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Built From Memory: A Guest Post by Marcus Kliewer
What if your dream home came with a few loose ends? This terrifying thriller is an unsettling story that’ll put a creak into the floorboards… Read on for an exclusive essay from author Marcus Kliewer on writing We Used to Live Here.
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From an author “destined to become a titan of the macabre and unsettling” (Erin A. Craig, #1 New York Times bestselling author), a haunting debut—soon to be a Netflix original movie—about two homeowners whose lives are turned upside down when the house’s previous residents unexpectedly visit.
When I was a kid, my family and I pulled up to an old home my parents used to live in. The current owner was outside washing his car, he noticed us staring at his house and wandered over. My father explained that he and my mother used to live in the house. The owner warmed up, and after some small talk we were about to leave when he asked my parents if they, “Ever noticed anything strange around the house.”
I vividly remember the expression on the man’s face, he seemed embarrassed to be asking. After some hesitation he went on to detail ghostly encounters in the home. Up until that point, every person I’d seen share a “Ghost story” always seemed eager to do so, but this stranger seemed reluctant. Almost scared.
This seed of an event, especially the expression on that man’s face, eventually sparked into the idea, “We Used to Live Here.” I’ve always been fascinated with memory and how it changes over time. Even my memory of this particular memory has inevitably evolved, taking on features that may never have been, but it feels just as real all the same. This uncertainty is at the core of “We Used to Live Here”. The overwhelming majority of our experience is built from memory. Even the sentence you just read before this one has already been regulated to nothing more than a memory. The present is merely a split second, and memory, for better or worse, dictates our perception of reality. If those ideas interest you, along with a few ghostly encounters in the night, then “We Used to Live Here” might be right up your alley.
If you told my childhood self back then (or even myself a few years ago) that this story would eventually become a published novel, I likely would’ve laughed. Being a debut author has been a roller coaster that I’m still getting used to. Yet every day I’m so grateful to be along for the ride.
