12/31/2025 Author Notes Series: ZIPPERS

Zippers is one of my favorite stories and I've not done a note on it yet so here we go. I've mentioned a few times how some of my ideas come from my kids, and I'll be honest, most of my more bizarre stories come from their ideas, not all... but most, so far. LOL.

Zippers is essentially a story based on the mannerisms, dark humor, and intrusive thoughts of my oldest daughter, whom most of you know as Katie, but in fact, her full name is Katrina. She is the Katrina in the story. We bonded throughout her life over horror movies, serial killer documentaries, and ghost-hunting trips with my parents, it's not impossible to see where some of our influences may have come from.

Her sense of humor is every bit as dark and twisted as mine is, so Zippers came from that trait in us both. I believe it began as a conversation we had in which she was breaking down how she would do things if she was a serial killer like Ed Gein, and thus the skin suit idea came into play. At some point after much hilarity ensued, she stood up and demonstrated how she would walk if she were to be in a skin suit. Thus, the cover was born. And the cover may be my most unsettling cover to date.

The skin is too big, a bit floppy, a little saggy, zippered all weird and twisty, the face seems to be melting off. I've had more than one reader dm me about the cover, and that was before they read the story! I always get a chuckle out of that.

But the story is oddly tender, emotional, and gut-wrenching, despite how unhinged Katrina is. One of my traits as an author, is letting the reader see the villain as a person, their origin story of sorts, even if only in snippets. More often than not, the one thing we don't always get to see in a horror movie or horror story, is what made the villain the way they are. Clearly, in most cases, something happened to them at some young age that broke an innocent psyche. I like to expose that, to force the reader past the horror and past the insanity, to feel empathy for the killer, even when they don't want to.

Zippers is dark, very dark, and its graphic. At some point while writing this, I entered my zone, my writing zone where it's just the words and the keys, nothing else exists in that space except the story. So, the last half of the book begins to rhyme like a lunatic Dr. Suess wrote it. (Because, poetry is my authentic voice, it's my first voice, so when I zone out, you get poetry.) Thanks to that, you get a little humor in it as well, but overall, you get a really disturbing story about a young woman who just wants a hug.

Get it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Zippers-Candace-Nola-ebook/dp/B0CW4PV27F