Horror is one of those genres which melds into others with ease—it's a sense of scene, emotional content, the provocation of reactions from the beholder. One might say that all writing is those things, but which reactions you're after determines your tone. I have always felt horror was not my natural genre—science fiction and fantasy come much more easily. But by the same token I can say I'm a big fan of the Alien franchise, which, certainly the original, is pure Gothic horror formula, and of the writings of Howard, Lovecraft and Smith, which embrace horror in many of its aspects, cosmic—, body—, and so forth. So maybe horror isn't that much of a stretch.
For some while now I've been in touch with the Horror Obsessed Writing and Literature Society (HOWLS), of Centennial, Colorado. On Sunday, August 8th, 2021, I had the pleasure of communicating on a message board with their members, and for an hour answered a wide range of writing questions as fast as I could type—I answered every point, I'm glad to say! I was also asked to write a cover blurb/endorsement for their anthology Howls from the Dark Ages, a volume of historical horror, which was another new experience!
However, I was also invited to contribute a story to their forthcoming anthology Howls from the Wreckage, a collection of disaster-themed horror, and this gave me a chance to flex the horror muscle in terms of composition. It's true, I've produced a number of pieces in the past which stray into the genre. The Moth and the Candle, in Dies Infaustus, Gorgon's Deep in Myths, Monsters, Mutations and Fear of the Dark, in Aurealis #104, and dramatised on No Sleep Podcast, Season 14, Ep. 25 are all maritime horror with a sci-fi edge, and I have other pieces unpublished. My fantasy piece The Dreamer in the Dark in Strange Wars has as much horror as many a Howard piece, while my early sci-fi outing Petrichor, in Wordland 8: Time We left (which seems to be no longer available) and Galaxy Anthology Series #5 certainly qualifies. So it was perhaps predictable that I would approach horror from the standpoint of both science fiction and mythology, to offer context to the chills.
There are many forms of horror, but I remember an editor once describing the nature of the field from his perspective. He said “When I read horror I want to be frightened—not disgusted.” This harked to the growing trend in horror writing to wallow in body horror, be it mutilation, torture, disease, sexual perversion or whatever, which perhaps grew out of an inevitable staleness in the old tropes. You can only dwell on vampires, werewolves, mummies and so on for so long before they lose their creepy edge, if for no other reason than mere familiarity, and the chill of fear so craved by the reader must come from fresh sources. Still, the distinction between fear and disgust is a worthy one, I feel, and a line a writer should be aware of when choosing their material, and the audience they're playing to.
The fresh writer finds new takes on old tropes—the haunted house will never go out of fashion, but such a story demands a new twist, a fresh context, something which whispers to the reader in expected ways. It needs to “say something new,” though far be it from me to use that expression critically, as I understand just how few truly new ideas there are. Not that many years ago a major US writing body issued a statement that, in their opinion, there were no new stories and could not be any, which may be interpreted as an encouragement for people to lose the attitude that a story is not worth publishing unless it somehow does the impossible. But, all the same, the onus is on the writer to try. None of us want to merely regurgitate other writers' ideas, much less their storylines, (no matter how inspired by them we may be) but no few come up with stories entirely independently, only to discover, perhaps many years later, that they were not as original as they had believed. Does that make such work necessarily a poor story, though? No!
Be that as it may, with horror I guess I try for the evocation that throws a particular kind of shadow over one's soul—the awe that comes from encountering the unknown, and the fear that goes hand-in-hand with it, which can then be met with courage by protagonists with whom the reader might identify. This formula can be applied to a wide range of genres, of course, so perhaps it's impure horror. I don't really know! But I'll be happy if what I produce finds resonance with a decent part of the readership.
Where might my horror writing go in future? Pure horror in a supernatural vein is always on the cards, perhaps occult detective outings (more about that in other posts), and there was an idea for a horror novel at the back of my mind a year or two back... We'll see where the market leans!
Header: Royalty free image, Stefan Keller art, from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-spirit-nightmare-dream-2847724/
