31 Days of Horror: Day 1-- Here We Go Again for the 16th Year, the First Why I Love Horror Essay of 2026, and the First Giveaway

Today is October 1st and here we are again with 31 Days of Horror.

Each year 31 Days of Horror grows in readership. While some of you are here all year long, even when this blog is limited to my weekly #HorrorForLibraries giveaways, each year I get many new people joining in on the spooky blog-a-thon fun.

Now with Why I Love Horror: Essays in Horror Literature out in the world for a full year, and having won the Bram Stoker Award for both Short Nonfiction and Long Nonfiction, there is even more eyes on 31 Days of Horror.

But even with the book out and succeeding, the Why I Love Horror train stops for no one and I have solicited over a dozen Why I Love Horror essays being published here on the blog for the very first time. And it will all start today with Katherine Daniel a debut author with Berkley. 

But, first things first, if you have never encountered 31 Days of Horror before well, I have been doing this event since 2011.

[Side note, it all began inauspiciously with this post. Nothing special, just a basic post about  the appeal of Horror, but I htinkit is important to acknowledge that inauspicious beginning.]

The entire idea of 31 Days of Horror, began as a way to help library workers during the time of year when they need the most help with Horror. However, I did not want this series to become a list of lists either. 

From that desire to give you something original and useful was born a concurrent series entitled Why I Love Horror. In this series, that runs mostly, but not only, during October, I reach out to people in the Horror world and invite them to contribute essays written for you-- the general library worker. These invited people are told to share why they love horror as a creator and fan in 1500 words or less. Once again,  I have quite an exciting lineup planned.

My goal with the "Why I Love Horror" series has always been to expose you to people you should know about AND give you even more context for appeal. I can give you all the examples in the world of why people enjoy feeling scared when they read, but until you hear from actual fans, fans who also create Horror, it is hard to understand, especially for the vast majority of you who don't enjoy Horror for yourselves. 

Over the years I have had many people contribute to the Why I Love Horror series from up and comers [some of whom have gone on to become big names] to firmly established authors to folks who love horror in the library world. 

You can click here to see them all. "Why I Love Horror" is also a searchable tag any time, just like 31 Days of Horror.

"Why I Love Horror" is an excellent resource to help you help readers, and it is a Horror RA resource you cannot find anywhere else. 

But the blog is going to post every single day for 31 days in a row, so there is plenty of time to talk about all of this in more detail. Today, we are rushing straight with an original Why I Love Horror essay from Katherine Dunn, the author of When The Night Comes Knocking, her debut, Appalachian horror novel in which two estranged siblings become trapped in a convenience store under attack by a monster from the mountains who feasts on guilty hearts.

When The Night Comes Knocking is coming out October 20th from Berkley, but I have an ARC for one lucky winner today.

But wait....there's more. I want to start this month of supersized giveaways with 2 more titles, also going to the one winner.

I also have a finished, hardcover copy of the Welsh Folk Horror novel,  The Hill in the Dark Grove by Liam Higginson courtesy of Hogarth which came out on August 11th AND an ARC of the Lit RPG horror novel, The Ship of Death by Kyle Winkler courtesy of the Harper Collins Library Marketing team. This novel came out this past Tuesday.

Click here to see last week's giveaway and review the rules on how to enter. You enter once and you are entered going forward.

Good luck.

And now, please meet debut horror novelist Katherine Dunn and learn why she loves horror.

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Why I Love Horror: Essay by Katherine Daniel

When I was perhaps six years old, my ferocious reader of a mother introduced my siblings and I to Alvin Schwartz’ In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories. Allow me to set the scene: in a small bedroom covered with Star Wars action figures and Nintendo 64 game cartridges, the blinds were shut and every light was turned off, as my brothers and I sat on the carpeted floor between two twin beds with flashlights held beneath our chins. We stared, for once quiet and completely fixated on a portable radio; from it, a cassette tape played of a deep-voiced narrator telling the haunting tale of “The Green Ribbon.” With each word, our grips around the flashlights tightened; our postures hunched inward, breaths catching. It was terrifying. 

It was absolute magic. 

While I can’t recall for certain whether that was my first real acquaintance with horror, it’s one of the core memories that stands out in my mind when I think of how my love for the genre began. Another one of these moments came a few years later, when my dad was watching the movie Misery on the boxy TV in our living room. I had only caught glimpses from the next room over—a too-wide smile, the delicious craze in Kathy Bates’s eyes—though I found myself drawn in nonetheless, pulled into a crouching position behind the recliner my dad lounged in, where I quietly hid and watched the remainder of the film with a hand over my mouth and my heart pounding in my ears. With it came that feeling again, the same one that I’d experienced when listening to “The Green Ribbon”. That sharp terror mixed with so much impossible-to-place excitement. All I knew was that I wanted more. 

I soon became enthralled with the original Sci-Fi channel on cable TV, devouring any creature feature that was on at the time that regularly chronicled the murderous rampages of ice spiders, chupacabras, radioactive alligators, or masked killers. Then, at around twelve or thirteen years old, when my mom gave me a well-loved, peeling copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that she had read when she was my age, I knew I was a complete goner—that horror had my heart gripped between its sharp, bloodthirsty teeth. 

Through steadily consuming more and more horror, I had finally begun to understand the concept of fear, and how it could only truly have power over you if you allowed it to. There was something so addictive, so freeing about that notion that I knew I never wanted to go without it again. And thus, the love grew. 

I look back on these moments now and cherish them for what all they introduced me to—for the exploration into an adoration of something that had barely just begun to take root. Now, I have a new core memory that will be added to my collection; one where I will look back on the time that I was 28 years old and my debut novel was being published—a novel that was written as a pure love letter to all the horror I grew up finding so much joy in. 

I believe that fear is the universal emotion; all humans experience it, all battle with it, and I think that’s what keeps people readily going back for more in terms of consuming horror media. While we’re curious by nature, there’s also a deep craving to know just what it is that causes that spike in our heart rate and our blood to run cold—or that makes us grip our flashlights just a little bit tighter. At the gut of it, we long to understand what scares us most; and we feel quietly pleased when we find ourselves able to face something that otherwise might make someone else’s skin crawl. We come to horror to peel back the armour on the most honest, basal parts of our natures. We come to horror, open and eager and vulnerable again and again to feel—to decide if we’re going to be afraid or not. 

It’s a beautiful thing; I love horror for many reasons, though that might be my very favorite.

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Thank you for getting us started, Katherine. Come back tomorrow for a more formal primer on how to use this blog as a resource all year long.