Title: Long Night at Lake Never
Author: Eric David Roman
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 07/12/2021
Length: 50100
Genre: Contemporary Horror, LGBTQIA+, horror, horror fiction, queer horror, queer lit, lgbt horror, gay horror, gay lit, dark horror, revenge, slasher, scary, supernatural, camp horror
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Description
Welcome to Camp Horizons, where they pray all day…and get slayed all night!
Nestled against scenic Lake Never, recently outed Tyler Wills has arrived at the secluded conversion camp, where the delusional staff of counselors believes he and his fellow camper’s queer affliction can be healed solely through the power of prayer.
After a full day spent rallying against sadistic deprogramming therapies, the deranged camp director, and planning his escape, Tyler discovers a larger problem—a mysterious stranger has rolled into camp with a grudge to settle and a very sharp axe.
When night falls, the terror and body count rise. And Tyler, along with his fellow campers, find themselves trapped between a brutal, unrelenting killer and their holier-than-thou prey as they desperately search for a way to survive the Long Night at Lake Never.
Long Night at Lake Never
Eric David Roman © 2021
All Rights Reserved
The official Guides’ uniform at Horizons consisted of a canary-yellow polo shirt with the words Camp Horizons and the same logo from the entrance sign in a small square, stitched in a soft-blue thread on the left breast and khaki pants.
Those bright shirts were what made Guides Matt and Killian easy to spot as they made their way along one of the older trails. Matt stopped, unsure why. The beautiful foliage and tress surrounding them grew more serene and peaceful the further from camp the trail traveled. But the forest also grew denser, and that dense collection of trees worked overtime to make Matt inexplicably nervous. There were always tales about Lake Never, the kind circling in hushed whispers and bedtime stories. There were trails you weren’t supposed to traverse, and areas where one should never camp, but those were just stories. However, he was sure he spotted a dark flash of something, through the trees along the trail—a something he believed to be large, human, and following them.
“Why’d you stop?” Killian asked, annoyed to find Matt lagging a few feet behind him, staring off into the forest.
“I thought I saw something,” Matt explained. He would never have come out this far if not pushed by Killian to do so. The Guide had been relentless pushing them to go further along the trail. Matt peered through the thick branches and brush, trying to catch a second glimpse of the flash he’d seen.
“What did this thing look like?”
Killian stepped up behind Matt without him realizing. “I’m not sure, kinda like a flash, maybe something like a person…maybe.”
“I knew it.” The twenty-four-year-old Killian had gone on daily rounds to check the lesser-used cabins since he’d first spotted a figure by the toolshed, but the shape moved fast, and Killian had failed to catch him. The perpetrator was a person; there was no doubt about that. No animal, even a bear, appeared as a tall, broad-shouldered man bundled in layers of clothing, covered by a hoodie. Killian had theorized at dinner the night before, and again over breakfast that morning his certainty that if the mysterious person walked to and from Horizons, then their camp was based somewhere close and along the trail.
“Is that why you pushed us to come all the way out here, your mysterious stranger theory?”
“Yes.” Killian’s answer was firm. “I know what I saw, and I think they were wearing those clothes that went missing last month. Someone is camping out here, and I’m going to find him.”
Matt threw out a final glance to the spot he’d been focused on and broke away. He wanted to leave, but Killian’s insistence on the intruder being real, plus the flash of whatever it had been behind the tree line, succeeded in creeping him out. “Can we head back now?”
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Eric David Roman.com spent twenty years wandering the wrong paths; he tends to get lost a lot (he’s from Florida). He worked the wrong jobs (as it turns out, streetwalking is not a profession for just anyone) and avoided his true passion—writing, or as he refers to it, devouring sleeves of gluten-free Oreos in a dark closet whilst crying. After hitting a low point while trapped in retail management hell (a harsh rock bottom), he rearranged his thinking (now with 75 percent less anxiety and depression) and switched his focus fully to writing; well, as much as his gAyDD allows. And now, you’re reading his bio, so things are progressing nicely. He is the author of the outrageous novella Despicable People, the new novel Long Night at Lake Never, and multiple upcoming works. Eric remains socially distant in Northern Virginia (don’t stalk him, you’d just be disappointed), where he lives, writes, and loves a mix of all things horror, campy, and queer. He spends the days with his adoring husband and loveable cat (both of whom remain indifferent to his self-proclaimed celebrity).
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