I’m still riding the high from the good people over at The No Sleep Podcast producing my story, “A Guide to the Good Candy in the Neighborhood.” So I’m releasing some bonus content related to the story, including answering some questions I’ve gotten over the last week about the story, as well as a scene from the first draft.
Let’s do this!
How did Bill meet Roman?
Several people have asked me how Bill met Roman; someone even suggested writing it as a prequel or companion story to the main story. I tried to allude to it in the story, but since ‘Good Candy’ was Stef’s story, I didn’t want to spend too many words on it.
The way I see it going down is that Bill is both nosy and confident bordering on arrogant. He hears a rumor that there’s a witch living in his neighborhood, so he goes to check it out. Roman is getting old and needs to find a new vessel for his spirit (and the spirits of everyone he’s possessed before) to inhabit. When Bill comes around, Roman thinks to dazzle Bill into sacrificing himself willingly to become a new vessel. But Bill is not so easily duped and turns the tables on Roman, threatening to expose him, not as a witch but as a child predator, if he doesn’t help Bill take petty revenge on a girl at his school.
The two come to an agreement. Bill quickly identifies Stef as his mark, being the new kid at school, lonely and vulnerable. Roman, meanwhile, plans his revenge on Bill.
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Speaking of which, what did Bill plan to do with the sour ball?
This part of the story is less developed. I kinda leaned on the line from Scream, “There’s always some stupid bullshit reason to kill your girlfriend,” as my justification.
Basically, Bill is the popular, charismatic boy at school. The girl in question pissed him off somehow, but he understands enough about social dynamics that if he overtly does something to her, it could blow up in his face. So, after meeting Roman and discovering that magic is real, he realizes that he can use a spell from Roman to take his revenge on this girl without it being connected to him, at least obviously connected to him.
Bill didn’t intend to kill her. The sour ball and the spell attached to it that’s used in the story was not what he blackmailed Roman for. Roman’s revenge was either going to be what happened in the story, or that Bill would give the sour ball to that poor girl, who would die in front of Bill, implicating him in her murder in a way that couldn’t be traced back to Roman.
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What was Stef’s costume?
This is the second most common question I’ve gotten behind how did Bill and Roman meet.
To be honest though, I didn’t specifically describe the costume in the story on purpose. I enjoyed using enough description–fur, blood, fangs, purple contacts, even the prosthetics that couldn’t be made to work in time–to suggest a costume, but leave it up to the reader to fill in the rest of the picture.
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When I write, there are two main elements that I focus on: characters and plot. Sometimes, I’ll start writing a story with a more solid grasp for one but not the other. This was the case with the first draft of “A Guide to the Good Candy in the Neighborhood.” Rereading the excerpt below, I can see that I left myself threads to follow and develop without a clear idea how any of them would play out.
I started the story in February of 2023. I had the title in my mind, knowing it was a Halloween story about trick or treating. I started with the character trope of the scary old man, a character that had occurred to me as I raked leaves one November day (back when I still did that; leave the leaves). As I wrote the first draft of the story (which I didn’t finish), it veered in a different direction that didn’t have anything to do with the title, Halloween, or trick or treating.
I kept my scary old man in mind though, and continued to poke at the story from time to time. Then, in early 2025, I went back to the notebook to redevelop the idea. Keeping it focused on Halloween and trick or treating, I found the story of Stef, a kid who, like I was at that age, is uncomfortably aware of growing older and losing traditions that make life more magical. Bill is his foil, personification of a world with slick, superficial appeal waiting to take advantage of naive enthusiasm for personal gain. Roman is still the scary old man, but also turns into the old mentor. In the end, I consider the story to have a happy ending (in the way of horror stories) in that Stef finishes the story with a friend who will always be with him, exactly what he wants at the start of the story.
Without further adieu, I give you, the opening scene of draft one of “A Guide to the Good Candy in the Neighborhood.”
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No one knows anything about Mr. Crowder. Not really. Jimmy who lives next door to the old man says that he saw him once. Jimmy was coming home late from a party one night in his junior year and he was blasted to the wind. Mr. Crowder was standing at the fence, one hand on the cross piece, the other holding a cigarette halfway to his mouth, as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of a thought. He was squinting up at the moon with one eye half closed, the other staring off in a different direction.
When Jimmy eased his door closed as quietly as he could, as if his parents weren’t waiting at the window, watching his every move, Jimmy said he saw the eye that wasn’t pointed up at the moon roll in its socket and fix on him. Jimmy said, if he hadn’t already thrown up twice on the way home, he’d have lost his guts right all over the side of the car he was about to lose the keys to.
Mr. Crowder said, half up to the moon, half to Jimmy, “Hope she was worth it.”
Three weeks later, Jimmy learned that he had the clap and was going to be a father. Hell of a way to end the year.
Mr. and Mrs. Barnes didn’t corroborate Mr. Crowder’s presence at the fence that night. Understandable, since their son was coming home three hours past curfew, obviously drunk and stinking of marijuana and teenage hormones.
But Ms. Vandenbrink who lived across the street and a couple houses down and who was a known insomniac, said that almost every night, she’d see a single, wavering light come on in a basement window at the Crowder house, flicker for an hour or so, and then snuff out. This happened every day for about three weeks. This was back when we were having a big problem with rats in the neighborhood. Then, as suddenly as it had started, all the rats seemed to disappear and people started letting their dogs and cats out without fear again.
Ms. Vandenbrink thought that Mr. Crowder had worked some kind of magic to get rid of the filthy vermin.
Jimmy thought it more likely that old man Crowder had called the rats, and when he was done with them, had sent them back to hell.
The rest of the neighborhood, except for Kris Heller, just pointed out that winter was coming and had driven them to hibernation.
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