31 Days of Horror: Day 31-- Introducing 2023's Summer Scares Spokesperson....Daniel Kraus

Today is the day, the announcement of the 2023 Summer Scares Spokesperson. You can click here to access the Summer Scares Resource page to read the full press release. 

It's New York Times bestselling author Daniel Kraus!

Kraus is not new to Summer Scares. Rotters was one of our inaugural YA picks back in 2019, and he has filled in whenever we needed an extra author every year since. And, he is also a librarian and former editor at our sponsor, Booklist.

But this year, we are especially excited to have Kraus officially on board for 2 main reasons.

1. Kraus is a Guest of Honor at StokerCon 2023 in Pittsburgh this coming June. We are excited to celebrate him doubly at the event.
2. And this is KEY, Kraus writes Horror for every age level. We wanted an author who represented the adults, teens, and middle grade readers we are seeking, and I would argue that no one else in the Horror world has proven that he can scare readers at every age as well as Kraus can.

You can visit the Summer Scares 2023 Resource Page for today' press release and the 2019-2022 Summer Scares Archive for more information about Summer Scares but for 31 Days of Horror, we asked Kraus to share his thoughts on the program and Horror in general.

What he gave us is absolute Horror perfection. Enjoy.

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Being named the 2023 Summer Scares spokesperson feels like coming home.

It also feels like a call to arms.

The small Iowa town where I grew up only had one modest library, but it was the stuff horror dreams (and maybe a few outright nightmares?) were made of. Built in 1893, the Jefferson County Library was the first Carnegie Library west of the Mississippi. Though no longer used as a library, it still stands today—and is every bit as spooky. Stern red brick. High vertical windows. An archway over the entryway featuring a jade-eyed owl. It’s both handsome and slightly reminiscent of a nineteenth-century lunatic asylum.

[If you want an image: http://www.fairfieldculturaldistrict.org/heritage/Library/siteindex.htm]

Inside, it only got spookier. Old portraits with glaring eyes. Blank-faced statues. Two small floors of stacks, which grew dark near the back. A giant, outright terrifying bison head hanging over a stairway leading to a dimly lit top-floor museum. Inside were everything from shark jaws to taxidermized animals that had started to rot through their fur.

I got scared a lot at that library. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

[If you want spooky images of the library in the 1890s: http://www.fairfieldculturaldistrict.org/heritage/Library/tour.htm]

If I were transported back in that library circa 1987, I could take you directly to the Stephen King section. To the paperback spinner rack where I first came upon Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. To the shelf with the bound copies of old Mad Magazines, which, for reasons I can’t articulate, scared me senseless. To the corner of the kid’s section featuring nonfiction titles on ghosts, hauntings, and the paranormal. To the LPs. Oh, lord, the LPs. How many times did I go into my basement, turn out the lights, and lose my young mind over haunted vinyl like Sounds to Make You Shiver!, House of Terror, and A Story of Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein, which I can still quote from verbatim.

The library was filled with frights. But unlike the threats and insecurities of school bullies, creepy adults, and the half-understood scourges of poverty, mental illness, and abuse all around me—all around everyone, no matter what town you lived in—the library’s frights could be controlled. 

I could dial up the horror whenever I wanted: Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon, its spooky dust jacket a taunting dare. Or I could dial it back down: Watership Down, a book about rabbits for crying out loud, but recommended via King’s Danse Macabre—and a lot more harrowing than I expected. (I read a large-print edition, by the way, the only copy the library had.) It all worked its dark magic.

Horror didn’t just change my life. It saved it. 

In the 1980s, the pervading idea was that children and teens who were into horror were, at best, budding perverts and sickos, and at worst, up-and-coming satanic cultists. This notion wasn’t helped by the flourishing of VHS rental businesses that relegated the horror section to the scuzziest back corner, equating it with the Adult section behind the curtain. Grimy, grindhouse-era box cover art seemed to revel in it with such infamous box covers as Faces of Death and Fulci’s Zombie. Horror in that era conjured up images of 42^nd Street New York cinemas—drug-addicted sleazoids getting murdered by black-gloved knife-wielders. In a cruddy dumpster inside a seedy Manhattan alley—that was where your kid’s body would be found if you let them continue down horror’s grim path. 

My choice of genres, in other words, wasn’t the popular choice, nor the choice promoted by most adults and parents. My mom was an exception; I’ve written about her influence dozens of times. Who I ought to celebrate more, however, were my librarians.

Did the books I checked out at the library upset me? Often they did. But that was, and is, the value of horror to me: the testing the limits. As a kid, that meant finding out what scared me, retreating a bit, analyzing my reaction, and then returning to the scene of the crime and borrowing that book again, or renting that movie again, to see if I’d mastered my reaction over it. 

A horror fan might run away—but they always come back.

Many people lose this adventurous spirit as they get older. Not horror readers, and certainly not horror writers. We are always pressing, always probing, always seeing how far we are willing to go. This doesn’t make us lesser citizens of the world. It makes us better citizens of the world. 

Time and again, you’ll hear the old chestnut from those who have met a horror artist and said with astonishment: “I couldn’t believe how nice they were!” That is correct. Horror writers and readers are empathy experts. We understand the commonality of fear. And it is fear—and fear’s sister emotion, hope—that drives us, at a societal and biologic level, toward every major decision of our lives. This is how, piece by piece, culture evolves.

Where do the most important societal changes come from? The fringes. What is the genre most identified with fringes? Horror. Along with romance/erotica, I would argue, horror is the genre that operates on deepest of gut levels. It is the bellwether, the harbinger. It the genre that not only dares to be transgressive, but has transgression imprinted into its very DNA.

The same things that make horror the genre that understands fear is what makes horror the genre that welcomes one and all. Because in the dead of night, when our lives are threatened, when the blood and adrenaline are pumping, there are no divisions between us. We realize that we are all part of the same family.

And who are the midwives of that family? Who are the hosts that bring so many of us together, to celebrate what scares us, thereby celebrating what we have in common? Librarians. I am endlessly grateful to the librarians who had confidence that I, and millions of others, could navigate our boundaries as readers. The librarians working today are doing that same work, fighting to help readers find themselves as children, teens, or adults, and doing so under increasingly hostile conditions. We must support them in every way we can. 

It’s only fair. They supported us first.

Daniel Kraus is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels and graphic novels. He co-authored The Living Dead with legendary filmmaker George a. Romero. With Guillermo del Toro, he co-authored The Shape of Water, based on the same idea the two created for the Oscar-winning film. Also with del Toro, Kraus co-authored Trollhunters, which was adapted into the Emmy-winning Netflix series. He has won two Odyssey Awards (for Rotters and Scowler), and The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch was named one of Entertainment Weekly‘s Top 10 Books of the Year. His books have been Library Guild selections, YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults picks, Bram Stoker finalists, and more. His work has been translated into over 20 languages. Daniel lives with his wife in Chicago. Visit him at danielkraus.com.

31 Days of Horror: Day 30-- A Goodbye From HWA President John Palisano

Today I would like to formally say goodbye to a dear friend and our fearless HWA leader, John Palisano. Tomorrow is officially his last day as the President of HWA. 

John has been kind and welcoming to me since the very beginning, when I knew no one as a Guest of Honor at StokerCon 2017. After many years of service to HWA, John is stepping down and passing the keys to the Horror kingdom into the very capable hands of another John, John Edward Lawson.

There will be much time to talk about Lawson in the future, but today, I asked Palisano to participate in 31 Days, not to tell us why he loves Horror [which he has done before], but rather, to make a final public statement as President, and in true JP fashion, he did not disappoint.

Love you man. Can't wait to work with you again,

And now, here is JP.

-------------------------------------------

We could spend this valuable time reciting a list of accomplishments, or reviewing the highlights and lowlights of my service to the members of the HWA. You’d like the salacious stuff, wouldn’t you? Of course.

But all of that’s been well documented already. My preference is to leave you with a dark fable, because what it all comes down to for each and every one of us—the reason we are here—the reason we’ve been drawn together inside these torch lit caves and around these campfires—are stories. Specifically very, very dark stories. So, here’s one that says goodbye just as it says hello. 

 *** 

Silhouettes form in the gray mist. Fellow travelers arrive, called toward the dark, fantastic light to find and mine the stories and carry them across the icky, blood-soaked sand. The treasures they find can be so exquisite—like the burning sensation from a lingering cut. As much as it hurts, the itch feels good enough to scratch and obsess over while glimpsing the layers of fat and tendon beneath a calloused hand.

As the shapes approach, I think of what a gift it’s been to sit on this dark shore’s lifeguard stand—one made from the sea-weathered bones of the guides who’ve served before me. The travelers come, some well-prepared and just looking for the lantern’s light to guide them toward the next outpost. Others come hungry and in need of nourishment and strength, all carrying their own stories to tell.

To all I say, “May your travels be light and your words carry you far” as they pass. The night sky turns red as a crimson sun rises over a sea as dark as pitch. Millions of small wave crests glisten like faraway stars. Now it’s time.

From behind the vast, limitless shroud of sky and sea, light footsteps approach. Soon, another slender silhouette approaches. His face is familiar. His demeanor is calm and robust. He reaches out a hand. “I’m ready,” he says. “Are you?”

“Yes,” I say. “Time for the transfer.” With a sure hand, I offer the lantern, holding it for a moment until I’m sure he’s got it. When he does, I nod. “Now it’s yours to shepherd well.” “Of course,” he says. “That’s why I answered the call.”

The sands open at my feet. I slip downward, the ground taking me in. I can feel mites biting as the Earth surrounds me. Shutting my eyes to the pain, I seperate my thoughts from my mind and think of a thousand stories written by two-thousand hands. Buried to my neck, my gaze takes in the new lantern holder just as its dark anti-light beams blaze. The dark eats anything too bright.

The new lantern holder climbs up onto the station, it made of bones cracked and full, darkened from the sea winds and spray.

Soon my bones will be made a part of the guard tower, too—just as soon as the sand spits them out, clean and glistening with saliva and salt water. They’ll be added and placed where needed, just as many others have before mine.

Darkness curtains me as I’m swallowed. The mites breach the innermost chambers of my skull. Other than my bones, I’ll leave a dark mark on the sands, its shape an organic puzzle for those who might encounter it. In time it will wither away; wind and tides will insure as much.

The travelers will keep coming, drawn by the dark beams, their journeys only just begun. The last thing I hear is his voice, speaking to a new arrival. 

“May your travels be light and your words carry you far.” 

 *** 

Here’s to you, all within the dark light of the HWA—and to those outside its walls, too. Thank you for allowing me to guide you these past years. John Edward Lawson is going to be an amazing lantern holder. I can’t wait to see how the HWA grows over the next several years. See you somewhere along the dark shores of discovery, friends. 

“May your travels be light and your words carry you far.”

Memento Mori 

John Palisano 

October 31, 2008— October 31, 2022

31 Days of Horror: Day 29: An excerpt from Nuzo Onoh's A Dance for the Dead out This Tuesday

Author Nuzo Onoh is back after a five year hiatus with a brand new novel [out 11/1] and she offered all of us an exclusive except.  You can also read this excellent CrimeReads piece she wrote this week entitled "5 Female Demagogues of Horror.

Below is some information about Onoh and her novel, A Dance for the Dead which received this excellent advanced blurb:

“Nuzo Onoh’s A DANCE FOR THE DEAD is a thrilling, creepy, and moving novel about betrayal, sacrifice, redemption…Very powerful. A story I won’t soon forget.”

--Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the end of the World

It has been five years since Nuzo Onoh, widely known as the Queen of African horror, released a novel. In that interval, she has published a novella, The Unclean, been twice longlisted by the British Science Fiction Association Award and shortlisted by the Nommo Awards, published stories in multiple anthologies including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from African and the African Diaspora, Africa Risen Anthology, Picnic in the Graveyard anthology, and the highly acclaimed collection, Revelations: Horror Writers for Climate Action featuring many of the big and rising names in the horror genre, amongst several other anthologies.

For Nuzo’s fans and horror lovers around the globe, the long wait for another African Horror chiller is finally over. Nuzo’s latest novel, A DANCE FOR THE DEAD, is released on 1^st November, 2022 by Stygian Sky Media. The novel is described on the publisher’s website as “a chilling African-horror tale of sibling betrayal, dark rituals, malevolent curses, and supernatural vengeance by the undisputed “Queen of African Horror” Nuzo Onoh.” 

The highly prestigious Publishers Weekly, describes the book as a “gripping dark fantasy…The vibrant worldbuilding and steady pace keep the pages flying. Readers are sure to be impressed”. Acclaimed horror author, Jeremy Bates has this to say about the book, “Nuzo Onoh’s novel, A DANCE FOR THE DEAD is a mesmerizing and terrifying thrill-ride from start to finish. I haven’t read anything really like this before.” And the award-winning Australian author, Eugen Bacon writes, “Nuzo Onoh writes simply and powerfully, masterful at a calibre of African horror that yanks out your outrage, solidifies your fear.” 

Going by the mostly 5-star early reviews on Goodreads, the Queen of African Horror is back to her rightful throne. A DANCE FOR THE DEAD follows the tragic story of two princes, Ife and Diké, and the consequences of betrayals, abuse of power, prejudice, and supernatural vengeance. In hallmark Onoh writing, the book brims with superstitions, powerful magic, malevolent ghosts and brutal cultural practices in the notorious Ukari village, the fictitious African village in Onoh’s stories that has become the equivalent of Derry in Stephen King’s works.

The book begins with an African saying, “When a man’s penis grows too big for his loincloth, he shouldn’t be shocked when a monkey mistakes it for its banana” But readers should not be deceived by this humorous opening. While there are flashes of humour in the story, the plot is one that is filled with the kind of terror and brutality that will leave readers unsettled long after they have read the final page.

Prince Diké is the first son of the King, heir to the throne and leader of the fearsome warrior cult, the Ogwumii. His younger brother, the handsome Prince Ife, is a famed dancer, with an addiction to Palm-wine and merry-making. Despite being engaged for over three years, Ife is still to marry the village beauty, Ada of the Nightingale Voice. In frustration, the king instructs Diké to arrange with the Ogwumii warriors to abduct Ife and force him into marriage.

Ife panics. His best friend, Emeka, suggests they abduct Diké instead. Dike’s abduction would plunge the kingdom into panic and scuttle the unwanted marriage to Ada of the Nightingale Voice. Emeka has always hated and envied Diké and Ife, unaware of the dastardly intention behind Emeka’s plan, agrees to the abduction.

The book blurb states:  On a moon-lit night, Diké, heir to the Kingdom and leader of the terrifying warrior cult, the Ogwumii, falls asleep inside his bedroom. He wakes up to find himself trapped within the secret shrine of the village deity, a dark cave forbidden to all save the powerful witchdoctors. Overnight, the mighty warrior-prince becomes an Osu- an untouchable and outcast. In disgraced exile in the forbidden shrine, his sole companion is the raging ghost of a murdered slave girl, wrongly sacrificed to the gods on the false prophecy of a lecherous witchdoctor. To break the Osu curse, Diké must find the traitors who orchestrated his downfall and embark on a terrifying journey to the ancestors' realm, a deadly quest that could end his life or return him to full citizenship and glory.

This brief synopsis already gives readers a taste of the dark thrill awaiting them. The ghosts are powerful and malevolent, while the witchdoctor rules in evil supremacy. Intrigues and treachery are abound and readers will be left rooting for vengeance and redemption. The below extract from the book will give readers a taste of what to expect from this latest offering from The Queen of African Horror. Happy reading.

_________________________________

(Except from A DANCE FOR THE DEAD)

A terse silence hung in the air, a silence of screeching hate. The witchdoctor stared coldly at the gathered warriors.

“Diké, son of Ezeala of Oma clan, hear this!” he pointed a blood-reddened finger at Diké. “I once again pronounce the curse of The Shadow Crows on you! A dark cloud now hovers over your head, a cloud of crows, the shadow of misfortune and pain. You have become the foolish chicken that walked out of the protection of its mother’s wings and became food to the preying hawk. Even as you stand before me today, your body has already become meat-feast to the grave worms.”

 Dibia Okpoko turned and faced the stunned warriors, his eyes blazing. “Hear this! Any of you warriors who refuses to abduct the slave-girl for the sacrifice, shall also be burdened with the curse of The Shadow Crows. Your foolish leader has commanded that you reject the heart of the slave-girl and I will not punish you for obeying your leader. That is the law of your cult, after all. But you must obey the laws of the land by performing your duty to the gods, which is to bring the human sacrifice into the shrine. Go now and bring the slave-girl that you may all live. As for your leader, he is doomed. I, Dibia Okpoko, have spoken, and the words I sow have never failed to harvest crops.” 

He turned back to Diké and spat into the soil. “As for you, proud prince, upon your foolish head be your doom. The black birds have spread their invisible wings over you and the clouds above you have turned to night in the middle of the day. Start counting your days, proud prince, and remember to count backwards, not forward.”

For several terse seconds, the two men glared at each other, hatred blistering like an inferno between them. Finally, Diké picked up his machetes and turned and walked away from the shrine-grove. He waited to hear footsteps behind him, the fearless feet of his warrior-leaders and his father.

 

He heard nothing. No one followed him out. 

A sudden shiver layered his skin with goosebumps. He shook it away with a loud curse as he stalked away from that place of death. Every man has his own palm-lines, his own lines of destiny, he thought. He could not fight Chicken-Legs’ doomed destiny. He could only fight his own. He didn’t believe that the decrepit witchdoctor had any powers over his destiny, regardless of his threats. Should misfortune come, he would handle it with the fortitude of a man. Should death come instead, he would face it like the warrior he was and fight it without fear, without mercy, and with great respect.

***

A DANCE FOR THE DEAD (paperback) is now available for preorder from all reputable retailers. Click here to order 

A special edition hardcover is also available from the publisher. Click here to order

(About the Author)

Nuzo Onoh is a Nigerian-British writer of Igbo descent. She is a pioneer of the African horror literary subgenre. Hailed as the "Queen of African Horror”, Nuzo’s works have featured in numerous magazines, podcasts, and anthologies, as well as in several academic studies and publications. 

Nuzo holds a Law degree and a Masters degree in Writing, both from Warwick University, United Kingdom. She is also a certified Civil Funeral Celebrant, licensed to conduct non-religious burial services. An avid musician with an addiction to JungYup and K-indie pop music, Nuzo plays both the guitar and piano, and holds an NVQ in Digital Music Production from City College, Coventry. She currently resides in The West Midlands, United Kingdom, with her cat, Tinkerbell.

31 Days of Horror: Day 28-- Why I Love Horror by Meghan Arcrui

As the 2022 blog-a0-thon winds down, I am happy to present  a post from my friend and colleague, Meghan Arcuri, a talented writer and the current VP of the HWA. While the President leads the organization, the VP of the HWA does the bulk of the work day to day work of making sure all for he wheels are turning. And with a new President about to begin his term [more on that in a few days], Meghan has been busier than ever.

She is a rising writer to watch and I greatly appreciate the time she has taken to be a part of my Why I Love Horror series, especially because of the story she has chosen to tell. This is not your average "Why I Love Horror" testimonial of a life long fan. But I will leave that for you to discover below.

Loving and Fearing the Void

By Meghan Arcuri 

Confession time: I’m afraid of the dark. I’m afraid of disease. I’m afraid of sticking my feet over the edge of the bed (because the monster will grab them … obviously). And I’m afraid of scary movies.

Coming from a horror writer, this might seem odd.

Always a sucker for irony, I think it’s hilarious.

I did not grow up wanting to be a writer, let alone a horror writer. Hell, I didn’t read much horror at all. But one thing led to another (read: when I became a stay-at-home mom, I started reading tons and tons of books and thought, “I could do that!”), and I found myself at Borderlands Boot Camp – a three-day writers workshop. Since the founders were Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and Doug Winter—giants in the horror writing community—most of the attendees I met wrote horror. I was surrounded by horror writers. Fortunately, these were some of the nicest people around, and they encouraged me to take a stab at the genre.

At first, I was like, “Ewww … horror.” 

But then I actually sat down and gave it a try, and, well … I loved it.

Writing horror allows me to explore characters and situations entirely outside my realm of existence. I’ve written about some deplorable people who have done and said things I would never dream of in real life. And guess what? It’s kind of fun. It’s fun to play around in that headspace, roll around in their evil, get to be a baddy for a second. I imagine it’s akin to an actor sinking her teeth into a juicy, villainous role.

It also, at times, helps me to lean into my fears. Explore them. Look at all the possible angles and outcomes and, ultimately, help me deal with them.

This is one of the reasons I like reading horror, as well. Watching a character battle demons, go to hell and back, and overcome a variety of obstacles can be satisfying and self-affirming.

Reading horror also reminds me that sometimes things are messy. Sometimes there is no happily ever after. And that allows me to reflect back on my life and acknowledge that—much as I might try—everything does not have to be perfect.

And sometimes? I just love a cool speculative concept (see Josh Malerman’s Unbury Carol), amazing world-building (see Justina Ireland’s Dread Nation), or a strong heroine (see Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic).

I’m living proof that you can be a fraidy-cat and, at the same time, enjoy the void.

But I’m still not sticking my feet over the edge of the bed… 

Two Recent Projects:

1) I edited a small collection of Charlotte Riddell stories. If you love Victorian ghost stories, you can't go wrong with Riddell. A past master who deserves more attention, she knows how to keep the pages turning. It was a limited run, but you can find out more about it here. You can also hear me talk about it on the Weird Christmas Podcast.

2) I was asked by the director of my local high school drama club to adapt one of my stories for the stage. They wanted to do something for Halloween. I was honored to be asked and enjoyed the process of adapting the story. I chose “Green with Hunger,” a tale based on the Wicked Witch. You can find the original story here. 

Meghan Arcuri is a Bram Stoker Award®-nominated author. Her work can be found in various anthologies, including Borderlands 7 (Borderlands Press), Madhouse (Dark Regions Press), Chiral Mad, and Chiral Mad 3 (Written Backwards). She is currently the Vice President of the Horror Writers Association. Prior to writing, she taught high school math, having earned her B.A. from Colgate University—with a double major in mathematics and English—and her masters from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley. Please visit her at meghanarcuri.com, facebook.com/meg.arcuri, or on Twitter (@MeghanArcuri).

31 Days of Horror: Day 27-- Why I Love Horror by Lisa Kroger and #HorrorForLibraries Giveaway 104 of a Finished Copy of Toil and Trouble

Today I have a 2-fer with the regularly scheduled #HorrorForLibraries Giveaway and a Why I Love Horror entry by one of the authors. And this is a follow up book to a Bram Stoker Award Winning nonfiction title that is one of my top print reference titles for all libraries. More below, but first, here are the details and rules on how to enter:

1. You need to be affiliated with an American public library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Click here to see giveaway #103. Our winner was Lois from Chest County [PA] Library.

Now on to today's giveaway.

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson is an award winning look at the most important women in horror, science fiction and fantasy, this is more than an encyclopedia. Along with extremely fun and compelling stories of the lives of women, some of whom everyone knows and others, who after reading this book you will never forget, it is also a volume filled with lists of read and watch suggestions, discussions of the next generation of women, and insight into the genre itself. 

Now they are back with another stellar, must purchase title: Toil and Trouble: A Women's History of the Occult. And the publisher, Quirk Books, is offering you a FINISHED COPY of the book to add to your collection immediately. And if you already ordered it [which I know many have], well we all know what happens to occult books at the library...you will need another copy at come point.

From the publisher's description:

This celebration of forgotten magical women, from Salem to WitchTok, is a fascinating and empowering read for anyone interested in occultism or feminist history. 

Meet the mystical women and nonbinary people from US history who found strength through the supernatural—and those who are still forging the way today. From the celebrity spirit mediums of the nineteenth century to contemporary activist witches hexing the patriarchy, women have long used magic and mysticism to seize the power they’re so often denied. 

Organized around different approaches women have taken to the occult over the decades—using the supernatural for political gain, seeking fame and fortune as spiritual practitioners, embracing their witchy identities, and more—this book shines a light on underappreciated magical pioneers, including: 

• Dion Fortune, who tried to marshal a magical army against Hitler 

• Bri Luna, the Hoodwitch, social media star and serious magical practitioner 

• Joan Quigley, personal psychic to Nancy Reagan 

• Marie Laveau, voodoo queen of New Orleans 

• Elvira, queer goth sex symbol who defied the Satanic Panic 

• And many more!

And as a bonus in today's post, I also have Lisa Kröger  offering her take on Why I Love Horror.

Why I Love Horror by Lisa Kröger 

Quick question, horror fans. How do you repel a vampire?

With holy water, of course. The liquid is so powerful, only a few drops will burn the skin of the damned. You could also whip out a crucifix (just the sight of it makes the creature hiss and retract).

Who do you call when your teenage daughter is possessed by a demon?

An exorcist, courtesy of the Catholic Church.

Horror is usually built on the dynamic of good versus evil. It’s why so many of us can call the genre “comfort food.” Unlike the real world, the evil is clearly defined, and so is the good. We know who the savior of the story is. Our job is only to watch—and wait—to see if the good will triumph. Often it does, even if the promise of future evil still remains.

Horror has often been called a transgressive genre. I’ve called it that myself—it’s one of the primary reasons I love it. It’s meant to disrupt the comfortable places we exist in, to make us feel unsafe and insecure. The disruption is meant to be good, mostly, as it shakes us up, wakes us up, and makes us question our world. The transgressive nature is what led me to write Monster, She Wrote and my newest Toil and Trouble: A Women’s History of the Occult. Women breaking rules and taking charge is at the heart of the kind of horror I love.

I grew up in a conservative evangelical Christian community. The rules of my church were strict: no musical instruments, as only human voices were permitted in songs—and no dancing was permitted ever. As a child, I was warned against “mixed bathing” (which meant swimming in pools with boys). I remember overhearing a debate over whether or not women should be allowed to speak at all within the walls of the sanctuary (we already couldn’t pray out loud there). It was a place built by rules, and most of those rules told me that I was “wrong.”

Horror, then, for me was an escape, and if I’m honest, a bit of a rebellion. The first movie I remember seeing was The Exorcist, when I was in middle school. It was a clandestine affair: I was at a sleepover, and we stole the video from my friend’s older brother. No one knew we were watching; surely, we would be told we couldn’t watch a movie like this one. Here was a girl about my age, saying things I could never imagine saying and doing things with (gasp) crosses that I couldn’t comprehend. It exploded my world. I was gleeful—watching horror was an act that my community would shun me for, if they ever knew. I was watching something that was “sinful”—that was “wrong”—and it felt powerful. In a way, it was the first step to my life outside of that community.

As an adult, I’m an atheist, or maybe an agnostic. Truthfully, I don’t care about the label of it all—I just care to define myself as not a believer, as an outsider to that community. As I grew older, my love for horror grew too, but there was always a strange Christ-shaped shadow that followed me. Even in my escape into horror, there were the crosses and crucifixes and holy water. The power of Christ compels and all that.

Sometimes, a narrative surprised me. Carrie (1976) was one of those films I watched early on that cemented my status as a horror fan. Carrie’s blood-soaked death stare as she targets her classmates at the prom is iconic, pure horror at its best. But for me, the true terror was found in Carrie’s home. It was one of the few movies that I had seen that peeled back the façade of living in a community that was overshadowed by a fundamentalist worldview. My own childhood experiences were vastly different from Carrie’s, of course (there were no prayer closets, no religious abuse, nor accusations of “dirty pillows”), but both the book and the movie really understood the stark difference in the world outside of Carrie’s home and the world inside. Carrie was an anxious outsider—her mother’s religious fanaticism cemented that identity for her. She never stood a chance.

To this day, it is still for me one of the best representations of the dangers inherent in religious fanatism.

Yet, the horror genre as a whole seems to still fall into the narrative trap of making the Christian church the template for the good that will defeat the evil. There’s The Exorcist, of course. But also The Amityville Horror, the movies in The Conjuring Universe, The Omen. They all position the Christian (usually Catholic) church as the ultimate way to destroy evil. Even films like Wicker Man present Christianity as the “right” religion when compared with the murderous pagan cult.

In all of these, there is little examination of the dangers that might be inherent in a religious environment. The “evil” sometimes grows from the inside out.

When Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass premiered on Netflix, I was cautiously optimistic. I’d loved The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor. But this show was something different—no big, haunted house, like the earlier shows, just a small, conservative community with a church at its heart.

But Midnight Mass resists the traditional narrative of a supernatural evil overcome by a religious good. There is a supernatural evil, of course, but there’s also something beneath that, something already rotting on the core of the island town. Flanagan’s story demonstrates how faith can blind people to dangers—in this case, mistaking those dangers for something miraculous. But it also shines a harsh light on how “good” people are really bad (their religiosity has only coded them as virtuous, though their words and actions proved otherwise).

But more than that, Midnight Mass allows the heroes to rest outside of the Christian community. The first to fall to the evil is the most religious of them all, Father Paul, followed by his second-in-command, Bev Keane. Flanagan’s church does not exist to fight evil; rather, the church is the weakest point that allows the evil to take hold in the town. Without the church, without Father Paul, without Bev, the people of Crockett Island would’ve remained safe. Both Father Paul and Bev manipulate the townspeople, using Bible verses twisted to fit their purpose. They make angels out of literal monsters.

The show demonstrates the dangers inherent in blind faith and unexamined allegiance to an ideology better than anything I’ve ever seen.

But the show truly excels in its depictions of the heroes, those characters who stood up against the evil. First was Sheriff Hasan, a newcomer to the island who questions the ethics of handing out the Christian Bible in the public school. He draws the ire of Bev during a school meeting, but he stands his ground. Then there is Sarah Gunning, the doctor who noticed something not quite right with the blood samples of her patients (which seemed to burst into flames in direct sunlight). Sarah has returned to the island to care for her elderly mother, but she never quite felt at home, especially with her girlfriend drawing stares from the more religious folks. There is also Erin Greene, the unmarried and pregnant school teacher who stands up on more than one occasion to the not-so-subtle “slut shaming” verbal jabs from Bev.

A Muslim. A lesbian. A “fallen woman.”

They are all people who would be considered “sinful” or “wrong” by the Christian community on Crockett Island. Yet, in Flanagan’s story, this band of outsiders is the true heroes. They are the ones who rang the alarm when danger entered their community. Midnight Mass is religious horror, but it is one that celebrates the outsider.

I, for one, enjoy horror that examines all the institutions, religious or not, that can breed evil within our society. I especially enjoy the ones that remember we need to see the outsiders as heroes.

31 Days of Horror: Day 26-- Podcasts and Recordings Featuring Me

Yesterday I posted the recording from the conversation I moderated for the Book And Author Society, but this Halloween season, I made a few other  appearances that you can now access from the comfort of any computer, for free.

Taken together, these appearances provide a snap shot of Horror in libraries at this current moment and also give you a plethora of ideas, links, and resources to promote Horror all year long. As this special month of daily reminders about the vibrancy and breadth of the genre winds down, it is important for you to keep suggesting Horror in every season.

And to help you keep going, ALA Editions is offering my readers $5 off my book, The Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror, 3rd Edition [2021], from now until the end of the year. Just use the code RAGH22 at check out. 

Now to those appearance links for your viewing and listening pleasure.

The first was back in September when my HWA Library Co-Chair Konrad Stump and I appeared for New Jersey LibraryLink in early September and presented Horror Readers' Advisory: How to Help Your Scariest Patrons which you can now watch here.

My editor at ALA Editions also interviewed me for American Libraries Magazine's Call Number Podcast. I am after R.L. Stine, which made me think about it the way-- R.L. Stine opened for me. A girl can dream right. You can listen to that entire episode here.

This past summer, the library workers behind Down Time, a podcast produced by the Cranston [RI] Public Library reached out to me to do an episode about Horror with them. That podcast went live yesterday and you can listen to it here.  Or anywhere you get podcasts.

31 Days of Horror: Day 25 - Why I Love Horror by Linda Addison

One of the most talented and best humans in Speculative Fiction is Linda Addison. I feel so lucky to have gotten to know her though our service to the HWA, but I feel even luckier to consider her a dear friend.

Earlier this month, I hosted an event for the Book and Author Society, a panel discussion with Horror authors Cynthia Pelayo. Hailey Piper, Chuck Wendig, Lisa Morton, Gabino Iglesias, and Linda Addison.

I was purposely saving Linda's entry into Why I Love Horror until after I knew for sure that this panel discussion would be ready for viewing by all. You can now view the recording for free here.

I am going to let Linda speak for herself on that video and in her guest post below, but before I hand over the blog to her, I want to say this: Read everything she has ever had a hand in and if you ever have the chance to be physically near her-- take it! 

The floor is yours Linda....

Why I Love Horror by Linda D. Addison 

 Horror: an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. 

There's two kinds of horror in the world, one is real-life horror and the other is fictional horror: poetry, stories, novels, movies, etc. I know that we're writing about the make-believe horror, but I can't leave out real horror because so much of what I write comes from my reactions and emotions about things that are actually happening in the world, the terrible things humans do to each other. One feeds the other and I suspect that’s true for many creators of horror work. 

I love reading horror fiction and poetry written by others because of the tension it creates, and releases, like holding my breath and then exhaling, while being safe. No matter how intense the emotion invoked, I know that it’s not from something that will actually harm me. Similar to the thrill of a rollercoaster ride, it feels like I’m going to fly off the edge, I scream at the sensation, but ultimately I know I’m not in danger.

Growing up in Philly, I used to watch scary movies with my mom at night after my younger brothers and sister went to bed. Too often I would fall asleep before the movie actually ended, but I looked forward to those evenings. I think I was around 12 years old when I started watching "Double Chiller Theater". The movies didn’t give me nightmares, I was more curious about the adventure and the monsters, what created them? I fondly remember movies like Frankenstein, The Mummy, Forbidden Planet and Creature with the Atom Brain, to name a few.

While others found these movies scary, they were a lot less fearful than the life I was living in my house and neighborhood. These movies took me to places I’ve never seen and fed my active imagination. Escaping into movies and books not only helped me release some of the real-life tension, but allowed me to daydream how one day I might go to other countries, see things that were only in books. Dreams I didn’t know would ever be real, but that escape was a shadowy breath of fresh air for a thin little girl with strange ideas and images that she kept inside. I don’t know how much those movies motivated me, but I can look back and know they were important.

In high school and college I fell in love with the shadows and music in the writings of Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe, James Baldwin, Kafka, Shakespeare, Langston Hughes, John Cheever, Toni Morrison and Richard Wright. After college, I obsessively read Stephen King, Tom Piccirilli, Tananarive Due, Jack Ketchum, Joe Lansdale, Karen Taylor, Charlee Jacob, Marge Simon and others.

Once I was in control of my life, I felt safe enough to look at the real horror in my childhood. I began making up my own stories and poetry, not so much autobiographical versions of my past, but using the emotions of what I experienced when I wrote. In time, I began to see that my writing involved not characters as victims, but victimized, and discovering the power to come to terms with their fear and their victimizer.

Much of the horror I write (and read) now is a way to process my “intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust” at the awful things happening in the world as a result of humans behaving badly. I love writing horror because it gives me a voice to express my emotions, and I love knowing that others read my work and it invokes a reaction in them.

So I’ll continue making up stories and poetry that others can read and hope it shakes them up in the safety of their homes. Since we’re all connected, maybe my writing will touch some real-life shadow in others, so we can exhale together. 

 —Linda D. Addison, five-time recipient of HWA Bram Stoker Award®, including The Place of Broken Things written with Alessandro Manzetti, & How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend, recipient of HWA Lifetime Achievement Award and SFPA Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry.

31 Days of Horror: Day 24-- Why I Love Horror by John F.D. Taff

John F.D. Taff is one of the best short story writers and editors working today. Numerous anthologies I have read this year, featured a story by him, and not a single one disappointed. He also edited one of the best anthologies of 2022, Dark Stars: New Tales of Darkest Horror. 

Click here for my full review.

After the number o time Taff's writing and editing left me breathless in the last year, I had to invite him to 31 Days of Horror. And spoiler alert, once again, he did not disappoint.

I Kill Because I Care

By John F.D. Taff

Horror, of all the genres out there in the literary world, is the most empathetic, caring of them, and I will fight anyone who disagrees with this assessment.  Before we descend into abject violence, though, allow me to explain.

I have been writing horror now for thirty-plus years.  I have been reading horror far longer than that, back to when I first began to read.  I gravitated toward horror in its most basic form—the horror comic book.  I read Marvel in those days, and if you know, you know.  I read mostly superheroes, to be sure, but also titles like The Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night, The Man-Thing, The Crypt of Shadows, The Living Mummy, and (to my Catholic mother’s dismay) The Son of Satan. (Ask me sometime to tell you the story of the priest who came to dinner and saw my crayon drawing of The Son of Satan on my bedroom wall.)  Even Dr. Strange Master of the Mystic Arts was at least fifty-fifty horror/superhero.

From there to the short stories of Poe and Lovecraft, then on to King and Straub and Barker and Rice.  In there was also a thorough indoctrination into horror cinema, mostly through the black-and-white movies of the Universal monsters and the all-too-vivid, full-color horror of Hammer films.  I was steeped in horror from an early age, just so my bona fides are established here straightaway.

Like most newbies to horror, sure, I was attracted to the very things that keep some away from the genre, namely the blood and violence.  Or the promise, the merest hint of that.  Slowly, though, ironic as it might seem, I began to appreciate the other nuances of horror.  The subtle, creeping dread, the implications of deeper, darker things, the vast, casual indifference of the universe to the human condition.  Things that it took years to discern because my reading skills far outstripped my maturity and life experience.

What it took me even more years to appreciate was what I’ve come to understand is the absolute kernel of truth embedded in all of the best horror stories.  And that, simply, is the genre’s profound empathy for the human condition.  One of my favorite authors, Stephen R. Donaldson (not horror but a fantasy novelist whose work does contain horrific elements) encapsulated what I think is the through-line of horror and the philosophy I have striven for in my own writing.  And that is, paraphrasing here, Write compelling characters, get the reader to care deeply for those characters, then kick the shit out of them.  Over the course of my thirty-plus years of professional writing, I have held to that philosophy.

But back to the original sentiment about horror being the most empathetic of genres.  Why?  Well, if you take that sentiment espoused by Mr. Donaldson as axiomatic, it’s easy.  If a horror story is going to take you to some dark places, if it’s going to scare or discomfit you, it has to first get you to care about the character(s) the story is going put through these paces.  If you don’t care for the characters in some fashion (and there are, of course, exceptions to this rule, but let’s stick with it for now), how are you going to be in the least affected by what is happening to them in the story?

But if you like them, if you do care about them, then what happens in the story will resonate easily with you.  You are, in fact, empathizing with them, and that sense of empathy makes what happens to the characters seem all the worse because, in essence, it’s happening to you.  The best horror stories, then, make the horror happen to the reader, and the way they do this is through empathy.

For example, would the events of Stephen King’s It have the same effect on you if you didn’t care for George, Ben, Eddie, Richie, Stan, Beverly, and Mike?  Would Stoker’s Dracula be as chilling if you didn’t feel sympathy for Mina and Lucy and Harker?  Would Shelley’s Frankenstein work if there wasn’t some shred of pity for the monster?  Would Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities” work if you didn’t pick up on the fractured love the two men have for each other?

I could go on and on. Rice’s ambivalent Louis in Interview with the Vampire.  Poe’s tortured narrators in “The Black Cat,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.”  I hesitate to invoke the name of King again in such a short article, but he is the touchstone of the modern genre, and his work is built on writing characters that readers love.  From the huge cast of The Stand to more intimate stories like Pet Semetary, King’s novels and shorts are replete with characters readers grow to love and care about deeply before the carnage ensues.

And it always ensues.

Even in its basest form, such as the slasher movie or stories that involve things sometimes described by readers with upturned noses as “torture porn,” there is some bond of sympathy built, however tenuous, between the character and the observer or reader.  Sure, some who prefer these types of horror might not be interested in this aspect or might be inured to it, but I argue that it’s there and its effect is real enough, even if it works on a more subconscious level.  I say this because I believe that much of horror, dealing as it sometimes does with eerie and supernatural things, operates on a subconscious level.

I have become known in the genre as the “King of Pain,” a sobriquet bestowed on me more than decade ago by one of my publishers.  It used to embarrass me somewhat, but I’ve grown to embrace it.  I’m very aware of my role as a creator of stories, of characters, and I want to make sure that readers identify and empathize with the characters I put on the page, so that the shit-kicking I put them through is felt.  Felt.  

But I also want them to come through the ordeal, whatever that means in the end.  Sure, some characters will die or will be permanently altered, but I think that, too, shown in a fictional form, establishes empathy with the human condition.  If a reader walks away from any of my stories seeing the characters emerge from adversity, surely this gives them promise that they can, too.  And isn’t that the best kind of empathy, the kind you can apply to yourself in your own life?

By better empathizing with yourself, I believe you’re in a solid position to empathize with others.

So, yeah, horror is the most empathetic genre out there, hands down.  Science fiction, romance, historical fiction, fantasy, crime.  All of these might feature characters the readers can empathize with, but in my estimation they are not built on empathy the way horror is.

Now, about that fight…

----------------------------------------

John F.D. Taff is the multiple Bram Stoker Award-nominated author of The End in All Beginnings and The Fearing.  His short stories and novellas have appeared in innumerable magazines and anthologies over the last thirty-plus years.  Peter Straub once tweeted that he was “mighty cool,” which Taff will undoubtedly have engraved on his tombstone.  Taff’s recent work can be seen in The Bad Book, the anthology he edited for Bleeding Edge Books, and Dark Stars from Tor/Nightfire, the anthology he edited and contributed to. His work has also appeared in anthologies such as Gutted, Behold, Lullabies for Suffering, The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors, and Orphans of Bliss.  New work will appear soon in projects such as Human Monsters and Damnation Games.  You can follow Taff on Twitter @johnfdtaff.

31 Days of Horror: Day 23-- Why I Love Horror by James Chambers

Earlier this week, when I welcomed Brian Matthews to the blog I also mentioned James Chambers, promising to give him a slot as well. Today is that day. 

Chambers is a tireless HWA volunteer. A few things he does-- along with Brian he is the StokerCon guru and is actively working to create the documentation we need to keep it going, he oversees the Stoker Awards [click here for a piece he organized with Lit Reactor about that], he has worked to revive the HorrorU classes, and he is very involved with his local chapter. This is not a complete list, but a sampling.

But here is something more important. I cannot say enough kind things about Chambers as a human having gotten to work closely with him over the years. And some of those times when we worked together were very stressful [one example, an actually Nor'easter as we hosted StokerCon and the hotel started to spring leaks], and yet, he never lost his cool. On our HWA Board conversation forum he is often the voice of reason in stressful situations as well.

We are all lucky to have him as part of the HWA's leadership, but he is alway a great writer. I have given his collections Star reviews in the past. But, let me let him explain why he loves Horror to you for himself.

Why I Love Horror 

By James Chambers 

“One needs nightmares… to appreciate dreams.” 

Several years back, the late and much-missed Rocky Wood led an online “challenge” for horror authors, readers, and fans to post why they loved horror and tag it “Read More Scary Books.” I contributed the above quote to the delightful cavalcade of posts supporting the horror genre and encouraging readers to delve deeper into what it offers. The overall celebration of this dark genre impressed me at the time as did the many different reasons people found to express why horror is so important to them. It took me some thought and consideration to distill my own affection for horror into such a succinct statement, partly because my love for the genre has evolved over the years. I wanted to capture the most enduring aspect of it, the one element that keeps me coming back to read and write horror fiction despite my love of several other genres from crime to urban fantasy, from military science fiction to steampunk.

Horror first sank its teeth into me with imagery. I loved monsters as a child, not an unusual thing at that age when boys often become fascinated with dinosaurs, sharks, robots, and other fantastic creatures and creations that spark our imaginations. They inspire us to learn all we can about them. The names of all the dinosaurs. All the parts of a robot. What fishermen find in the stomach of a captured great white shark. Horror took all that a step further by breaking the bounds of reality to suggest, however implausibly, that ghosts, vampires, and werewolves might also be real. Five-year-old brains don’t possess the same grasp on reality as adult minds. How children that age perceive life changes almost daily. They haven’t yet developed the cognitive skills to close the door entirely on what if. Children can know sharks exist in the sea, and know that coffins hold no true vampires—and yet, the teeth, the monstrosity, the ferocity, the sense of dread and excitement these two disparate things, one real, one not, share? That sticks a foot in the door of a young mind, keeping it open enough for that question to linger: What if? What if, despite everything I know, both are real? Most children only see pictures of sharks and vampires in children's books, in movies, or on TV. Their experience of them is the same. Only rationality and trust in their parents, teachers, and other adults helps them discern the difference between the real one and the imaginary one.

As children grow, though, the façade of the “trusted adult” often comes crashing down. Adults lie, fib, or mislead kids on countless occasions, some well-intentioned and fun (such as Santa Claus), others malicious and damaging such as lies to conceal abuse, some to protect the parent or adult from sharing embarrassing information with a child, and so on. Children grow up to see through these falsehoods. Years of presents and good times soften the blow of realizing there’s no Santa Claus, but that’s an exception. Other truths that become apparent as we grow to see the words or stories intended to shield, dismiss, or victimize us for what they were, kick that “What if?” door wide open again: What if everyone who told me Tyrannosaurus rexes once existed, but vampires don’t and never did was lying about that too? It’s the harvest sown in the horror brain.

Many horror readers and authors I know discovered the genre in earnest around the age when they experienced these revelations. For my generation, it’s almost a rite of passage to have read Stephen King’s Night Shift, Salem’s Lot, and Skeleton Crew, followed closely by Clive Barker’s Books of Blood. Those of use who read them around middle school and early high school have a significantly higher ratio of having grown up to be a horror writer or reader. That’s my theory, at least. I base it on purely anecdotal evidence. I’m confident, though, that if anyone ever undertook a serious survey it would bear this out in some fashion. Having the curtains of childhood reality torn down to expose things we lived with unquestioned for so long sends us seeking a means to make sense of it, to adapt, to adjust, to recalibrate, and renew our designations of what is right or wrong, good or evil, safe or dangerous, challenges that characters in horror fiction experience—often with the added obstacle of no one believing them, leaving them on their own to solve their troubles, which holds a mirror up to the alienation and isolation many young people feel in those years.

As a child, my introduction to horror came in the form of comic books, specifically giant-sized issues of Tomb of Dracula and Werewolf by Night, and movies, especially the Universal Horror films featuring Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr, but also made-for-TV fare like Gargoyles and B-movie reruns of Battle Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Empire of the Ants, Food of the Gods, Kingdom of the Spiders, Them!, and many others. As a teenager, the short fiction of Barker and King galvanized me to return to the genre. I obsessed about how to see movies such as Day of the Dead, From Beyond, and The Thing, which Hollywood and wizened adults deemed unsuitable for my impressionable mind. Those stories, regardless of their media, seemed more authentic and truer to me than any action, comedy, or drama. Those types of stories exaggerated reality to idealize it. Horror exaggerated reality to expose it.

The fantastic, grotesque images seeded in my young brain bore fruit years later when they helped me comprehend the expanding world unfolding around me as my awareness and responsibility increased. Horror stories helped me understand that real-world monsters exist and that it was not only okay to question what adults around me taught and believed but a necessity. A core survival skill, in fact. Around the beginning of that period in my life, I read a comic book that captured so much of what horror had come to mean to me. The story, “In the White Room,” appeared in issue four of The Saga of the Swamp Thing. Daring for a comic book, it struck a gruesome chord with news reports of the Atlanta child murders, which officially ended the year before the story saw print. In the tale, the Swamp Thing encounters a series of child killings committed by the “Pineboro Child-Stalker” and discovers the killer is a popular TV host in the mold of Mr. Rogers on a local children’s program. His singsong catchphrase about dealing with strangers: “Give the benefit of the doubt, when you trust it all works out.” Using his show to teach children to lower the guard and trust strangers, he then preys on them. The effect of that story was seismic for me.

Soon after, I read Clive Barker’s “In the Hills, the Cities,” which remains to this day, for me, the most compelling story in the Books of Blood and one that shattered my nascent ideas about what horror stories can and should be. It included no gothic castles, graveyards, cemeteries, ghosts, or monsters, and yet proved so effective it has never left my head. Other stories I read and movies I saw around that time further shaped my ideas of horror as a genre. Back then, I was exploring all the genres, reading J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and Thieves World; raiding my Dad’s science fiction paperback library for Bradbury, Clarke, Dick, Niven, and Pohl; even my toes into crime and mystery with the occasional Alfred Hitchcock anthology. Although I loved it all, horror resonated for me the deepest.

I went on to read several other authors who helped define my ideas of the genre (and continue to read many today because horror is alive and well and constantly reaching in new directions), and discovered Jack Ketchum, David Schow, and John Shirley, all of whom wrote beautifully about ugly things. That idea took root in my writer’s brain. Horror literature should—and often does—stand with the best writing of any genre. I love pulp horror and what it brings to the genre (and have written my fair share of it, especially my Corpse Fauna cycle of novellas and stories), but it says volumes that classic literature and pop culture are so dominated by Frankenstein, Dracula, and the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

I loved each of these aspects of horror as I encountered it, understood it, and came to embrace it. When I seriously embarked on my own writing career, part of the challenge became synthesizing these different ideas into a clear concept of why the horror genre has been so important to me for long, why I wanted to write horror more than any other genre. I looked back at what I had gained from a life of reading and writing horror fiction and realized that—despite the gruesome, terrible things that populate much horror, the reprehensible tortures authors inflict on our characters—the genre is a fundamentally hopeful and optimistic one.

Horror writers seek to expose what hides in the shadows, which I attempted to capture in the title of my last horror collection, On the Night Border. We wrestle our nightmares into the light and make sense of them so our readers may learn to do the same. We delineate and illuminate the darkest aspects of the human experience to help people appreciate what is good, to recognize the innate power in their hopes and dreams—because that power almost always outweighs the power of nightmares, real or imagined. And that is why I love horror.

31 Days of Horror: Day 22-- Why I Love Horror by David Rose

I have had the pleasure of getting to know author David Rose as I assisted him in creating an HWA Veterans Committee.  Beginning November first, you can see his excellent service to his fellow veterans and members of the HWA with our month long spotlight on veterans in Horror, but before that, here is your chance to meet Rose as an author.

Why I Love Horror by David Rose

Does because it irritates my super-religious mother count? 

Nah, she’s all right, but there’s no denying the look in her eye when I talk about a tale I’m working on, or when she must’ve worried the dark strain in the family double helix had passed to my niece when we played a game when said niece was still a toddler. She would nestle up next to me, cutest thing you’ve ever seen, then beg me to pull out my phone, fire up Google, then type Witches. 

“Good witch or bad witch?” she’d ask; looking down at the cartoon or the Halloween model, where I would then promptly announce my judgment. 

Why do I love horror? Does the thrill count, when I myself was a kid and rode those crappy haunted house rides where the ex-con pressing its buttons can be as unsettling as what waits inside? I absolutely loved those things, you see! Those haunted fair rides: full of the early ‘90s wolf heads and odes to serial killers, fictitious or non, and yes, those splendid carnies who from my father’s side proudly descended. I recall the smell of those tunnels, the clank and bang as your cart meets another not-so-sudden turn, the speakers nestled in the darkness; crackling out the wolf howls, or muah-ha-ha-has, or the gleeful cackle of a very bad witch. 

Horror is fun. 

For those who feel that little thrill when there’s a bump in the night, exploration of the dark and scary also comes with great moments of joy. We read, we write, we watch because it’s entertaining to do so. 

And then the question inevitably arises, why is this? Why does watching a demon summoned from a pumpkin patch to exact a grieving father’s revenge bring such hell-yeah to our day (or probably night)? 

The cynical answer is we are a species removed from death. We don’t kill our own food, we live twice as long as our ancestors did just a few centuries past, and, save for our combat vets and first responders, the gruesome end of a human being in what was their prime of life is reserved for the silver screen or the cream-colored page. Our primitive impulses may just be bored, and pulsing, and demanding to be fed. 

The optimist’s answer, though, is one of appreciation. By witnessing the snarky teens get slashed by Freddy or the sailors pulled into the water by a giant shark, we may look around at the drudgery of our room and see not its blandness but a solace, a secret garden, teeming with safety and comfort and no maniac standing outside our window. Appreciation: for our world, one that could be far, far worse. 

As an author, I think I land somewhere amidst these explanations. If we can say cynicism rests at one end of a spectrum and optimism rests at its other, then in this spectrum’s bellybutton I swim my laps. I think this could be said for many authors. 

It’s important here to admit I am no bona fide writer of horror. I leave that for the juggernauts of the field, who seem to understand its conventional fascination and its devoted audience for better. What I am is a fantasy writer, and a damn dark one at that. Remember that looking around the bland room and not feeling so bad about it? My world, Mulgara, people have told me, is far better at accomplishing that very thing than any pill we could be prescribed. Tolkien made me wish I could live in Middle Earth. I, partly without meaning to, wrote and write stories about a place few would wish to go. Walk a mile on the streets of Nilghorde. Observe their furtive shadows and the windows locked tight. Or grip an oaken paddle and venture into the waterways of Amden Bog, where worse fates wait than a communion with crocodiles. Ghouls and necromancers thrive there, as do politicians of the most corrupt sort—making our own seem like philanthropists and statesmen. And that is apparently the point: one the deepest recesses of my makeup absolutely wishes to convey. 

Examining the darkness in our own lives shows us many things; our strengths, our flaws, what little we control and that vast flow of circumstance which we oh so don’t. 

Don’t tell the narcissists, but one’s strengths and weaknesses often arrive together. Skilled love-making may carry an origin in insidious porn addiction. A fondness for the cerebral has often been accompanied by lackings in the material (just find your nearest bookworm deathly afraid of stick-shift). A fortitude unrivaled may have come from years of being bullied; leaving a Recon Marine still staring in a barracks mirror and seeing the 5th-period weakling, all those years and triumphs later. Now add that pesky fact that we control so little and we’re flung back to Mulgara yet again. Ambition in a fallen world is a recipe for wonder, and no steamier does that stew froth than when characters aren’t monoliths of good or evil but afflicted with the strong-weak dichotomy we all know all too well.

Yet this is not the sole property of a secondary world. My time as a Recon Marine came and is now long gone. The other day I “celebrated” what would have put me at twenty years in the Corps; a day I often see Marine vets commemorating on Instagram. I believe I understand why so many do this. We are caught in a moment of reflection. The twenty-year mark is where most Marines retire, and those of us who got out after an enlistment or two can’t help but take stock in all we’ve done, wonder who we’d be if we’d stayed in, and contemplate who we once were. 

It was this exact mix of imagining and rumination that led me toward Lovecraft’s Iraq, a novella-size piece where I pull from my time overseas and use it to respectfully add to the Lovecraftian canon. If ever is there a place to learn your strengths and your weaknesses, it is in the cowboy culture of a recon unit. And if ever was there a place for all that to be tested, it is in an armed conflict. I won’t even get started on the lack of control thing here, but boy does draping such an epoch in the squiggling tentacles of horror make for a fun writing experience. And from what I can tell readers are enjoying it too, and that whole “the real world could be far worse” takes on a whole new meaning when Operation Iraqi Freedom now includes missing pages out of the dreaded Necronomicon.

Yes, good and bad. Longing to see death and being appalled by it. A cynic’s wit and an optimist’s hopeful smile. All these things are why I enjoy horror; a genre that takes seriously the subjects a distracted and myopic world wishes every so often to sweep under the rug. 

From weakness can sprout strength, and out of the dark often emerges a light, though only the trained eye will see it. One that has put in the time to stare blankly into the abyss, plume its depths, and hopefully emerge with clearer vision. Of course, so few eyeballs actually do this. I suppose that’s why I love horror all the more. 

 If YOUR eyeballs enjoy absurdly dark fantasy, may I recommend my The Scrolls of Sin?

If you prefer that very thing set in a vast swamp; Amden Bog: A Novel in Stories. 

Or our solar system, rife with corruption and devilry, 200 years from now? Forsaken, Fantastic!

And if military horror is your next adventure, Lovecraft’s Iraq may hopefully do the job. 

 Safe travels. 

David Rose is the author of, among others, The Scrolls of Sin and Lovecraft's Iraq. The latter has been included in the 2022 HWA Bram Stoker Award® Reading List. His forthcoming work includes “Shain and Cinnastasia” in Superstition from Redwood Press, as well as the essay titled “McNaughton’s Witches” in S.T. Joshi’s Penumbra journal. 

He lives in Orlando, Florida.bsp;