Cabin Crimes: Guest Post by Mike Cobb

What is it about a cabin in the woods that practically screams menace? Is it the way the trees press in too close? Is it how the silence seems to stretch for miles? Maybe it’s just the remoteness—a place where help won’t come, and secrets don’t echo. It’s the perfect backdrop for a crime, and the perfect crucible for the characters who survive it. It’s also the kind of book that keeps me turning the pages until the wee hours of the morning. 

When I began writing Muzzle the Black Dog, I knew the setting had to be remote, raw, and unforgiving. The cabin in my novel isn’t just a backdrop—it’s a character in itself. It isolates, it exposes, and it becomes a mirror for the unraveling mind of my protagonist, Jack Pate. After a mysterious stranger appears at Jack’s isolated cabin door, his life is forever changed. The stranger’s cryptic message sets off a chain of events that take Jack on a harrowing journey to uncover the true meaning of his own existence, leading to self-discovery and redemption. 

Turns out, I’m not the only one drawn to these shadowy hideaways. Below, I’ve gathered some of my favorite crime novels where cabins and woodland retreats become grounds for murder, mystery, and survival. 

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware 

A bachelorette party gone awry in a forest retreat in the English countryside. Ware is a master of psychological tension, and here she uses the isolation to full effect. Secrets, betrayal, and a haunting sense of déjà vu. 

One by One by Ruth Ware 

A corporate retreat in a luxurious ski chalet. Snowed in, of course. What possibly could go wrong? A lot, as it turns out. The staff starts dying, and paranoia reigns. Ware has proven again that she knows how to weave a compelling mystery that will keep you on the edge of your seat. 

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley 

Seven friends decide to spend New Year's Eve at a hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands. Like the characters in One by One, they become snowbound. By the end, one ends up dead, indelibly changing all their lives. Foley deftly conveys a chilly, claustrophobic mood that delivers a tightly wound tension. 

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay 

Imagine a secluded cabin in New Hampshire. Imagine an idyllic family vacation. Idyllic, that is, until three strangers invade the cabin, forcing seven-year-old Wen and her parents to make impossible choices. Tremblay plays on primal fears—strangers at the door, no way out, and desperation. 

An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena 

What is it about snowstorms? I guess they just fit naturally with menacing cabins in the woods. In Lapena’s mystery, a group of friends get together at a Catskills lodge. A blizzard snows them in. Then one of the guests is found dead. At first, they think it’s an accident. But when other guests start dying one by one, the survivors begin to suspect the killer is among them. 

No Exit by Taylor Adams 

Okay, so this one isn’t about a cabin in the wood, but I’ve included it because it’s still a “trapped in the wilderness” story. And there’s a blizzard again! A young woman is desperate to outwit a psychopath and save a kidnapped young girl locked in a van at a snowed-in rest stop. 

So, if you’re itching for a good, scary “cabin in the woods” story, or close to it, one of these books may be just what you’re looking for. 

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Mike Cobb’s body of literary work includes both fiction and nonfiction. He is the author of four published novels, Dead Beckoning, The Devil You Knew, its sequel You Will Know Me by My Deeds, and Muzzle the Black Dog. A native of Atlanta, Mike splits his time between Midtown Atlanta and Blue Ridge, Georgia. 

NO EXIT (from rewrites): Guest Post by Taylor Adams

TAYLOR ADAMS:
NO EXIT (from rewrites)

Writing a book is a long, strange, complicated process. Some days are euphoric. Some are dismal treks. Most fall somewhere in the middle. This writing process won’t work for everyone (heck, it doesn’t even always work for me) – but here is how I wrote my novel NO EXIT, over the course of roughly 18 months and 1.5 million gallons of coffee.

1) THE PREMISE

During time I probably should have been focusing on my day job, I combined various story elements into a mixture that excited me enough to believe in the project. In this case, it was “highway rest stop” plus “blizzard” plus “kidnapped child in an animal crate” plus “what would you do?” I was admittedly pretty unsure if the premise could sustain a full-length novel at first.

2) THE OUTLINE

For a few weeks or even months, I regurgitated ideas, sequences, and subplots to fill the story out in an “outline” format, which involved tons of bullet points, abbreviations, and sentence fragments. Outlines are a critical step because they allow me to get my brain around the narrative’s basic shape. I like to work on it until I have about five pages (give or take), and at that stage, I’m fairly thrilled about the story’s potential, ready to write it, and overall, quite optimistic.

3) THE FIRST DRAFT

Wherein all of that optimism is obliterated like an insect against the windshield of reality. Writing a first draft sucks. The key – for me – is to not lose momentum. Don’t look back. Don’t revise (yet). Just write that awful thing all the way to its bitter, poorly-judged end. It’s important to just get something down on paper, so you have a lump of clay to work with. In my case, after two-ish months of my obligatory 1,000 words a day, I had a NO EXIT first draft that was about 99% crap, and 1% OK.

4) THE SECOND DRAFT

The second-worst part of the process. But for the second draft – and every draft after – I always start with a fresh Word document and rewrite every word from page one. Often, I’ll have two Word docs open on my laptop – the prior draft, and the current draft. I do this because it forces me to think (and rethink) about every single word. As tempting as they can be, Word’s copy-paste commands are my mortal enemy, because nothing I write is ever good enough in its first few iterations. But draft by draft, as I run the story through this rewriting filter, it grows steadily, incrementally better.

5) DRAFTS 3-7

Somewhere, many months into the process, a beautiful tipping point occurs. I like to think it’s the exact moment when the book transitions from 51% crap and 49% OK to become 49% crap and 51% OK. It’s genuinely thrilling to see the story that I’ve envisioned months ago finally take form. It keeps me going.

6) THE FINE-TUNING

Here’s where it gets fun. Once I’ve achieved a workable framework of a functioning story, I’m able to layer in the flourishes. I can really hone the characters, the dialogue, the small beats, and make the big ones hit harder (this is also the part of the process where I actually feel like a writer and not a captive word processor). Every day, I’m able to solve a new problem, or add a nifty new spin to a scene. With NO EXIT, much of this time was spent sharpening the action beats, fleshing out the atmospheric details of the rest stop, and adding new elements of uncertainty and tension. Key character beats, such as Darby’s text messages to her mother, also came in here – not to mention a fair bit of logic fixes (it took months to make the spatial geography of a certain plot twist work, around page 200 – but what a blissful eureka moment that was).

7) BRING ON THE FIRING SQUAD!

Beta readers are invaluable for locating all of the things in my blind spots. From test reads of NO EXIT, I learned about a multitude of pacing issues in the novel’s first half and ended up cutting a full 5 pages of bloat from the first chapter alone. This step is also the best way test how readers will respond emotionally to the characters, so I had plenty of guidance in making Darby’s plight sympathetic and her errors forgivable (nothing is worse than a thriller protagonist who annoys the reader!). Also… apparently, I’m guilty of heinously overusing the word “chatter.”

At the end of this grueling process… well, there’s still a lot of work to do. NO EXIT underwent numerous edits and copyedits, but with every pass through the eyes of people more experienced and detail-oriented than I, it emerged a better and more polished piece of storytelling.

Certainly, this is hard stuff, particularly during the early drafts when story lacks shape and direction. My advice: if you’re dying to tell your story, work on it every hour you can spare. Keep writing and rewriting. Every day. No excuses.

It’s worth it.

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Taylor Adams graduated from Eastern Washington University with the prestigious Edmund G. Yarwood Award. His directorial work has screened at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival. He lives in Washington State.