Welcome everyone, I’m The Li-Bury-An, and today we have a spotlight on Shawnna Deresch
Anyone who is a member of the Horror Writers Association or who is active in horror fiction social media communities knows the name Shawnna Deresch. I’d known her name long before we’d ever spoken officially. So I was quite surprised and honored when she submitted a short story for our humble little anthology series. Her story, Little Sally Ann, is about a little girl who hopes for a mother of her own, but due to the fact that Sally Ann is a ghost with a penchant for the demonic, she often ends up doing more harm than good to her potential mothers…
“Sally Ann swung her baby doll up in the air, and when it came down, it knocked over a lamp. She tried to pick it up but couldn’t. She let it go and it crashed back to the ground. Sally Ann placed her hands over her ears to pretend to disappear so she wouldn’t get scolded. She didn’t want to get in trouble with the new woman. She might not want to be her new mommy if she did.”
From “Little Sally Ann” by Shawnna Deresch
Today, Shawnna talks about how she came up with her story “Little Sally Ann” for THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY : Women of Horror Anthology Volume 3. Out now from Kandisha Press!
“I’ve always loved creepy kid stories like in The Omen and more recently Hanna in Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage and my favorite creepy, evil kid is Regan from The Exorcist. A little innocent child one moment, and the next, without warning, turn into a murderous little demon. I also love haunted house stories. I can’t turn away a haunted house book. So I combined the two to create Little Sally Ann.
I actually wrote Little Sally Ann as a separate story and had it put away for a while. The same with the main couple, Janice and Carl. Their story was actually part of another story, but it just felt something was missing. I didn’t just want a haunted house story and it just clicked one day to merge the two. What is in the anthology is two different stories written at different times in my life coming together to create one story. “
SHAWNNA DERESCH has been crafting scary stories since she could first talk. Her love of horror began when she was a child watching horror movies with her father and now as an adult is obsessed with anything horror-related. She’s a lover of paranormal investigations and loves checking out cemeteries and old buildings.
She travels extensively and splits her time between the Chicagoland area and anywhere down south where the temps don’t go below 80 degrees. She lives with her three children, two black rescue cats, and one blue-eyed puppy in a condo near the beach of a big city.
She is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and is the Chairperson of the Chicago Chapter of the Horror Writers Association. You can find her on Twitter: @shawnnaderesch or on the HWA Chicago Chapter on Twitter: @ChicagoHWA
KANDISHA PRESS 
Thanks Kandisha Press!
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