Watched: A Halloween Tale

by Sidney Williams, Michael August (Pseudonym)

A short tale of suspense set at Pembrook High and exclusively available for Kindle.

Everyone expects Brianne Pratt to plan the scariest Halloween dance ever, but she's facing a few challenges. School authorities want to keep the theme too tame. Her folks don't like her college boyfriend who's coming back for the evening, and worst of all, someone's watching.

Someone's spying on Brianne, sneaking messages into her locker and placing strange phone calls that make it clear her secret admirer won't give up easily.

Even if she can navigate the treacherous waters of school politics and pull off a wild and exciting Halloween event, she's worried she could be the real focus of the horror on the big night.

Also includes sample chapters of the Pembrook High novel The Gift.

35 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 3, 2013

About the author

Sidney Williams is the author of thrillers including Dark Hours, Midnight Eyes and Disciples of the Serpent. Early horror novels include Azarius, Blood Hunter, Gnelfs and When Darkness Falls. He also penned three young adult horror novels under the name Michael August. Sidney worked for years as a newspaper reporter with varied beats that included crime and entertainment news. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and currently teaches creative writing.

Reviews

[Paige Turner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Review posted on Between Reality

I’m not sure what I expected, but this was the weirdest short story I’ve ever read. Thirty pages worth of “What?” “Really?” and “Wow, okay.”

The story is only thirty pages long so really, how long can a review for it be, but we’ll see.

I’ve seen piece of paper that’s thicker than Watched’s characters and plot. Brianne was disrespectful towards adults and it was completely distasteful. I don’t even remember any of the other characters. There was so little suspense that it completely surpassed zero and went into negative infinity. I never even guessed who the stalker was and I didn’t care when it was revealed. There was nothing scary about him, just creepy. It wasn’t a mixture of a creepy stalker with a terrifying plot with a eerie setting, it was just “No thanks, this is weird.”

Read the rest of this review and more here: Watched Review

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is just a short story, written from a setting that the author has written novels about, that being Pembrooke High School. It is, I believe, classified as YA fiction, so I'm not really the "target audience." Yet I find that I enjoy quite a bit of fiction that is designated as "Young Adult" or "Juvenile." Not sure what that says about me. :-)

Watched is a story about a teenage girl who is organizing the Halloween dance for her school. As she goes about this task, she meets with resistance from various fronts, some, of course, being the faculty, and another being a rather conservative mother in the community. She also has to deal with parents who don't want her to go to the dance, because her older, college-aged, boyfriend will be there.

It's an entertaining story, with a little bit of a twist at the end, cleverly played.

[Mary Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Watched by Michael August was a great short story. Although this a short story, it had all the elements of a full length book: mystery, suspense and gore. The mystery of the secret admirer was carried on throughout the whole story and I hadn't figured out who it was until it was revealed at the end. There was a twist at the end that I didn't see coming and which surprised me. The characters were well developed and I felt like I had some insight into their personalities. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy short story mysteries. This is the second book I've read from this author and I plan to read more.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so distracted by the many - MANY grammatical errors that I did not enjoy this read at all. Skip it!