Shivers, Chills, and Goosebumps: How to Write Scary. Entangled Publishing's Halloween Hop

Hi everyone, this is Aleah Barley! Hope you're having a spooky October.

I write funny (I hope) contemporary romances. My first book Too Hot to Handle came out last year, and my next book Leaving Las Vegas is available for presale now.

I don't write horror, but both of my books are quick paced and suspenseful with car chases, standoffs, and explosions. So, how do I write scary?

Scary is visceral.

Scary isn't about saying that June is scared.

Scary is saying:

June quivered nervously.

Scary incorporates the senses:

The taste of bile rose in her throat. The smell of gasoline from was heavy in the air. She couldn't see much, but she could hear the killer's footsteps as he crossed the cramped garage, disturbing centuries old dust.

Scary is about what happens next. What might happen next.

Leaving Las Vegas Blurb and Buy Links!

"I'm so glad what happened in Vegas didn't stay there. A sexy, fun, thrilling romp of a romance that had me alternating between a swoon and laughing out loud."
~Robin Covington, bestselling author of the Boys are Back in Town series.


Find it now at Amazon or at Barnes and Noble!


When West Virginia wild child, Glory Allen enters a private poker game with her town’s dreams at stake she loses it all. To make matters worse, she’s trapped in a car with the sexy but infuriating man who won—and accused her of cheating. Now because of him, she’s on the run from the mafia who put out a hit on the stuck-up casino magnate with the toe-curling good looks—and he isn’t even her type. So why can’t she cool the explosive chemistry between them?

She’s out of control…and she’s enough to drive Luke Tanner crazy. Yet she’s the only one willing to put her neck on the line…for him—a complete stranger she professes to hate. Now he’s in debt…to her. And it’s a debt he’s willing to work off any way she wants…on the hood of his sports car, in a waterfall—wherever she’ll have him, he’s willing to pay the price.But the stakes are raised when they return to West Virginia—helping Luke escape has put Glory and her hometown in the sites of someone who wants him dead. This time Glory decides she’s not going to end up empty-handed—it’s time for the winner to take all and she won’t stop ’til she wins his heart.

Intro to Writing

I haven’t taken a writing class since… ever. The closest I’ve come in the last few years is Candace Haven’s awesome Quick Draft workshop, which is more like the Spanish Inquisition then a learning experience (not in a bad way, swearsies). When I tell people I’m a published author (with Entangled Publishing, go team!) they almost always ask where I learned to write, I fall back on simple truths “I read a lot as a kid” and “I’ve always been a writer.”

However, I did do one of my favorite writing exercises ever in a classroom. Sixth grade. The Arts Impact Middle School in Columbus, Ohio (don’t hate me Michigan, I was only there for a few years!). My English teacher had everyone in class write down how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Then she pulled out a bag of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a knife.

Most people had written things like “Take bread. Add peanut butter and jelly.” Some had gone as far as to add the knife. One kid had thought to open the bag. No one had thought to write the words “Open the peanut butter jar.”

When you’re writing a book, your plot and your characters are like two pieces of dry bread—essential to the sandwich—but you still need some icky, sticky, peanut butter descriptions to keep them together.  

Sometimes you have to open the jar.

Spaghetti Squash Lasagna. Gluten free, Healthy, Incredibly Labor Intensive.

Yesterday I was talking to my mom on the phone (asking for a phone number because, you know, I am a ditz and recently lost my cell) and I told her I'd started cooking two hours ago and probably had another two hours to go.

She asked if I was unwell.

Not so much, I was just making spaghetti squash lasagna which first requires making homemade pasta sauce and preparing spaghetti squash. Then you cut up lots of vegetables and layer it all with cheese. What was supposed to be one lasagna turned into three, and I now have enough food to last until the end of days (and a huge thank you to my boyfriend who put it all away). 

What's your favorite labor intensive food? Do people think you're crazy when you make it? Is it worth it?

Detroit Bittersweet

I sway

Crossing cracked streets and crushing glass beneath my feet.

I sway

In this southern city built so far to the north I can touch the border, on a coast less than a mile wide;

With barbeque, jazz, and moon pie’s on sale now for a dollar ninety five;

Where boys as black as pitch and pale as ash cut their teeth on race relations I can never hope to understand as a recent traveler to this antique zombieland.

I sway

Catcalls and comments washing over my grungy jeans and laundry day shirt.

The motion of my hips moving more men than all the water in the ocean with the selfsame notion that someday I might turn to you. Talk to you. Smile at you. Laugh with you.

This is poetry in motion, you think.

This is the place where violence begins, I know, with the shouts and the winks and the slowing your car down to call out to some strange woman that you have never met. That you will never meet in this fallen city still desperately hanging on to its Motown beat.

But the only way to change the future is one step at a time. Legs stretching out in one long line. Hips swaying as I go about my business, trying not to listen to the sounds of a city that I would so dearly love to love.

Pop Up Detroit

Sushi Sunday and Taco Tuesday.

All the opportunity of a major modern city, here today and gone tomorrow.

Hipsters and handshake deals transforming empty café kitchens into foodie fantasy—

Offer good while supplies last.

Storefronts exclusively open during events giving rise to vents of anger from a populace hungry for glass bottled sodas and screen-printed t-shirts, the opportunity to spend hard earned money more important than the goods you see—

For a limited time only.

 Books and bags replaced with terraforming florists forming a shifting bedrock of society. Rotating concessions making it impossible to plan ahead.

Leaving instead a sense of dread:

The city you wake up to may be not where you said goodnight.

Act now before it’s gone.

 Marvel at a world of maker vision and opportunity—a righteous renaissance constantly anchored by the next bright idea—never thinking of the opportunity cost of investments unmade, buildings unmortgaged, and dues unpaid in a permanent city left to fade away.

Rules to Live By

I was born in the late eighties in Los Angeles, and I’ve come to realize that most of the cute stories from my early childhood were actually the result of my mother looking for free air-conditioning (tip: art museums offer both culture and climate control). Like all kids, I like to think of myself as a rebel. In my case, this means a life spent following my bliss on nights and weekends while I work a day job. With benefits. I’ll never date an alcoholic or move cross country to marry a long distance boyfriend.

And I’ll never own a beagle.

Still, I’ve taken a few of my mother’s rules to heart:

Always buy art.

Always accept collect calls. No matter who or where they’re from.

Never turn away a friend who needs a place to stay. (In my case, they’ll be staying on the five foot long couch in my shoebox size studio apartment).  

Live like you mean it.