Horror by air, land and sea?
Sounds about right for this time of year, which includes spooky season and the holidays Americans travel most during. Yeah, we might just stay home after listening to the new audiobook from Marcus Kliewer.
“Please Remain Seated,” out now from Simon & Schuster, is an audio original from the best-selling horror author of “The Caretaker” and “We Used to Live Here,” featuring narrators Sosie Bacon (“Smile”), Jeremy Bobb (“The Outsider”) and Kyle Beltran (“American Horror Story”).
“The collection takes listeners from an eerily empty commercial flight to a deserted back road and the darkest depths of the ocean, delivering three cinematic stories created specifically for audio,” according to the publisher. The three short stories — “Please Remain Seated,” “Backroads” and “Anomaly” — each feature a different narrator, sound effects and music that keep the listener engaged and unsettled.
“Each one is centered around a different mode of travel: air, land, sea,” Kliewer said during a recent email interview. “I specifically wrote them for people who love to listen to spooky stories while on the move.”
Kliewer is no stranger to telling stories through different mediums. He broke into the horror scene during the COVID-19 pandemic by posting short stories on Reddit, which eventually became his debut novel “We Used to Live Here” and launched what fans call the “Old House Universe.” That interconnected world continued not just into his follow-up, “The Caretaker,” but also into two of the stories in this audiobook, “Backroads” and “Anomaly,” according to the author.
“For this audio short collection, the titular story ‘Please Remain Seated’ takes place in its very own SCP-inspired universe. Both ‘Backroads’ and ‘Anomaly’ take place in the Old House Universe,” he said. “Though maybe ‘Please Remain Seated’ exists as a fictional movie or comic book within the Old House Universe…”
Kliewer described the universe as his best take to “follow in the footsteps of Stephen King.” King fans, whom he calls his Constant Readers, have spent years going down the Beams of his “Dark Tower” series, which essentially created King’s own comic book-style multiverse. There are entire subReddit communities dedicated to both.
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“The Old House ‘Universe’ is the ever-expanding world that most of my stories take place in,” he explained. “I love the idea of everything being interconnected but also working as stand-alone stories. So for readers wanting to just pop in and read one book, they’ll be able to appreciate it on its own, but for readers wanting to go down rabbit holes there’s an entire convoluted world of background lore and conspiracies to explore.”
Fans of Kliewer have more to look forward to with both his novels optioned for the small and big screen. Netflix bought the rights to “We Used to Live Here” before the book had even been published, and “The Caretaker” is in development to be a film starring “Euphoria” star Sydney Sweeney. He’ll also have another book coming soon.
“I’m currently working on my third full-length novel, and it’s actually creeping me out as I write it, which basically never happens,” Kliewer noted.
So what draws him to horror? And why write stories to be released as audio only?
“I love exploring scary topics in a safe and controllable environment, plus it’s fun scaring people that want to be scared,” he said. “In anything I write, I’m always thinking about the auditory experience. I think this stems back to the majority of my reading being audio. Having the extra layer of sound effects opens up a whole new world of possibility in the creative process, which was really fun.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Do you enjoy writing short stories versus long narratives?
There are pros and cons to both, but my attention span definitely loves jumping from one short to the next.
Q. What about audiobooks do you find appealing?
One of the main pieces of advice I give to aspiring creatives of just about any medium is to try to find a job that lets you listen to podcasts or audiobooks. When I did maintenance landscaping, I spent nearly eight hours a day listening to audiobooks and learned so much about writing and story craft because of that.
Q. Do you have a favorite audiobook adaptation or original?
Corey Brill’s narration of Nick Cutter’s “The Troop” is incredible. I’m also partway through listening to MrCreepyPasta’s narration of Jack Townsend’s “Tales from the Gas Station,” which has been a lot of fun.
Q. What do you think makes a good narrator?
When I forget that I’m listening to a person reading and find myself lost in the story.
Q. Did you learn anything hearing someone else read the story to you?
Whether it’s been the “We Used to Live Here” or “Caretaker” audiobooks or this short story collection, I’m always so impressed by the actor’s ability to elevate something I’ve written and make it sound even more intense than I imagined.
Q. What’s something about a piece of your work that you wish readers and listeners knew?
I’ve said it before, but if you go into these books expecting things to make sense at the end or expecting to have an explanation for every event and/or question, you’re going to have a bad time.
Q. If you could ask your readers one thing, what would it be?
Not a question, but a huge thank you for taking the time to pick up my books and read them. I’m so grateful I get to share these weird stories with so many people and make a living doing it. None of that would be possible without you!
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