I’ve been quietly but quickly whittling away in the lab the last couple of months on a new horror novel manuscript that fits into a subgenre called “liminal spaces horror” that’s niche but very popular at the moment.

So what is a liminal space? You can find any number of descriptions of physical or emotional liminal spaces, but let’s go with the Wikipedia definition, which catches both the physical and emotional state of being:

A place or state of change or transition; this may be physical (e.g. a doorway) or psychological (e.g. the period of adolescence). Liminal space imagery often depicts this sense of “in-between”, capturing transitional places (such as stairwells, roads, corridors, or hotels) unsettlingly devoid of people. The aesthetic may convey moods of eeriness, surrealness, nostalgia, or sadness, and elicit responses of both comfort and unease.

Wikipedia

The physical liminal space in my manuscript is a network of steam tunnels underneath a university campus. The emotional liminal space is the period of transition of my main characters, three college friends a few days from their graduation confronting both their past together and the uncertain future.

Ok, so the liminal space trope is fun for me as a writer to explore and nerd out on, but what’s this story actually about? Here’s the pitch I’ve just started sending to literary agents in hopes we can get this thing represented and ultimately published!

Steam doesn’t move like an animal’s breath. Sounds don’t hunt prey. The past can’t haunt you, not literally. But there are forces at work in the U Tunnels that will make you see things you’d rather forget.

When three soon-to-be college graduates seek one last adventure together in the steam tunnels under campus, they’re confronted by disturbing secrets from their past and discover the truth behind a student’s suicide their freshman year. Lost in the labyrinthine tunnel system and looking for an escape, Jeff, Amanda and Boner keep stumbling into surreal scenes that hold a haunting familiarity. Amanda relives emotional challenges faced after transitioning gender in school while Boner is confronted by generational trauma his family endured under the oppression of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. But it is Jeff’s past that pursues them all, slowly revealing the responsibility each must bear for the girl’s death.

At a tight 50,000 words, U TUNNELS is like the movie PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN meets Stephen King’s IT — a carefully crafted, slow burn of a revenge plot carried out by a woman who’s already dead. The target audience is young and new adults as well as any fan of liminal space and psychological horror. It would appeal to Stephen Graham Jones readers or those who have discovered Stephen King horror classics and wonder what’s next. Comparable titles include Jones’ THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS and NIGHT OF THE MANNEQUINS, THE MIDCOAST by Adam White, and ALL THE WHITE SPACES by Ally Wilkes.