After a chance encounter with a stranger at her campsite, Trixie inadvertently sends a vampire to menace the small farming town of New Hayshire.
Will the denizens of the peaceful, sleepy farming community be able to stand against the wrath of a monster straight out of old mares' tales? Or are they all doomed to become little more than cattle to slake the vampire's unending hunger?
Tag Update: As the former "Blood/Gore" tag has now been changed to just "Gore", it has subsequently been removed as unnecessary. The story still contains scenes of a vampire feeding on its victims and fairly minor descriptions of wounds/injuries suffered in violent conflict.
Proofreader(s): Book Wyrm (Chapter 1)
Chapters (4)
Since this is a thriller, and maybe not intended as traditional horror, my initial feedback might not be too helpful. But writing horror, for me, is a slow burn. It's a lot of a mystery, because, without jump scares of gut-wrenching images, all we can do as writers is hold the reader in suspense and give them the uncanny feeling of the unknown.
For a first story, this is pretty good. I used to hate the use of ellipses, but I have grown to tolerate and even like them in the past year or so. However, I am of the mind that they should not be overused, and I think that you do overuse it a little for the Starchaser's dialogue. You can allow the narration to suggest that he speaks slowly, to structure your syntax so that he speaks a lot while meaning very little.
The reason why this becomes a problem for the horror aspect is that all writers have to work within a zeitgeist of tropes and cliches. From the slow and shady way he talks, it's already clear that he is the beast. Your writing is all fine, some of the dialogue is cliche but that just changes with style and experience. What you can do to improve is focus more on the personality and symbolism of your character.
You could either focus more on the vampire's feelings; do they hate being a vampire, do they feel lonely as an outcast? Or, you can leave their monstrous nature a mystery (kind of too late after this first chapter, but it's something you can do for the future) and present them as a normal-ish character, the kind that seems to have a perfectly reasonable explanation for their quirks, but something about it all still feels off.
Vampires, and monsters in general, are not horrific because they're dangerous or frightening to look at. Monsters are scary because they reflect something about our human nature. Granted, avoiding the tropes is increasingly difficult so for something as widely popular as the vampire. Not only has it existed in folkloric culture for probably thousands of years, but the vampire is incredibly present modern horror and action pop-culture.
Sorry this was so long, you got me wanting to go more in-depth with this topic, but that is not really relevant to your story and writing. I might write about it in a forum/blog post. If I do, I'll link it for your interest.
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First of all: thanks for the feedback! Much appreciated.
Yes, the absence of a horror tag is quite deliberate. I admit to having had some trouble thinking of proper tags for this one since it's not meant to be a horror story in the traditional sense, nor is it really a dark fic either. I settled on thriller since there is more focus on action and, eventually to some degree at least, how the denizens of New Hayshire will cope with the monster lurking in the nearby woods. I was planning on uploading the second half of the first chapter, well, right this very evening. Maybe that will help provide a clearer picture of what I've been intending for the story to be?
As for the ellipsis, trust me I used to be a LOT worse. I'll definitely keep that point of yours in mind for future reference.
Oh, you shouldn't apologize for that! I rather enjoyed reading through it all and you do have some very valid points.