PEORIA MAGAZINE October 2023

W O R D C O U N T

STORIES TO SHOCK AND DISTURB Normal author dishes up terror with Twilight Zone -esque tales

Author Sue Rovens

BY LAURIE PILLMAN

R etired librarian Sue Rovens is all smiles when she sits down to discuss her recently published book, Sanctum . She has a quick sense of humor and an easy laugh that makes talking to her a genuine delight. But there’s a reason an old horror trope tells us to beware of the nice ones. With their combination of suspense, horror, and eerily relatable characters, Rovens’ stories will chill your blood. An Illinois girl, the author grew up in Park Forest and Hazel Crest but has called Normal home since 1982. She worked in Milner Library at Illinois State University for 30 years before retiring just a few years ago. For a long time, Rovens, now 59, thought she would wait to fulfill her dream of writing until after she retired, but her mother’s death in 2009 spurred her to start early. “We always liked to watch One Step Beyond and Twilight Zone together when I was a kid,” said Rovens. “I was right there when she passed away, and it changed me. It’s like, if you want to do something, do it now. Don’t wait. It was the impetus to look at life in a different way, to appreciate things.”

and a series of strange premonitions, is partially set in Bloomington/Normal. The book received a starred review in the May 2018 issue of Publisher’s Weekly. Rage , Rovens’ 2021 release, also uses the Midwest as a backdrop for mingled stories of depression and alcoholism. It even starts with a character standing on the roof of a building on the Illinois State University campus. Rovens says she writes about the Mid west because she knows it well, but her ideas come from everywhere. ‘IF I COULD WRITE IT,

Rovens started writing that year, and three years later she completed her first book of short stories: In A Corner, Dark ly: Short Stories to Horrify, Shock and Disturb . The collection has won praise. The story When the Earth Bled won sec ond place in the Support Indie Authors short story contest, and Coming Over inspired a short student indie film by the theater department of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Like the classic sci-fi and suspense shows she loved, Roven’s writing leans into the psychological horror arising from society’s darker corners. There are bits of gore scattered throughout, but the author uses an atmospheric creepiness that would fit better with the classic horror films of the 1930s than the slasher flicks of the 1980s. Chills arise from character and plot, leading one reviewer to say her an thology was “like the Twilight Zone meets the Midwest.” LEANING LOCAL Readers will find the Midwest makes frequent appearances in Rovens’ works. Her second novel, Track 9 , a troubling tale about an abandoned railway depot

THEN IT’S NOT AS SCARY BECAUSE IT’S COMING FROM MY OWN HEAD’

“When I sit down, I have a very loose concept, a character in mind, or just a thin idea. I write my first drafts during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoW riMo). I sit down on Nov. 1, and I don’t know what’s going to come out.” Her book Buried , in which a hoarder’s dog digs up something from the cem etery, came out of a reality television

94 OCTOBER 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE