31 Days of Horror: Day 3-- Why I Love Horror by Gwendolyn Kiste

Today I have another readalike author from  WHY I LOVE HORROR: ESSAYS ON HORROR LITERATURE the amazing Gwendolyn Kiste who is a readalike for Cynthia Pelayo in the book:

Gwendolyn Kiste is the four-time Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Pretty Marys All in a Row, The Haunting of Velkwood, and the forthcoming In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including Lit Hub, Nightmare, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, CrimeReads, Titan Books, The Lineup, and The Dark. She's a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror Award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Shirley Jackson, Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, and Dragon Awards. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at gwendolynkiste.com.

But full disclosure and shout out to Gwendolyn. I asked her to be in my book very early in the process, but she was too busy with other projects and let me know immediately. I am so appreciative of this and her for even considering. As promised, when it was completed, she read my book and gave me a great blurb. 

I love all of Gwendolyn's books but her latest, The Haunting of Velkwood was one of my favorites of 2024, so much so that I gasped with joy when she won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Novel this past June.

I was already going to ask her to be a part of this year's Why I Love Horror essay series and then found out, that her next book, In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts, is coming Fall 2026 from Creature Publishing, the very small press I will be featuring later this month here on the blog.

I feel this was all meant to be.

Now enough from me, here's Gwendolyn Kiste.

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Why I Love Horror

by Gwendolyn Kiste

Anytime I’m asked about why I love horror, I can’t help but think of a famous scene in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1948 dance classic, The Red Shoes, a film which could potentially be called its own form of body horror. At a high-end party, an iron-fisted director asks our protagonist ballerina, Victoria, why she wants to dance. With barely any hesitation, her reply is “Why do you want to live?” A little flustered, the man responds by saying, “I don’t know exactly why, but… I must.” She stands firm and says, “That’s my answer too.” 

I must. Just like Victoria, that’s my answer as well. I must love horror, because to me, it’s like breathing. It’s like the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins. It’s been with me my entire life. My earliest literary memories are of Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury. My earliest film memories include Aliens, Gremlins, Universal Horror, and Hammer films. When I was twenty, I met my husband when we were both independent horror filmmakers. Every aspect of my life has been brimming with the horror genre. It’s entangled in me like a symbiotic entity, and I can’t imagine it any other way.

And now more than ever, I’m grateful for this genre and what it’s taught me, because horror is everywhere, both the fictional variety and the literal kind. It practically goes without saying at this point, but we’re living in truly terrifying times. Book bans have become commonplace. Our rights—to our bodies, to love who we love, to even just walk down the street—are dwindling by the day. 

But we’ve got one light in particular in all our lives right now: there’s no genre that can respond to these times in quite the same visceral way as horror. Horror faces everything head on; from death and destruction to grief and gore, horror never flinches, and it never compromises. It doesn’t have to. It tells the plain, unvarnished truth. That’s one of the many reasons I’ve always loved it so much. I can be myself in the horror genre, and I can express my truth. I don’t have to turn away. I don’t have to pretend. The world can be a truly frightening place, and horror doesn’t ever sugarcoat that fact. Trauma is not only allowed to exist in the genre, but it’s front and center. You can talk about the things that scare you, and instead of being ostracized, you’ll find other people in the horror genre who will look right at you and tell you: I know what that feels like too. It’s a genre that deals with pain, but it’s also a genre that deals with empathy, and I take such refuge in that. 

Every day, the future seems to become bleaker. But when I look around at the genre and the way we can leverage our words to fight, I’m heartened a little bit more. Horror is filled with shadows, but horror is also filled with light. It’s about the Final Girl defeating the slasher killer. It’s about the exorcism of the innocent and the ghosts being vanquished from the haunted house at last. Horror gives us a roadmap for how to keep going. And right now, that feels like the most important resource of all.  

Horror is resistance. It’s rebellion. The genre’s very existence pushes back against so-called polite society. Growing up, I was always the weird girl, the one who preferred bats and monsters to frilly dresses and talking about crushes. I was also always the one who spoke up, even though little girls were never supposed to do that. But in horror, it’s always the girl who speaks up. She’s the one who goes to battle, and let’s be honest: she usually wins. Horror gave me a sanctuary then, and it’s giving me a sanctuary now. The genre shows us all the things that are worth fighting for. And together, we have to go and make good on that fight. 

I must. I must love horror, because it’s the way through, the glinting promise at the end of the tunnel. It reminds me that there’s a way out. Horror is ours. It belongs to all of us. And the future is ours too, even if the people in power don’t want us to believe that. 

Keep going. Keep fighting. Keep reading horror. We must.  

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

Click here to learn more

31 Days of Horror: Day 2-- Why I Love Horror by Nat Cassidy

Welcome to the first Why I Love Horror essay of 31 Days of Horror 2025. Today I am featuring Nat Cassidy. Why is he first and today? Many reasons.

First, Nat is a readalike for Clay McLeod Chapman in WHY I LOVE HORROR: ESSAYS ON HORROR LITERATURE, and this year, I am featuring a few of the readalike authors here on the blog.

Second, Nat is the author of one of the best Horror books released this year. Not so far. This year, end stop. I have enjoyed all of Nat's books but When the Wolf Comes Home is his best so far.  

I have a lot more to say about it at this link from my Library Journal starred review, but here is a preview of what you can find there.

Three Words That Describe This Book: the power of fear, immersive terror, pulp homage

After a particularly bad day at work at a 24-hour LA diner, aspiring actress Jess finds a young boy whimpering outside her apartment complex and brings him inside. But this is no ordinary boy, and the father who is looking for him is a monster who will stop at nothing to get him back. So opens Cassidy’s latest Horror novel (his best to date), as he consciously frames his story about “daddy issues” as an homage to classic pulp Horror and chase novels with clear Twilight Zone influences, but this description only scratches the surface. Full of action, adventure, blood, and twists, the tale is anchored by the evolving relationship between Jess and the kiddo, who are the beating heart at its terrifying center. Reader beware, as the text warns, “No one will be spared,” but not in the way anyone will anticipate. The horrors encountered here will burrow much deeper, forcing a confrontation with the power fear holds over all. 

Nat also graciously agreed to do an interview with me in LJ to be paired with that review. You can access our conversation here.

Third, today is Yom Kippur. I wrote this post a few days ago and set it to run today. I will not be online as I observe the most important Jewish Holiday of the year. Nat himself is Jewish and he wrote about it in the afterward for Nestlings and how his Judaism made its way into the story. Click here (and scroll down) to read my review of Nestlings where I write about this in more detail.

Thank you to Nat for not only agreeing to write an essay for this year's 31 Days of Horror but also for managing to both make his writing style and personality shine and still give us a serious look at Horror. This is funny on the surface, but the second you start thinking about the words, you realize it hits much deeper.

Take it away Nat Cassidy.

💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀

WHY I LOVE HRUH

By Nat Cassidy

Roughly 135,000 years ago, a young hominid named Hruh lived amongst a tiny, isolated clan deep in the wilderness. 

Hruh was an imaginative, anxious fellow and, much to the chagrin of his small community, he voiced those imaginative anxieties to everyone within earshot. He would think of the worst case scenario—worse than worst, because he would embellish details, exaggerate threats—and then inflict the what-ifs upon his mother, his father, his siblings, his cousins.

It had been this way ever since he first learned to communicate. It didn’t win him any friends. He was often, to borrow a later parlance, on thin fucking ice.

In fact, his name meant something like nuisance, annoyance. It had come from the squealing noises he’d made as a baby, but as any of his family would have attested, the morbid ramblings he spouted off once he got a little older were no less obnoxious than his infant shrieks.

No one wanted to hear it. They cursed the very existence of their limited language for making Hruh’s awful stories possible. You’re making us worry about things that don’t even exist, they’d say (and I’m paraphrasing here). The world is scary enough! Leave those obnoxious details out of it. It’s not useful!

Useful was the most important concept to Hruh’s family. They didn’t have these particular words to describe themselves, but his was a family of stubborn rationalists. A peculiar breed that has been with our species since time immemorial. One that puts no value on the ephemeral.

Hruh couldn’t help himself. He’d never admit it, but a deep, intrinsic part of him actually enjoyed the sensation of jumping at shadows, of causing alarm in others, of looking into the dark recesses of a cave system or a copse of trees and imagining the most hideous breeds of creatures his mind could conjure and then being weirdly relieved when reality served up something a little less insane. It was fun. And it was useful. He didn’t know how, but it was.

Then one day, the monster arrived.

Something somehow none of them had ever seen before.

A massive—they didn’t quite have the word for it, but let’s say cat. With two gigantic teeth the size of a grown man’s forearm jutting out of its skull. And a horrible case of mange, which had rendered its face, neck, and head completely hairless. It was a truly abominable, uncanny sight. Very much like something Hruh’s feverish imagination would’ve conjured up. It glided into Hruh’s family’s cave with silky grace, unhurried, a low and almost hypnotic bass note churning in its throat.

Practically each member of Hruh’s clan had the same response when they saw this abomination: they were stunned into stillness. Their brains were like a narrow entryway, trying to admit too many new thoughts in at the same time, causing a pile up at the threshold.

Hruh’s brother tried to put up a fight, but he was quickly dispatched by one of the monster’s massive incisors. After that, everyone else seemed to accept their fate almost immediately. Only their bowels and bladders had sense enough to run.

Some 134,947 years later, a British writer named Richard Adams would name the sensation tharn (which, incidentally, was Hruh’s clan’s word for a small, purplish berry that should only be eaten when one’s bowels moved stubbornly slow). Hruh would never get the chance to read Richard Adams—a shame, since everyone should give him a try—but he would’ve recognized the concept of tharn immediately. He saw it embodied with every one of his clansmen.

Not him, though. The freakish, naked tooth-cat inspired no such reaction in him.

Because Hruh’s first though of seeing this creature, hearing its rumble, seeing the way the shadows of the cave and their small fires twisted and warped the animal’s already terrifying features, was:

I’ve been here before.

He experienced no overwhelming, circuit-frying novelty. He simply recognized the threat for what it was. He’d played out scenarios like this again and again in his mind. He was afraid, but fear was nothing new to him. He knew how to live alongside it.

Fear had also shown him every place in the caves where he could hide during such an incident as this. He was able to stay safe as the beast slinked past, tore the others apart, and eventually left. 

It all happened so quickly. 

He was the only survivor.

After leaving the mangled remains of his clan—and I suppose it should be said he did feel bad about not being able to save them—Hruh eventually went on to find a new community. 

He wandered far, and one day found others who were like him, who weren’t afraid of fear, who leaned into the even-worse-worst-case-scenarios, who found themselves comforted by the darkest imaginings. Hruh was determined to keep his new clan safe, to not make the mistakes his previous family made. He made story-sharing a priority. Every night—and sometimes during the day. 

The darker the better. 

The scarier the better. 

The more useful. 

It became a tradition. A skill.

And his children lived on.

***

Lately, I’ve been formulating a hypothesis. 

Horror, as a genre, is such a massive tent. We’ve got invisible demons rubbing shoulders with city-sized monsters while unkillable masked slashers shoot the shit with mournful ghosts. It’s a fool’s errand to make too many generalizations.

But my hypothesis is a generalization. And a pretty accurate one at that, I’d wager.

Here it is.

I think almost every horror fan—and this includes horror creators, since all of us come to the genre as fans first; why else would we own so many black t-shirts with Dario Argento titles on them?—possesses two distinct personality traits. 

First, we’re all anxious as hell. We all tend to imagine how things can go wrong. We walk into a room and we’re automatically writing the first draft of some new Final Destination-type movie in our head: here’s what could kill me, here’s what could maim me, here’s where a masked psycho could hide, here’s how I could embarrass myself, here’s how my heart could break. The world is an amusement park map, only it’s full of emotional and physical peril instead of rides.

That’s a big part of why we love our genre so much, after all. Horror stories give us such satisfying confirmation. I was right! we get to think. See?! THAT’S why I never go upstairs / into the ocean / near abandoned lunatic asylums / home to visit my parents!

As a little bonus, we get to feel some justifiable bravery, too. Because, this time, we chose the danger. We didn’t wait for it to come to us. We bought the ticket. We opened the book. You don’t get to rule my life, Fear.

Horror lovers know anxiety like their closest (though not always dearest) friend. But there are plenty of people who are naturally anxious, and a lot of them hate horror. They say things like, Why would I ever want to watch or read something that scares me? The world is scary enough as it is!

That’s where the second trait comes into play. The trait that truly sets us horror fans—the children of Hruh—apart.

We’re all optimists. Whether we’re aware of it or not.

This doesn’t necessarily mean we think good things will happen. But I do think it means we all think good things are possible.

The anxious people who don’t like horror don’t like horror because it only reminds them that bad things happen, with no additional benefit. But every time a horror fan engages with a horror story? A deep, primal part of our brain kicks in, one that thinks (and I’m paraphrasing here), Okay, then how would *I* survive in this scenario? What mistakes do the characters make? What do they do right? 

How can I use this?

Sure, the kills are fun. The dread is delicious. We get a little twisted kick out of the taboo-pushing.

But it’s also all useful.

Horror fans love life. We love living. We understand there is no true horror in a story unless the thing at risk of being lost is precious. We believe survival is always possible, even if it’s only the remotest possibility. And that’s why, night after night, our clan gathers around the fire, to share these stories of failed survivorship, of heightened peril, of gruesome, garish torment. 

Because we’d like to keep on surviving, thank you very much.

We are the children of Hruh, after all. 

It’s in our DNA.

***

By the way, you might like to know that Hruh lived a long, long life and died at the ripe old age of 35.

Anthropological records show he might have even been working on one dilly of a cave painting. Something involving small town secrets, plucky children, and maybe even a killer trickster with a white face and orange puffy hair (but I’m paraphrasing here).

He’d never know the legacy he’d leave behind.

All the imaginings his lineage would conjure forth and inflict upon their stubbornly rational, appalled brethren with morbid glee.

Hruh went on to have a long line of inheritors. 

One of them is me.

One of them is you.

***

Click here for more
Why I Love Horror,
in book form 

31 Days of Horror: Day 1-- Here We Go Again for the 15th Year 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.

And this year, with Why I Love Horror: Essays in Horror Literature out in the world, I will have even more, and probably many more non library staff. But don't fear (pun intended), the audience for this blog-a-thon is still (and always will be) you, the library worker.

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. 

Click here to learn more

And  as I said above, Why I Love Horror is now a book that you can buy and make available for your patrons as well. 

However, it even with me on tour for the book all this month, Why I Love Horror content is not the only way you can use this blog as a resource now and all year long.

In the past few years, I also started another new series within his 31 day series, and that was to feature a small Horror press. This year it will be Creature Publications and I will have much more to say about them and their authors the week of the 13th. 

A few other notes about what to expect here.:

• I am going to move my links roundups to every Sunday. Mostly you will not see lists and posts from other places here on 31 Days of Horror as I tend to focus on original content, but I don't want those awesome lists and articles to get lost either. Expect those on 10/5, 12, 19, and 26.
• Giveaways will not only happen on Thursdays. During this month, giveaways can be offered on any day of the week, but all winners are pulled Friday after 5pm. But, if you want to be eligible to win, enter now. Click here for the rules. In fact, this opening day post will end with a giveaway!

But let's not get too ahead of ourselves on Day 1. Remember, this blog is not just about my October content. It stands as a resource on Horror, both as a free update to my textbook, and as the most comprehensive resource for working with Horror readers in libraries all year long.

I have more than tags for you to use to access content. If you look in the right gutter of the blog, under the cover of my book, there is a list of pages you can find on here. That list is on EVERY page, so you don't have to worry about a huge link tree to find them. Access is easy, intuitive, and FREE

The pages with their direct links are:

• Summer Scares Resources and FAQ
• Third Edition Bonus Content: More Subgenre Annotations
• Horror Resources 
• Best Independent Horror Publishers for Libraries
• Horror Awards
• Archive of Becky's Lists Articles and Presentations
• Summer Scares Archive [direct link but it is also on the FAQ page linked above]
• Horror Reviews Index

In the spirit of being THE Horror for Libraries resource, I make sure each page lists the last time it was updated in the title. I curate all of this information and stand behind it.

So while this October you may be more focused on my 31 Days of Horror daily posts and Why I love Horror content, please know those pages with links are there all year long to help you find, display, and promote horror.

This blog should be the first place you go for all of your Horror RA, Collection Development, and Programming needs. I get no extra money from you visiting here. I keep this blog up for me as much as all of you. It is a record of all of the information I am using to stay up to date too. However, if you want to support my efforts to keep doing this work for another, please consider buying a copy of my book for your library and/or hiring me to train your library staff on a variety of topics. 

So poke around the site today, later this month, in a few months, whenever you need it. We will have a lot of fun for the rest of October, but  just remember, I am always here for all of your Horror for Libraries needs

And remember.... your Horror loving patrons are not monsters; they just like to read about them.

Let me hold your hand as we explore the scariest genre together.

As promised, we begin with a giveaway. Actually it's 2 books for 2 winners. Both are finished copies of titles I was not able to review but they are both titles I want to make sure to let you know about so you can add them to your collections. Details below but first, here are the rules on how to enter:

1. You need to be affiliated with an American Library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Click here to see last week's giveaway. Our winners were Stacey from NE and Rachel from TX.

Now on to this week's giveaway:

First up is If You Knew Me by S.P. Minkowski. From Goodreads:

In this twisted psychological thriller from acclaimed horror author S.P. Miskowski, a novice reporter walks a perilous tightrope between ambition and obsession.

Parker Dillon can’t win. Just as she’s trying to start her journalism career, her aunt sells the website where she works, and the new owner is keen to replace employees with AI. But her luck seems to turn when she discovers an intriguing cold pitch buried in her aunt’s files.

Ann Mason claims she did something terrible and never got caught. She’s also weirdly infatuated with a long-forgotten TV star. Desperate for a spectacular feature, Parker tracks Ann from Seattle to her home in Arizona. But as she interviews neighbors, coworkers, and friends, her quarry grows increasingly elusive, and her story turns deadlier than she ever imagined.

Parker can’t shake the feeling that she’s the subject, not the author, of this macabre piece—the prey, not the hunter. The more she learns about Ann’s obsessions and drives, the more it’s like looking in a cracked mirror. And Parker’s not sure she likes what she sees…

Second  I have The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpton. From Goodreads:

Drawing on the creatures and horrors of Irish folklore, The Burial Tide unearths our darkest truths: how far we’d go to win our freedom, and how quickly our desires can become monstrous.

A woman who can’t remember her death.

On an eerily quiet island off the coast of Ireland, a woman with no memory claws her way out of her grave and back to life. But not everyone welcomes the return of Mara Fitch.

An island with a terrible secret.

Inishbannock. Where strange misshapen figures watch from the trees and the roads are covered in teeth. Where two brothers gamble for nothing, the doctor only treats the dead, and the pub owner speaks in riddles. Where a poet loses and finds his soul. And a husband without a wife claims to know everything about Mara.

A past that refuses to stay buried. As Mara returns to her life on this upside-down island, her memories begin to leech their way back to the surface. The more she remembers, the more the village will do anything to stop her . . . 

 But the sea remembers it all.

Thank you to the publishers for these finished paperbacks. You can add these titles to your libraries ASAP if you win, but everyone should order these books now. Both came out in September.  

Enter now and you are entered going forward.

The winners will be drawn in the order the books are listed here. Good luck!

Now let's do this-- 31 Days of Horror has begun.