Twitch of the Death Camp

Check out the original pseudonym - Matt Hadder - a hangover from my college prankster days!

Twitch of the Death Camp began Its life  as a novel called Writing Camp, playing to Its roots as a goofy horror parody. Then it became Haunted as it took on a more serious tone - until Chuck Palahniuk released a horror novel under that title about writers at a retreat together. So that went out the window. Fortunately, I saw the movie Twitch of the Death Nerve around that time, and Twitch of the Death Camp was born!

I had been inspired for a long time to write a camp slasher story. Growing up in the 80s fed me a steady diet of b-rate slashers. I wanted to tell the story from the up close perspective of a single character.

I was on a work trip to Gettysburg, staying in a motel on the outskirts of town by myself. I bought a 12-pack at a nearby store and drove through the graveyard there drinking it. There's not much to do at night there so I was holed up in my motel fairly early. Halloween IV was on AMC, inspiring me to finally start my slasher novel.

It was a lot of fun to write. Eventually, the idea of living in a world full of terror making horror stories no longer scary took hold as I wondered how to make my slasher story actually scary. I thought about how we lived with a permanent fear, and how we might never know who did some horrible act, or catch them. Or get justice. Or revenge. And so Twitch of the Death Camp began to evolve beyond just a re-make of a camp slasher story.