Whoa, talk about your massive understatements: “I'm not your typical suburban housewife,” Teri Jacobs says.

        Well, no.

Teri Jacobs with some of the gargoyles and masks in her Mason home. (Brandi Stafford photo) | ZOOM |

        Here's Angyl, hero of her “Hideous Beauty” short story, sewing herself to the lover she just dismembered because she wants to be a Siamese twin.

        And here's Hakon in her “Of Gargoyles and Sin,” removing his talons from a badly gouged victim.

        And here's Ms. Jacobs admitting, “I write to shock people. You can be attracted to something very dark — emotionally and sexually — but most people won't accept that side of themselves.”

        Nope, not your typical Mason stay-at-home mom.

        Ms. Jacobs, see, is a horror writer with 20 gruesome short stories and one grisly novel called The Void (due next summer from Leisure Books) to her credit.

        But she doesn't look horrific: The dimunitive — 5-foot in heels, maybe 100 pounds — 33-year-old mother of two is dressed very West Coast and laughing constantly.

        Yet she spends her mornings creating a world full of “copious screams of the abused and damned,” with “iridescent screams bursting from lips in suspended decay.”

        “My mother-in-law wanted to read something I wrote. So I gave her my absolute tamest story. After she read it, she said "how can someone so bubbly be so dark?'

        “It was about the seventh grade when I got hooked on it. I read an Edgar Allan Poe story and that was it. I wrote a horror story in junior high. The teacher read it aloud right before lunch, and no one could eat.

        “That's when I knew, just knew, I had to write.”

        She's been writing off and on ever since — writing in college while working on a degree in English lit — “I'm still a major Shakespeare and Milton fan.” Not writing while living in Los Angeles and working, so husband Michael could go to law school.

        And finally, writing again for the past three years, and doing it well enough for hot-selling horror-master Tim Lebbon to call her “Nightmarish, surreal and wonderfully poetic ... the new Mistress of Terror.”

        Ms. Jacobs prefers to call herself a “demented Martha Stewart” because of her two passions: Horror and baking. “I'm self-taught. I learned when I was ordered on bed rest while I was pregnant. I invent things and they're delicious. Problem is, I can never remember what I did, so I usually only make things once.”

        She writes mostly in the mornings when her 4-year-old is at day care and her 6-year-old at school, but it's not unusual for ideas to pop up anytime: “I get a portrait in my head, atmospheric and moody, creepy, brutal, surreal and dreamy, magical or fantastical. But at its heart, it's always dark and scary. Then I describe and explore that portrait when I'm writing.”

        Despite what others have said (“An adrenaline-rush of re-imagined myth and all-too-real terror,” fellow horror writer Gary A. Braunbeck says), she wonders if she's any good at all: “I read something I wrote and I say, "this sucks.' But in some ways, I think if you don't worry that you're no good, then you're in trouble. Or at least way too arrogant.”

        Wellsir, before she starts writing again, how about 10 questions?

        To get into a horrific mood, I like to ...

        Put on my music — gothic rock, very dark and bent — and turn my eyes inward to see what pictures are there. Then I try to say it as vividly as possible.

        The thing that scares me most ...

        I'm almost afraid to voice this out loud — my children dying.

        The thing that scares other people most ...

        Death. That primal fear of death. It's fear of the unknown, even if they don't voice it. I mean, consider, for some people life is pure hell, but they don't commit suicide. It has to be fear of death.

        The only thing scarier than my stories ...

        Is the real world. There's a pessimist for you. I write to avoid the real world.

        The ultimate horror novel and film for me are ...

        My very favorite novel is The Stand (by Stephen King). As for movies, that's hard because I have so many favorites. It would be either The Thing or Alien. They both scared me, and I don't scare easily.

        If someone 25 years ago told me I'd be doing this today, I would have ...

        Believed them. I wrote my first story in the seventh grade. My teacher liked it so well she wouldn't give it back.

        One area where I could improve ...

        I could be a better storyteller. I think I'm too much of a poet. But storytelling, that's something I have to learn. No one can teach it.

        My ———————— needs no improvement ...

        Imagination. That sounds arrogant, but it's so vivid.

        I want ——————— to play me in the movie of my life because ...

        Oooh, that's one of my fears. I don't want a movie of my life. I don't want people digging around. That's why I haven't written a bio for my Void jacket yet. I don't know what I want people to know. Oh, can a Martian play me? There's no actress short enough anyway, and I do feel like I've sort of alienated myself from the human race.

        I wish you had asked me ...

        About my Monday night visits to Vertigo (Over-the-Rhine dance club). It's goth-industrial night so I go a lot.

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