What's the most improbable but true thing about you?
Once on a hike through a desert mountain, I heard someone calling for help off the trail. When I investigated, they were hanging from a cliff’s edge and I helped them up.

Why did you choose to submit to Horror Over the Handlebars?
Bert and I were talking at an author event and the conversation led to what we were working on at the time. Bert was working on a Connecticut-based horror anthology series but was looking for a theme, and I'd just written the first draft of the coming-of-age horror story that ended up in the anthology. Bert found a theme and my story found a home.

Tell us a little about your story, “Incident at Elderhill Farm” and its genesis.
More of this story is true than some might expect. I (like many of us) was a “kid on bike” once, and I did ride around looking for cool places to goof around with Super Soakers or generally explore. There was a farm in my neighborhood where my friends and I did just that a few times. The woods behind the farm often had spent shotgun shells on the ground and we did find an old shack that looked like it had been destroyed from the inside out.
From there, I continued with the idea of what if there was some kind of altar in the shack in the woods and something ancient in the woods behind it. Then the kids would have to do the classic “kids on bikes” thing and come up with a crazy plan to escape, keep the town safe, and uncover as much of the mystery as possible.

Tell us about “The Withering” in Horror Over the Handlebars and what you liked about it.
It hits a lot of those relatable notes about the “kids on bikes” age. The taste of unsupervised freedom that comes in late childhood/early adolescence, searching for arrowheads, and that one house in a neighborhood that the kids are convinced has a witch or a monster living in it. It’s easy to empathize with these kids in a way that creates an instant investment in the story and its characters.

If you could time travel, where would you go, what would you do, and why would you do that?
Assuming it's not a one-way trip, the very far future, just to see how things turned out for us. If it’s a one-way trip, then about a week into the past.

Who would you bring back from the dead for one hour and what would you do with them?
Ernest Hemingway and I'd probably have a drink with him or go fishing. I feel like win lose or draw, it would be interesting.

What's your favorite piece of art? Could be music, writing, sculpture, painting…
The improvised stories that come from my D&D group. I find this sort of storytelling really interesting because just a handful of people have a shared experience sitting around a dining room table, and it could be one of the funniest moments or most epic stories they’ve ever heard, but nobody else knows about it. I think about the countless stories told around game night tables that we’ll never know.

What are you most proud of creating?
Asking that of a new-ish parent, you’re going to get a predictable but earnest answer: My family.

What's next on your literary horizon?
I’ve been writing stories for a single-author anthology set in an alternate world that is like ours, except that horror movie slashers (supernatural serial killers) are a thing. Some of the stories are slashers, and others are explorations of what a world like that would be like.
I’m also finishing polishing off a novel that I’m going to start sending out to potential publishers soon. It’s about a young woman who is giving her life a hard reset by spending the winter living alone in a tiny house in a New England summer vacation town that all but rolls up its sidewalks during the off-season. Of course, while she’s finding herself, someone else has already found her and is convinced that she’s a key piece in bringing a dark prophecy about.

Where can readers connect with you online?
www.johnopalenik.com is the easiest way to find links to all of my other social media. I’m most active on Instagram and Threads.