31 Days of Horror: Day 8-- Why I Love Horror, Undertaker Books Week Edition Featuring Nicole Givens Kurtz

 

 

Day 4 of my 7 day feature centered around Undertaker Books continues. From their "About" page:

Welcome to Undertaker Books, where our core values are integrity, professionalism, honesty, and transparency.

At Undertaker Books, our mission is to provide publishing services to indie authors worldwide, spotlighting new and unique voices within the realm of horror fiction. We strive to offer a seamless publishing journey from submission to publication while providing valuable feedback every step of the way.

We believe in collaboration between authors, publishers, editors, and designers to bring diverse voices to the forefront of the horror genre. Our passion lies in creating a long-lasting partnership with authors by focusing on the “less is more” concept: quality releases, not the quantity of them.

Undertaker Books is not limited to any specific theme or subgenre. Instead, we are dedicated to innovative storytelling and embracing the myriad voices that contribute to horror literature.

To our readers, we hope to bring you stories you’ll take to your grave. 

Undertaker Books is a small press on the rise, and its Founder and Publisher Rebecca Cuthbert has everything to do with that. She has organized six of her authors to contribute to this week long feature and today, you get to meet Nicole Givens Kurtz author of the Undertaker Books collection The Spirit Room. From the publisher: 

The Spirit Room is a different kind of Southern Gothic.

Nicole Givens Kurtz delivers stories from the world left by crumbling plantations, Jim Crow, and generational poverty. Gone are the ancient mansions and good ol’ boys, replaced with southern streets and battles for justice.

The stories take place in cities you’ll recognize: Knoxville, Charlotte, Baltimore, etc… But Kurtz takes us behind the curtain to reveal the indomitable spirit of those living on the wrong side of town, to show us the battle we’re aware of, but never quite see.

The Spirit Room isn’t a ghost story collection. It’s a celebration of the Southern heart, the pride and persistence that keeps fighting no matter what pain it endures. Here amongst the horror and the history, you’ll find tales of the spirit’s defiance and determination. This is Southern Gothic at its purest and finest

The Spirit Room is a collection you don’t want to miss.

Click here for more information about this book and to order. 

Before we get to Kurtz's essay, a reminder that Cuthbert is also offering a giveaway this week-- Undertaker Books prize packs for 3 winners! Click here for the rules and details on how to enter (from a previous giveaway post). Get your entries in by 5pm Central this Friday (10/9) to be entered for the week's giveaway. 

Now back to Kurtz and her entry into the Why I Love Horror series.

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Why I Love Horror

By Nicole Givens Kurtz

Horror is a part of me. My earliest memories are infused with horrific moments. Beginning with my birth, when I arrived three months early, weighing roughly one pound, and to the doctor and nurses’ surprise, breathing, my life has been plagued by close encounters with death. I spent the first three months of my life in the NICU. Several months after being home, my head got trapped between the springs of my threadbare crib bed. My dad wrenched it open, freeing me but almost ripping my neck. At two years old, alone in my bedroom, I touched the black-tapped electrical cord for my television and inadvertently electrocuted myself. I woke up on the other side of the room. Then at five years old, I was involved in a daycare van accident. A boy, seated beside me, died. I love horror, because it is such an innate part of me.

In addition to the real-life horrors of being Black and poor in America, horror has always been a big part of my reading life. It began in grade school. My favorite book as a child was Where the Wild Things Are. I loved the idea of hanging out with monsters and rebelling against my parents. The characters were other, non-humans, beasts and hideous looking beings. As a weird young Black child, these characters resonated with me. I cannot say I was represented, but I identified with Max and with the ostracized monsters, the misunderstood, the strange. 

As a 1980s teenagers, I came of age during the slasher horror movie era. Thanks to home video and the rise of rentals, I consumed a large quantity of slasher films. The plotlines tended to retread the same ground, only the setting and characters changed. There weren’t Black characters in horror that didn’t die off in the first few pages of a novel or series. When they weren’t killed for fodder, they were turned into the magical negro, giving all of themselves for the white protagonist to level up and survive. Rarely were Black female characters the final girl.

Horror novels and short stories genuinely increased my love for the horror genre. Early on it was Stephen King, Poe, and Shirley Jackson, but when I went to college I discovered the quiet horror of southern gothic authors. Although problematic, I learned much about these subgenres of horror and the terror of everyday life. It aligned with what I already knew in my reality. 

When I found Tananarive Due’s work, I fell immediately in love. Not only was I represented, but the Black woman was the heroine, the final girl, the savior—everything that traditional horror and reality told me Black women were not. I went on to read Toni Morrison and realized that not only could Black women be included in horror, but we could write it. That sparked so much awe and hunger—a desire, if you will. As a writer, I wanted to delve into the genre, not from a reader’s perspective, but now as an author.

Another influential story is by Zin E. Rocklyn’s Flowers for the Sea. I have never read something so deeply visceral, unflinching and raw. I love horror that sticks with me, that lingers and resonates long after I’ve finished the text, and that story definitely did. It made me realize the true power of horror and its honesty. 

L. Marie Wood’s The Promise Keeper is another influential text. It’s a vampire story unlike anything I have ever read and the power of women joining together, of found family, of obsession and the depths of love in that novel bowled me over. Again, it was the raw emotions, the non-sugarcoated reality, the horror, that even now I have goosebumps thinking about.  

While living in the Southwest, I leaned into the world of New Mexico, a state by all accounts unlike any other in the entire country. Here, beneath the blue canopy and surrounded by red rocks, I encountered other cultures, Native people, and the three primary tribes in the northwest corner of the state—Zuni, Hopi, and Navajo, the Dine. Most of my students were Navajo and as I read and learned about the diverse cultures there, I realized that the westerns my parents loved were myths. Hyperbolic and exaggerated tales of white superiority in the American west. I wanted to tell those other stories, the stories of Black people, freed slaves, and former Black Union soldiers, who made their way west. Thus began my writing weird westerns. As it was, my weird westerns were horror in origin, and my short story collection, Sisters of the Wild Sage: A Weird Western Collection, encapsulates my time in the American southwest, with stories of the New Mexican territory prior to it becoming a state, its present and its future.  Only with horror could I illustrate both the terror and the triumph of living in such harsh environmental conditions alongside the even crueler conditions of racism, misogyny, and prejudice. In those horror stories, I tell tales of women, Native American, lesbians, sisters, and families that went west, seeking what the east couldn’t provide—a chance at happiness. 

Although I loved New Mexico, I was called back to the Southeast. I'm southern, born and raised in East Tennessee. I'm a graduate of The University of Tennessee, Knoxville [Go Big Orange!]  I grew up in Waffle Houses and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. My home was filled with Prince, Dolly Parton, Rod Stewart and speaking in tongues. In a word, I’m southern.  But I was as different as the music playing in my home. 

From Faulkner to O’Connor to Jackson, I was confronted with stories where Black folks were absent or loomed in the background like ghosts, invisible, unseen. While I love the southern gothic subgenre, I wanted to see more BIPOC horror and lore.

Much of southern gothic fiction is from white southern writers. When people often think of the genre, sweeping plantation homes, Spanish moss, and mausoleums come to mind.   

Those settings ignore the bustling numbers of African-Americans who reside in the south. They ignore the more urban settings that are uniquely southern as well. New York City, Chicago, and LA do not have a lock on urban settings or the stories told within them. Southern gothic stories are haunted, horrific, and warrant a place in our dialogue about the southern gothic genre.

Hence my latest collection of southern gothic horror, The Spirit Room: A Southern Gothic Collection. This collection of short stories brings me full circle, back to my roots, and back to the type of horror I was born into. These stories are from the world left by crumbling plantations, Jim Crow, and generational poverty. Gone are the ancient mansions and good ol’ boys, replaced by southern streets and battles for justice. Here are my stories, my southern gothic, my horror—not invisible ghosts. No, The Spirit Room isn’t a ghost story collection. It’s about the southern spirit of Black people, like my grandmother, my mom, me. 

This is why I love horror. No other genre allows us to look unflinchingly at ourselves and those around us. No other genre allows for the brutal honesty that horror does. It is only when we are stripped bare—down to the truest parts of ourselves - can we see what is lacking, what is damaged, and what must be healed. Horror gives us permission to stare into the mirror and confront what looks back. 

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Bio: Nicole Givens Kurtz has been called “a genre polymath who does crime, horror, and Science Fiction and Fantasy (Book Riot).” Her horror weird western, Sisters of the Wild Sage was included in Book Riot’s “The Best of the West: 8 Alternative History Westerns.” She’s a two-time Atomacon Palmetto Scribe Award winner (2021 and 2022), a recipient of the Ladies in Horror Grant, and a recipient of the HWA Diversity Grant. With over 20 years in publishing, Nicole has over 50 published short stories and is the editor of groundbreaking anthologies, SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire and Blackened Roots: An Anthology of the Undead with Tonia Ransom. Author Website: https://www.nicolegivenskurtz.net