Welcome to Horror Nails!

My name is Sara Amundson, and I am a horror writer and nail art addict. Satan recently told me that the time has come to join my horror obsession and my nail art mania into one unholy, brightly colored union.

This is the cuteness you see right before your eyes are gouged out. pic.twitter.com/VgieaC6dNv

— Sara Amundson (@saraterror) January 8, 2016

First, I tried stitching horror and nail art together, Human Centipede-style, in my rec room/secret laboratory. But that was so messy, plus my neighbors kept complaining about all the screaming.

Then, while I was hosing the blood and nail polish off the floor of my rec room/mad scientist lair, a brilliant revelation hit me: I can just create a blog!

Here’s what you’ll find at Horror Nails:

• Horror themed nail art
• A lot of swearing
• Off-topic nail art, because damn it, I have range, people. (Besides, evolution blessed us with two hands specifically so we could wear two manicures at a time. It’s SCIENCE.)
• Lots of stuff about nail stamping, which is my favorite kind of nail art
• The usual nail art blog stuff: reviews, swatches, informative tutorials (for example: how to hide your neighbors’ corpses under your nail polish collection when they won’t stop complaining about all the screaming coming from your rec room/secret laboratory)

Horror Nails is a little rough around the edges:

Please bless me with your patience. Horror Nails is in its infancy, like an alien belly-burster toddling around before the blood of its meat-incubator has even dried.

As far as nail art blogging goes, I’m a total newbie. I’m all enthusiasm and rough edges at the moment, but this website (and especially my presentation skills and tools) will become more polished over time.

I’m jumping feet-first into this blogging adventure. I want to start now, now, now! I can make this website look pretty later, I can buy equipment to take professional-quality nail pictures later, get a logo later, take over the world with my army of genetically engineered seahorses later, yada yada yada.

But I am ready to make the world spookier with my nails right this instant.

More about me:

I’ve already covered the important stuff about this blog, but if for some reason you want to know more about me here’s my supervillain origin story autobiography of a nail art addict.

Five years ago, my world was rocked when I discovered nail stamping. I’d never seen anything like it, and it was obsession-at-first-sight.

When my first nail stamping equipment arrived, I realized that doing nail art is far more than a fun hobby. For me, it’s also one of the best forms of pain and anxiety management I’ve ever encountered.

I’ve had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder since I was 17, and I’ve developed all sorts of super-fun health issues because of it. In 2010, a cascading series of health problems and ill-advised treatments from clueless doctors left me disabled. A major nerve in my pelvis was damaged, rendering me unable to sit at all for two years.

If you’ve never lost the ability to sit, you’ll probably never realize how absolutely crucial sitting is to living life. Those two years were sheer hell. My world narrowed down to a tiny point because of my physical limitations, and my days and nights were filled with excruciating pain.

But whenever I did nail art, the pain, stress, anxiety, and anguish would slip from my mind. Nail art fills my head with colors and possibilities, until there isn’t room in my mind for anything else.

For several months, I’ve been doing intensive therapy to treat my PTSD. It’s incredibly hard and painful work, and my nail art obsession has grown stronger with each difficult challenge I face. Nail arting has become a compulsion that consumes most of my free time.

My desk is covered by a dense forest of nail polish bottles. I’ve accidentally gotten nail polish on my dogs more than once. I keep finding things stuck to my hair with dried polish. My long-dormant asthma has resurfaced thanks to constant exposure to chemical fumes. And still I nail art like a fiend!

A couple weeks ago, after an especially rough therapy appointment and an equally extreme session of nail arting, I said to my husband, “You know, I think I’ve been self-medicating with nail art.” His answer was a loud, sarcastic, “GEE, YA THINK?”

I have been dormant online for a while — and my writing career has been paused for far too long — thanks to nasty health problems and the difficult work I’ve been doing in therapy. But that’s about to change.

HorrorNails is going to bring me back to life, like lightning striking Frankenstein’s monster.

Where to connect with me:

There are many fun ways to connect with me. You can:

• Read a bunch of my awesome short horror stories on saraamundson.com
• Follow my main Twitter account @saraterror
• Follow the brand spanking new, official Horror Nails Twitter account @HorrorNails
• Check out my YouTube channel, which is filled with goofy videos of me reading short horror stories
• Send me a message via my Contact Me form
• Look under your bed, because I’m probably hiding there with a knife and a bust of you that I lovingly sculpted with earwax I’ve been collecting from you while you sleep

I’ll add Instagram and Tumblr accounts to the mix soon, once I’ve got this blog fully up and running.