Last weekend at Spocon, in the dealer's hall, I was lucky enough to find a man with an entire box of Leisure Horror that I hadn't read yet. Yes, that's right: a box. I went through it to pick out duplicates, squealing as I did about how unrelentingly, gloriously terrible some of the books looked. Brooke, who was with me, initially thought I was rating them. Then she realized I was buying them, and made the best "Oh God why have you allowed this to happen?" face I've ever seen her make. I got twenty-one brand new horror novels for twenty bucks, and he threw in the box. Total win.
(My total win only increased later in the weekend, when
I have since devoured three and a half books from the haul. The first one, Snow, was an incredible reminder of why I'm not actually a very good straight horror author. See, these things come out of the snow, and they kill people. They stick their creepy snow-creature arms into peoples' backs, and drive them around like disturbing meat-suit zombies. And then they eat you. Unless you can kill them first, in which case, hey, points to you. That's it. That's all. No science, no justification, no "oh my stars and garters, the Wendigo myth was based on reality"—there are snow monsters, and they want to make you die. I loved this book. If I'd written it, it would have been twice as long, involved a lot more why-porn, and probably lost a few entrails in favor of a) the scene at the top-secret government lab where we learn about the aliens, or b) the scene at the top-secret monster-hunters' library where we learn about the folklore behind the snow-creatures. It always makes me happy when I get a reminder of why I'm not the kind of horror author I sometimes secretly wish I were.
The second book, Dwellers, was the first thing I've ever picked up from Leisure Horror that could actually be adapted into a Disney movie. It would be a sad Disney movie, sure, and it would lose a lot of, again, entrails, but it would work. Dwellers is like Harry and the Hendersons crossed with The Thing. It's sad and poignant and tragic and funny and altogether wonderful, and I really didn't expect it. Again, there's very little "why" in the book. Horror doesn't need "why." Horror needs entrails, and horror gets them, but oh, wow, is this a fabulous book.
The two I've read since then haven't been even remotely as good, which is why I'm not identifying them by name. Altogether, it's been a fantastic reminder of why I read horror, and why I'm not so good at writing it in any format longer than a short story. Why is there a monster in the closet?
Because.
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August 7 2010, 01:37:34 UTC 6 years ago
Silly boy.
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August 7 2010, 01:37:51 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 17:06:53 UTC 6 years ago
enjoy the trashy reads!
August 7 2010, 01:38:04 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 17:08:31 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 17:18:49 UTC 6 years ago
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August 6 2010, 17:13:04 UTC 6 years ago
August 7 2010, 01:55:57 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 17:14:11 UTC 6 years ago
I wanna see the learner's permit process for teenage Wendigo. Do they have to put big L stickers on the backs of their heads? Stuff like that.
August 6 2010, 19:10:19 UTC 6 years ago
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August 6 2010, 17:22:34 UTC 6 years ago
Oh, and I re-read Feed between last night and today... and cried again this morning. You'd think on the third time through it wouldn't do that, but NOPE!... there it was again. (And I'm not that girl. ... That Mira Grant chicky, she must be doing something right.)
August 9 2010, 17:59:14 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 17:51:34 UTC 6 years ago
http://bit.ly/cvxFob
That link goes to my blog, which also doubles as a workblog.
I can completely understand how you feel in regards to horror. I'm the same way. I also tend to overthink these things, instead of just jumping into the fray and gloriously kill everything on the page.
August 9 2010, 17:59:36 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 18:03:50 UTC 6 years ago
(Actually, there's two extremes of horror I dislike. At one end there's the blud'n'gutz type, which if anything just makes me feel ill, and then there's the psychological type which freaks me out because I'm not stable enough to take it. Yours is off in a different dimension...)
August 9 2010, 17:59:57 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 18:27:02 UTC 6 years ago
August 9 2010, 18:00:14 UTC 6 years ago
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August 9 2010, 18:00:41 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 20:19:41 UTC 6 years ago
On a seperate note:
if you run down the line of afternoon commuters-with-books, you'll usually get "woman with romance, woman with romance, man with science fiction with big guns on the cover, me,"
You realize it is just a matter of time till one of those other commuters is reading one of your books.
August 9 2010, 18:00:56 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 21:54:21 UTC 6 years ago
"Why do terrible things sometimes happen to the nicest people? ...Because they can."
August 9 2010, 18:01:11 UTC 6 years ago
August 6 2010, 21:55:29 UTC 6 years ago
I tend to like both styles. Depends on the book. Usually, fear of the unknown is a big trigger for me, though, so no explanation is usually scarier. The nerd in me gets off on the science stuff, though. Either way, Snow sounds like it's right up my alley, along with Feed, for different reasons.
August 9 2010, 18:01:36 UTC 6 years ago
August 7 2010, 01:09:12 UTC 6 years ago
Followed by warily eyeing the blood-spattered snow-monster-book that sat in the bathroom, WATCHING ME PEE, for the rest of the con. Distracting me from thinking about the spiky-urine-eels you told me about.
I do so love rooming with you. It's a horrifying adventure! <3 <3 <3
August 9 2010, 18:01:51 UTC 6 years ago
August 7 2010, 05:23:15 UTC 6 years ago Edited: August 7 2010, 05:33:16 UTC
I also prefer for a story’s precise deviations from reality, once their details are revealed, to serve as shorthand for, or commentary on, elements of the real world. Feed provides several good examples of this, even at a macro level: for one, Kellis-Amberlee is, at its heart (at least as far as we know right now), about good intentions gone wrong. Once I understand that, I can grant a lot of the scientific details as read, because I can easily make the metaphorical leap that a chain of misguided good intentions can lead to something really terribly awful, even if I don’t get exactly how a retrovirus does its thing.
Anyway, all that said, “why porn” is a great phrase. My most intense experiences of horror (I guess, strictly speaking, terror) involve fully understanding the precise details of an event currently underway and the ways in which it could have been, and maybe even still could be, avoided, but being forced to watch it unfold anyway. I guess it’s about experiencing fear from the viewpoint of tragedy, rather than shock.
And boy, does Feed deliver along those lines.
August 9 2010, 18:02:06 UTC 6 years ago
Thank you. :)
August 8 2010, 14:27:11 UTC 6 years ago
Can be a mixed bag; there's selections that have blown my socks off (looking at you, Brina Keene, Edward Lee!), and others that have me banging my head on the desk sobbing over how THAT got published while mine just keep getting the rejections.
I will, however, love them always no matter what simply for reprinting the late great Richard Laymon's stuff and making it available on this side of the pond :)
-- C.
August 9 2010, 18:02:18 UTC 6 years ago
August 8 2010, 19:26:02 UTC 6 years ago Edited: August 8 2010, 19:29:13 UTC
The characters, of course, may have no clue. The readers, at some point, probably should, in such a way that they have an even better idea than the characters just how deep in trouble they are. Suspense is when you know the suave young man at the party is a hollow-backed, liver-eating demon, but the viewpoint character who is watching her best friend get led off in a dark corner by the young man has no clue, or perhaps a vague feeling that something is just slightly "off" about the man.
A lot of monsters have a simple "why": they are predators, and you're lunch. Fair enough--but that is still a motive and makes sense.
What I get put off by of late (though I thought they were cool stories when I was younger) are horror stories where the horror is delivered by the cheap trick of not telling the rest of the story. You know, the ones where the ending is just left hanging or implied?
(I exempt Arthur C. Clarke's "A Walk in the Dark" from this because the build-up is excellent).
August 9 2010, 18:02:44 UTC 6 years ago
August 9 2010, 00:11:59 UTC 6 years ago
tl;dr WORLDBUILDING (and also fairy tale/well known story (ie Alice) retellings) is my FAVOURITEST THING. The two together are my OTP.
August 9 2010, 18:03:09 UTC 6 years ago
<3
August 10 2010, 05:58:47 UTC 6 years ago
August 18 2010, 14:32:54 UTC 6 years ago