February. The month that Greeting Card companies and Flower Stores wait for each year. The month where love and passion rule, and all things are possible. Where your true love holds you close and rips your heart out of your chest, still beating, to show you before you die. And why not? Every good novel needs some tension to balance the mushy love parts, right?

This month we will look at this balance and focus on the craft of writing a great love scene or a terrifying horror novel. We’ll seek out the secrets that have fueled stories told around camp fires for centuries. And we will look at why, when we are out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by whatever horrors our imaginations could dream up, the thing we inevitably do is create stories even more fearsome.

Both horror and romance work on playing with the readers emotions. They focus on the emotional response, a sense of longing or a chill of fright. They both focus on the passion that make us who we are. Even if you don’t write in the genre, we all want to elicit an emotional response in our readers.

So welcome to the Fictorians take on Love and Murder. Come in close where we can give you a kiss while we slide the blade home between your ribs.