The Horror Writers Association, which was the topic of Day 10, also hosts local chapters. My local chapter had lapsed over the last few years, but thanks to today's "Why I Love Horror" essayist, it is coming back!. Meet Shawnna Deresch:
Shawnna Deresch has been crafting scary stories since she could first talk. Her love of horror began when she was a child watching horror movies with her father and now as an adult is obsessed with anything horror related. She's a lover of paranormal investigations and loves checking out cemeteries and old buildings.She travels extensively and splits her time between the Chicagoland area and anywhere down south where the temps don't go below 80 degrees. She lives with her three children, two black rescue cats and one blue-eyed puppy in a condo near the beach of a big city.She is a member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and is the organizer of the Chicago Chapter of the Horror Writers Association. You can find her on Twitter: @shawnnaderesch. You can find the HWA Chicago Chapter on Twitter: @ChicagoHWA. Sign up for information about the new chapter here.
I asked Deresch to take a break from rallying the Chicagoland Horror Troops and let all of us know what she loves horror.
Why I Love Horror
My name is Shawnna Deresch and, okay, I’m finally ready to admit it. I am a horror junkie. I’m not sure when I became an addict of horror, but I’m sure I’ve had this addiction my whole life. I am also a horror writer. I love to write about the darker side of things. It’s what I’ve always been attracted to. It was difficult for me to admit that I am a horror writer because for many years a lot of my close writer friends looked down at the horror genre calling it a bastard child of genres. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to admit that I write horror. But horror is what I love to write and to read. By the way, those friends are wrong and are missing out on some great works.
I’m a relative newcomer to the horror writing community. Even though I’ve been writing most of my life, I have a Bachelor’s degree in journalism, it wasn’t until the last few years that I decided to finally put roots down in the horror writing community. And that’s not easy for me being an extreme introvert. I’m a lurker on social media and to think about having to socialize terrifies me. And meeting in person at conferences, workshops, etc. puts my anxiety into high alert.
As someone who’s battled and continues to struggle with debilitating anxiety, depression and PTSD on a daily basis, it’s hard to put yourself out there when it feels like you’re exposing yourself and you feel all of your insecurities are revealed to the world. In the not so recent past, I’ve been judged on my looks, that I’m too thin or too fat (I struggle with bulimia), the clothes I wear and the music I listen to and so many other things that people are always trying to box me into what they think a woman and a woman horror writer should be/look like. And have been told things to my face like “don’t kid yourself, you’ll never be good enough so don’t even try” or the one statement that makes me cringe and ball up my fist ready to fight is “you’re too quiet and sweet to like horror”. What? You can’t be sweet and quiet and like horror? Ridiculous! The one that still gets to me is “stick with what you know”. Well, I am sticking with what I know, and that’s horror.
It does surprise many people I’ve known for years when they find out that I write horror and I ask them why it surprises them, because, to me, horror is all around us. It surrounds us and you don’t even have to go far to see it. Watching the news is horror to me. Crime, injustices are horror. Even ordinary everyday things can be scary to some people.
Understanding why I read and write horror is complex. I believe it deserves a place on the shelves of libraries and bookstores as its own dedicated section.
Reading and writing is a big part of my process in healing from my traumas. I have many reasons why I read horror, but my main one is as a temporary escape from the world. Reading helps me to decompress from the outside world.
I write horror for many reasons. For me, it’s therapeutic enabling to cast out my demons so to speak and it lets me put on paper all of my trauma and horrible experiences. I’m able to stare those fears and demons down. I think that’s one of the reasons I like to write survival horror. Following along on a character’s journey trying to navigate and survive anything from a slasher/serial killer to an apocalypse can sometimes be cathartic.
I was lucky when I was young. My mom gave me the best gift that I still cherish to this day. That gift was the love for reading. My sister and I still laugh about how our parents never let us do anything and we felt too sheltered, but the one thing my mom and my dad did was to never censor anything I read, the music I listened to, or the movies I watched. Needless to say, I took total advantaged of that. I got to experience the world through reading. My mother always had a book nearby her. And to this day, I have at least one physical copy of a book, one on my Kindle and one Audible book at all times. And two of the three of those books are always horror related.
My mom encouraged me to visit the local library. Some of my best summer memories as a child was going to the library about 4 times a week with my sister and best friend spending hours browsing books and just reading in a corner of the library where there were beanbag chairs hidden away from everyone. I even volunteered there like stamping the due date cards, yes, before computer/digital/internet times, just so we could spend time around books. Even to this day, when I travel, which is a lot, I’ll visit the local libraries in the city where I am at.
And in junior high, I’d spend mornings before classes and after school while waiting for my bus, in the library with my best friend looking up books on witchcraft, ghosts, haunted houses, anything that was horror/paranormal/occult related. The librarians knew me by name and knew that I was the quiet girl who sat in the corner reading books about how to cast spells.
I write primary psychological, religious (possession/demonology) survival horror and once in a while about phobias. But I’ll read any type of subgenre horror as long as there are well written, fully developed characters. I love character driven stories.
One of my all-time favorite horror authors is Bentley Little. When I read The Town for the first time, I knew that I wanted to write like him. That was years ago. And now I’ve found some of my favorite books of all time from authors such Gwendolyn Kiste who penned Rust Maidens a body horror, coming of age novel that I could not put down and devoured the book as soon as I got it. Not a lot of books can creep me out, but Blanky by Kealan Patrick Burke did that from beginning to end. I now want to read everything he’s ever written. I discovered that there is other literary horror than just Shirley Jackson’s work such as author Jac Jemc’s writing. The Lottery by Jackson will always be one of my favorites. But I loved Jemc’s The Grip of It about a couple whose relationship is deteriorating after they bought a house that possibly could or could not be haunted.
I joined the Horror Writers Association (HWA) because I wanted to connect with other writers who shared the same love of the darker side of literature. I’ve been a member of other writing organizations, and while they were helpful, HWA has been the most welcoming, and I feel like I finally found a place where I belong.
I also wanted to find horror writers and dark fiction writers near where I lived in Northwest Indiana. And since I couldn’t find any, I decided to resuscitate the HWA Chicago Regional Chapter to forge some new friends, networking and talk about writing. And when I put the call out for prospective members, I was worried that no one would be interested, but I was wrong. We have enough interest to get the Chicagoland Chapter back up and running soon! For now, because of Covid-19, we’ll be meeting virtually.
I’m in a “complicated relationship” with why I love horror. But what it all boils down to me is that I’ve lived horror, and yet, like a final girl in a horror movie, I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere. And writing and reading horror books are helping me to heal. It’s changing the way I look at the world.
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