Last week on the general blog, I announced the above deal to turn "Why I Love Horror" into a book, a real book with a major publisher.
I added the details and context in this post.
As readers of this blog know, the Why I Love Horror posts are a huge feature of my October, 31 Days of Horror blog-a-thon. But to celebrate the book, I will have a few sprinkled throughout the summer.
Today is an example. I first met Izzy Lee through her work, specifically, her amazing comedy/horror short film, Meat Friend, which was the audience award winner at the Final Frame Film Festival during StokerCon 2022. You can watch the film here. Seriously, step away from this post, watch it, and come back. It's under 9 mins.
Welcome back. Along with films, Lee recently published a first novella, I Can See Your Lies. From the Goodreads entry:
FOR LOVE. FOR VENGEANCE.
Fin's reality is crumbling. Her husband has abandoned her, she's now a single mom to a nine-year-old daughter, her Los Angeles home is sweltering, and she's being haunted by disturbing hallucinations that make life a waking nightmare. Are the visions a product of stress, trauma, psychosis, or something else? The answers to those questions become more clear when Fin starts digging up dark secrets connected to her mother's cold-case disappearance, a once-rising actress who mysteriously vanished in 1979. Will Fin slowly unravel the truth? Or will it remain hidden forever beneath the glitz and glamour of illusion?
This novella is getting rave reviews and I highly suggest you seek it out to add to your collections. In the meantime, I wanted to let Lee introduce herself to all of you. Here is Izzy Lee's entry into the Why I Love Horror series.
by Izzy Lee
Horror understands me, and I, it. It’s a genre that I’ve been drawn to from a very young age, and no other comes close. Horror was there for me when adults were not, it is there for me now when my country and government is not, where I have the misfortune to live in the “land of the free,” but they really meant that it is only free for those who rule it, who look like them, who have their means. They are the ones who hold elections on what I can do with my own body, who allow their own to do terrible things to my kind and those around me, to those they cannot possibly understand because they do not have the capacity. Or they will not, they refuse it.
Horror is a place where I can go to escape from the feeling of that invisible boot against my neck, crushing out my air and my voice. It’s where I go to get away from the constant nonsense that bombards me, whether that’s an inner voice or the society raging against me because I refuse their lies. Horror’s black embrace is there for me on those dark days when the noise is too much, that cacophony that tells me that I’m not good enough, smart enough, rich enough, thin enough, talented enough, normal enough, enough, enough.
The dark velvet void is always waiting for me when I need it. This is the one place that listens when I need to cry out, sob, or even whimper to be heard, and it does not judge, because it knows I speak my truth. This special place is where others like myself go to find each other, because it’s probably the only place where we can exist without having to explain why we’re “like this.”
Horror will not tell you to feel better, to snap out of it, or try to force a cruel sense of optimism down your throat. This is not a genre that will try to sell you falsities or paradoxes, it will not proselytize. It will be real with you, it will be simply be there, it will nod to you in solidarity for having the courage to exist in so much pain, and hold out a chair for you at its vast table.
That is a comfort we don’t really find anywhere else, but the black lights burn just up ahead, if you know where to look for them. If you’re new to this particular darkness, don’t be afraid. It feels funny to tell you this, but what you fear isn’t us, it isn’t this island of misfit toys. We take the fear around us and wear it like a shroud, or a cloak. You can sometimes see it swirling in our stares.
If you want it, it’s yours, this place that is not a place, this home that is not a home. You will be welcomed, understood, and will find friendship and kindness there. But you must be open, you see, and that can be the scary part. But if you have nothing to lose because it’s all been taken from you, you’ll find a calm stillness, kind of like the eye of the storm.
Am I okay? Christ, no. But that’s fine, I’m among friends here. And simply because of that fact, I’m more okay than I would be otherwise. Granted, it’s an X-ray version of a vision of what “okay” means to everyone else. Again, I’m more than fine with this. They cannot understand horror. At times, they’re the ones who perpetrate it due to outsized feelings of superiority and outdated ideas that were never, in fact, all right.
These kinds of people don’t understand that we’re on an infinitesimal speck of rock hurtling through cosmic dust and gamma rays, and that we don’t exist for very long, if we even exist at all.
Apologies, you’re reading the rantings of someone who decided to check out all the available Nietzsche books at her local library when she was only 14. I’m actually fun at parties, if you’re into horror and like real conversations.
So no, I’m not okay, it is nearly impossible to exist in this world. However, writing this has made me feel almost okay, and for that, I’m grateful.
Horror has given me this release from the maelstrom of madness we find ourselves in. As Oliver Reed once said in my favorite Cronenberg film (The Brood), “go all the way through it.”
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