Collin Armstrong: I’ve Been a Fan of Horror Since I Can Remember

Collin Armstrong has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade developing, writing, and producing material for outlets including 20th Century Fox TV, ABC Family, Bleecker Street, Viaplay, Discovery, and the LA Times Studios. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.

In this interview, Collin discusses how the 2020 era of COVID shares parallels with his new horror novel, Polybius, his advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Collin Armstrong
Literary agent (if one): Liz Parker & Parker Davis, Verve Talent & Literary Agency
Book title: Polybius
Publisher: Gallery Books
Release date: April 29, 2025
Genre/category: Horror / Thriller
Elevator pitch: After the arrival of a mysterious new arcade game plunges a small town into violent chaos, a handful of residents scramble to uncover how the game works and whether its effects can be stopped.

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I grew up watching films like Gremlins and reading books by Stephen King and John Saul, like Carrie and Creature, and had always wanted to create a dark coming-of-age story in that mold. I first heard about the urban legend of Polybius in the late-2000s, and right away it struck me as a potential arena for a story about younger people being faced with exaggerated versions of the challenges they’ll encounter as adults.

My take on the Polybius legend actually started as a feature-film pitch in the early 2010s. The core story—kids on the verge of adulthood, investigating a mystery that plunges them into a dangerous conspiracy involving a mind-altering video game—was in place from the start. I was never able to crack a take that connected enough with anyone to move the concept forward, so I put it aside.

I tried to revisit it a few years later, toward the end of the 2010s, as a sort of online epistolary where I’d be posing as a survivor of a violent outbreak the game caused, telling the story of what happened through a series of social media posts, but other work kept taking precedent and I never followed through.

When COVID hit in 2020, I lost a very promising job and, I think like a lot of people, didn’t know what was going to happen next. My wife’s job was impacted in the opposite way—she was suddenly very busy—so I was spending most of my time watching our kids during the day then sitting around at night, having a persistent existential crisis. Eventually, I found my thoughts returning to Polybius.

The way that I’d envisioned the game “infecting” people—distorting minds, driving everyone apart including those who hadn’t played but were suddenly paranoid about their friends and neighbors—had parallels to what was happening in the world; the game’s mechanics acted like a virus. At the time I’m not sure that I saw this, I think I just felt it, and started writing whenever I could find the time.

Eventually I did go back to work and had to put the project down. I think I figured it was a lark, a coping mechanism for a confusing, dark moment in time. But after I’d finished a particularly grueling job, I opened the Polybius file, started reading, and found myself sucked back in. I started sharing what I’d written with my reps, who were so positive about it that I knew I was on to something. I talked it over with my wife and decided to take the time to finish the manuscript.

It went out to publishers in late 2022 and sold to Gallery in early 2023.

Honestly, the entire process has been full of surprises! The most striking to me has been the way you collaborate with your editor and the staff that supports your release; it’s much more intimate and one-on-one when compared to the work I’ve done in film, TV, and copywriting. There, there are always multiple sets of eyes leading to a lot of contradictory feedback that you have to parse, on top of trying to keep your story true to itself; with Polybius, it was a series of personal conversations that felt much easier to understand and navigate.

At the time I was writing, I didn’t realize how much of an impact that living through COVID was having on my thought process; I think it’s pretty apparent on the page.

First and foremost, a good scare. I’ve been a fan of horror, suspense, and sci-fi since I can remember, and every piece of fiction, every film, every game that’s stuck with me has entertained me.

But the ones I count as favorites, that I go back to over and over—films like John Carpenter’s The Thing, stories like Stephen King’s The Jaunt, books like The House of Leaves, games like Silent Hill—bring something more; a depth of character, concept, and execution that elevates them.

I’ve tried to bring that deeper layer to Polybius. To be clear, this is not a book that changes the world, but hopefully it can hook readers with thrills while kindling deeper thoughts about what it means to live in a society surrounded by technologies capable of shaping our thoughts and perceptions, whether we want them to or not.

Write! I know this is the same piece of advice that a lot of writers give, but I think it’s given so consistently for a reason. You have to be ready, because you never know when the moment will come where you’ll meet someone who can change the trajectory of your career. You want to be able to put a piece of writing in their inbox that you’re proud of, and you’ll only have that piece if you’ve put in the work.

It's difficult for a lot of people to find the time to write. We have kids, debts, lots of other responsibilities that speculative writing can’t support. But if writing is what you want to do with your life, you have to find the time to do it before anyone will help you to make a living out of it. Speaking from experience you’ll come up with a lot of bad ideas and write a lot of bad pages, but eventually you’ll get there.

And the same is true if it’s simply something that helps you feel at peace and make some sense out of life—find that time for yourself; it’s important.