Each year during the blog-a-thon I choose one of my trusted indie publishers for libraries [listed here] and invite the press and their authors to introduce themselves to all of you in the library world.
This year I chose Grindhouse Press, a female owned press putting out high quality, high interest titles, celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. After reading and enjoying both True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik [featured in my Readers' Shelf column and giveaway a few days ago] and The Perfectly Fine House by Kozeniewski and Young [for my Library Journal June Horror Review Column], I reached out to CV Hunt, owner and publisher, and asked her to gather 6 authors of her recent and upcoming titles to share "Why I Love Horror" with all of you.
Before we get to today's authors, a quick reminder-- Grindhouse Press is sponsoring this week's #HorrorForLibraries Giveaway. Click here for details and rules.
Today I am highlighting Tim Meyer and John Quick. Click on their names to learn more about each author.
FOR THE LOVE OF HORROR
by Tim Meyer
Imagine this: It’s Friday night and you’re sitting in a packed theater, elbow-to-elbow with other cinema fanatics, tossing back a few handfuls of popcorn, sipping on your favorite soda pop, watching the screen intently as your fitness watch alerts you about the steady increase of your pulse rate. Maybe a knife-wieldin maniac is creeping across the shadows, stalking their prey (some teenage heartthrob), ready to hack and slash their way to the final scene. Or maybe there’s a giant shark with a nose for human blood gliding across the deep blue sea. Maybe there’s a gang of vicious vampires plotting a hostile takeover of a small town in the midwest. Maybe the boy next door is confessing he’s really the school’s mysterious serial killer. Point is: you’re there, and you’re scared, and you’re having…
...fun?
I really struggle when it comes to this topic, the whole why do you like this junk? question that every horror writer has to invariably answer one day. Usually people want to know what it was that really messed you up when you were a kid. What was that violent thing you witnessed that shook you to the core. That traumatizing event that now makes you seek out the world’s darkest delights. I can’t speak for every horror lover out there, but for me, no such moment exists. I honestly can’t pinpoint that one thing that made me fall in love with the genre. I think it was a slow build that gradually took shape over time. And I don’t think the love was born from any one aspect either. There were many contributing factors.
I do remember watching Jaws at an age most would probably consider way too young. Gosh, I had to be six or seven, sitting there on the couch, watching old Brucie gobble up Robert Shaw on cable television. I’m pretty sure it was the first on-screen death I ever witnessed and I was somewhat taken by it. Slightly terrified, slightly changed. I grew up on the Jersey shore and I’m pretty sure I didn’t step foot in the ocean that summer. Then there were films like The Exorcist that caused many sleepless nights. A whole bunch of monster/creature features from the 80s I used to sneak into the house behind my mother’s back. I tried to consume whatever I could get my mitts on back in those days.
Films aside, my interest in the genre (interest that eventuallyb loomed into an undying affection) was really accelerated by the works of R.L. Stine, junk (some might call it) that was encouraged because reading was encouraged. Goosebumps and Fear Street were two series I couldn’t get enough of. I distinctly remember walking home from the Scholastic Book Fair with piles of both in my arms, eagerly wanting to get them back to my bedroom so I could crack a couple of spines and spend the afternoon locked away, bothered by no one, diving into the worlds these pages contained. It was a magical time in my life. Those worlds were where I felt I belonged. Even though they were scary, filled with monsters and murderers and treachery on every other page, it was where I felt most safe. Most comfortable. Most alive.
Horror is an escape. Let’s face it - the real world can be unkind, downright cruel, a bloodthirsty beast of the highest order. A vampire that is never satiated, that requires you to keep the donations coming. For some, it’s a financial crisis, for others, it’s the inability to deal with the loss of a loved one. Some struggle with addiction or some traumatic childhood experience. We all have our own real-life horrors, terrors we must overcome, and they sometimes occur daily. But these experiences and tribulations are what makes us us.
I think that’s what I love most about horror - it’s not all about the monsters, the gore, the jump-scares. Sure those are fun, but what really makes the genre work is the human element, the characters. The Shining isn’t about a spooky hotel populated by soul-thirsty ghosts; it’s about a family feeling trapped by a loved one whose life is spiraling out of control due to alcoholism. Nightmare on Elm Street isn’t about a child-killing dream demon that hunts you when you fall asleep; it’s about teenagers suffering from the anxieties of being teenagers and paying the ultimate price for their parents’ sins. The Babadook isn’t about a magical boogeyman; it’s about a single mother dealing with a traumatic past, doing the best she can, learning to live with the crummy hand she was dealt.
Horror is about us. All of us. Everyone. Doesn’t matter where you’re from, where you’ve been, what you’ve experienced - horror will find you. And it will welcome you with open arms. It will hold you close. In horror land, there’s something for everyone.
One last realization before I go, because I feel like this should end on a happy note. That thing is, for me, I equate being scared with fun. Let’s journey back to my opening paragraph, where we’re all sitting in the theater, pulses amped, anxiously awaiting that jump-scare you know is coming. Then it does come, and even though you are prepared for it, you jump anyway because your significant other next to you jumps, the whole theater jumps and screams and then breaks into collective laughter because such a reaction is silly. So silly. Ridiculously silly.
Silly and fun. It feels good, the scares. It feels safe. It feels like home.
Why I Love Horror
by John Quick
I always knew I wanted to be a writer, since reading was the thing I felt most connected to, and telling stories seemed like the next logical step. When the time came that I decided to pursue it fully, it was a no-brainer that I would find myself firmly planted in the horror field. I didn't know what would happen, and I didn't care. I had stories to tell, and was determined to do just that. Now, eight novels, two short story collections, and a novella later, here I am, still telling stories.
It’s impossible for me to pinpoint the exact moment I realized I was a horror fan because, quite simply, it happened so long ago I can’t remember it. As a kid, I was always into the weird and bizarre. I grew up on reruns of Twilight Zone and loved getting lost in Tales from the Darkside. A local UHF channel used to run old horror movies from the fifties at 4 AM Saturday mornings, and more often than not, I did everything I could to get up and watch them. I vividly remember watching the original version of The Fly with Vincent Price, and getting scared out of my mind. I still deal with arachnophobia to this day thanks to that film’s final scene.
I wasn’t just limited to movies and television, though. I also read as much in the horror genre as I could. I started with the old Crestwood House juvenile novelizations (if you want to call them that) of the Universal classics like Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man, and even Godzilla. From there, I moved on to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and then, when I was ten or so, took the leap all the way to Stephen King. From there, it was full speed ahead, and I have never looked back.
The question of why horror appealed to me didn’t come up in any way that provoked serious thought until I started writing myself, and realized it was inevitable someone would ask me about it. I’d gotten the whole “why do you write that stuff” thing since I let people know my intention to pursue this path, and generally replied by asking “why do you think I have a choice?” Some people’s brains are just wired that way, plain and simple. I tend to gravitate to horror and the weird. It’s part of who I am, and I’ve come to accept it. But that doesn’t explain why I love it as much as I do.
I’ve done a fair bit of thinking about it, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I love horror because at its core, it is an exploration of fear in various forms. Horror works because it draws on the innate fears each of us possess. Those fears may change or shift over time—I’m certainly not afraid of the same things I was when I started down this path—but horror takes on so many shapes it still provides an outlet no matter what fear we have.
The fear of death is perhaps the most common. We all wonder what lies beyond, and generally dread the time we have to face that incredible change ourselves. Have a fear of spiders? There’s Arachnophobia, just waiting for you to watch it. Fear of clowns? Stephen King’s got you covered to an incredible degree with It. Whatever the fear, there’s a novel or a movie or a TV episode of a show like Twilight Zone that lets you face it from the safety of your favorite chair, in a safe space where you know it won’t hurt you.
Horror gives us a way to hold a mirror up to our fears and confront them without any real risk. Aside from a few unfortunate exceptions, we recognize that what we’re reading or watching is fiction, a magic trick in many ways. Yet, even knowing that, we are able to face those things that scare us and sometimes keep us awake at night without being in danger ourselves.
Another reason I love this genre is because, let’s face it, horror can be fun. There’s a reason there are so many horror comedies out there—they are natural bedfellows. Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, even authors like Jeff Strand all have careers because they found the way to blend these two into effective combinations. To me, it makes perfect sense. When facing down your fear, you have two options: scream or laugh. What’s the old saying, laughter is the best medicine? By exposing fear as occasionally ridiculous and asinine, we minimize it and can deal with it more easily.
And that’s the thing. Fear transcends age or race or class. It goes beyond how you were brought up, and the things you experience. Oftentimes, fear can be forged from those very things. The horror genre allows a method to confront that fear, to work through it and come through stronger on the other side.
Horror is our dark mirror, a way to look at ourselves and identify parts of our psyche that we want to make stronger, or temper, or even simply accept. In some ways, it’s a form of self-therapy, a way to analyze that aspect of ourselves and shine a light on it. As a horror author, I have found myself pouring my own fears into my stories and dealing with them by forcing my characters to do it for me. It’s often painful, and generally isn’t easy, but I have noticed the sense of relief when I come through to the other side by typing “The End” on the page. I vividly remember feeling the same relief as a reader when I came to the end of a particularly harrowing work from someone else.
One could also argue that horror makes us think, makes us confront realities about the world around us that we would otherwise ignore by either choice or lack of awareness. Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door is a prime example of this. While a fictional account, the story is based on real events, which makes it that much more impactful. As terrifying as it is to imagine, there are people out there who are just as evil as any character in a work of fiction. They show up on the evening news quite frequently, but there are many, many more who operate beneath our notice. Horror can make us more aware, make us open our eyes to see them, and—hopefully—stop them before they can destroy more lives than they already do.
In short, I love horror because of the many ways it allows me to deal with my real-life fears and insecurities. I can only hope that I have managed to provide that same release through my own work, and will continue to try and provide that outlet as so many others have done for me over the years.
Today I have a review of the new prequel to one of my all time favorite space horror books, Hematophages. It's Skinwrapper by Stephen Kozeniewski. From the back cover copy via Goodreads:
