31 Days of Horror: Day 2-- How to Use This Site As The Go-To RA Resource for Horror

Yesterday was exciting. I got the Why I Love Horror essays going on day 1 with a debut author, and we had a 3 book giveaway. Click here to catch up.

However, before we move forward with this year's new content, I wanted to take a moment, as I do every year, to reacquaint you with this blog as more than just a fun October experience (which it is), but rather, remind you of it's usefulness as a resource all year long.

So let's do a little orientation today.

RA for All Horror in general, and this blog-a-thon specifically, makes everyone feel welcome from the horror newbie (and/or fraidy cat) to the expert and everyone in between. I go out of my way to present things in an accessible way, organizing the content to meet everyone where they are, and allow people to explore at their own pace, always centering the patron experience. I am helping you help your readers, again from whatever level of familiarity of horror they come with as well.

Of course every October, there is a post a day in the main frame area, but throughout the year, I tend to only post 1x a week to host my #HorrorForLibraries giveaway. That giveaway is always going on. Your entry at any time, enters you going forward. And if you win, you can re-enter after 4 weeks. Since April 2020, I have given over 330 people books. Every giveaway post begins with the rules on how to enter. Here is a recent giveaway so you can see what those rules are (and so you can enter if you want; yesterday's post has the current giveaway).

I have written three editions of a textbook for library workers entitled, The Readers' Advisory Guide to Horror from ALA Editions (most current edition is 2021 and you can buy here). I also edited Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature from Saga Press (you can buy that anywhere books are sold). That book won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Nonfiction and Tananarive Due's essay from the book won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Short Nonfiction. 

While Why I Love Horror is my newest book, this website began to support those textbooks for library workers. Everything I do here acts like a free update to those books. Its focus is on helping you, the library worker help horror readers-- just like this blog.

So that is the basic background on what this site exists. Now let's take a quick tour, together. 

Look at the page in front of you. I keep the site very text heavy so that it is clear and easy to navigate. I also use tags to make everything easy for you to find. And finally, I keep the tone here conversational but authoritative. I want anyone who works from any place on their library's organizational chart to feel like they belong here, I want every level of familiarity with horror to find useful information, and I don't want anyone to feel like they are not welcome here.

At the very top of the page is the link for the current year of Summer Scares, a national summer reading program of horror titles-- 3 each for the reading levels of Adult, Teen, and Middle Grade-- presented by Horror Writers Association (HWA), in partnership with Booklist, Book Riot, iREAD, and NoveList®, a division of EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO). The 2026 year is coming to an end, but on October 30th, here on the blog, we will be announcing our 2027 Spokesperson!

Below that link is the main body of the site presenting as blog posts. You can navigate these as they appear in reverse chronological order or use the tags either at the end of each post or in the right gutter. Under the tags you can also navigate the blog by year and then month. So, if you want to easily see all 31 Days of Horror posts ever, you can use the tag for 31 Days of Horror, but you can also go to each year and choose October to access them that way.

The other major section of the blog you need to know about are the Pages which are listed above the tags and just below the HWA logo in the right gutter. These pages are actively maintained by me for the purpose of serving as your go-to horror for libraries resource. Below are the pages, linked in this post just as they are in the gutter, but here for the blog, I also added some information about what you can find when you click through.

PAGES

• Home: This link brings you back to the main page and the current blog post. 

• About This Blog: Info on this blog, how it began, and what to expect. 

• Third Edition Bonus Content: More Subgenre Annotations: When I wrote the third edition of the book, I had to cut half of the annotations. I moved them here on the blog to help you find even more suggestions. But full disclosure, all of this is dated now. The manuscript was turned in at the very beginning of 2021. 

• Horror Resources: This page is a treasure trove of links and resources for anyone who wants to help horror readers. Use it all year long. 

• Best Independent Horror Publishers for Libraries: This is exactly what it says. I update it regularly.  

• Horror Awards: Also exactly what it says. I pulled it out of the resources page so you can access the awards quickly and easily. 

• Archive of Becky's Lists, Articles, and Presentations: This is where all of the content I have created outside this blog lives. I will talk about this page in detail tomorrow's post. 

• Summer Scares Archive [2019-2025]: Once a year ends for Summer Scares, I move the content to this archive. This is the place to go to see all of the titles and resources we have created over the years. 

• Horror Reviews Index: Access my reviews through an automatically updating link.

Thank you for joining me on this tour of the RA for All Horror. Tomorrow, I will focus on my Archive of Lists, Articles, and Presentations as noted above. 

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