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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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.