G R E AT L I F E | W R I T E R S
“I am hoping that after reading the book people will have an appreciation for horror. Because it’s not all Stephen King. It’s not just about making your heart beat fast.”
HORROR,
HE WRITES STORY BY JOSIE RANDALL | PHOTOS BY SERGEI BELSKI
I
t would be as early as 2 a.m. on a school night when Caillou Pettis would finally peel his eyes away from yet another horror fiction novel. He’d lay in bed staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes scared straight. Other times, inspired to write his own horror anthology. “I kind of wanted to write a book for as long as I can remember,” says Pettis, who was born and raised in Airdrie. “When I was younger, I used to read a lot of the young-adult style horror books. Like Goosebumps, Fear Street and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Those books were crazy to me, but they were also very easy to read. I always kind of thought it would be cool if one day I could write a story like that.”
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S U M M E R 2022
Over the years, Pettis took inspiration from everywhere. Random pictures on the internet, people he met on the street and strange things that happened to him while growing up. Eventually Pettis locked himself to a desk for four months to write While You Sleep. It was released in March 2022, and is available on Amazon and Kobo. He describes it as 10 pulse-racing stories all set in the fictional city of Newryst — one of the most terrifying places known to mankind. “I wanted to create a diverse selection of stories. So for example one is about sleep paralysis, one is about this kid who wakes up in this room and he has no idea how he got there and has to find clues to get out,” says Pettis.
