Happy Thursday, friend! Welcome to an interview with author Rebekah L. Webb about Burrows of Blood and Shadow, a unique literary horror that can be seen as short story collection! Let’s welcome Rebekah and learn more.
Get to know the author: Rebekah L. Webb
Hi Rebekah! Welcome to Armed with A Book. Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!
I have a hard time talking about myself. I always struggle with what’s relevant and worry that I’ll come off as boring or overly complicated. I’m in my 40s, I have a bearded dragon that’s seven years old, that I’ve had since was a baby, and I love to listen to music, but not when I write. I can sing but don’t play instruments, I dance but only when alone, and I used to not like coffee but now I have a few cups a day. Oh and now that I’ve started drinking coffee, I’ve found that it makes me sleepy in the morning, a little awake if I drink it past ten am, and keeps me up all night if I drink it past two pm. And I love beef of all kinds.
What inspired you to write this book?
My main inspiration originally was to write a book that would be the easiest for me to write so I didn’t get stuck at 5,000 words like my previous attempt at a novel. I’d tried all the advice for plotting and writing and plotting, flashcards, specific outline techniques, and a bunch of writing advice I didn’t vet or think about whether it was from professionals or amateurs. I decided for my next attempt, I’d make everything geared toward making writing and finishing a novel easier for me. I made it a series of interconnected short stories because I was better at writing short stories, I made a looser outline because I was better at plotting on the fly with a bit of structure, and I made it literary horror because I was good at writing both.
How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?
The first draft took a month. The second draft took about three months. The final draft where I added 10,000 extra words took about a week. But those were spread out over years, as it took a long time to find a good editor. It took thirteen years for the book to go from first to final draft.
In the first draft, the Dream Surfer was a minor character with no backstory. I actually took his past from an unpublished sequel. The story really began to come together when I turned him into the main character and gave the novel a stronger thread to connect the stories.
What makes your story unique?
Burrows of Blood and Shadow is a novel made of interconnected short stories about an entity that has no memories or life of his own, who travels deep into the minds of others to experience their memories. He is not tethered to time, so he can experience people at the moment of their death, or experience cause and effect out of order by visiting the aftermath of a situation before he experiences the inciting incident.
It also is about trauma and the processing of trauma in a way that doesn’t outright say it’s about processing trauma. Instead, it is about experiencing the Dream Surfer processing trauma and using that experience however you see fit. I had discussion questions created to help people who want to use the book to help with their own trauma. https://burrowsofbloodandshadow.com/discussion-questions
Who would enjoy reading your book?
People who enjoy experimental and unusual fiction, people who enjoy darker fiction, people who enjoy who with fantastical elements, people who enjoy prose with a lyrical bent, and people who enjoy getting into the minds and emotions of characters in short bursts.
Did you bring any of your experiences into this book?
Not intentionally, but it’s unavoidable. This novel was more stream-of-conscious therapy for me.
What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?
I want them to take away whatever they need from it, be that entertainment or something more.
Do you have a favourite quote or scene in the book that you find yourself going back to?
The line: Sleep well little babe and dream of far away. Where covers cannot save you, and night eats all the day.
The story and chapter it came from was actually the first chapter I wrote and was the start of the novel until I expanded the roll of the Dream Surfer. I love how hauntingly beautiful it is, like a blood-colored lace fluttering in an icy breeze.
What is something you have learned on your author journey so far?
Keep going, keep writing.
What’s the best piece of advice you have received related to writing?
All writing practice is practice and find a way to write that works for you. Read the details of writing advice and not just the condensed quotes, ie “Write what you know,” “show don’t tell,” etc. Think of those as headlines, they are meant to catch you attention but the actual advice is usually fully realized concepts with nuance that sometimes even goes against the common assumptions based on just reading the quotes.
Another example is 3rd person limited POV. It’s a quick way to refer to it, but a lot of people not only make the assumption that the limited refers to how deep you can go into the mind of the character. The limited actually refers to being limited to one characters POV per chapter or scene. So, always make sure to check even things that seem evident, because writing terms and advice are notorious for giving short titles to complicated concepts.
If you could give a shout out to someone(s) who has helped in your writer journey, please feel free to mention them below!
My mom, who has always had my back and encouraged me to write. And my bearded dragon Leap, simply because he’s cute.
Where can readers find you on the Internet?
Tiktok: RebekahLWebb
Instagram/threads: pieceofpickledcake
Facebook: rebekah.webb.31
Twitter: story_tweets
BlueSky: rebekahlwebb.bsky.social
Burrows of Blood and Shadow
Horror/Short stories, 2022
An enigmatic entity’s journey to process a trauma he can’t even remember.
The dreamers dream all the time, free to go anywhere, to be anything, to see worlds outside themselves, inside themselves and beyond themselves. The Dream Surfer has no past or memory and can only experience life through the dreams and memories of others. He is stuck in a world of doors and windows leading to quiet lives, where pain and tragedy flow like the inevitable path of gentle streams. There is one spot he refuses to go, a dank corner where burrows dive down to dark and brutal depths.
He yearns to break free of his cage and create an existence of his own. But nothing he’s done so far has brought him closer to freedom. Maybe the key to escape lies where he has so far feared to tread. The Dream Surfer takes the plunge into the depths of the burrows, where he will travel the turbulent current of pain and cruelty intersecting through various narratives. Will this give him the freedom he craves? Or is it just a way to add more chains?
Thirty-seven tales weave together to shape multiple plots, some which dig into literal flesh, while others rip at the flesh of the mind. Neither guilty or innocent, young or old, are safe in this twisting path of mental and physical horrors.
Content notes include Psychological distress, some graphic violence, violence against children derealization, body horror.
Book Excerpt from
Burrows of Blood and Shadow
She floated forever, swimming in place in her glass coffin. Time had never really meant anything to her, being a child of the sea. Her old life was filled with days of filtered sun and nights of womb-like dark, where she would float with her kin in sleep after liquid romps through their watery world. The animals of the sea knew not to harm them, that they were set apart from the world of prey and predator.
Now even that fluid passage of time sea was gone. Light never came to her new prison and so there was no day for her, only endless night. Her universe had shrunk to a box, where no amount of movement would ever take her anywhere. Life had ended and half-life had begun, a world of drifting thoughts and fading memories.
She still had some memories though. She remembered the noise, thick and smooth, embracing her like arms. She remembered the songs of her kin, pure and flexible — always flowing, ever-changing, giving food and comfort, life and love — the essence of her soul.
And she remembered her people, free and gay, riding the currents and speaking the secrets of the sea. Her mate by her side, stronger than the great white, her little daughter trailing behind, brighter than the surface sun and more essential than song.
If only she could remember more. Faces blurred, images dropped away, even names turned cold and fell apart. Her world now could not contain the world before. It was too small to hold such treasures.
Only one memory remained in sharp focus, the one when the mortals from above stole her away. They lured her with a song, one of her kins’, but colder, more distant. She rose up through the water to the sky to find it, to see what made it sound so strange. All she found were surface mortals, riding in their gleaming vessels of driftwood and polished black coral.
They reached down and grabbed her, their hands like a thousand electric eels. The world went black as they pulled her away from the sea, but where her eyes betrayed her, her body did not. Rough gravel tore at her skin and tight, smooth cloth bound her in place.
The next time she could see, it was the darkness of her prison.
She hated the monsters who stole her, who kept her like some sort of prize for reasons unknown, that she would probably never even guess. She was just an object, waiting forever for her fate.
Forever ended too soon.
Blinding light erupted above her, piercing the darkness and bringing pain. Fingers pressed into her flesh and she rose, away from the confines of her tomb and into the cold surface air. She didn’t resist — there was nothing left in her to even try. She allowed them to carry her away and set her on a cold plank.
Images appeared above her, mere outlines against the still-blinding light. Slowly her new world came into view, and she saw several white-robed surface dwellers carrying strange devices that whirled and clicked, hummed and blinked, twisted and spun. Two cold objects clamped over her gills, allowing her to breathe.
One of the monsters bent over her with a spinning device and brought it down to her chest. Pain, stronger and deeper than she had ever felt before, burst forth. She tried to thrash and escape, but her body wouldn’t respond. A scream welled up in her throat and exploded out, but even her voice refused to obey. It stuck at the end of her teeth, like a breath never exhaled.
The device ran down her chest to the top of her tail, grinding into what she could only imagine to be bone. Her silent scream continued to build as another monster pushed a tool deep into her chest and pried apart her ribs.
They prodded her innards and shoved them around as if she were just an interesting collection of kelp. She felt a tug from deep within her gut and saw her intestines rise from her body, agonizing and unbearably slow. The monsters smoothed out the bloody cord still attached to her and spoke to each other in quick words, like barking seals.
Finally, they set her guts aside, pulsating next to her on the icy bed, still pumping with her blood. They moved to her liver and sliced until finally holding it up, careful not to harm it in any way. She saw parts of herself she couldn’t name still keeping it connected to her torso. Why didn’t they just kill her? Why did she have to be alive?
No answer came, and the monsters continued to pull her organs free, never once bothering to detach them from her body or to spare her from the pain that grew at the tip of her teeth. She couldn’t even release the pain through tears; her eyes were immobile and dry.
Stop, please… Just kill me. You don’t need me alive…
One monster lifted her heart, holding it like the daughter she could barely remember. She could hear it beat, a disgusting squelch that seeped through her pain. The monster set it aside and moved toward her face, staring down at her imprisoned eyes.
Please, stop. Kill me. She willed him to see, to understand, to show just a bit of mercy, to set her free. The man continued to stare down at her, and there was something in his eyes. Were those tears?
“She’s very beautiful, isn’t she?” The words meant nothing, his language undecipherable. His voice no longer sounded like a seal, but a lonesome dolphin, haunting and sad, but beautiful. Did he understand? Would he love her? Would he show her mercy?
The monster touched her cheek with his bloodstained hand — her blood — and gently caressed it. He sighed and placed his palms over her gills and ripped objects encasing them away, cutting off her breath and filling her with hope, hope that broke through the pain and promised no more.
She sank back into the darkness that crept along the edges of her eyes, and felt the pain sink away. It was like falling into water, like floating. She pretended she was back with her kin, drifting through the night and dozing in womb-like calm.
* * *
Such an elegant creature. Even in her death, she retained that grace. Too bad she had to leave the world in such a brutal way, separated from the music that gave her life. What was music like? He didn’t put much thought into it. Music was just something he knew of, not something he searched out. Even when he traveled the memories back in the lighter side of his realm, he really didn’t explore much music. Still, the Dream Surfer wished he could have heard the music she described. It was too faded in her memories for even an echo.
And what of the monster? What was the measure of mercy? Did one act after such visceral barbarity even count as compassion? Or was it merely the final selfish act after cruelty, to taste just one breath of kindness, to let it roll around like a pallet cleanser after a heavy meal? Was there even any difference? Did mercy require an act against someone first? Was there a difference between mercy and benevolence? He couldn’t answer any of those questions, no matter how hard he tried.
Was the Dream Surfer capable of mercy? Was he capable of cruelty? Was he capable of anything beyond ruminating about the motivations and actions of others or contemplating the supposed nature of his true self?
Interested?
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