S. M. Pollack
Atmospheric, Evocative Fiction
!!! LITERARY AGENTS !!!
November 2025: I am currently seeking representation for my new horror novel…
My 100,000 word manuscript is ready to share, and I can’t wait to get it out to the world! Highlights are below, and I am following the normal submission channels with a query and synopsis available. Please contact me if you would be interested in taking a look and possibly working together!
(Author's impression of book cover)
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*** CURRENTLY SEEKING REPRESENTATION ***
Repent (2025)
Hard partying. Morally bankrupt. Few redeeming qualities. Jax Landry’s provocative life has left him isolated, short of friends and long on enemies. As a means to artificially numb the pain of a broken existence, his drug-induced indiscretions have become legendary, leaving him no stranger to blacking out at the tail end of many destructive benders.
But this night—this particular night—would be like no other.
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After a round of debauchery ending in a familiar drunken coma, Jax finds himself abducted and taken to a remote location in the Colorado foothills—confined to a circumstance of unimaginable hell.
Trapped in a mansion with no escape, was he being held as part of a ransom ploy? Was it the act of a criminal organization? A jaded past lover? Or was he possibly a pawn in a disturbed reality show? Over the course of a seemingly never-ending night, the house forces Jax to face his own personal demons and experience mental torment that no person should have to endure. His captors, always one step ahead, use every sordid detail of his past to rebuke him in the present—not intent on inflicting physical pain, but rather on shattering his internal spirit. How did they know about the time he was humiliated back in grade school? Or about his girlfriend that had drowned? Or the horrible images he experienced as a disgraced Marine during the Iraq war?
Desperately trying to escape the collection of horrors, each room in the twisted maze becomes more terrifying than the last. Everything Jax encounters is freakish. Chaotic. Confounding. IMPOSSIBLE. Every wretched being goes to great lengths to distress him in new and demented ways, mocking him with painful memories until his soul is crushed.
Maybe it’s all a dream.
Pushed to the limits of human capacity, Jax is eventually left a broken man, the experience forcing him to evaluate his life and leaving him forever changed. A victim of his own doing, he comes to realize that no one put him in that house. He put himself there…and he alone must choose his ultimate fate. REPENT is a battle on the road to enlightenment—but death might just be easier.
If only it was a dream.
REPENT: The Story Behind the Story
I am by no means on the level of seasoned authors with years of writing and multiple books beneath their belts, and would never dare to compare myself as such at this point in my journey (although I strive to be there one day!). That said, I found inspiration for REPENT from many different pieces: Steven King’s 1408; the atmospheric horror writings of Darcy Coates, such as Gallows Hill; the movie House on Haunted Hill (original and remake); hell, I could even say it’s a much darker and demented take on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The twisted story also lands in the same vein as other recent titles such as We Used to Live Here (2024) by Marcus Kliewer, The September House (2023) by Carissa Orlando, and Play Nice (2025) by Rachel Harrison.
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As far as other formative drivers behind my writing, I simply dig anything horror, but if I had to narrow it down, I would say these are some key influences at the core of REPENT:
HORROR MOVIES OF THE 1980’s! Don’t get me wrong, there have been some great horror creations throughout all decades (past and present), but, overall, there was no better timeframe in my opinion. I just adore the campiness, the questionable acting, the questionable decision-making of the characters. The synthesized music and melodic hooks. The grainy, dark, unrefined aura that added to the unsettling feel. In perhaps a contradiction of terms, to me, that was “good time” horror, and nothing was better. I try to translate that feeling into my writing.
JUMP SCARES! They seem to get a bad rap for some reason, but I am all about jump scares. In great horror movies of the past, what are the most memorable scenes that are talked about for years to come? Let’s be honest…it’s the ones that catch you off guard and make you scream! Even though it is a bit more challenging, I believe it is possible to incorporate and translate that visceral imagery into the written word, and I use that as a cornerstone for my writing to generate emotion and anxiety through the unexpected. Although I can appreciate a good gruesome horror story, gore isn’t the key to uneasiness in my particular writing—although most horror has a little bit of gore, right?!
HAUNTED HOUSES! I’m talking about the live, commercial haunted houses that thousands of people traverse every year around Halloween. For REPENT, I wanted to try and duplicate the charged emotions from a haunted house—the anticipation, the suspense, the chills, the JUMPS—and immerse the reader in that experience.
RELENTLESSNESS! Mission Impossible. Fast and Furious. John Wick. Die Hard. One of the great things about walking out of a big-budget action film is that you almost leave the experience feeling exhausted from the nonstop chaos. What if that same model was applied, but used instead to create a relentlessly unsettling experience? In most horror, at best, the audience is hit with maybe a handful of killer scares, leaving a great deal of time to come down and regroup as the tension rises and falls. But what if the intensity were never to fall? What if the audience, sharing in the protagonist’s inability to escape terror from beginning to end, was never given a chance to come down? That is what I wanted to explore with REPENT.