintage I've been just getting a whole ton of emails about this kind of thing and how much I must be summoning demons. I'm like, seriously, just read the book. It's not about that. It is funny, isn't it?

We all have these preconceptions of what things are based on stuff. So I respect people's opinions, but read stuff before you make a decision.

I do want to come onto short stories, you mentioned them at the beginning. You write short stories, you write novels, as do I.

How do you decide whether an idea is a short story or a full-length book?

Boris: Well, the problem with my writing is I'm a pantser, and I usually don't know what is going to happen pretty much until I'm close to the end. So sometimes it's not going to be known whether it's a novella, a short story, or a full-length novel, until I'm pretty much close to the end.

A lot of times I get this sort of inkling for writing a short story based on a dream or whatever. I don't like the commitment, so I'm just going to go and churn out a short story in two or three days. I like that because I don't need to do extensive planning and plotting out for the whole for the whole book. You can just sit down, you can write it, and you're done.

These days, I try to focus more on novels because I like the challenge. I find it way more challenging. At the same time, as my writing has evolved, my books have become more descriptive. So there is a lot of atmospheric buildup, there's a lot of suspense, there's a lot of world building and character development.

Short stories don't really give you the freedom to do that. It's very much getting into the meat and potatoes, just get straight to the point. Whereas in a book, in a novel, you actually have time to do the slow burn.

That's where I got a lot of inspiration from Stephen King because his books are exactly like that. For about 70%, there's nothing going on, and then suddenly it just spirals out of control. I just love that kind of story.

Joanna: I'm laughing again because I know what you mean with Stephen King. Of course, he has short stories as well. I really like writing short stories, and similar to you, if there's an idea that just is annoying me, that I want to get out my head—

I feel like sometimes I can just put that idea into a short story, and then it's out of my head and that leaves room for other things.

Boris: Exactly, and you can always do both. Some of my short stories from NoSleep actually got adapted into full novels. You can do that. It's absolutely possible.

It's just for me, it's easier to adapt a novel into a short story than the other way around because when it comes to turning a short story into a novel, you need to be careful with not adding redundant parts.

There have been authors who have made books from NoSleep to full-fledged novels, and what happened was there were lots of repetitive parts that were unnecessary, but that sort of worked really well in the short story. This is a trap that needs to be avoided when adapting one to the other.

Joanna: Yes, it's interesting because I write these short stories and then I publish them as just short stories on my website, on Amazon, and a lot of the reviews are, “This is too short.” I'm like, it's a short story. That is what it is. It is that length. But people say, “Oh, this could be a novel.”

I haven't even considered turning a short story into a novel because I feel like it's a nice, self-contained thing that, in my mind, is now finished. It is done. That's how it worked. Now I can't imagine it being anything else.

Boris: I'm exactly like that for some of the stories, especially the longer ones. I had just finished writing a trilogy, and it took me about six months. Before I finished writing it, I was thinking of doing a short story and then posting it to NoSleep so I can promote it.

Then after writing it for six months, no, I am done. I want to move onto something else. I do not want to see that book ever again.

Joanna: I guess another question on short stories is some authors think they're “not worth writing” because readers prefer long form books. You might not have enough to do an anthology like you did. They're hard to sell.

Why do you think short stories are worth writing?

Boris: I think there are many benefits to writing short stories, but it all comes down to who you ask. I know a lot of authors who actually make a living with short stories, anthologies, and they're doing really well.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the benefits of writing short stories is you don't need to commit to it as you would to a full-fledged book. So you can write a short one, you can take a break, you can maybe come back after six months, one year, whenever you feel like it.

Then after a while, you're going to have an anthology with really no absolute commitment, which is great. Now I see that some authors, they just put short stories together into an anthology. They sell them that way.

I see some other authors who are actually selling them as standalones at 99 cents. Now, selling short stories on Amazon, and I think this is a little trick here. It's good to diversify. That's the first thing.

I don't want to be personally known as the short story author.

I want to be labeled as somebody who's going to make a groundbreaking novel.

When it comes to short stories, there's so much diversification. There's so much advantage. For example, you can post those short stories to WattPad, to NoSleep, and you can scrape some money up from other sources.

My short stories, they still get offers from YouTube narrators, and they give me payment for the rights for narration. Then you got animators. Then you got, if you're really lucky, these content scouts who can actually find your story, they like it, and they want to produce it into a short movie, an actual movie, whatever else.

There are so many ways, and there's so many rising platforms for short stories where you can post them and you get royalties from it. So I think for short stories, Amazon is not a bad choice, but there's not like one wrong or one right way to do things. You can do it in so many ways.

Joanna: You said there's people making a living just with short stories.

Are they submitting to anthologies through the horror traditional publishers?

Boris: From what I know, doing anthologies with other authors usually doesn't yield a lot of money, sometimes nothing at all. I personally have been in some anthologies and they were not profitable.

They were very good for exposure, and they were very good for getting new readers. Somebody who reads the anthology because of some other author is going to read yours, and he might be like, okay, I like this author, I'm going to check their other books out.

When it comes to earning a full-time living with short stories, I know a few authors who actually write all of their stories, they compile them into their own anthologies, and they sell them like that. It works really well for them, but I think it's all about what kind of an audience you cultivate.

So if you start right away with cultivating short story readers then they're going to be great, you're going to have those. If you start with 99 cents deals, if you start with KU, it all depends.

I have personally tried going wide.

I'm in KU, Kindle Unlimited, and I've tried going wide. Crickets. Nothing happened.

I think it all depends on what kind of an audience you have. For me, it's been years now, I think going into a different venue would probably not be as successful.

Joanna: Let's talk about that because I know you know David Viergutz, and he was on the show, I guess once this goes out, a couple of months ago. He talked on the show about the fact that Amazon didn't really work for his books. He moved out of KU and is basically selling mainly a lot from his website.

You mentioned there, KU is good for you, and you had crickets elsewhere. So I wondered—

Why do you think your books have had traction on KU?

Are there things that you think might work for other authors who are struggling there?

Boris: So I've been wondering about this for a long time as well. I remember David Viergutz and I, we were talking about it for a while, and we were pretty much doing the same things. I was seeing success on Amazon. For him, nothing.

It was like Amazon didn't like him. I have no idea what was going on there. He moved on to direct, which was really good. He's very successful there now.

For me, so what happened was I had first found 20Booksto50K. I published a few books, and there were some traction, but not enough to earn significant income.

I started doing marketing, but it wasn't going so well. I figured, you know what, my marketing is probably going to suck. I'm doing everything I can, but I'm going to have to take into consideration it's probably going to be bad.

Therefore, I'm going to use the method that Michael Anderle mentioned, which is publish enough books that you're going to be earning enough money. I already had three or four books that were already finished, I just hadn't published them yet.

So I started publishing them, I started running Amazon ads on them, and I started seeing more and more traction on Amazon. I believe that in today's era, which might change very soon, the algorithm is a very important thing.

I think what I did was I managed to switch the algorithm into my favor by giving readers books that they liked.

Then Amazon started showing my books to other readers.

Nowadays, for example, I have mostly organic traffic. I do run ads on my new launches, but after, I turn them off. My books are gliding very nicely. They're doing everything organically. This was probably a long history of showing that my Amazon account is doing well.

So if you pair that with something like a BookBub deal, that's going to probably change everything. That was, for me, what really got me into working full time. Up until then, it was going very slow.

Pair everything that you know. Ads, newsletter lists, newsletter swaps, newsletter stacks, running ads on different platforms, Amazon ads, Facebook ads.

Some people run them on Instagram. Even TikTok these days is very profitable for some authors.

If you pair those, and you find what works for you, give it a strong push, and it's bound to work. I've even tested this with some pen names because I wanted to know what exactly worked.

With Kindle Unlimited, unfortunately it's very difficult to tell what worked because we don't have enough information like we do with direct. With direct, you can exactly tell where each sale came from, and you can pinpoint what's working and what isn't. With Kindle Unlimited, you have to guess a little bit.

So I'd experimented with different genres, different pen names, and the result was the same. If you do a strong push, whether it's with Facebook ads or Amazon ads—for me, personally, it's Facebook ads—putting the book in Kindle Unlimited, doing 99 cent deals. For me, that worked perfectly and still does.

Joanna: Are most of your sales ebooks, or do you also do print and audio?

Boris: I do all of that. Audio, print books, ebooks, even hardcovers, but most of my income does come from Kindle Unlimited. From the page reads, about 60 to 65% comes from that. The rest is ebook sales.

Print, not so much. I tried switching to direct just to sell print over there. Unfortunately, selling from my own store was not profitable because shipping from Serbia to America or the UK is very expensive. So I ended up sticking with eBook sales instead.

Joanna: Yes. Although, just on that, I mean, you could use a printer in the US.

Boris: Yes, like Ingram Spark and others. I have tried using those, but unfortunately, I didn't see any kind of sales. So maybe the algorithm over there is not in my favor.

Joanna: I think this is what's so interesting, and that's why I wanted to mention that, because —

What works for one author might not work for another, even in the same genre

— which is why it's good to compare you and David. Again, we're not talking about him behind his back, he said this on the show. He said it didn't work for him.

I mean, I've looked at both of your books. There's a clear genre with the covers. They're not dramatically different, as far as I could see. It was like—Why does it work for one author and not another author?

As you say, you just don't know. You just have to try things, and then if it does take off, as it did for you, you're leaning into that. It didn't for David, and he chose another path. As we said, he's doing very well. So it's so hard, isn't it, to know what to do if somebody is new, or like me, writing in a new genre.

Boris: Exactly.

So many authors give up, unfortunately, before they should.

I know there were so many aspiring authors who wrote an entire series and it just didn't work.

Sometimes books, they're just dead on arrival. I've had books like those as well. I've had books like my personal favorite, The Grayson Legacy, it just did not sell no matter what I did. I changed the covers, I changed the blurb, I even re-edited the entire thing. Nothing.

So I just couldn't understand. I still don't understand what is going on. I've asked around to other authors, and they tell me, okay, the cover is on point. The blurb is on point, it tells you exactly what it's about. It's just not selling. Maybe it's just currently not doing anything for the market.

You can still use those books. So I personally use The Grayson Legacy as a reader magnet, and you can use that to actually get new readers. They read that book, and they're going to be like, “Okay, I like this one. Let me check out the other books as well.” So it can still be used for something.

It's like we mentioned, there's not one wrong or right venue to take. You can go so many different directions. There are so many successful authors who are wide, and there are many who are in Kindle Unlimited.

So I know there's a lot of rivalry between the two. Kindle Unlimited authors are going to be talking bad about wide and vice versa. I really believe there's really no wrong way of doing things in this business.

Joanna: Yes, and on that, a lot of horror is standalone rather than series.

Do you write mostly standalone, or have you broken into series?

Boris: I've written both, and I can definitely say that series sell way better. Leaving books with cliff hangers and then moving on to the next one, it just naturally sells much, much better. It sells so much better that even the pre-orders for the next book in the series, they're going to be, organically, very good.

Whereas with standalones, people finish it, they're done. They need a break. Sometimes we do have readers who just want to jump straight into the next one, but when you finish a standalone, that next book doesn't have to be your book. They can start reading another book by another author.

Whereas if you give them something in a series like a cliffhanger, and it's a good enough story to get them into it, they're not going to be able to resist it. They're going to move onto the next one.

The latest trilogy I wrote, they're all connected, all three books. They're not standalones. Whereas most of my other books are standalones. Only after I started writing the series did I see a significant rise in my income.

Joanna: That's interesting.

How do you write a horror series when one of the things that happens in horror is that people die?

Do you have to just create a much bigger cast?

Boris: Oh, yes, exactly. You can create a big cast, and there's a lot of these swappable characters. Some characters die, other characters get introduced. You got to think of it as a TV show with multiple seasons. So you kind of follow that concept, and it works very well.

You give them a fast paced environment. Every chapter that I end, I usually end it with a cliffhanger. So not only are they unable to stop reading the series, they're unable to stop reading the book.

What happens is I have so many readers tell me, like, “Oh, I lost a lot of sleep because I had to keep reading this.” For me, this is a huge success.

So writing a series, it's trickier because when you write about a paranormal house, for example, I did not see how this can be adapted into a series. People would get fatigued from that. So it has to be something completely original.

Like last year, I wrote a zombie series. This was more of an apocalyptic series, but it also blended horror elements to it. It was not a typical survival series. This year it was like you mentioned. A huge cast, lots of things going on, and each book was centered around a certain theme.

So you give the characters a problem they face. Just when they've solved that problem, a new one arises, and that leads into the next book.

Joanna: It's interesting, though, because you said you're a pantser—I say discovery writer—and I find that even though I have series, each book is really standalone. In that you can finish it, and I'm like, okay, story has finished. So in my discovery writing mind, I can't seem to think beyond that one story.

How do you write series as a pantser?

Boris: Well, mostly luck. You just write and hope for the best. For certain big books like those, like series, you have to have at least a vague outline. So I try to have, like, point A and point Z.

So I know what the beginning is going to be like, I know what the ending might be like, but going through the story, that is where the troubles arise. This is where there's so much rewriting, so much deletion. Thousands of words lost is the most painful thing ever. 

I think it takes a lot of effort too, because when you actually have something in your mind when you think of a scene, and when you actually start writing the scene, you figure, you know, this doesn't sound too well. It doesn't look as well as I imagined in my head. Then you need to change the whole thing.

This impacts the previous scenes, the subsequent scenes, and this is where the problem arises. This is why I'm trying to transition more into not being a pantser, but planning more. I'm just not good enough to take notes like that, and my mind is volatile.

It's like I'm going to be walking through the park, and I'm suddenly going to think, “Okay, this would make a great idea for the story. I need to change it immediately.” So I'm not good with taking notes.

Joanna: Yes, it is interesting. We all have our struggles, but I still enjoy being a discovery writer. I also want to ask you because, of course, you're in Europe—

Is there a network that you're part of for horror writers?

Or just indie authors? Or do you go to American things? Like the Horror Writers Association is mostly in the US.

Boris: Yes. Funnily enough, I didn't even know there were lots of horror authors in Europe, especially in the Slavic region. I know a few authors who mostly use pen names because of the stigma, the superstitions and whatever, and they like to keep secretive.

For me, personally, I am connected with authors from America because that's how I started. I didn't know there was anything else in Europe. Since most of my books are set in the US, I try to be more aligned with that.

I have not actually been to any American gatherings yet. With book signings, I do have one next year, Books and Brews in Indiana. It's a little difficult to go to all those events.

I can see there's so many of them, and I want to attend all of them, but it takes just 10 hours just to get to the east coast. Now, getting anything further than that, it's hell. It's very expensive. I try to limit myself to only the most important events.

Joanna: Yes, and the jet lag is a killer, right?

Boris: The worst thing is that it's not bad when you're in the US, but when you return to Europe, terrible. It just sort of catches up with you.

Joanna: Oh, yes. I really struggle with that. I'm going to Author Nation. In fact, that'll be the week after this goes out, and I'm already like, I have to organize all my meetings as early in the day as possible because I'm up at 3am going, “Woo-hoo!” and then by 4pm I need to go to bed.

Boris: Oh, exactly.

Joanna: It is difficult. Well, we are out of time.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Boris: Well, all my books, since they're in KU, they can find them on Amazon. They can contact me on my website, AuthorBorisBacic.com. Or if they want to get in touch, they can also email me. I love hearing from readers, from authors. So, yes, those are good ways to go.

Joanna: Thanks so much for your time, Boris. That was great.

Boris: Thank you.

The post Writing Horror With Boris Bacic first appeared on The Creative Penn.