This is part 3 of 4 for today's installment of 31 Days of Horror.
Now it is David B. Silva's turn.
Silva has written seven novels. His first short story was published in 1981. His short fiction has since appeared in The Year’s Best Horror, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, and The Best American Mystery Stories. In 1991, he won a Bram Stoker Award for his short story, “The Calling.” His first collection, Through Shattered Glass, was published by Gauntlet Press in 2001. In 2009, Dark Regions published his collection of eleven new stories and one reprint, In The Shadows of Kingston Mills.
He is probably best known as the editor of The Horror Show, which was published quarterly from 1982 to 1991. This small-press horror magazine won a World Fantasy Award in 1988 and went on to publish the first early works of some of today’s most talented and influential horror authors, such as Bentley Little, Brian Hodge, and Poppy Z. Brite.
Silva co-edited (with Paul F. Olson) two anthologies published by St. Martins Press: Post Mortem and Dead End: City Limits. In addition, he edited The Definitive Best of The Horror Show, published by CD Publications in 1992.
In addition, from February 1997 until September 2002, and from late 2004 until the present, Silva served as co-editor (along with Paul F. Olson) of Hellnotes. Originally a weekly subscription newsletter dedicated to the horror professional and horror fan alike, Hellnotes is currently a free blog under the wing of JournalStone and updated several times a day with latest news in the horror genre.
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WHY I WRITE HORROR
By David Silva
These are some of the snapshots I carry with me:
My father coming up to visit me after first being diagnosed with leukemia. The visit was a surprise, and he brought a new computer with him. As he carried it into the house, he said, “This isn’t yours, but I’m going to let you use it.” Later that afternoon, he told me he was dying. We spent the entire weekend playing with the computer, trying to write crude DOS programs and get it to do what we wanted. It was as close to him as I ever felt.
Carrying my dog Seth into the veterinarian’s office and placing her on the cold stainless steel table. Her so well behaved, as always. Me fighting back the tears in front of the doctor. She had been diagnosed with bone cancer and her limp was so dramatic that every step had to be excruciating. I couldn’t stay to watch him put to her to sleep. It just hurt too much.
Answering the knock on the door at three-thirty in the morning and stepping outside, where ashes were floating down out of the sky like giant snow flakes. The Fountain Fire, which had started nearby and had burned some 65,000 acres while moving away from the house, had turned back during the night. I remember the acrid smell of smoke in the air. The sense of urgency and danger, mixed with utter silence and an odd, surreal beauty I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe. The house, fortunately, was spared.
Standing in my father’s hospital room, watching him as each breath gradually grew a little shallower. Some so faint I wasn’t sure if he had taken a breath at all. Finding myself counting the seconds after his last breath, time stretching out further and further, and then the realization … the moment’s passed. It’s over. He’s dead. He’s never going to take another breath. He’s never going to smile again, to laugh. A piece of the foundation of my life has just disappeared.
My mother giving me a copy of Ray Bradbury’s The Toynbee Convector for Christmas. It was her last Christmas, and we both knew it would be her last. The smile on her face, because she knew I was a Bradbury fan. I asked her to sign it for me. After she died, I bought another copy for reading. I keep the copy she gave me safely tucked away, where I can pull it out whenever I need and remind myself how lucky I am.
Believing in Santa Claus until I was ten years old. Every Christmas we would go for a long drive through the surrounding neighborhoods on Christmas Eve to see the decorations. When we returned home, there would be a fire in the fireplace and presents under the tree. I like believing in Santa Claus. And the Grinch, too. Oh, and it was my grandparents who put the presents out each year.
My father dropping my sister and I and a friend off at the State movie theater to see a cartoon festival one Saturday morning when I was eight. It ended up being the wrong theater. Instead of cartoons, we watched a movie called Terror From The Year 2000. It was the first movie that ever scared me. For years, I was haunted by visions of a purple woman mysteriously materializing behind me.
Reading Edgar Allen Poe stories at my grandmother’s house at night in bed when I was a young boy, and how wonderful they were.
The Book Mobile that came by the house once a week when I was a boy. Looking back on it now, it was a tiny little thing. But it seemed cavernous at the time. I remember the excitement of climbing up the steps, the smell that was somehow ancient and new all at once, the plastic covers, the tall shelves.
My sister sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night as a teenager to go hang out with her biker boyfriend. She got caught. Her bedroom window got nailed shut. She was the bad seed. I was the good son. Of course, as adults, she’s far more responsible and level-headed than myself.
My best friend when I was eleven, sneaking into our house while we were away and stealing all my marbles. He left a perfect path of footprints leading directly back to his house. I asked him to return the marbles and he did. We remained friends, but it was never quite the same after that. I had something over him and neither of us like that.
Spending the night alone in the Community Center in preparation for a huge arts and crafts sale the next day. I was there to make sure nothing was stolen during the night. It was cold and dark and eerie. There were Christmas ornaments everywhere. Little gingerbread houses with gum drop roofs. Miniature rocking chairs with Mrs. Santa in place. Ceramic statues of little elves. Reindeer made of wood and felt and pine needles. Nightmarish. Absolutely nightmarish.
Walking down a path in the mountains late at night, following what little moonlight there was, and having someone jump out behind a tree, completely unexpected, and scream. On the outside, I barely flinched. Inside, I thought my legs were going to give out and I couldn’t stop my heart from pounding.
Me and three friends being pulled over by cops because they were looking for someone and we apparently fit the bill. The ordered us out of the car, had us put our arms on the vehicle and spread ‘em, then frisked us and asked for I.D. It was as guilty as I ever felt for having done nothing.
Becky, who was an excellent diver, trying a dive off the diving board at summer camp and coming down on her face. For weeks after, she walked around looking something like the Elephant Man, her nose swollen and twisted to one side, huge black-and-blue stripes beneath each eye. I wish I had a camera.
A boy in sixth grade running out into the street to get a baseball and getting clobbered by a car. We all gathered around to watch as he walked in circles, his eyes glassy, repeating over and over, “I just wanted to get the ball. I just wanted to get the ball.”
Old Airport Road, where one night two young teenage lovers went barreling down the dead end until they slammed into the embankment and totaled their car. I was ten. My sister was nine. My father heard the sirens. He scooped us up, put us in the car and followed the ambulance to the accident. I remember there were shards of broken glass everywhere. The air was sharp with the smell of oil and gasoline. We watched as the two teenagers were strapped into gurneys and each stuffed into an ambulance. Their faces were a bloody mess. The girl was groaning nonstop. I don’t know if they made it or not.
The night I left the front yard when I wasn’t supposed to, so I could show a visiting neighbor where my school was. Most particularly, I remember the whipping I got when my father finally tracked us down several hours later.
The first time I ever shoplifted something. I was eight or nine, and I had gone to the store to pick up some bread for my mother. While I was there, I slipped a candy bar into my pocket. Not being terribly proficient at it, I think a bit of the candy bar was sticking out. When I went to the check out counter, the cashier suggested we get some “fresher” bread. I followed him back to the bread shelves, where he casually asked what was in my pocket, and before I knew it, I was in his office and he was calling the police. I don’t think he actually called them. I think he was just trying to scare me, which believe me, he did. He ended up giving me a lecture and telling me to have my mother come see him next time we came to the store. I never told my mother. And I hated it every time I had to go anywhere near that store again.
The dogs barking one night, and me blindly following them out into the woods to see what the fuss was all about. We stopped in front of a stand of manzanita, maybe two or three feet away, and suddenly a coyote let out a howl from the other side. The dogs started barking again, and there was some rustling around in the dark. I didn’t stay to see what it was all about.
The babysitter, an older woman who cared for us during the day while our parents worked, washing my mouth out with soap. I don’t remember what I said, but I do remember that it was the only time I had ever had my mouth washed out with soap.
Taking a walk down the long driveway out to my mailbox one afternoon, and finding a cow’s heart and intestines dumped in a pool of blood in the middle of the road. Apparently, someone had stolen a local cow during the night and slaughtered it in my driveway, which was hidden just off the main road. Or aliens had visited the area. I guess I’ll never know for sure.
Working on the roof of a house with my father and grandfather. This was a new house, the family’s “dream house,” that would eventually take two full years to build. We were cutting and laying wood shakes. Off to the side, I caught a glimpse of my father climbing down the ladder. I peered over the edge and asked him what was up. “I’m going to the hospital,” he said. “I cut my finger off.” He hadn’t said anything when it had happened. He hadn’t yelled or screamed or cried. He had picked up his finger, and climbed down the ladder, fully prepared to drive himself to the hospital. My grandfather ended up doing the driving. I stayed behind and continued working on the roof, absolutely amazed at my father’s calm reaction to such a horrifying event. I was fifteen. I still got excited about slivers.
Cutting wood for winter one August afternoon. Pacific Gas & Electric had come through last summer and leveled a number of pines while installing an electrical line into the back of the property. I had taken the chain saw to one of the piles, unaware that nearby a nest of yellow jackets had built a hive in the ground. Apparently, they didn’t care much for all the racket. Before I realized what was happening, I found myself under attack. It was a long, long run before the last of the persistent fellows finally gave up the chase. I was fortunate to come away with only five or six stings.
Going up for a rebound while playing basketball when I was in my early twenties and coming down wrong on my foot. I ended up on my back, and when I raised my head to see what had happened, I discovered my right foot pointing the wrong direction. I had dislocated it. On the way to the hospital, I couldn’t remember where I lived. Once I got to the emergency room, they had to put me under because they couldn’t get my foot back into place and every time they tried, I screamed. Even in my twenties, I couldn’t find the composure under adversity of my father.
I carry these snapshots with me wherever I go. Some were taken at the most significant moments of my life. Others were taken for reason I cannot fathom. All I know is they are always with me. Yet each, in its own way, has contributed to my fascination with horror.
I write horror not because I’ve lived it, but because it charms me, because I see its place in my live and the lives of others around me, and I want to understand it.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
31 Days of Horror: Day 30-- JournalStone Part 2
This is part 2 of 4 for today's installment of 31 Days of Horror.
Now it is Michael R. Collings' turn.
Collings is a Professor Emeritus at Seaver College, Pepperdine University, where he directed the Creative Writing Program for over two decades.He has published over 100 volumes of poetry, novels, short fiction, and scholarly studies of such contemporary writers as Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Dean R. Koontz, and Piers Anthony. He has served as Guest of Honor, Scholar Guest of Honor, Poet Guest of Honor, and Special Guest at a number of science fiction, fantasy, and horror conferences, including HorrorFest ’89, Brigham Young University’s ‘Life, the Universe, and Everything,” World Horror Con 2008, and World Horror Con 2012. He has been an invited panelist on over 60 convention panels dealing with topics as disparate as Stephen King, the role of religion in science fiction, and the nature of horror poetry. With his wife Judith, he has also published a unique cookbook, Whole Wheat for Food Storage: Recipes for Unground Wheat, a revision and expansions of their first joint project, Whole Wheat Harvest (1980). He is now retired and lives in his native state of Idaho.
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WHY HORROR?
By Michael R. Collings
Why do I read horror, write horror, write about horror?
Probably most horror writers have been asked these questions or something close to them. There is, after all, something peculiar about spending inordinate amounts of time imagining, re-creating, or analyzing darkness, particularly when there is already much darkness in the ‘real’ world.
Perhaps therein lies the answer, at least in my case. There is much darkness ‘out there’, so many things that seem uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Through horror, writers—and readers—may assert a kind of vicarious control over them, and by doing so fit more comfortably into the ‘real’ world.
Let me explain:
In his 1981 study of horror fiction, Danse Macabre, Stephen King discusses three levels of horror:
At the thematic level, horror can speak metaphorically or symbolically. Literary monsters may represent literal monsters that threaten everyday life. A vampire suddenly appearing in a small town and systematically preying on its inhabitations may simultaneously condemn the contemporary sense of isolation that afflicts most communities. People live separated lives; they do not notice the alterations in or absence of their neighbors until it is too late, when the bonds of civility have already broken and the sense of community disappears.
The vampire may exemplify the allure and the tragedy of uninhibited lust. By virtue of its existence—neither dead nor alive; its mode of feeding—penetration and bloodletting; and the inescapably body-oriented nature of its attacks—usually male upon female, the vampire can slip from a figure of horror into quasi-pornography, especially when the transmission of blood is described in loving, overly sensual detail; and at the same time it can indict the contemporary obsession with sexualizing people, usually women, into little more than objects of physical release.
The werewolf may represent the abrupt, inexplicable intrusion of death into a family or community. Unseen and unsuspected until it lashes out in rage and inflicts carnage on its victims, the werewolf parallels disease—cancer, for example—and its insidious rampage within a healthy body. It may stand for accident or fate; there is no cause, no rational or purpose behind its sudden eruption—it simply is, and by its presence it disrupts order and security.
Zombies epitomize the loss of agency and rationality. Probably their unusual popularity at the moment reflects a cultural fear of helplessness and hopelessness in the face of global threats: wavering economies, potential if not probable warfare, pandemics facilitated by technology. Everything considered normal may dissolve at any moment, leaving survivors surrounded by mindless, unfocused, ravening monsters whose sole function is to destroy any remnants of civility.
Most other literary monsters may serve parallel functions. Amazons demonstrate the threat of sexual disparity; Creatures from Other Dimensions, including Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, embody the threat of the unknown, of the breakdown of reason and intellect into madness. Ghosts, Demons, the Haunted Place/Bad Place, and other denizens of darkness—each may in its turn speak volumes about the human condition.
At the literal level, horror may work in a manner similar to classical tragedy. When written effectively, with an eye toward creating genuine terror rather than mere physiological revulsion, horror may combine pity and fear to achieve a kind of Aristotelian catharsis focused on the purging of one specific strong emotion, namely, fear itself. Horror allows readers to confront an object or objects of pity, usually victims, frequently innocent or inoffensive victims; and an object of terror, horror, or revulsion, the monster or monsters; and by juxtaposing the two, feel legitimate fear while in a safe, controlled environment. This fear may in fact be physically expressed, through a rise in heartbeat, increased rate of respiration, even a literal chill up the spine. In any case, the physical response allows the reader to experience and thereby purge the effects of extraordinary fear without physical danger.
Finally, on an ethical level, readers of horror more often than not confront the most literal sort of morality. Unlike in the experiential world, in the world of horror, actions that are evil, wrong, or even misguided have immediate consequences. Cause and effect are clearly linked. If a mad scientists creates a monster, eventually the monster turns on its creator. At least as far back as Shelley’s Frankenstein, this has been a leitmotif of horror fiction. The responsibility of creator to creature—and for the acts of the creature—in part defines the plot itself. If a teenage couple have illicit sex and thereby participate in an adult action without being prepared to accept the concomitant responsibilities, they die, frequently during the act itself. There is no reprieve, no opportunity for a second chance. Transgression leads to death.
It is possible for horror itself to be essentially immoral. Novels exist in which characters are introduced and almost immediately destroyed, merely for the sake of blood and gore. The monster itself becomes little more than a killing machine and the plot impelled not by causal relationships among episodes but by the simple need for more blood. The horror of unrelieved revulsion, in other words, runs the risk of existing solely for the sake of that revulsion, with little thought of creating the more transcendent horror or terror. Such fiction verges on the immoral, if not the obscene, not through the representation of unacceptable language or events but because of its cavalier attitude toward characters and their lives.
On the whole, however, those writers most frequently cited as masters in the field—Poe, Lovecraft, King, Koontz, McCammon, and a handful of others—consistently provide tales that, however close they come to mere revulsion, ultimately lead the reader to a heightened sense of morality, of catharsis of fear, and of the relationship between story and life, between characters and the reader.
In a recent afterword to his 1987 novel Shadowfires, Dean R. Koontz considers the question of what constitutes horror and why it is so often shunned as a genre. One of his conclusions is that horror concentrates its images and effects on death—death as theme, as plot device, as indicator of character. And in large part, what he suggests holds true. The major “monsters” of horror fiction are, by and large, the Revenant Dead, the Undead, and the Walking Dead—ghosts, vampires, zombies, Lovecraftian Great Old Ones long since vanished from this plane and seeking to re-enter it. Even the werewolf is in some ways a figure intimately associated with death—although the lycanthrope is still alive, he is an outcast, an ‘other’ essentially dead to the larger community.
Death is the beginning and end of much horror. It triggers the appearance of the monster, either literally, as the monster is called from death; or figuratively, as its victims announce the presence of the monster. It is the punishment meted to the unwary, the unethical, the unrighteous. As noted above, teenagers who engage in sex before understanding the adult responsibilities implicit in the act are punished by death. Mad scientists—and often even inadvertent meddlers in the true order of the universe—suffer death at the hands—or claws, or teeth—of their creations. Even the innocent die, often in gruesome ways, in order to underscore the leveling power of horror…and of death. It is not accidental, of course, that so many horror novels sport black covers; the archetypical cover may be the first paperback edition of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, almost pure glossy black, with no title, the embossed face of a girl…and a single crop of crimson blood. The essence of the novel was communicated forcefully and directly.
These are the things I consider when I read horror, when I write horror, when I write about horror. The experiences become passages through darkness into something else…the light, perhaps, or understanding, or consolation, or at the least relief—that the world ‘out there’ is not yet as terrifying, as terrible as the worlds of the imagination.
[Portions of this essay appeared as “The Peculiar Case of Horror” in Toward Other Worlds: Perspectives on john Milton, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, and Others (Borgo/Wildside, 2010). The original material has been rewritten and expanded.]
Now it is Michael R. Collings' turn.
Collings is a Professor Emeritus at Seaver College, Pepperdine University, where he directed the Creative Writing Program for over two decades.He has published over 100 volumes of poetry, novels, short fiction, and scholarly studies of such contemporary writers as Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Dean R. Koontz, and Piers Anthony. He has served as Guest of Honor, Scholar Guest of Honor, Poet Guest of Honor, and Special Guest at a number of science fiction, fantasy, and horror conferences, including HorrorFest ’89, Brigham Young University’s ‘Life, the Universe, and Everything,” World Horror Con 2008, and World Horror Con 2012. He has been an invited panelist on over 60 convention panels dealing with topics as disparate as Stephen King, the role of religion in science fiction, and the nature of horror poetry. With his wife Judith, he has also published a unique cookbook, Whole Wheat for Food Storage: Recipes for Unground Wheat, a revision and expansions of their first joint project, Whole Wheat Harvest (1980). He is now retired and lives in his native state of Idaho.
**********************************************************************
WHY HORROR?
By Michael R. Collings
Why do I read horror, write horror, write about horror?
Probably most horror writers have been asked these questions or something close to them. There is, after all, something peculiar about spending inordinate amounts of time imagining, re-creating, or analyzing darkness, particularly when there is already much darkness in the ‘real’ world.
Perhaps therein lies the answer, at least in my case. There is much darkness ‘out there’, so many things that seem uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Through horror, writers—and readers—may assert a kind of vicarious control over them, and by doing so fit more comfortably into the ‘real’ world.
Let me explain:
In his 1981 study of horror fiction, Danse Macabre, Stephen King discusses three levels of horror:
I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud. (Ch. 2)Revulsion—the Gross-out—is, as King suggests, relatively easy to achieve. It requires primarily quantities of blood and guts, graphic descriptions, and graphic language. The most vocal arguments against horror as literary genre concentrate on this level. At the other extreme, true Terror, the moment that generates a frisson down the spine just before the monster is revealed, requires extraordinary facility with language, characterization, and setting to accomplish, and only a few masters—among them Poe and Lovecraft, as well as King himself—create it consistently. When it occurs, and when Terror, Horror, and Revulsion are used critically and carefully, such literature may demonstrate a number of useful traits.
At the thematic level, horror can speak metaphorically or symbolically. Literary monsters may represent literal monsters that threaten everyday life. A vampire suddenly appearing in a small town and systematically preying on its inhabitations may simultaneously condemn the contemporary sense of isolation that afflicts most communities. People live separated lives; they do not notice the alterations in or absence of their neighbors until it is too late, when the bonds of civility have already broken and the sense of community disappears.
The vampire may exemplify the allure and the tragedy of uninhibited lust. By virtue of its existence—neither dead nor alive; its mode of feeding—penetration and bloodletting; and the inescapably body-oriented nature of its attacks—usually male upon female, the vampire can slip from a figure of horror into quasi-pornography, especially when the transmission of blood is described in loving, overly sensual detail; and at the same time it can indict the contemporary obsession with sexualizing people, usually women, into little more than objects of physical release.
The werewolf may represent the abrupt, inexplicable intrusion of death into a family or community. Unseen and unsuspected until it lashes out in rage and inflicts carnage on its victims, the werewolf parallels disease—cancer, for example—and its insidious rampage within a healthy body. It may stand for accident or fate; there is no cause, no rational or purpose behind its sudden eruption—it simply is, and by its presence it disrupts order and security.
Zombies epitomize the loss of agency and rationality. Probably their unusual popularity at the moment reflects a cultural fear of helplessness and hopelessness in the face of global threats: wavering economies, potential if not probable warfare, pandemics facilitated by technology. Everything considered normal may dissolve at any moment, leaving survivors surrounded by mindless, unfocused, ravening monsters whose sole function is to destroy any remnants of civility.
Most other literary monsters may serve parallel functions. Amazons demonstrate the threat of sexual disparity; Creatures from Other Dimensions, including Lovecraft’s Great Old Ones, embody the threat of the unknown, of the breakdown of reason and intellect into madness. Ghosts, Demons, the Haunted Place/Bad Place, and other denizens of darkness—each may in its turn speak volumes about the human condition.
At the literal level, horror may work in a manner similar to classical tragedy. When written effectively, with an eye toward creating genuine terror rather than mere physiological revulsion, horror may combine pity and fear to achieve a kind of Aristotelian catharsis focused on the purging of one specific strong emotion, namely, fear itself. Horror allows readers to confront an object or objects of pity, usually victims, frequently innocent or inoffensive victims; and an object of terror, horror, or revulsion, the monster or monsters; and by juxtaposing the two, feel legitimate fear while in a safe, controlled environment. This fear may in fact be physically expressed, through a rise in heartbeat, increased rate of respiration, even a literal chill up the spine. In any case, the physical response allows the reader to experience and thereby purge the effects of extraordinary fear without physical danger.
Finally, on an ethical level, readers of horror more often than not confront the most literal sort of morality. Unlike in the experiential world, in the world of horror, actions that are evil, wrong, or even misguided have immediate consequences. Cause and effect are clearly linked. If a mad scientists creates a monster, eventually the monster turns on its creator. At least as far back as Shelley’s Frankenstein, this has been a leitmotif of horror fiction. The responsibility of creator to creature—and for the acts of the creature—in part defines the plot itself. If a teenage couple have illicit sex and thereby participate in an adult action without being prepared to accept the concomitant responsibilities, they die, frequently during the act itself. There is no reprieve, no opportunity for a second chance. Transgression leads to death.
It is possible for horror itself to be essentially immoral. Novels exist in which characters are introduced and almost immediately destroyed, merely for the sake of blood and gore. The monster itself becomes little more than a killing machine and the plot impelled not by causal relationships among episodes but by the simple need for more blood. The horror of unrelieved revulsion, in other words, runs the risk of existing solely for the sake of that revulsion, with little thought of creating the more transcendent horror or terror. Such fiction verges on the immoral, if not the obscene, not through the representation of unacceptable language or events but because of its cavalier attitude toward characters and their lives.
On the whole, however, those writers most frequently cited as masters in the field—Poe, Lovecraft, King, Koontz, McCammon, and a handful of others—consistently provide tales that, however close they come to mere revulsion, ultimately lead the reader to a heightened sense of morality, of catharsis of fear, and of the relationship between story and life, between characters and the reader.
In a recent afterword to his 1987 novel Shadowfires, Dean R. Koontz considers the question of what constitutes horror and why it is so often shunned as a genre. One of his conclusions is that horror concentrates its images and effects on death—death as theme, as plot device, as indicator of character. And in large part, what he suggests holds true. The major “monsters” of horror fiction are, by and large, the Revenant Dead, the Undead, and the Walking Dead—ghosts, vampires, zombies, Lovecraftian Great Old Ones long since vanished from this plane and seeking to re-enter it. Even the werewolf is in some ways a figure intimately associated with death—although the lycanthrope is still alive, he is an outcast, an ‘other’ essentially dead to the larger community.
Death is the beginning and end of much horror. It triggers the appearance of the monster, either literally, as the monster is called from death; or figuratively, as its victims announce the presence of the monster. It is the punishment meted to the unwary, the unethical, the unrighteous. As noted above, teenagers who engage in sex before understanding the adult responsibilities implicit in the act are punished by death. Mad scientists—and often even inadvertent meddlers in the true order of the universe—suffer death at the hands—or claws, or teeth—of their creations. Even the innocent die, often in gruesome ways, in order to underscore the leveling power of horror…and of death. It is not accidental, of course, that so many horror novels sport black covers; the archetypical cover may be the first paperback edition of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot, almost pure glossy black, with no title, the embossed face of a girl…and a single crop of crimson blood. The essence of the novel was communicated forcefully and directly.
These are the things I consider when I read horror, when I write horror, when I write about horror. The experiences become passages through darkness into something else…the light, perhaps, or understanding, or consolation, or at the least relief—that the world ‘out there’ is not yet as terrifying, as terrible as the worlds of the imagination.
[Portions of this essay appeared as “The Peculiar Case of Horror” in Toward Other Worlds: Perspectives on john Milton, C.S. Lewis, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, and Others (Borgo/Wildside, 2010). The original material has been rewritten and expanded.]
31 Days of Horror: Day 30-- Horror Publisher JournalStone Takes Over the Blog With Giveaways
Today, on Halloween Eve, I have a mega guest post and three book giveaway planned to take us to the finish line.
As I have mentioned on the blog recently, the publisher JournalStone is working very hard to keep horror in paperback, distributing through traditional bookstores, and getting it into libraries.
For the last few years, the genre appeared to be retreating to specialty stores and online marketplaces, with many of the titles that you used to be able to get in paperback being moved to ebooks.
Thankfully, JournalStone has gone in the opposite direction. You can click here to see my post about this from back in July.
But to show my personal gratitude for their commitment to horror in print, I invited the editorial staff of JournalStone to prepare guest posts about why they love horror. So today, as we close out on the end of the month, I will have 4 guest posts coming throughout the day.
In the meantime, JournalStone is also offering a prize pack giveaway. Email me at zombiegrl75[at]gmail[dot]com for a chance to win three horror novels including The Devil of Echo Lake by RA for All: Horror guest poster Douglas Wynne. The deadline for entries is Friday at 5pm central.
So with 4 posts to do today, let's get going on the first.
I will begin with Elizabeth Reuter. Stuck somewhere between childhood and adolescence, Elizabeth Reuter never got tired of playing with the imaginary friends that crowd her skull. She has written published articles, edited novels, and had her first short story published in JournalStone’s 2010 Warped Words anthology, a horror tale about evil children and denial. Ryu Murakami, Natsuo Kirino, J.K. Rowling, Holly Black and Clive Barker are the major modern writers who inspire her. She lives and works in Okinawa, Japan, translating Japanese/English nonfiction papers for her office and getting plenty of material to write about in return. Demon of Renaissance Drive is her first novel, but if Annabelle has any say in the matter, it won’t be her last.
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Formula and Freedom By Elizabeth Reuter
There are two kinds of mainstream horror.
The first is the type most people think of when “horror” is mentioned: monsters and torture porn. Jason, Freddie, Jigsaw. In this best-known segment of horror, monsters will chase/trap a group of people who die one by one in the most gruesome ways filmmakers can dream up. The formula is set, down to the character archetypes and victim profiles: a young, white, virginal woman will survive, while minorities and the sexually active can count the minutes until their demise.
I don’t see the appeal of this type of horror. It’s so dull, so silly; worst of all, it isn’t scary. The heroes blur together and the monsters are known only for the deaths they inflict, rather than because they are themselves disturbing. What’s interesting in a story where you know what’s going to happen? What draws a reader or viewer to characters with no character?
Then there’s the other side of horror. In this, there are no boundaries on characterization, no checklists on who must or must not die. The only rule is: find what disturbs people and shove it in their faces. Discover what’s frightening and build a world around it. Search for parts of the human heart that no one wants to look at, and force that truth into the open air. It’s this freedom and creativity that draws me to horror, as a writer and fan.
Without the human—especially male—terror of rape, we would not have Alien. Uncontrolled sexual depravity powers Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart, better known by its movie incarnation, Hellraiser. Alcoholism and child abuse fuel the antagonists of Stephen King’s The Shining. Perfectionism haunts Nina in Black Swan. A desire for love destroys the unlovable monsters of Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera.
Watching and reading these staples of the genre, people are forced to wonder how much of themselves they can see in the story. Some are chilled by similarities; others see so much similarity that they angrily reject the comparison. Women who want ballet to be all beauty didn’t just dislike Black Swan, they raged against it for destroying their fantasies. The violence of their reaction told me that the movie had hit right on target. Only something people are deeply afraid of can offend them in such a visceral way. And only when viewers and readers react to a story as though they’ve been personally wounded, is horror doing its job.
Run away if you like, gentle reader.
We’ll get you in the end.
As I have mentioned on the blog recently, the publisher JournalStone is working very hard to keep horror in paperback, distributing through traditional bookstores, and getting it into libraries.
For the last few years, the genre appeared to be retreating to specialty stores and online marketplaces, with many of the titles that you used to be able to get in paperback being moved to ebooks.
Thankfully, JournalStone has gone in the opposite direction. You can click here to see my post about this from back in July.
But to show my personal gratitude for their commitment to horror in print, I invited the editorial staff of JournalStone to prepare guest posts about why they love horror. So today, as we close out on the end of the month, I will have 4 guest posts coming throughout the day.
In the meantime, JournalStone is also offering a prize pack giveaway. Email me at zombiegrl75[at]gmail[dot]com for a chance to win three horror novels including The Devil of Echo Lake by RA for All: Horror guest poster Douglas Wynne. The deadline for entries is Friday at 5pm central.
So with 4 posts to do today, let's get going on the first.
I will begin with Elizabeth Reuter. Stuck somewhere between childhood and adolescence, Elizabeth Reuter never got tired of playing with the imaginary friends that crowd her skull. She has written published articles, edited novels, and had her first short story published in JournalStone’s 2010 Warped Words anthology, a horror tale about evil children and denial. Ryu Murakami, Natsuo Kirino, J.K. Rowling, Holly Black and Clive Barker are the major modern writers who inspire her. She lives and works in Okinawa, Japan, translating Japanese/English nonfiction papers for her office and getting plenty of material to write about in return. Demon of Renaissance Drive is her first novel, but if Annabelle has any say in the matter, it won’t be her last.
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Formula and Freedom By Elizabeth Reuter
There are two kinds of mainstream horror.
The first is the type most people think of when “horror” is mentioned: monsters and torture porn. Jason, Freddie, Jigsaw. In this best-known segment of horror, monsters will chase/trap a group of people who die one by one in the most gruesome ways filmmakers can dream up. The formula is set, down to the character archetypes and victim profiles: a young, white, virginal woman will survive, while minorities and the sexually active can count the minutes until their demise.
I don’t see the appeal of this type of horror. It’s so dull, so silly; worst of all, it isn’t scary. The heroes blur together and the monsters are known only for the deaths they inflict, rather than because they are themselves disturbing. What’s interesting in a story where you know what’s going to happen? What draws a reader or viewer to characters with no character?
Then there’s the other side of horror. In this, there are no boundaries on characterization, no checklists on who must or must not die. The only rule is: find what disturbs people and shove it in their faces. Discover what’s frightening and build a world around it. Search for parts of the human heart that no one wants to look at, and force that truth into the open air. It’s this freedom and creativity that draws me to horror, as a writer and fan.
Without the human—especially male—terror of rape, we would not have Alien. Uncontrolled sexual depravity powers Clive Barker’s Hellbound Heart, better known by its movie incarnation, Hellraiser. Alcoholism and child abuse fuel the antagonists of Stephen King’s The Shining. Perfectionism haunts Nina in Black Swan. A desire for love destroys the unlovable monsters of Frankenstein and Phantom of the Opera.
Watching and reading these staples of the genre, people are forced to wonder how much of themselves they can see in the story. Some are chilled by similarities; others see so much similarity that they angrily reject the comparison. Women who want ballet to be all beauty didn’t just dislike Black Swan, they raged against it for destroying their fantasies. The violence of their reaction told me that the movie had hit right on target. Only something people are deeply afraid of can offend them in such a visceral way. And only when viewers and readers react to a story as though they’ve been personally wounded, is horror doing its job.
Run away if you like, gentle reader.
We’ll get you in the end.
Monday, October 29, 2012
31 Days of Horror: Day 29-- Review of Coronation by Lee Jordan
Yesterday, I had this guest post by Lee F. Jordan. So today, I am reviewing his latest novel, Coronation.
Coronation has had the least attention of the books I have reviewed this month, and now that I have read it, that makes me angry because it is very good and deserves more readers.
The story was inspired by three actual nautical mysteries and these historical events are referred to throughout the story. We begin with a creepy prologue in modern day with a submarine full of dead, hanging, smiling soldiers.
The story then quickly goes back to the 1800s and one of the the nautical mysteries, in this case the gruesome murders of lighthouse workers.
Then the story goes back to present day and we start to meet the main players in the present.
Let me say this shifting of time line and point of view continues throughout the story, but it is not confusing at all. In fact, quite the opposite. This shifting enhances the unease of the story. We see a great evil from different perspectives and over a long period of time.
But this bouncing around also shows a restraint in storytelling. Jordan allows the tension to build, giving us little details, enough to keep us turning the pages compulsively, but not enough to blow the cover off the main evil. As a result, I wanted to put the book down, but I literally could not. I kept wanting to read just a little more. It was like an addiction.
Reading Coronation is like peeling an onion-- an evil, bloody, ancient evil driven onion.
This is an action oriented story. Jon David is the most developed of the characters here, but don't expect more character development than is necessary to move the story along. This is not a knock on the novel at all. The point of the story is to move the action along.
Let's get to that action. Our main character is a supernatural Navy investigator, Jon David. He is called in to investigate that submarine full of dead people I mentioned at the beginning. I will not give more details away except to say that the past and the present are connected, and there is a lot of blood, evil, and terror.
Since Jon David is a Naval detective this is horror with a strong investigative element. He is able to stop the evil human mastermind, but as Jon David is recuperating, the ancient evil is regrouping and staging a comeback. I think Jon David will need to be called back into action to use his dark gift to stop the monsters once again.
Three Words That Describe This Book: supernatural thriller, action oriented, terrifying
Readalikes: This was easy because I immediately thought of a few works. First, the classic gruesome and violent The Night Boat by Robert McCammon. It is out of print, but available at many libraries and features a long ago sunken Nazi submarine that resurfaces with a zombie crew. I love this book.
For those who want more true nautical mysteries which feature a horror answer, try Terror by Dan Simmons. Vice versa, if you like Terror, try the lesser known Coronation. As I said about Terror in my book:
"Simmons adds a supernatural twist in this historical novel of Sir John Franklin’s mysterious and failed 1840’s arctic search for the Northwest Passage. No one knows what really happened after the ships became trapped in the ice, but Simmons’ description of disease, cannibalism, and a monstrous creature stalking the crew is compelling and terrifying. This is an intricately plotted story with an oppressively menacing atmosphere."
Finally, Jon David reminded me of Jonathan Maberry's bestselling, supernatural thriller hero Joe Ledger. In fact, Jordan's choice of quick changes in point of view, as well as a story line with human and supernatural evil will appeal to Joe Ledger fans. Here is my review of Patient Zero, the first book in this series. Scroll down to see comments by Maberry too.
Full disclosure: I received a copy of Coronation from the author for free so that I could add it to my library's collection.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
31 Days of Horror: Day 28-- Guest Post by Author Lee Jordan
A bit late on the post today, but the family and I were at the Bears game most of the day, and boy was it exciting. Back home, and the pooped kids are in bed, so now it is time to return to the scares.
We are getting down to the home stretch. I have 1 more review, 1 more multiple book giveaway, and still a few surprises coming.
Today, I turn things over to another up-and-coming author Lee F. Jordan who offered this personal account of why he has devoted his writing career to horror. I really like how he gets at one of the main appeals of the genre...that although it is outrageous, a part inside all of us fans knows it might turn out to be true.
Tomorrow, at some point, I will have a review of Jordan's newest novel, Coronation up on the blog.
In the meantime, you can visit Lee F. Jordan's homepage at http://leefjordan.com/
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Every now and then, I am asked to submit a piece for a magazine or online blog, and although I wish it was because my name was instantly recognizable among the horror denizens, the simple fact is that perhaps it is the oddity that horror writers must possess that gets me these invitations. Contrary to most of the emails I tend to get, I do not live beneath a decrepit mausoleum with constant irrational thoughts bombarding my wakeful state.
It isn’t a case of what to write so much as what not to write. If the script is already laid out, then the ending is also predictable. For example, if I tried to pen a romance story, the formula would be relatively simple: boy meets girl; both dislike each other intensely until they discover a common thread; boy then pursues girl like a lap dog; girl spurns the attempts until a romantic moment ensues; etcetera; etcetera; ad nauseam. But all the readers know well in advance that the two will get together in the end. Happy endings are what the world thrives on.
But then there is the horror author (or the freshman horror author as I tend to refer to myself). The ending is unknown, the path undecided and the predictability out the window.
Happy endings are never assured.
I have always heard that an author, to be successful, should write about a subject that is familiar. Perhaps something that happened in a previous life, or was intense enough to spur a long-standing memory. In that one simple axiom, lies the problem for those of us devoted to writing horror. If this kind of stuff actually happened, then we probably wouldn’t want to write about it for fear of being declared legally insane and locked up.
The dilemma of what to write begins before the keyboard is even opened for some of us. However in reality, I wouldn’t want the kinds of things I write about to happen to my worst enemy, let alone myself. Others, perhaps the ones who do live under mausoleums or have several ex-wives, would probably disagree with me.
Interesting conundrum, actually.
Would my horror be more terrifying, the blood darker, the gore gorier, the eviscerations more insatiable, if I had experienced them myself? If Lizzie Borden still carried an axe, would she be a good horror writer?
This subject, the darkness that lies inside men and women, is like an untapped ore vein to me; one that lies richly below the surface and is just waiting to be harvested like a winter crop. It has always been clear to me; to write anything else would be frivolous. Not that I dislike other subjects, as I am a voracious reader of everything I can get my hands on from mysteries to non-fiction, but I love the dark.
Love it!
There is a richness there, in the dark, that does not exist anywhere else. Where else, for example, can the headless walk among us, the dead rise with purpose, and the vampires harvest so succinctly? When I get to bend the rules of physics, break the Ten Commandments, bleed the poor and feed the greedy, and then come out the other side unscathed, all in the space of a few thousand words; that is when my juices get to flow.
Horror has no rules, as I see it. And for that reason alone, I cannot fathom writing anything else. (Boy may end up with girl at the end of the story, but there is no guarantee that the girl will have all of her parts attached in the correct places.)
Not to mention, it could be true.
If there was zero chance of horror being true, if this were the only universe, if there wasn’t the question of whether evil really exists and to what extent, then the act of writing horror would lose its luster to me. The very fact that the lights turned down low, the tree scraping on the window pane, the sound of damp footsteps outside the door, and the possibility of monsters in the closet only enhances the obvious: we just aren’t sure about a lot of things in this world… or in other worlds.
So when my laptop opens, and my fingers start to draw something that I hope will cause the reader to question the elements surrounding our very existence, then I know I have written something that perhaps will be remembered.
There is a song by the rock group Delain I listen to entitled “We Are The Others” that is a catchy tune about non-conformity. Every time I hear the song, I think of the boundaries that exist in daily life and the manacles that we impose on ourselves. And then I smile because I realize that writing horror gives me the rare privilege of breaking those chains.
Not to mention, it could be true.
We are getting down to the home stretch. I have 1 more review, 1 more multiple book giveaway, and still a few surprises coming.
Today, I turn things over to another up-and-coming author Lee F. Jordan who offered this personal account of why he has devoted his writing career to horror. I really like how he gets at one of the main appeals of the genre...that although it is outrageous, a part inside all of us fans knows it might turn out to be true.
Tomorrow, at some point, I will have a review of Jordan's newest novel, Coronation up on the blog.
In the meantime, you can visit Lee F. Jordan's homepage at http://leefjordan.com/
*************************************************************
Why write horror?
Why write anything else?
Lee F. Jordan
Every now and then, I am asked to submit a piece for a magazine or online blog, and although I wish it was because my name was instantly recognizable among the horror denizens, the simple fact is that perhaps it is the oddity that horror writers must possess that gets me these invitations. Contrary to most of the emails I tend to get, I do not live beneath a decrepit mausoleum with constant irrational thoughts bombarding my wakeful state.
It isn’t a case of what to write so much as what not to write. If the script is already laid out, then the ending is also predictable. For example, if I tried to pen a romance story, the formula would be relatively simple: boy meets girl; both dislike each other intensely until they discover a common thread; boy then pursues girl like a lap dog; girl spurns the attempts until a romantic moment ensues; etcetera; etcetera; ad nauseam. But all the readers know well in advance that the two will get together in the end. Happy endings are what the world thrives on.
But then there is the horror author (or the freshman horror author as I tend to refer to myself). The ending is unknown, the path undecided and the predictability out the window.
Happy endings are never assured.
I have always heard that an author, to be successful, should write about a subject that is familiar. Perhaps something that happened in a previous life, or was intense enough to spur a long-standing memory. In that one simple axiom, lies the problem for those of us devoted to writing horror. If this kind of stuff actually happened, then we probably wouldn’t want to write about it for fear of being declared legally insane and locked up.
The dilemma of what to write begins before the keyboard is even opened for some of us. However in reality, I wouldn’t want the kinds of things I write about to happen to my worst enemy, let alone myself. Others, perhaps the ones who do live under mausoleums or have several ex-wives, would probably disagree with me.
Interesting conundrum, actually.
Would my horror be more terrifying, the blood darker, the gore gorier, the eviscerations more insatiable, if I had experienced them myself? If Lizzie Borden still carried an axe, would she be a good horror writer?
This subject, the darkness that lies inside men and women, is like an untapped ore vein to me; one that lies richly below the surface and is just waiting to be harvested like a winter crop. It has always been clear to me; to write anything else would be frivolous. Not that I dislike other subjects, as I am a voracious reader of everything I can get my hands on from mysteries to non-fiction, but I love the dark.
Love it!
There is a richness there, in the dark, that does not exist anywhere else. Where else, for example, can the headless walk among us, the dead rise with purpose, and the vampires harvest so succinctly? When I get to bend the rules of physics, break the Ten Commandments, bleed the poor and feed the greedy, and then come out the other side unscathed, all in the space of a few thousand words; that is when my juices get to flow.
Horror has no rules, as I see it. And for that reason alone, I cannot fathom writing anything else. (Boy may end up with girl at the end of the story, but there is no guarantee that the girl will have all of her parts attached in the correct places.)
Not to mention, it could be true.
If there was zero chance of horror being true, if this were the only universe, if there wasn’t the question of whether evil really exists and to what extent, then the act of writing horror would lose its luster to me. The very fact that the lights turned down low, the tree scraping on the window pane, the sound of damp footsteps outside the door, and the possibility of monsters in the closet only enhances the obvious: we just aren’t sure about a lot of things in this world… or in other worlds.
So when my laptop opens, and my fingers start to draw something that I hope will cause the reader to question the elements surrounding our very existence, then I know I have written something that perhaps will be remembered.
There is a song by the rock group Delain I listen to entitled “We Are The Others” that is a catchy tune about non-conformity. Every time I hear the song, I think of the boundaries that exist in daily life and the manacles that we impose on ourselves. And then I smile because I realize that writing horror gives me the rare privilege of breaking those chains.
Not to mention, it could be true.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Joe McKinney Giveaway Winner
The winner of the 6 book Joe McKinney giveaway was Tatianna F.
Thanks to all for participating. This was a popular one.
I have one last giveaway coming next week.
Thanks to all for participating. This was a popular one.
I have one last giveaway coming next week.
31 Days of Horror: Day 27-- Guest Post by Author Douglas Wynne
Today's guest post is by Douglas Wynne, who is experiencing a dream come true this month as he just saw the publication of his first novel, The Devil of Echo Lake. Wynne is a writer and a reader of dark fiction. Read on to see his perspective.
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Why dark fiction? Why write that stuff? Why read it? Isn’t there enough horror in the real world without creating more of it for entertainment?
I think those are valid questions, and I’ll try to answer them first as a reader and then as a writer. The simplest and truest answer is probably that’s just the way I’m wired. I like dark books for the same reasons I’m drawn to the dark music of Pink Floyd and Tool. Fascination with the shadow side of things is simply woven into the fabric of who I am as a person. But it’s also just part of being human, I think, if you’re not in denial. Still, there are some rational reasons for the attraction.
Reading is an exercise in empathy, and if the character through whose eyes I’m experiencing the world is in horrible trouble, then my emotional investment in the story is greater. As a reader, I’m drawn to dark fiction because right there on the cover of a horror story is the promise of trouble. Someone is going to have to deal with some bad shit. And in life, well, as Jim Morrison said, “No one here gets out alive.”
In reading a horror novel you get to vicariously experience the things you fear. You get to drag them out from under the bed where they’ve been chattering away on the periphery of consciousness, raising your stress and anxiety, and you get to examine how you might react to the unknown, the disturbing and the terrifying, all within the safe confines of a fiction in which the danger can be dismissed as implausible if it gets to be too much for you. It’s kind of therapeutic.
But the threats in a good horror story are sometimes quite plausible, and the characters should always be plausible. There is something exhilarating about watching an author take an ordinary flawed character who inhabits the same mundane world you and I spend most of our time in, and then slowly open up windows from that world into a nightmare. If the ordinary world and characters are drawn with the same authenticity, detail, and emotional depth found in good literary fiction, then the fantastical or macabre elements become that much more credible, and far more disturbing. It can be a thrilling plunge to take after feeling the rollercoaster car you’re strapped into click clacking up the incline against the gravity of your disbelief.
I enjoy writing dark fiction for many of the same reasons that I enjoy reading it, but I don’t sit down with genre labels in mind when I start writing a book. Every novel has its own needs, and in the course of discovering the voice and shape of a story and the necessary consequences of a plot premise, I would never make a deliberate effort to add horror that isn’t natural to the tale I’m telling. That said, when I survey the playground of publishing, horror does seem to be the biggest sandbox because once you pin that disreputable badge on… anything goes. There are no taboos.
Why horror? Because in literary fiction magic is taboo, and in fantasy fiction sex is taboo.
In horror you can have all the sex, violence and magic you want, but all three are often metaphorical. You can also get into those sticky questions of religion and the afterlife. In politics the hot button question may be where does life begin? but in horror it’s where does life end? And then what? And is there more at stake sometimes than your mere life?
I write to explore those kinds of questions, if not to answer them.
Sex and death are the bookends of our existence, the polar forces of the human condition, the desire and fear that drive our lives. Any big story that tries to sweep them into the margins is impoverished by the omission. As for magic? I write fiction because it’s imaginative by definition. So why not dream big? It’s not like you don’t have a big enough canvas or an adequate effects budget when you pick up a pen to write.
On the dedication page of his horror magnum opus, IT, Stephen King wrote, “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” I’ve always wanted to read and write books that tell some truth about the bad hand we’re all dealt when we come into this world, the fact that sooner or later, everyone is promised a death. Horror doesn’t deny that fact; it casts our ordinary lives in stark relief by reminding us of it. On the same page, King also wrote, “The magic exists.” And I believe that the healing, revelatory power of a good story, the illuminating power of a dark story, discovered ages ago by shamans crouching beside the first campfires, is the most tangible magic in the world.
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Why Horror?
By Douglas Wynne
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