Jay Slayton-Joslin - Sequelland: A Story of Dreams and Screams

Ive never stopped worrying about whats in the shadows. I keep the blinds closed because I think there may be someone out there in a mask creeping up on me. I wonder about finding bodies in abandoned buildings and am glad my bed has storage underneath so monsters cant hide there.

I grew up on horror movies. Boxsets of Nightmare on Elm Street for Christmas, raiding the family DVDs for anything with an 18 + rating and goreI wanted to be scared and to have nightmares. I think being a writer encourages you to go to those unknown places, to live in your brain and more often than not that can be a terrifying place. You constantly wonder about things that could happen to others, yourself, and how that can change the world as you know it.

I havent written any horror stories, or at least not in the conventional way. Nothing about burial grounds, no wendigos or cannibals; the only thing going bump in the night in my stories was my protagonist stumbling home from a drunk. In reality, Im constantly scared by how the world is unfolding and how powerless we are to do anything about it. Its part of why I tend to write about depressed nothingness and people who have the choice to change but continue to be a shitty person, because those scenarios are far more realistic to me than anything taking over the world.

I have notebooks with outlines of serial killers that are inspired by urban legends, of families who move to a neighbourhood where theyre not welcome and cults that specifically target the protagonist. If, or more accurately, when I write one of thesethe idea that it could be boring or not at all scary is enough to cripple me each time I sit down at my laptop.

With horror, it feels like that much more of a holy ground because its something I consume that I love and perhaps it would be tainted for me if I cant create something I love. Though, as I type this, I know that it doesnt mean that I wont try, out of respect for myself and all the countless films, games and paperbacks Ive torn through over the years. Its the lore and the continuous story thats stuck with me over the years.

The way a series of novels can detail a character or a whole universe, Ive found that same magic in horror films and their sequels. Whether its an actor reprising their role after 20 years, or a throwaway sentence about them being away because the actor wouldnt come backall of it adds something to the world.

The kid in me cant get enough of the gore. I love the storytelling, the blood, and the familiar thrills a horror franchise can consistently deliver. Plus, theres so many of them. The digital age has robbed me of the pleasure of scanning every DVD in an old shop, rubbing my fingers against the spines and looking at the cover art to see which might be the scariest, as I sit crossed legged on the aisle floor. For older folks, this may be replicated with a cult section and VHS. I hope in the streaming age we get something similar to the Direct to DVD Sequels, because, man did they make me happy.

Its because of the pure joy they brought me that I want to look at those sequels and understand how they work or, if they didnt, why not. They say if you dont learn from history youre doomed to repeat it, and while Im no bastion of perfect art, perhaps I can extend that to mean if we can learn from previous artists, we can learn how to not make the same mistakes ourselves and recognise when its going right. Plus, yknow, there might be some cool stories from our favourite franchises, Im not going to say its purely some altruistic quest here.

Everyone in this book has a passion for what they do, it takes some crazy kind of drive to see a piece of art and run at it to make it better. Sometimes it is just a job, but more often than not its a labour of love. Sometimes that love can pay the bills, sometimes it can leave you never wanting to look back on it. Sometimes we have to look into the shadows of anothers art to see the work that lives in ourselves.

For most of my life Ive been that kid that stares out the classroom window, thinking about the movie that I saw the night before, the book I was reading, the video game where I made the choices that influenced the story.

For me it was never enough to be content at the end of the film, particularly in horror, where there tends to be a last minute closeup of the slasher as their eyes open, implying theyve got another blood bath in them. Stephen King famously talks about the what if? And when we look back at franchises these questions tend to be answered for us rather than allowing the viewer to develop it themselves: What if Michael Myers wanted revenge after being shot and would never give up? What if escaping Leatherface didnt stop the cannibal family? What if a teen girl with psychic powers wasnt an isolated incident? What if making sequels to great films was more of a cash grab by studios, and that it is only because of fans and directors who love these movies that we get to expand on the originals that brought us nightmares? I know these questions because Ive asked them hundreds of times myself.

As a writer, I know that the deeper you delve into being a creator, the process and what that actually means, the more complicated it gets. When my first book came out, a little poetry collection called Kicking Prose, I was thrilled. I would carry several copies of it everywhere, like I was allergic to oxygen and it was my EpiPen.

Looking back on it now, coming up to six years since its release, Im indifferent to how I feel about it. Its the best that I could do at that time, and I can do better now though I suppose that is the right way round. Its probably harder for the directors featured in this book than it was for me, not just because they had to work with more people than I havesmall presses are usually one or two people and a cover artist, if thatbut they were brought in when something had already been created. They were writing and creating the sequel to something that most of them were not involved in.

In this book, there are creators who began their careers with a sequel and never even directed again. For others, it was the beginning of a long career, and for some, it was a step down after having already achieved fame and success. Some worked as hard as they could and then went on to other projects, others never left the project and the reputation from it behind. Its difficult to say why these directors got involved with established franchises in the way that they did, and even looking back on the whole collection now, Im not a lot closer to getting an answer that isnt vague, but I am closer. If you were given the choice to do something that wasnt going to be a nightmare of studio executives

making decisions, in your dream field, to do something with the material that inspired you, would you take the job? I would. I dont like the answer to that question from an originality and creative standpoint, but to get paid to do what I love, to be able to say yes to all those previous things? It beats my 9-5. Its not as if the height of my artistic ambitions is to write