HBT - Guest post with author Amanda Ashby

Today's Haunted Blog Tour post will be a guest post from author Amanda Ashby. She has written the YA novel, Zombie Queen of Newbury High.

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In order to help celebrate The Haunted Blog Tour I thought I’d talk about the scariest book that I’ve read. In fact it’s the ONLY scary book that I’ve read because after finishing it I realized that I could NEVER go through that again. And the book I’m talking about? Why it’s The Shining by Stephen King of course.

Even thinking about it makes me want to curl up into a ball and hide somewhere. I mean that book is so scary that you could read it on a sunny beach and still want to scream your head off. Unfortunately, I did not read it on a sunny beach. Instead, I made the mistake of reading it when I was seventeen years old and was babysitting for some of my parents’ friends.

And did I mention that these people lived in a really old farmhouse that was on top of the hill in the middle of some Australian bush? Trust me, being in a really old farmhouse on top of a hill in the middle of some Australian bush definitely isn’t the best place to read The Shining.

Even worse, after the kids went to sleep, I made the mistake of sitting on the couch to read. Unfortunately, the couch was in the middle of the room and so I had no wall behind me, plus it was on four little legs, which meant there was a space below it as well. Now none of this sounds too creepy when it’s daylight, but trust me, by about eleven at night (don’t forget the isolated old farmhouse/big hill scenario) I suddenly realized that sitting on the couch in the middle of a room is not a good place to be.

However, by that time it was too late and I was so completely petrified that I quite literally couldn’t get off the couch. Nor could I stop reading the book because every time I tried, all the freaky noises just started to sound louder and freakier and scared me even more. And so I was stuck on the couch reading The Shining until the people finally came home at two in the morning. By the time they did get home my nerves were completely shot and not only did I never go out there to babysat again, I never read another Stephen King book either. Even seeing the movie with the wonderfully terrifying Jack Nicholson didn’t scare me half as much as that book.

Of course I did feel slightly better when I watched Friends a few years later and discovered that Joey was also scared of The Shining and that he used to put it in the freezer when he got to a scary bit. But of course even if I’d known about the freezer back then, I still would’ve been stuck on the couch with no way of getting the book in there.

So has anyone else read a book that completely terrified them? I can assure you that I won’t be reading any of them, but I’d still love to hear what they are. And there is a copy of my book Zombie Queen of Newbury High up for grabs – which I promise is completely safe to read even if you are stuck on a couch in the middle of an old farmhouse on a hill!!!

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Thanks so much for the entertaining guest post Amanda! As surprising as it sounds, after reading this it actually makes me want to read The Shining.
And yes, her last paragraph is correct. There will be a contest tomorrow to win a copy of her book! Hope you're all enjoying my Haunted Blog Tour. :)