By Kayla Hayes
Out of FishHawk comes a new published author by the name of Steve Soderquist, 47, whose Horror/Thriller novel Farm House has been receiving positive feedback. A five-star review on Horror-Web.com describes it this way: “Farm House is not just a story, it is an experience in terror.”
Farm House may be a bit too ‘honest’ for my taste, but after delving into the 214 page novel I found it difficult to stop reading, despite the uneasiness I felt in doing so. But what is a good horror novel for, if not to instill discomfort in the reader? Soderquist wastes no time ‘fluffing’ out his characters before pulling us immediately into their stories, only to share their dark and dismal pasts with us as we propel forward in the novel. He describes the main character, Crystal Christiana, as a “one-woman-wrecking-machine” whose motives for being so are alluded to on the very first pages of the novel. While the basic plot of Farm House may sound familiar – an outraged young woman seeks vengeance with those who caused her pain at a young age – there are certainly twists with Crystal that lead to (more than) surprising events in the novel. Crystal’s vengeance has been carefully calculated for the past 11 years of her life.
Farm House is a work of fiction, but many elements of the general setting relate to Soderquist’s personal experience, such as the farm house itself. The idea for Farm House hit Soderquist while he was finishing his first novella One For The Road on a large property in Michigan, where he resided alongside eight good-hearted young adults between the ages of 19 and 24 years. He wasn’t looking for a new story to write, but wondered what would happen in a scene like that when one unstable element (Crystal Christiana and her relationship with the farm house owner, “Mama K.”) was thrown into the mix – and the story began to write itself.
Soderquist admits to being unsettled himself while writing the novel. “There were times when I had to take two to three days off because it was so disturbing.” Farm House is available for purchase at damnationbooks.com or on Amazon. For more information on Soderquist and his work, visit www.geomancor.wix.,/stevesoderquist.
