When she was a little girl, horror scribe Cheyenne Leo experienced her first spine shivering moment. However, it wasn’t a fictional account told through one of her stories, but was a real-life occurrence that took place inside a pen full of swine.
It happened while she was visiting a farm belonging to her mom’s friend.
“There were all these cute little piglets running around in a pen with their moms and I wanted to see them, but I was too small, so someone picked me up and put me up on the side of the pen to stand where I could see,” recalls Leo, adding it was rainy that day, making the pen slippery.
“I fell in. The mother pigs swarmed me, protecting their piglets, and stomped all over me and bit me, grabbed me and whipped me around. Someone jumped in and pulled me out, and I was all right, but very, very scared and ever since I have been absolutely terrified of pigs.”
That feeling of terror is the impetus of the Cherryville author’s new novel, Summertime: A Tale of Horror and Suspense, published by Shorehouse Books based in Philadelphia, PA.
The story centers on four friends who become stranded during a camping trip in a forest somewhere in rural B.C. and soon realize they are not alone in the woods.
“Summertime is about a genetically engineered monster that is kept as a murderous pet of a cannibalistic man hiding around an old glacier lake in an old growth forest,” said Leo. “The whole point of the book is that you don’t know what the monster is until the end, or what his purpose is. That is where I manufacture the suspense.”
This isn’t Leo’s first foray in the horror genre. At age 22, she has already published a full serial novel called Willow Creek and she also publishes a weekly, free newsletter that comes out through her brand, Darkness Reigns (darknessreigns.blog.com).
Leo started putting words to paper as soon as she learned to read at the age of two. She was first published at the age of nine for her poetry, and her first fictional story was published when she was 18.
It was while visiting the library with her parents that she became interested in the horror genre.
“I used to sneak horror books out because they looked interesting — all hard covers and glossy fronts and secretive looking pictures,” she said. “My mom always caught me with them. She didn’t like me being into horror, so she would take them away. She didn’t like me watching horror movies either, but my dad would sneakily let me watch them all the time.”
As a teen, Leo was entered in the native education program at Charles Bloom Secondary School in Lumby. After graduating, her family did not have the money for her to attend a traditional college so she became involved with the United Nations and took courses through Alison University in English literature and graphic design.
She also worked as a web content writer.
“I worked for small businesses internationally, as well as big corporations like Facebook and Google. They used my articles to drive up traffic to their site. I have spent many years publishing poetry, and enjoy writing children’s stories and academic things sometimes as well,” she said.
However, it’s the horror genre where she feels most at home.
An admirer of authors such as Stephen King and R.L. Stine, Leo says she carefully plots out and researches the storylines for all her horror novels over a period of months and sometimes years.
She also draws inspiration for the setting of her books from the local area.
“Obviously, I have to change the names of places to stay legal and above board, but in truth, all of my books are set in Vernon, Cherryville and Lumby and right here around my house on the Shuswap hill,” she said. “Also, I only write and publish in Canadian English. My American publisher has had to learn to compensate. If they don’t, I will move on to someone who will… Only Canadian spelling and grammar rules.”
A practitioner of Wicca, Leo also gives paranormal advice through her Darkness Reigns site and through her social media contacts. Lately, she has been helping her mom, who is disabled, market her new jewelry line, the Mad Beader, which sells some of the Darkness Reigns jewelry designs.
“We’re just opening the online shop. Till now we have only been selling locally,” said Leo.
Summertime: A Tale of Horror and Suspense is available in print on demand, which Leo says is for environmental reasons, at all Amazon sites, Barnes and Noble, Chapters/Indigo, Abes books, and for order from Bookland in Vernon.
You can also follow Leo on Twitter at @cheyenneleo18.
