McKenzie Rae's Blog: McKenzie Rae's Crazy, Creepy, Sad but Fun World of Writing

I've always been a little torn about proclaiming my favorite season to be autumn. On the one hand, I love the way the leaves change colors, I love the cooler temperatures, and I love sweaters and coffee.


On the other hand, allergies. All of the allergies. They try to suffocate me in my sleep. But I do still love the fall. I'm an October baby, so associating my birthday with Halloween really helped cement my love for this time of year.

That's part of why I loved writing My Dark Passenger, as well as the other two books in the trilogy. I've always loved things that were creepy, dark, and defied logic (at least on the surface). To this day, I haven't experienced anything that I couldn't explain, but there's a part of me that wants to. Maybe not something traumatizing like what Wolf in My Dark Passenger experiences, because his life kind of gets upended after his weird encounter. I just want something to happen to me, or near me, that makes me scratch my head and wonder.


If any of you have had an experience like that, I'd love to hear it. I like to think I'm the perfect balance of open-minded and skeptical. At the very least, those stories fuel my imagination and help me to write more eerie books!


For those of you who haven't read or heard of My Dark Passenger, here's the blurb:


Kevin Wolf is driving back to his hometown when he spots a teenage girl hitchhiking on a remote highway. Concerned for her safety, Wolf offers her a ride through the night, but the girl remains enigmatic, refusing to reveal her name, origin, or destination.


Strange occurrences unfold in her presence. She evades Wolf's attempts to involve the police, and her company disturbs everyone but him. Adults avoid her, children react with fear, and crows shadow her every step. Meanwhile, Wolf is plagued by recurring nightmares of a faceless figure driving his truck.


Their journey leads them unwittingly into a monster’s lair when they arrive at his hometown amidst a Halloween festival. It soon becomes clear that the girl harbors secrets that may endanger them both.


My Dark Passenger explores an eerie world where reality blurs with the unseen. A world that is inextricably linked with our own.

Well, it's September which means that it's basically Halloween.

Back in 1937, the city where I lived the first three years of my life officially claimed the title Halloween Capital of the World. But Anoka, Minnesota had Halloween spirit well before that, putting on a costume parade all the way back in 1920. Being a spooky October baby, this is one of my favorite bits of local history.

Growing up around a town that throws a big party every Halloween inspired the Fall Festival, a fictional event in a fictional town found in My Dark Passenger. When I set out to write this book, I really wanted to capture the essence of October. I wanted the town of Birchwood Lake to feel like a cross between downtown Anoka and the apple orchard my family used to visit every year.

When My Dark Passenger was first published (because this is a second-edition relaunch), I was told that I succeeded in capturing the unique feeling of "fall," and I hope that reader was right. While the book isn't really what I would call scary, there's an eeriness that stays with you - which is exactly how I feel about the month of October.

I hope y'all are ready for Halloween, because My Dark Passenger gets a new life on October 22, 2024. Or, if you're into paperbacks, you can pre-order a physical copy which releases on September 16, 2024.

My Dark Passenger

I am cursed.

It’s been a running joke in my family for years that technology will eventually start doing weird things around me. I’ve had one phone die under mysterious circumstances that not even the guys at T-Mobile could explain. I’ve had an iPod that was so glitchy, I couldn’t bear to listen to it anymore, only to have it miraculously heal itself a month later. Back when I worked a desk job, my computer and all of my test devices completely stopped charging one day; I later discovered that my cubicle was the only one in the entire office that had lost power for unknown reasons.

This past week, I had another phone suddenly go bad.

It had been charging all night long, only to be completely dead and unresponsive to all chargers the next morning. So, I put on my big-girl pants and took it to the T-Mobile store as soon as they were open for business. Nothing the guy at T-Mobile did would turn on my phone, so he sent me to another store that specialized in cell phone repairs.

Now, I am a directional idiot, and the shopping center I went to is a maze of twisting, winding roads and a convoluted network of interconnecting parking lots. Because my phone refused to turn on, I couldn’t rely on Google Maps to take me to this other store. I could only go off of the T-Mobile guy’s vague directions and pray that I would eventually find my way there.

Onto the cell phone repair store. An employee there was able to turn on my phone, but only once he’d hooked it up to a special power source which allowed him to some certainty that I probably had a bad battery. They, however, did not have any batteries for my phone in stock. So, I was sent to yet another store with more vague directions and no GPS.

Thankfully, I made it to the battery store, and they had the kind of battery I needed in stock.

For almost a whole week, my phone successfully charged. And then, one miserable Wednesday morning, it was mysteriously dead once again. I’m not proud to say that I let this ruin my day. It was the cherry on top of an already eventful and stressful week, and I had reached the point where I was just done.

Then I unplugged the cord from the wall, and my phone suddenly decided it actually would turn on. And it wasn’t even dead! It still had half the battery left!

Now, as of this Thursday, my phone seems to have stopped charging again. Technology failing me is one of those things that gets under my skin like no other. What’s something that makes you guys want to scream your anger and frustration into the void?

The Anxiety Monster is real, but he’s not what you think he is.

He lives in the dark, only vaguely visible as a terrifying silhouette. You can’t really see what he looks like, but you know he’s there, creeping closer to you. The only way to see the Anxiety Monster is to turn on the light. To do that, though, you would need to walk around him and find the light switch. And you can’t move, because you’re terrified that the monster will get you if you do.

If you turned on the light, this is what you would see:

The Anxiety Monster isn’t actually a giant creature that looms over you and plots your demise. The monster is really just the size of a mouse, but he’s been using the shadows to fool you into thinking that he’s bigger than he is.

But you’ll never know that, unless you turn on the light. Because the Anxiety Monster thrives in the dark.

This week, the Anxiety Monster was getting to me, and it took an unbiased third party to flip the light switch. I’m not someone who packs my weeks and weekends full of activities. If I have ONE thing going on in the day, then that’s it. I’m not planning anything else. For, this has been a full week (and it won’t be over by the time this post gets published).

I’ve got one meeting, one babysitting gig, one church event, one birthday party, one trip with friends in 4th of July traffic, and I just found out that my aunt and uncle will be visiting over the weekend as well.

As of writing this, I’ve only checked the meeting off of my list. But before I went to my meeting, I was stewing over my full schedule. My stomach was in knots, and I told myself, “Just get through it one day at a time.”

Right before my meeting, my palms were sweaty and I could feel my heartbeat in my throat. Here came the Anxiety Monster--because I didn’t know what to expect. Because I had questions about this thing that I had volunteered to do but had no experience with yet. I was in the dark, right where the monster wanted me to be.

It wasn’t until near the end of the meeting, after my group leader had led a calm and organized discussion and had happily answered all of my questions, that I relaxed. I relaxed and realized that my group leader had turned on the light and showed me just how small and pathetic the Anxiety Monster really was.

This meeting that I had been nervous about wasn’t actually a big deal. In fact, it was a very small deal. Something that my mind had blown out of proportion so gradually that I hadn’t noticed what it was doing until the event had passed and the world hadn’t ended.

The Anxiety Monster lives in the dark, because if you knew how small and inconsequential he was, you would never fear him. But lucky for the monster, human memories can be faulty.

That’s the kicker, isn’t it? That, even though I know how unimportant half the things I stress over truly are, I still fall for the Anxiety Monster’s trick. I still stand motionless in the dark, too afraid to walk around the monster and turn on the light.

In the process of doing a deep-clean of my bedroom this week, in preparation to paint the walls, I came across this note that was hidden at the bottom of a dusty, dirty basket. It had been a little bit of an overwhelming day, and this was just the thing to cheer me up.

Based on my handwriting, and the E at the end of Kenzi, I’m guessing that I wrote this sometime in high school. Seeing the phrase, “From the mind of: Kenzie Swenson” immediately piqued my interest. Really, that could mean anything. However, I never would have guessed what was inside this note. I’ve never considered myself a poet, but inside this note was a poem. Here it is:

“The white porcelain seats when marred with neglect.

Scandalous tales of unfaithful lovers and significant others

as well as pointless opinions of cinematography, esteemed published works, and sex.

A whirlpool of earthy color escapes into the maze of pipes."

It took me about ten seconds of consideration to figure out what the poem was about--and really I don’t know what else I would’ve expected of a poem written by high school Kenzi. It’s a poem about a stall in a public restroom.

Why? Nobody knows. I’m just going to enjoy the fact that it exists.

For most of my life, I’ve never been someone who liked spiders. It wasn’t until a few summers ago that my weird spider love took root in me. Most of the time, when I saw a spider, I ran in the opposite direction (and sometimes, I still do). But a couple of summers ago, my mom noticed these big grass spiders had made their webs on the siding of our house and in the decorative wagon wheel under the kitchen window.

For the fun of it, I suggested that we name them. So, we jokingly named the ones we could see. Gradually, we found more and more grass spiders living on the outside of our house, and we named those ones too.

After a while, I caught myself checking up on them and talking to them when I went outside. It’s funny how giving these creepy, crawly spiders names and talking to them like I would to my cat really endeared them to me. These days, I’m not nearly as afraid of spiders as I used to be.

I took this personal experience and incorporated it into my part of an entwined anthology that I’m a part of. My character in that book tries to take away her fear of things by giving them a name and making them known--taking away the mystery and ambiguity of the things that she fears by giving them names--which I kind of feel like is what I did with spiders.

It seems to me that most writers are sort of neurotic. Is there any writer, famous or unknown, that doesn’t have a few demons hidden away in their closet?

I’ve been dealing with anxiety this week, and that always affects my writing--mainly by making it next to impossible to focus on whatever book I’m currently working on. This week, my babysitting schedule changed slightly, I got confirmation that I’ll start learning some new skills to volunteer in a different area at my church, I unexpected spent an afternoon with an injured friend in the emergency room, I’m attending a dinner party where I won’t know everyone, and I also had a panicky moment where I thought I had completely forgotten about and missed a commitment I’d made the previous week.

Oh, and I almost freaked out in a Walmart because social anxiety is a thing, and I didn’t want to talk to an employee to help me get a bottle of makeup remover.

All of that leads to a spiral of general worries about the future, which in turn leads to me tossing and turning at night, unable to sleep.

I think something that perfectly sums up my current state of mind is the fact that I picked an entire mole off of my arm. I have a bit of a compulsive skin picking problem, but this is the first time that I’ve picked at and peeled off a mole.

But one bright spot this week was seeing my little cousins laugh as I tossed pieces of popcorn into the air and caught them in my mouth. So, if you’re like me and you’re a nervous wreck of a person, you’re in good company. And hang onto those silver linings.

I take a lot of walks in the summer, which was what I did on Sunday afternoon. My grandpa had come home with my family to eat lunch with us, and at the point where this story begins, it was that post-lunch time where everyone has gone to their separate corners of the house to either watch TV or to take a nap.

Little did I suspect what was waiting for me at home as I wrapped up my walk.

While I was gone, my mom had gone into the upstairs bathroom and spotted a wad of brown hair in the shower drain. There are three girls in our house who have long brown hair, so finding a clump of hair in the shower drain was not unusual. Thinking nothing of it, my mom reached into the tub to pick up the clump of hair.

It was then that she realized it wasn’t hair she held in her hand. It was a big ol’ spider.

What does one do when they accidentally pick up a big spider? The correct response is to chuck said spider across the room. However, upon closer inspection, my mom discovered that the spider was dead. So, she picked it up with a napkin, and her first thought was: “I should show Kenzi.”

As some of you may or may not know, I developed a love of spiders last summer. I started naming the grass spiders that lived on the outside of our house, and gradually, they became my creepy little babies. I checked in on them every day and stopped to talk to them. Ever since then, small spiders haven’t seemed quite as scary as they used to be. I have even called tiny jumping spiders cute.

It was as my mom was walking down the stairs in search of me that I walked into the house. Perfect timing, right?

She drew me out of the kitchen by saying, “Kenzi, come see what I found in the shower!”

Poor, unsuspecting daughter that I was, I met her on the stairs and saw this:

Meet Sauron the spider. He looks like he crawled straight out of Mordor. And yes, I realize that we missed a giant spider LotR reference, but we had already named a spider Shelob last summer. Couldn’t have a repeat.

After freaking me out (because there’s only so far my weird spider love will go), my mom set this guy on a counter in our kitchen. As grossed out as we both were, we were also insanely curious. Where I live, you don’t often see spiders this big. We took pictures, got out a magnifying glass, and measured it with a ruler (its body was about 1 inch in length). In our efforts to identify what kind of spider Sauron was, my mom even got a flat paper towel and flipped his body over. She also put her finger right next to him for scale.

Right after my mom laid a quarter down next to Sauron (again, for scale), I heard my mom gasp and say, “It’s not dead!”

To which my response was, “What?!” I could no longer see the spider since I had sprinted to the other side of the kitchen as soon as she said that.

“I saw it move! It stretched out a leg!”

Cue the hysterical screaming from me. To give you guys some perspective: we don’t live in a huge house, but there are two levels plus a basement. My grandpa, who was in the downstairs bathroom at the time, heard my screaming through two walls and a closed door. And later, my brother said to me, “So, I take it the spider was still alive? I was on a call upstairs when I heard the screaming.”

Yes, Sauron was still alive. My mom carefully picked up the paper towel and delivered him outside to the front yard. He definitely wasn’t 100% healthy, though. This is where things get icky.

Some context first:

The girlfriend of one of my brothers lives with us (one of the three women in the house who has long brown hair). Unlike me, she has zero love of spiders. Not even cute little jumping spiders. She also volunteers at our local hospital on Sundays, and she doesn’t get home until the middle of the afternoon. On this particular Sunday, she came home and took a shower in the upstairs bathroom.

It was not long after that that my mom discovered Sauron half drowned in the tub.

Meaning that Sauron and my brother’s girlfriend were almost definitely in the shower at the same time.

With each other.

And she had no idea.

When I told my brother that we didn’t kill the spider--just dumped him out in the lawn--his eyes got big and he whispered to me, “We never speak of this again!”

So, everyone in the house knows about the spider incident except for his girlfriend, and we’re all sworn to secrecy. The only reason I feel confident posting this story is because I know for a fact that she’s not on any social media platforms. And I’m 99.99% positive that she doesn’t read this blog.

The takeaway that my mom got from this incident was: “We found out how far your weird spider love goes. And it ends at big-ass spider.”

I grew up with this tiny orange and white cat named Pumpkin. One of our neighbors found her as a stray; her previous family had spayed and declawed her, but somehow she’d been separated from them. I remember going over to that neighbor’s house and looking under the bed where Pumpkin was hiding. For me, it was love at first sight.

Even as a fully grown cat, Pumpkin was so little that my mom used to say she was made of nothing but fur and air. Despite her size, Pumpkin thought she was a tiger. She’d hunt baby bunnies, chipmunks, mice, snakes, and birds--all without any front claws. She would go up to dogs in our neighborhood, some of which were a lot bigger than her, and smack them in the face with all the confidence in the world. Some weeks, a family from our church would come over for small group meetings and bring their little dog Sasha with them. Sasha was terrified of Pumpkin.

On the flip side of the coin, Sasha instinctively knew that she could chase and bully our other cat Talula.

Talula used to be the exact opposite of Pumpkin.

Where Pumpkin was tiny, Talula was big. Pumpkin liked to talk to us, and Talula was pretty quiet.

Pumpkin was a smart hunter. Talula watched the wildlife in our yard with these vacant eyes that said, “The lights are on, but nobody’s home.” We used to say that in a post-apocalyptic world, we would want Pumpkin with us for hunting, because Talula would be useless in that scenario.

Pumpkin was fearless. Talula was scared of just about everything.

Pumpkin hated Talula when we first introduced her to our household. She became more tolerant over the years, but she never truly warmed up to her. Whereas, Talula just wanted to be friends with Pumpkin and didn’t really understand that that would never happen. Whenever Pumpkin crossed Talula’s path, we would hear hissing and growling that sounded like a hive of angry bees. Sometimes, Pumpkin walked into an empty room and hissed at nothing, just in case the house had forgotten that she didn’t approve of Talula.

And Pumpkin, for whatever reason, decided that I was her person. Our little orange diva staked her claim on my bedroom, and for the most part, Talula respected that and stayed away. Talula’s relationship with me was not so cuddly. Where Pumpkin wanted to snuggle with me, Talula was more likely to attack my hands or my feet with her sharp claws and teeth.

Pumpkin lived to the ripe old age of nineteen (we think, since we don’t know for sure how old she was when we took her in). The day that she died, Talula started acting kind of strange.

Our gray kitty, who rarely showed an interest in my bedroom, came into the room, curled up in the corner behind my bed, and took a nap. Then, a few days later, we discovered a rabbit that had been killed and left on our back patio. It could have been one of the other neighborhood cats, but then why would they leave it at our door? What was even weirder for me was the fact that Talula started sleeping on my bed and snuggling on my lap.

Then my brother’s girlfriend brought her cat Scrappy to live with us.

Talula hates Scrappy, even though the poor little Munchkin cat just wants to be friends with her. Rarely, if ever, did we hear Talula make the same angry beehive noise that Pumpkin used to make, but these days we hear it all the time whenever Scrappy comes too close to her. She is officially becoming a grumpy old lady (although she doesn’t sound like a life-long chain smoker like Pumpkin did).

And now, we’ve had visual confirmation that Talula is in fact dipping her toes into hunting. We’ve seen her catch a chipmunk, and just this past week, she injured a bird in the backyard.

In the weeks and months immediately following Pumpkin’s death, I had joked that Talula was being haunted by Pumpkin’s ghost. Somewhere along the line, that’s become less of a joke. Now, we say in all seriousness that Talula is slowly but surely turning into Pumpkin. Now all she needs to do is shed her fear of dogs and cars, and her transformation will be complete.

It’s a little sad that the thing that has kept me from getting the first dose of my Covid vaccine is the fact that I’m an anxious traveler. I practice the art of nervous driving and terrified parking. So when I finally made an appointment to get my shot, it helped that my mom very graciously agreed to go with me for emotional support.

Even though my mom was driving the car, I still managed to be an anxious backseat driver. At two points, I pointed out that we were in the wrong lane for our exit, and basically spent the rest of the drive sweating and holding my breath at various points.

As we pulled into the parking lot, I suddenly got a lot more lightheaded than I was a minute ago and felt pins and needles in my fingers. To which my mom’s response was, “That’s not a good sign! You’re going to hyperventilate.”

I didn’t, nor did I throw up, which was something I was more than a little worried about. It took me back to the day that I took my driver’s test. I was in the same car, also with my mom, and breathing heavily. It was a scorching hot day, and we had zero air-conditioning. One of the instructors stopped by my open window and said, “Just don’t throw up. That’s all that we ask.”

Yeah, throwing up wasn’t on my agenda either. My stomach wasn’t sure if it was on board with that plan, though.

In the end, getting my vaccine was pretty anticlimactic. I didn’t have to wait forever in a line, the healthcare workers were super nice, and I barely felt the prick of the needle. Sometimes, you just need to be dramatic beforehand, and then act like it was nothing after the deed is done.