Last month I welcomed Horror Author David Rose to 31 Days of Horror. You can read his Why I Love Horror essay here.
I met David at StokerCon in Denver this past May when he approached me to ask about creating a Veterans Committee for the HWA to honor those who came before us, honor and promote our members who served, and provide insight into the relationship between veteranhood and a passion for writing horror.
I loved the idea and we made plans to get to work to make it happen. We needed to identify HWA members who are veterans and allow them to get involved ASAP. Using the established HWA spotlight month posts which run on the website throughout the year, we claimed November to Spotlight Veterans in Horror. David did most of the work. He came up with the interview questions, solicited people to join us, and prepped everything to run all month long under the guidance of our awesome social media team.
This is just the beginning of the committee's work, however. David has also started a column in the member monthly newsletter and is recruiting vets to help plan more things.
Below you can see David's introduction to the month and his answers to the interview questions. Please keep an eye on the HWA page all month for more. David and I were elated to see how many HWA member vets reached out to us to participate.
You can also access past "spotlight" months from the top of the page as well.
Finally, I want to personally thank David for coming up to me with his idea and for his hard work to see it through. I assisted him to get it all going, but he did all the heavy lifting. And he was correct to approach me because there are so many HWA member vets, from diverse identities, who came together to make the coming month's spotlight possible.
The HWA is a member driven organization, and as the Secretary, I am the first point of contact between the members and the board. So if you too have an idea that you want to pas on up the chain, email me at secreatry@horror.org.
Veterans in Horror Spotlight Introduction by David Rose
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” inSuperstition from Redwood Press, as well as the essay titled “McNaughton’s Witches” in S.T. Joshi’s Penumbra journal.
He lives in Orlando, Florida and is a member of the HWA and SFWA.
The Uniform, The Individual
November is going to be a very special month for the Horror Writers
Association. For the first time in its proud history, officially, members who served in their nation’s military will be recognized in the Veterans in Horror Spotlight, via the brand new Veterans Committee.
Here’s the thing, vets are a diverse bunch. And I mean diverse with some real oomph behind it. Political leanings, religions, personalities akin to Rambo while others used to gleefully set up the D&D game in the duty hut. The ranks are teeming with individuality, and a few of us even found our way to the written word. Though vets themselves need little exposure to how vast the veteran community truly is, broadening the public’s and industry’s perception of our community is as noble as it is overdue.
Promoting HWA members who are vets, whilst also showcasing their work and uniqueness: this will be achieved via a two-prong effort. First, Unquiet Front, a column that has been appearing in the HWA monthly member newsletter. The second is the spotlight itself, where vets will provide their answers to a few questions the Veteran Committee has since shot forth.
We hope you find this addition both informative and fun.
To Get a Feel For How This Month Will Go, Here is My Interview. Hope You Come Back to Meet More of Our Vet Members All Month Long.
Tell us a bit about your military service. Years? Branch? Specialty?
I was in the Marine Corps from 2002 to 2006 (plus a little volunteer service back in 2009, but it was so brief I hardly count it). I'd started in artillery but kicked and screamed until I was finally allowed to try out for Marine Recon. Upon passing its hellacious vetting I became a Recon Marine; something I'm eternally proud of, and the role in which I deployed to Iraq in late 2004.
What role, if any, did reading and writing play during your military service?
Prior to joining, I really hadn't read much other than The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It was in the barracks of Camp Lejeune and inside the cramped trailers outside Fallujah where I became a real reader. Henry Miller, Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, you name it. If it was a portal my head was stuck through.
Writing: I had written a lot as a kid. In fact, between 5th grade and my senior year, English homework read aloud had risen the eyebrows of a few teachers who I suppose I'd, up until then, given them reason to view me mostly as trouble, or to not know I existed altogether. Anyways, a couple of years into my enlistment I found writing again. It was sporadic and navel-gazing and hilariously dripping with young 20s angst...but it served its purpose, you could say. Some of it was poetry and said "high art" was amassed into a book called From Sand and Time. It won a national award in 2018, ha!
What inspired you to start writing?
I don't know, and I hope I never learn that answer.
What was it about the horror genre that drew you to it?
Will this be viewed as a confession? Heresy? A bit of both? I never got into horror proper. Don't get me wrong, I love Stephen King and marvel at how Ligotti can even put his pants on in the morning if he views the world so bleakly. But my taste prompted me down the shadowy well of dark fantasy and its conjoining tunnel: weird fiction. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith and their unsung genius of a literary descendent; the late, great Brian McNaughton. This is the work that demented me like wine, so much now I am driven to make a contribution.
I think at the heart of this question is why do you like things that are scary? I classify fright into the broader genus of darkness, and, for me, the villain almost always steals the show. A "good villain" makes the difference between a masterpiece and something that was...well, okay. My mother's preacher once told me I romanticized darkness. I think he meant this as a precaution, but it apparently launched me into a writing career.
What role, if any, does your military experience play in your writing?
Until recently, I made a point not to include much of my military experience in my work. Not that I'm traumatized by it or that I'm ashamed of it or anything, I think I just wanted to hammer away at objects that I viewed as entirely my own. Interestingly enough, though, looking back I see how brotherhood (good or bad), relationships with authority (good and bad), and violence all play key roles in stories that take place in an entirely different world.
These days, I'm weaving my times in Recon with my work like one big, blood-soaked basket. It's been really fun, and I hope to do so for many years to come.
What is your favorite depiction of military service in all of literature? Why?
That is an interesting question because the answer, I believe, will expose much about how a person views the military, and perhaps the world at large. There are so many good books I've read about war and its warriors -- Bravo Two Zero, Generation Kill, Marine! The Life of Chesty Puller and, in a way, its utterly heartbreaking sequel Fortunate Son -- all of these enriched and (as good books should) changed my life. It may just point to the iconoclast in me, but my vote has to go to Anthony Swofford's Jarhead. I read it at a time when I'd just received a Ph.D. in the disparity between reality and officialdom. Through Swofford, a voice whispered in my ear. It spoke of truth and beauty, and how those things are one and the same, despite whatever gatekeeper may rail on otherwise. This realization has informed much of my fiction and I couldn't be more grateful.
How do you feel military veterans and the broader military experience has thus far been represented in the horror genre?
I'm not sure it really has. Seems to me there's a lot of space for creation here.
Who are some civilian characters in horror that you think would have made for great soldiers?
I have to pull from the deep bag of dark fantasy, but I think Ringard in McNaughton's "Ringard and Dendra" would have made a fine infantryman. There's something about his calm toughness. He would certainly do well in the woods, and his special relationship with trees may very well serve as an additional weapon, if not an information-gathering system [insert chuckle and self-satisfaction that I haven't given too much away].
Who are some military veteran horror authors you recommend our audience check out?
Hmmm, I'm going to go with Charles L. Grant (1942-2006). His style isn't the easiest for me personally, but there's no denying his place in the genre. This past StokerCon, Thomas Monteleone mentioned him to me. Thanks, Thomas!
What’s something about veterans most people don’t know?
Veterans are way more diverse than the general public assumes. There's one boilerplate narrative out there that champions each and every veteran as a selfless, patriotic hero. There's another which contends in a rather patronizing way that vets are the victims of sly propaganda -- and the "best and the brightest" is more a euphemism for "you poor things." Neither is true. When it comes to motivations and beliefs, vets are almost as diverse as the populations they come from. I'm rather sure the answers from my fellow HWA members during this spotlight will show this to be so.
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