Tuesday, October 15, 2024
31 Days of Horror: Day 15-- Scare Up the Vote
Monday, October 14, 2024
31 Days of Horror: Day 14-- What I'm Reading: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Today I have one of the most hotly anticipated books of the new year, and it does not disappoint. This book is stellar and damn good.
The official review appears in the October 15, 2024 issue of Booklist. Below is my draft review and bonus appeal content.
STAR
By Grady Hendrix
Jan. 2025. 432p. Berkley, $30 (9780593548981); paper, $19 (9780593818183). First published October 15, 2024 (Booklist)
Neva, fifteen and pregnant in 1970, is brought in secrecy to Florida and the Wellwood House, a maternity home by name, but a prison in practice, a stand-in for such homes that proliferated across the US and Canada between 1945 and 1973. Once admitted Neva is renamed Fern, to protect her from the shame she is reassured, ends after she gives birth. Abandoned, alone, and struggling to access information about what is happening to their bodies, angry at being told they alone must pay for their sins, Fern and her roommates– Zinnia, the only black girl, Rose, a hippie, and Holly, a molested 14 year old– are given a copy of “How to Be a Groovy Witch” by the bookmobile librarian and their lives are changed forever. Told from Fern’s perspective, this is an original and nuanced addition to the witch cannon. However, it is the clear, accurate, and intensely visceral body horror of pregnancy and birth laid bare, that may catch readers off guard. Another stellar novel from Hendrix, a story that has a strong emotional core, compelling plot, unforgettable characters, and 360 degrees of terror. For fans of Horror that empowers the powerless as written by Gwendolyn Kiste, Gabino Iglesias and The Reformatory by Tananarive Due.
YA Statement: Teen horror readers will be invested in Fern, Holly, Zinnia, and Rose’s story which, despite taking place in 1970, is unfortunately still relevant today.
Three Words That Describe This Book: visceral, empowerment, intense
I already see people warning others about the graphic birthing scenes; even lowering the star ratings because of it. Giving birth is supposed to be natural and a part of life. It also happens to be body horror by definition. You grow another human and must expel it. There should not have to be a warning. The fact that people feel the need-- this is why the book had to be written and by a man because a woman would be called extra or hysterical for doing it. I cannot wait for the first 1 star review by man who says it is "too much." I will cackle at the moon under the stars.
Readalikes: The readalike authors above are a great place to begin. Of course, readers new to Hendrix should read everything he has written and use this link to find more readalikes for each of his books from me. Also the Jade Daniels trilogy by Stephen Graham Jones is a great readalike here, especially My Heart is a Chainsaw which can be read as a standalone.
Sunday, October 13, 2024
31 Days of Horror: Day 13-- Weekly Links Round-Up
Each Sunday during 31 Days of Horror I will be sharing the links, articles, and such that other resources and media put out into the world this October so that you can use them as a resource both right now and all year long:
- Goodreads has great Spooky Season coverage for a wide range of readers-- not just the die hard Horror fans:
- 78 Most Popular Horror Novels of the Past Five Years
- 64 Paranormal, Supernatural, and Magical Romances for Spooky Season
- Creature Feature: 128 New Books with Vampires, Witches, Ghosts and More!
- Getting Moody: New Dark & Twisty Reads Across Genre
- Best Horror Books of the Year (So Far) by Emily C, Hughes via Vulture
- The 2023 Wonderland Awards Finalists were announced, via Locus. One of the novelist finalists is Sam Rebelein's Edenville. You can read my review of that novel here and see Rebelein's Why I Love Horror essay from last year here.
- 20 Scary Books to Read This Halloween via People Magazine
- 7 Great Haunted House Novels Written by Women via Crime Reads
- The Horror Shop at Barnes and Noble -- newly spruced up for Holiday shopping (already). A great place to find suggestions for your readers
Saturday, October 12, 2024
31 Days of Horror: Day 12-- Local Libraries Celebrating the Spooky Season
One of the great things about October at the Library is that many libraries provide Horror programming. Below are 3 completely different options from different places around the country and one (the final one) is available for anyone with an internet connection to participate.
The point of this post is to showcase three library examples as either an inspiration for you to try something similar at your library next year and to inspire you to check out libraries near you to see if they are doing something.
If you follow the main blog, you will know that I was at the Illinois Library Association Conference most of this past week, and one of the things I learned there is about how to find programming ideas and presenters. The advice was simple. Search your area for ideas on what kind of programs there are doing, or, if you have an idea and need presenters, search for your specific topic and either go to those programs yourself to see how they are, or if they are past, ask the library how it went and for the presenters' contact info. [Thank you Miss Rosie for the learning]
All of this is to say that the 3 people I have included below, all of them, I have worked with and encourage you to contact them for advice and ideas for your Spooky Seasons to come.
We will start with the biggest event, organized by my co-chair for the HWA Library Committee, Konrad Stump-- Oh, the Horror! Now in it's 8th year. From Konrad:
The Springfield-Greene County Library in Springfield, MO, is celebrating its 8th annual Oh, the Horror! series this year. Started in 2017 by HWA Library Committee Co-Chair Konrad Stump and Katie Hopkins, Springfield-Greene's Planning & Development Librarian, Oh, the Horror! is a month-long celebration of the horror genre each October with author events, local history programs, movie screenings, and more. Centering on themes like "Ghosts & Gothics" and "Myths & Monsters" in past years with celebrated authors like Grady Hendrix, Silvia Moreno Garcia, Alma Katsu, and many more, this year's Oh, the Horror! series celebrates "Horror for the Holidays" with a jam-packed line-up that runs through November with appearances by USA Today bestselling (and Summer Scares 2024) author Rachel Harrison and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer McMahon. With October dedicated to Halloween and November to Yuletide terrors, Springfield-Greene will be extending the terrifying fun into December with a special "Ghost Stories for Christmas" live performance by award-winning voice actor and audiobook narrator Matt Godfrey. Providing a space for horror fans in the Greene County community to celebrate the genre, while also creating discussion about the appeal of horror to those who are not sure it is for them, Oh, the Horror! has proven to be Springfield-Greene's most popular program series.- S.A. Barnes
- Donald J. Bingle
- Lauren Bolger
- John Everson
- Christopher Hawkins
- James Kennedy
- Brian Pinkerton
- Michael Allen Rose
- Damian Serbu
Friday, October 11, 2024
31 Days if Horror: Day 11-- Why I Love Horror Tim McGregor
Today I have a brand new Why I Love Horror essay by Tim McGregor, author of one of my favorite books of 2024, Eynhallow. Click here for that star review from Booklist. It also received a star in Library Journal and the review was written by Jeremiah Paddock, the featured Why I Love Horror essayist on Wednesday.
Click here to visit his website and learn more about McGregor and his books. I have reviewed many and loved them all.
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WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE ABOUT HORROR?
Tim McGregor
Here’s a tough question to answer. Why do you love horror? Oh, man. It's like being asked why one likes chocolate. Or oxygen.
It is not, however, an unfamiliar question. I'm willing to bet every horror fan has been asked this at some time or other, and often with a hint of suspicion and derision. I remember being asked this a lot when I was kid, mostly by relatives on my dad's side of the family who were all staunch, spooky Catholics. One aunt even used to be a nun! I do have a vague memory of trying to answer that question back then, partly because I was annoyed at being made to justify my love for the genre. My response was something to the effect that we've had all this talk about God and the bible and maybe it was time for the flip side of that. Something new, something different. I don't remember their reaction to this, but I can't imagine it going over well.
But here's the kicker—they were into it too. They all read The Exorcist when it was a monster bestseller, they all went to see Rosemary's Baby and Jaws in the theatres. Flowers in the Attic? They traded that chunky paperback with the keyhole cover back and forth. I remember late night gossipy stories about the Manson family and devil worshipers in daycares and the horror of Jonestown. They were all over that stuff, relishing the gruesome details of both real and fictional horror as they sat around the campfire, blitzed out of their gourds.
Hypocrites. I guess they were just alarmed at seeing that same lurid interest from a kid. Do you know how many rosaries I was given back then? Like, holy shit. In our family, it was traditional for at least one person from each generation to enter the clergy. It was like a cheat code for the rest of them to avoid going to Hell. Somewhere around the age of twelve, I was convinced (and terrified) that they were all conspiring to shove me into the seminary. Partly because of my weird interest in horror, but also because they needed their next sacrificial lamb to chuck into the priesthood to guarantee their own salvation.
I learned later that this wasn't the case. The reason I was given all those damn rosaries and other Catholic tchotchkes was that, out of all the grandkids, I was the oldest male with the family surname. Meaning...the patriarch of my particular generation. How's that for a laugh? I was officially part of the patriarchy!
Can I blame some of my love for horror on Catholicism? Maybe. Baby Catholics are told to love an emaciated dead guy nailed to a tree. Just look at the anguish on that dude's face, the blood dripping from those thorns. You're told this dead guy loves you and you need to love him back. Sure, okay. While the crux of faith is belief in the resurrection, the real focal point of the religion is a corpse in Technicolor gore. The Stations of the Cross that depict Jesus' last hours are little more than a snuff film. And the Catholic church is so very Goth, isn't it? All the candles, rosaries, chalices, and creepy statuary. Nuns who float instead of walk.
But not every horror fan is Catholic, so that kind of blows that theory out of the water. In my case, maybe it just laid the groundwork.
Is horror a comfort? It certainly can be an escape from reality when one is needed, but the same can be said about so many genres. There is more to it than that and I think most horror fans sense this from an early age. There is a darker truth inherent in all those monsters and ghosts, something that couldn't be said aloud but only hinted at. Truths that other genres, with their square-jawed heroes and return-to-order endings, would never touch. And when a monster kid evolves into a horror reader, that allure only grows deeper. The darker truth that endings are not always happy, and the good guys don't always win. Hell, sometimes the good guys are revealed to be deluded bad guys! Order does not always triumph over chaos. At best, order can patch a temporary hole over the chaos and hope for the best. Rumbling just under that threadbare patch is the roiling abyss waiting to swallow us whole. It's patient, it doesn't mind waiting because someone will stumble in and, curious, will remove the patch.
Along with that dark truth comes the inherent danger in horror. No one is safe in a horror story, and morality is often a joke. Even in the comic books of my youth, there was no safety in horror. Terrible things happened to undeserving characters and truly loathsome characters sometimes got away with murder. In other genres like mystery and crime, fantasy and science fiction, there was always a return to order at the end, no matter how dire the plot turned. But not our genre. Horror allowed for a nasty ending or a cruel turn of events. The protagonists in horror stories may survive, but they end up deeply scarred by the end. We watch as a character that we've come to love get ripped to shreds because they opened the wrong door. And that feels truer than anything. Horror rips the mask away to show the world in all its brutality where other genres simply reinforce mainstream cultural narratives.
Does horror appeal to the cynic in all of us? To that kid in the playground who realizes that something is off about this whole situation. The arbitrary cruelty and chaos playing out and ignored by the adults who simply want to maintain the status quo. Someone—I don't remember who—once said that all comedians are frustrated optimists. Their art shines in the distance between the myth they were told and the ugly truth they see every day. I think horror fans and creators occupy that same territory. We smell the lie we've been told and, oh man, does it stink. Is no one else going to call it out? No? Okay, I'll do it.
Cracking open a horror story, you meet someone else who smells a rat and relates that through their particular story. That Stephen King fella or that Clive Barker dude. That kind-looking lady in the horn-rimmed glasses named Jackson. They felt that disconnect and they tell us their truths through their stories where other entertainments sell us their catastrophically simple morality plays about good and evil.
While we're talking about genre and disconnect from reality, here's something to consider; the enduring popularity of cop/detective entertainment. We've had almost a century of books, movies and TV about cops solving crime and catching bad guys when we all know that something is truly rotten in policing. Something evil happens when a person dons a uniform that grants them power over others. We see it play out on the nightly news. Biased cops railroad innocent people and slam people of color into the sidewalk with impunity. A falling acorn triggers tragedy. And yet the popularity of cop shows just carries on. I can't watch it anymore. I understand that it's probably comfort entertainment to a lot of people, but I just can't get past the disconnect between the fiction that is served up about cops and the cold brutality of policing today. At the time of this writing, yet another Law & Order spin-off has popped up, this one based in my hometown. Good grief. It's like a drug that we numb ourselves with. I think I laughed the first time I saw the term “copaganda.” I don't anymore.
Liars prosper and cheaters win. Good people are ground into hamburger simply because they got in someone's way. Innocents are bulldozed because someone, in a bid to accrue power for themselves, has targeted those people as outsiders and directed hatred towards them.
This is the world we live in, and the horror genre exists because of it. Other genres may offer escape from this reality, but horror seems to revel in it. It peels back the curtain and says “hey, doesn't this seem a little fucked up to you?”
Podcaster Neil McRobert often reminds us that horror is a broad church, and I think it is that versatility that makes the horror genre the perfect vehicle to examine both our problematic nature and our troubled past.
Tananarive Due's The Reformatory is probably the best example of this in recent memory. While it is a ghost story, it's also an unflinching look at the brutal segregation of the Jim Crow era. The ghosts speak the awful truth while the protagonists navigate this dangerous system where a wrong look could get a person of color tossed into a cruel carceral system. A difficult read at times, but a necessary one, graced by utterly humane characterizations of the human spirit abiding through pain.
Similarly, Alma Katsu's The Fervor explores the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two, an often-neglected aspect of both US (and Canadian) history. Injustice, brutality and racial bigotry are explored and exposed through the lens of the horror genre as yokai haunt the internment camp and a mysterious disease turns people violent. The supernatural horror drives the action, but the real horror is the vicious racism shown throughout this wartime period. The jingoistic, bigoted discourse exposed in the book is especially poignant after seeing its resurgence through the COVID pandemic and stoked by a certain orange turnip in the oval office.
There's a great discussion between these two authors when Katsu was a guest on Due's Lifewriting podcast. They talk in depth about the responsibility of writing historical horror and using the genre to shine a lot on events purposely brushed under the rug by a society that refuses to deal with its own past. It's especially telling when Due reveals that writing the supernatural elements of The Reformatory was often a relief from writing the true horrors of Florida in the Jim Crow era.
That's what exciting to me, the wide open, no holds barred, approach of the genre. Nothing is too sacred to be examined, no ideology too sacrosanct to be questioned or set on fire. As readers, we get to experience the white-hot rage of Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt or to see Stephen Graham Jones re-examine the slasher genre in his Indian Lake trilogy. We get to see Chuck Tingle expose the cruelty of religious homophobia in Camp Damascus or squirm in the extreme horror of Paula D. Ashe's short fiction. To let our minds be eaten by Alison Rumfitt's Brainwyrms or rot in the brutalist future of Andrew F. Sullivan's The Marigold.
Rocks are being overturned everywhere by the horror genre to expose the creepy crawlies, shining a light on the cruel world we've inherited and failed to improve. Its wavering light reveals the foundation that our world is built on—a mass grave, the great bone pile of human history. Examining the past, questioning it, is one of the things the horror genre does best. Sure, literary fiction does it all the time, but if we're talking about how the past haunts our present, well, horror is uniquely qualified for that.
At the time of this writing, I am polishing a novel about the Satanic Panic, showing how it plays out in a small community in 1990. That whole phenomena is baffling and fascinating, but part of the appeal of this subject is its current resurgence. The same paranoid fears are being used today by conservative forces to cause disruption, sow hate, and accrue power. History repeats, as they say. Why? Because some fuck-knuckle always thinks he can make himself taller by standing on someone's neck.
If you were to slot human history into a genre, which one would it be? Sure, there are tales of heroism and bravery, of progress and enlightenment, but the one constant throughout human history is the bloodshed. From the moment our species dropped from the trees, our history is one of exploitation and subjugation. And yes, the winners get to write the history, but not forever. Sooner or later, the other side of that empire building mythology emerges and tells the story of those who were ground into dust at the bloodstained hands of their colonizers and oppressors.
As horror readers, we are currently spoiled for choice in what has been called a horror renaissance. While that is certainly true, I do hope that the narrative around the genre itself, the common perception of it, will shift a little because of this bounty of amazingly diverse horror fiction. Can we please please please move past the idea that horror is a boom-or-bust genre? In both books and film, the traditional mindset is that horror is hot or it's not. I used to run into this all the time as a flailing screenwriter pitching horror projects to producers. They'd argue that horror may be hot at the moment, but it won't be three years from now when the film might be done. Or that horror was dead and wouldn't be popular for another five years or so. God, that infuriated me. I've heard Brian Keene trying to prepare us for when the bubble will inevitably burst—and I'm taking heed, because he's lived through it a few times—but I can't help hope he's wrong this time. What I want is that the genre will stabilize in the public perception and horror will now be seen as solid as mystery/thriller or romance or science fiction. It might be fun to be the underdog for a while, but it's time to change that. Our beloved genre has earned it.
Toronto
June 2024
Thursday, October 10, 2024
31 Days of Horror: Day 10-- 6 Books, 6 Winners, #HorrorForLibraries Giveaway
I have 6 of the books for which my reviews appeared most recently in Booklist and Library Journal. These are my review ARCs courtesy of their publishers. Details below, but first here are the rules for the giveaway:
- You need to be affiliated with an American 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
31 Days of Horror: Day 9-- Why I Love Horror by Jeremiah Paddock
As part of my best of Why I Love Horror essays past, I wanted to highlight some library workers as well as authors and since I am at the ILA Conference right now, I thought today was a great day to do just that. Please enjoy an essay from LJ reviewer and library worker Jeremiah Paddock that originally ran in 2021.
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Why I Love Horror
By Jeremiah Paddock
It all started with Clive Barker, a gift from my grandfather. Although I know that The Thief of Always is considered to be dark fantasy and not really horror, it sure scared the heck out of 10 year old me. I remember reading this and thinking, “I WANT MORE!” I LIKED being scared! Before this I had been a science fiction guy (and I still somewhat am to this day), and Clive Barker was a bolt out of the blue. The nice little library in my small town had a few horror books, but I didn’t really know what to look for and felt like it was taboo somehow to ask, especially for Clive Barker!
I was friendly with the sole worker at the tiny used bookstore in town on main street and decided to ask him for some advice. I remember buying the collected Stephen King Bachman books and a Fountains of Wayne compact disc on the same day and going home and just listening to the album on repeat while burrowing into King’s tome. What a revelation. Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man all in one book! Looking back, The Long Walk still gives me goosebumps. What a terrifying dystopian world. It made me realize just how sheltered I was that I hadn’t even imagined a world like this before.
Now I had two authors to look for and read.The small town library DID have Cujo and I gobbled it up and was horrified. I was a kid! I was scared of rabies! And most of all I was terrified of my parents ending up like the two adult characters. But somehow it was all perfect. It somehow eased my fears and made me feel a little better. It was cathartic. As cathartic as putting on Nirvana or Pearl Jam and jumping around my room until I fell over from exhaustion. I had never been this affected by literature before.
I knew I had to hide this. Growing up in a strict Christian household any content I consumed was carefully curated. My father frequently vetoed library books, music, comic books, and movies that he thought were not edifying to God. This was definitely a roadblock to my blooming horror fixation, but it was not insurmountable.
I started first with old films. While the aforementioned teeny tiny local library did not have many horror books that I could slip past my father’s censorship, they did have some old movies that were for some reason acceptable. The original version of The Thing by Christian Nyby, which was based on a John W. Campbell story, or Nosferatu. These movies got me through some lean literary times. But it wasn’t the same. At the time we lived in North Carolina and I had grandparents in Arkansas and New Mexico. We had flown to Arkansas to visit the grandparents on my mother’s side and were going to drive to New Mexico to see my paternal grandparents. We had eaten dinner at Cracker Barrel and were planning to drive late into the night.