Sam Rebelein: Turning Nightmares Into Fiction
Sam Rebelein holds a BA in English and Education from Vassar College, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, with a focus on Horror and Memoir. His work has appeared in a number of speculative fiction publications, including Bourbon Penn, Planet Scumm, The Deadlands, Press Pause Press, Coffin Bell Journal, The Dread Machine, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, and elsewhere. His debut novel Edenville is releasing this October from William Morrow/HarperCollins, and his follow-up collection The Poorly Made and Other Things will be coming out next year.
He currently lives in Poughkeepsie, NY, with his two dogs. For more about Sam (and pictures of said dogs), follow him on Twitter @HillaryScruff and Instagram @rebelsam94.
Sam Rebelein
In this post, Sam shares how the opening scene of his novel came directly from a nightmare, discusses his experience recording pronunciations of terms for the audiobook, and more.
Name: Sam Rebelein
Literary agent: Claire Harris (P. S. Literary Agency)
Book title: Edenville
Publisher: William Morrow (HarperCollins)
Release date: October 3, 2023
Genre/category: Horror
Elevator pitch for the book: Small town/cosmic horror about a group of creepy English professors who use the stories in one man’s head to build a doorway to another world. Starring sentient sunflowers, strange creatures, an old-timey blood curse, and Tom Jones music.
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What prompted you to write this book?
The opening scene is, almost word for word, a nightmare that I had several years ago. I’ve always had wildly vivid dreams (I can still remember specific details from dreams I had when I was, like, six), so I find myself writing about the power and magic of dreams quite frequently.
The origin of this story was not only that nightmare, but also what the character who has that nightmare does with it. Originally, this was a quiet novel about a narcissistic man and his long-suffering wife. He’s targeted by a cult who tells him he’s special, he’s chosen, and he allows himself to get looped into their agenda. Even though they’re, of course, only using him for their own benefit.
I wanted to explore how narcissism might affect the outcome of a horror story. What do you get when the main character says, “Ohh yeah, this is all about me.” How does that affect some of the psychological elements of the story? That’s the question I wanted to answer, originally.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
About five and a half years! I had the inspirational nightmare in January 2018, but strayed away from it while I built out other stories that took place in the same world. I was really exploring my short story chops back then, and the deity in my nightmare (originally a being called the Pencil Man) became the figurehead of this spooky alternate Hudson Valley I was building through those stories.
I’m from Poughkeepsie, NY, so my fiction all tends to be about small towns and spooky woods. And the Pencil Man lurked somehow under all of that. During my MFA, I actually got kind of a reputation as the Pencil Man guy, because I kept trying to figure out what his place was in my work. I just knew he was important.
But I kept losing focus of my actual Pencil Man story. I had many other in-world shorts that I finished and had published, but Pencil Man eluded me for years. The main characters, Cam and Quinn, were originally married with a son. They went through many iterations, but I kept getting bored of them. Like, I would write a hundred pages of them doing nothing. It wasn’t until I figured out a way to jam them onto another story I was kicking around that I felt like I knew what to do with them.
This other story was about a writing professor who grooms a student and ends up stealing her work, claiming it as his own. I imagined this taking place on campus at a cozy liberal arts joint similar to Vassar College (where I went to college). And once I put Cam in that academic space, I felt like I finally understood his motivations. Quinn went through several more variants. She had a dad who was being possessed, she was investigating secret tunnels under the school, etc. It took several half-drafts before I finally knew what to do with them both.
And even then, it wasn’t until after we were pitching the novel that I pieced it together! Then I really hit a point where I was like, Okay it’s seriously time to figure this out.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Everything has been a surprise so far! Because this is my first novel, every step of the process has been a pleasant surprise.
I guess for me, the most surprising elements have been the fun little chores I never would have thought of. For instance, I had to record pronunciations for all the specific fictional phrases throughout the book, for the audiobook. So I just sat and annunciated about 60 items into my computer as clearly as possible. It was fun seeing that all laid out.
I also got a kick out of seeing the style sheet, where they list all the spellings of these title-specific terms for the copyeditor. That tickled me, but also kicked in my imposter syndrome hardcore. Like, I just BS’ed what a gummerfolk was, but now it’s a real thing. Awesome. So just those times when you really see your ideas come to life—that never gets old.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I mean, I’m surprised I even finished it, to be honest. I’d only gotten through two or three half-drafts of the book when we sold it, so I wasn’t even sure that I could follow through to the end! When I gave the very first draft to my agent Claire, she commented on Cam’s arc, and I thought, I have a character who has an arc? Oh dang, I might actually have a novel here!
Then a few months later, I read it through with a couple actor friends who read all the dialogue for Cam and Quinn. Seeing them play off each other convinced me that I’d actually managed to create three-dimensional characters, because hearing the dialogue in their voices really made it pop for me. Before then, I’d been very worried all my characters were flat.
So if anything, I’m pleasantly surprised that the characters turned out as believable and engaging as they have (if I do say so myself). I will say, too, that I struggled early on to flesh out Cam and Quinn’s relationship. I got lost in pages and pages of backstory for them. And when I finally reduced that to just a couple pages, I realized how little we actually need to be onboard with a character. Like, if a character’s wearing a cool hat and they say something genuinely funny, and they seem like they’re not a total jerk, I think a lot of us are willing to follow them for a few pages at least.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
When the pandemic began, I went back and looked at the stories I loved when I was younger. I think I wanted to really investigate why I became a writer, what kinds of stories got me excited. I started re-exploring works like Goosebumps and Animorphs, movies like The Mummy and Jurassic Park, and I realized that I loved that kind of campy, fun, but perilous style of adventure. I wanted to create that kind of content for adults. Something that felt simultaneously gut-wrenching but relatively light-hearted. I realized that what makes works like The Mummy endure isn’t so much the set pieces, but the characters that navigate them. The wise-cracking smartasses who help us believe that evil isn’t so frightening.
I think I needed that during the last few years. Not only the escape of a good story, but the warmth of those characters to help guide me through it. I needed horrific situations that allowed me to vent some of the anxieties I’d been feeling from the real world, but I needed those situations filtered through voices that could crack jokes, too. Characters like Ian Malcolm make life, even at its most horrific, seem manageable.
So really, I hope Edenville feels like a good ride. There are thrills, chills, and jokes galore. If you need an escape this fall, come on down to Edenville. Just don’t expect to leave in one piece…
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Trust your gut! Defend what you like to the death. Read what brings you joy and tell those stories that bring you joy.
I fought myself for a long time because I was trying to write “what I was supposed to write.” I floundered between memoir, plays, poetry, etc., before I finally calmed down enough to write a fun, bloody adventure that I still get a kick out of, even after working on it for years.