Bennytown

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For nearly sixty years, Bennytown has been America’s most exciting family theme park destination. Under the watchful eye of cultural icon Benny the Bunny, the park has entertained generations of children with its friendly atmosphere and technologically innovative rides, acting as a beacon of joy and wonder, where magic is real and dreams come true.

 

Bennytown once saved sixteen-year-old Noel Hallstrom’s life, and to repay it, Noel has applied for a summer job. Though the work is messy and the hours are bad, Noel is happy to be a part of the Bennytown family, until he sees the darkness beneath the surface. Strange, mechanized mascots walk the park perimeter. Elegantly dressed cultists in wooden Benny masks lurk in the darkness. Spirits of the many who’ve died in the park roam freely, and every night the park transforms into a dark dimension where madness reigns and monsters prowl.

 

Noel is about to find out more about Bennytown than he ever wanted to know, and that its darkness might have designs on him.

read an excerpt...

The third escalator is the longest, looking like a black cut has opened in the earth before me. Carefully and quickly, I bound down the steps.

 Halfway down, Benny starts laughing over the speakers with a mechanical, staticky roar. His voice mingles with what sounds like a man whistling. The steps shake beneath me as the escalator jolts downward, twisting me off balance. The dolly flies from my hands, tumbling end over end down the moving steps. My arms reach out wildly for purchase, and I grab one of the rubber handrails, slowing my fall, but not stopping it.

 I land on my back, upside down with the wind knocked out of me. I try to ignore the stabbing pain from the steps while Benny interviews Flora Fox about her upcoming movie over the loudspeakers.

 The voices are shrill and the pain rings in my ears so loudly that I don’t realize there’s a humming sound coming from the bottom of the escalator.

 The dolly lies at the edge of the disappearing final steps, tumbled and with a gouge in one of its wheels and a yellow sticker I’ve never noticed on the bottom of its scoop. In front of the dolly, I’m staring straight at the escalator’s base with welcoming spikes ready to swallow my hat, my scalp, and my face. I can picture the flesh being peeled from my bones. I try to claw my way out of my sprawl, but my hands are slick from sweat and rain.  My fingers can’t find anything to grip on the polished escalator sides. The motor is getting louder while the grinding vibrates the steps beneath me.

 Wordlessly, I cry out, attempting to twist and fight my way free.

about Matt Carter...

Matt Carter has used his lifelong love for writing, history and the bizarre to bring to life novels

like Almost Infamous: A Supervillain Novel, Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir, and the Prospero Chronicles young adult horror series (all co-authored with Fiona J.R. Titchenell). Bennytown,is his first solo horror novel. 

He is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel and lives in the usually sunny town of San Gabriel, CA with his wife, their pet king snake Mica, and the myriad of strange fictional characters and worlds that live in his head.

 https://owlhollowpress.com/bennytown/

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https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6599726.Matt_Carter?

https://twitter.com/MCarterAuthor

  Buy links:

Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Bennytown-Matt-Carter/dp/1945654538/

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bennytown-matt-carter/1136895043?

Kobo:https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/bennytown

IndieBound:https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781945654534

 

 more personal "stuff" about Matt Carter...

Does this book have a special meaning to you? i.e. where you found the idea, its symbolism, its meaning, who you dedicated it to, what made you want to write it?

 I grew up in Southern California, surrounded by some of the best theme parks in America, so as a kid I was definitely fascinated with them. As I grew up and my interests became a little more morbid, I became interested in some of the darker stories and urban legends associated with various theme parks. Then, when I was 16, I got my first summer job selling ice cream at Universal Studios Hollywood, stayed there for two years, and, well, I think Bennytown was an inevitability. All of these memories and experiences were something that I knew I’d do something with someday (probably a horror story of some variety), and this is the result.

 Where do you get your storylines from?

 Everywhere, really. From favorite movies and TV shows that get the creative gears turning in my brain, to things going on in the world around us, to history, even to the limited life experiences I can boast of that still manage to never leave my memory and inspire more works.

 Was this book easier or more difficult to write than others?  Why?

 While there was nothing about this book that inherently made it difficult to write, there were a fair few issues that came up along the way that made it one of my most difficult to write. First off, I had a hard time establishing its scale and managed to change the outline close to a dozen times in the process of writing it. From there, a lot of the difficulties came after it got picked up, and I had to make a lot of edits that would make it readable beyond my oft rambling style.

 The biggest difficulty, though, came from matters of life and death, honestly. I began writing Bennytown in mid-2015, and was having a pretty good time of it. That changed on New Year’s Eve later that year, when my father passed away unexpectedly. I was more than a little traumatized by the experience, and it made writing a book about death and destruction and life after death not exactly a thrilling prospect. I set it down for a long time after he passed, uncertain if I would ever pick it up again. I did, though, and I’m happy I did, as it became a weirdly therapeutic experience amidst its horrifying content. Sometimes a little fictional fear can make real ones not so bad.

 Do you only write one genre?

 While I tend to lean in the direction of being a horror author, I don’t work exclusively within the genre. I have written sci-fi and superhero stories in the past, as well as dabbling in some YA and humor. I try to be a jack of all trades when it comes down to it, since it tends to help when a random idea comes along that I might want to give a try.

 

Give us a picture of where you write, where you compose these words…is it Starbucks, a den, a garden…we want to know your inner sanctum?

 It may sound terribly dull to state that I’m working on an IKEA desk that is covered in bills and paperwork, but that is indeed the case. It is a comfortable desk, and I’ve a comfortable chair, and it’s not without its embellishments to give it a little extra spice; a few choice Funko figures here, all being overlooked by a framed poster for John Carpenter’s The Thing above the desk. Usually there is a cup of coffee, and maybe a little creative madness to go around. Pretty standard stuff, I would assume.

 And finally, of course…was there any specific event or circumstance that made you want to be a writer?

 Ah, I was always destined to be a writer. Dad always used to tell me that we came from a long line of storytellers, and I think I definitely got that trait. Ever since I was little I was making up stories and adventures for my favorite toys, and that evolved in time to the written word (and maybe a few creative stories about what might or might not have happened to my report cards), and then one day just realizing that I wanted the world to see my words and doing what I could to make that possible.

 

 

 

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