Hello and welcome to 31 Days of Horror, a blog-a-thon series entering its 14th year. Every single day for 31 straight days, I will have a post here focused on Horror during its most popular season.
While we all know that people read Horror all year long, I spend this, our spotlight month, where the rest of the world and media pays closer attention, intensely focusing on Horror as it is right now.
This is NOT the place to find long thought pieces about the history of the genre or list of books by dead writer. Rather, it is the place to find out about today's writers, what today's readers are looking for, and most importantly, conversations about why I love Horror. My entire focus here on 31 Days of Horror is to give you a snapshot of Horror and its appeal. In fact, the entire point of the "Why I Love Horror" essays is to offer you, the library worker, an example of why someone loves horror so that you can understand even if you are not a fan yourself. It is also to give you a chance to get to know a current author, add their books to your collection, and/or suggest them to a reader.
Recently, I did a live event with my publisher, a book discussion of my library textbook, The Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror, third edition. It was me, writer/poet Linda Addison, librarian Lila Denning, writer Gabino Iglesias, writer Hailey Piper, and writer Matthew Salinas. The video of that 60 min event is now available here for free. I think it does a very good job explaining the current state of Horror and what I see as my part in it. You can watch it here or below
Now, what can you expect day to day here during 31 Days of Horror? Well, it will be similar to previous years, with a few changes to note:
First, I am going to move my links roundups to every Sunday. Mostly you will not see lists and posts from other places here on 31 Days of Horror as I tend to focus on original content, but I don't want those awesome lists and articles to get lost either. Expect those on 10/6, 13, 20, and 27.
Second, giveaways will not happen on Thursdays only. During this month, giveaways can be offered on any day of the week, but all winners are pulled Friday after 5pm. For example, I have already announced one giveaway this week and there will be another one tomorrow. So, if you want to be eligible to win, enter now. Click here for the rules.
And third, and this is the biggest change. I normally have over a dozen new entries into the Why I Love Horror essays that debut this month. But good news, bad news here. As was announced back in June, next Fall I will have a a book of new essays, by 18 authors, on why they love horror, edited by me. Currently, I have those essays and am actively working to turn it into a draft of that book (due before the end of the year). Click here or on the book announcement below for more details.
Now, I want to be clear, this does NOT mean that I will not have new essays this year. I do have some very good new entries, including one tomorrow, but I will also be reposting essays from the past 10+ years. I want to pull out some of the very best essays that have appeared here on the blog over time and highlight them for you in 2024.
As I was working on the pitch for my book, I spent time combing through the backlist of Why I Love Horror essays (which you can access anytime here), and I realized there are some amazing essays worth revisiting. But you will have to wait to see what I pick out.
In the meantime, I also have all of the resources that are here all year long. See the pages in the side bar for lists, resources, approved publishers, and of course the link to my reviews of hundreds of horror books.
I can't wait to do this with you-- 31 Days of Horror 2024!
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