Category Archives: Genres

Guest Post by Annik Valkanberg

Starting in the late 1970’s, if you mentioned the word horror, people assumed you meant cheerleaders getting chopped up into kibbles by either a paranormal creature or a psychopath with an inordinate amount of hit points.

In fact, people were so used to Jason and Freddy that the reading public started to push back on the genre. Things got so bad that authors and publishers did strange things to say that their horror books were not horror…they were…ummm…thrillers! or suspense! Anything but the dreaded “H” word. Even retailers like Barnes and Noble, who once had several shelves labeled “Horror” which mostly meant “Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub, and a couple of others we accidentally picked up from the distributor”, began to pull those labels and switch it to Thriller! or Suspense! or even Cookbooks!

Those slasher movies were incredibly cheap to make, exploited partially-clad young women who would scream loudly when they met the antagonist, and made a boat-load of money in the theaters. The books weren’t as successful, which bled over into the other sub-genres of the horror market. Ghost stories, paranormal creatures who fell in love, apocalyptic zombie-fests were all tarred and feathered during the mid 80’s into the 90’s. The horror market collapsed, and the authors and publishers began to either publish titles under established categories like “thriller” or created new ones, such as “paranormal romance”. The latter didn’t even exist in the 1980’s, and now bookstores have whole sections dedicated to books such as Twilight. Amazon shows 18,834 ebooks in the Kindle Paranormal Romance category. It’s a huge market, and the romance crossover is bringing in people who didn’t read anything else but straight romance for years.

There are folks who do enjoy the slasher bloodfests, and whole sub-genres grew out of the grave of horror. Pioneers like John Skipp helped to create an even bloodier version of the slasher novel, and the Splatterpunk niche was born. Some authors combined some horror elements with bizarre, LSD flashback inspired bits and the Bizarro niche burst onto the scene. Carlton Mellick III’s novel The Haunted Vagina is an example which will make you wonder if the world isn’t ending tomorrow because now you’ve seen everything.

It’s been a couple of decades since the word “horror” was the proverbial kiss of death for a book. Self-published authors are poking their heads out of the shadows and using the word on their book covers. With the general acceptance of all of the new niches, especially paranormal romance, the publishing industry is including that word in the book descriptions and on dust jackets once again. It is important, however to always be vigilent about the book market. If something like the Great Horror Death ever happens again, you need to be aware of how the industry is reacting. It’s better to re-classify your book before the Big 5’s creaky machine gets around to it. Authors and small publishers need to keep on their toes, and that means reading what’s new and trending in the industry at least several times a week.

To risk getting caught twisting in the winds of market share just fills one with a sense of horror.

It Lurks Within You

October 13, 2015

fictorians

Guest Post by Tonya L. De Marco

“I’m gonna kill you!”

How many times do we hear or say that every week? Chances are quite a few. It’s usually a harmless statement, but I like to think about the people that mean it. The people that silently scream it over and over in their heads while hiding it behind a serene smile. They march through everyday life as if in a masquerade, their faces reflecting only the emotions they choose to show us. Hiding behind the facades are images of spurting blood and victim’s pleas for mercy. The beast must be fed.

Those are the monsters I’m afraid of. And those are the monsters I’m inspired to transform into characters for my stories. Not the green alien creatures, werewolves, vampires or zombies…but the monsters that walk among us every day hiding in plain sight. The killer that sits in the next cubicle vetting her next victim. The classmate of our children who spends his free time studying blueprints of the school building rather than doing his homework. The ones that the neighbors and friends tell the reporters that “he was always so nice, so quite. He just stayed to himself.”

I’m intrigued by serial killers and, in particular, monstrous women. I think my fascination comes from the fact that I believe we all have demons deep inside of us that are capable of the heinous acts committed by these murderers. We all feel some hate or have a desire at one time or another for vengeance. What is it that keeps us from acting upon these impulses? What is different about them that allows their beasts the freedom to come forth?

Love and passion can turn to hate and thirst for revenge in the blink of an eye. So what makes someone follow through on those violent thoughts? What’s the difference between a person who “snaps” and may never kill again as opposed to someone that murders over and over again, carefully plotting and planning the crime? How are we, the normal people, able to control our rages? These are the questions I seek to answer in writing my dark characters.

My inspiration comes from real-life killers, past and present. The atrocities that humans are capable of inflicting against each another are far more terrifying to me than the stereotypical monster. I typically make my characters experience horrible things in their past to help explain why they might be the way they are. Research has shown that the amygdala is enlarged in the brains of sociopaths, which may lead to answers about what drives their urges.

Everyone has the potential inside themselves. Therein lies the biggest fascination for me. People will say, “I could never do that.” And, after seeing the movie SAW, many reiterated that they couldn’t make those life-and-death choices. I respectfully disagree. I invite those folks to sit down and meet their amygdala, the primitive brain. Constantly alert to the needs of basic survival, the amygdala would certainly trigger a “kill or be killed” reaction even in people that, in their higher brain, believe they have no capacity for.

I’m a petite red headed woman and even I carry this burden. For me, instead of applying a weapon to flesh, I feed my beast with pen to paper.

About the Author:

Tonya L. De Marco is a Costume Designer, Cosplayer, Model, and Author. She splits her time between the Ozark Mountains of Missouri and the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. She’s been hooked on costumes and costuming since she was a preteen. Tonya has over twenty years of sewing experience which includes designing and sewing numerous costumes for school plays and local theater.

Tonya cosplays across multiple genres including anime, sci-fi, steampunk, Disney, comic book, and pin-up. She attends several conventions per year across the country and enjoys meeting and talking with people about cosplay. Tonya has been involved in costume contests/masquerades as both a participant and a judge—at different times, of course!

When she isn’t sewing or writing, Tonya enjoys spending time with her family, friends, and her three adopted miniature donkeys – Rogue, Storm, and Phoenix. Visit her at GuyAndTonya.com.

Where Did You Come Up With That?

October 9, 2015

Frank Morin

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People always tell young authors, “Write what you know.”

How does that work if I’m writing about a serial killer? Or writing about domestic violence? Or writing about sexual perversions? Or writing any excellent, creepy, messed-up-in-the-head villain? Does writing those types of genres or characters mean that I, as the author, must also be evil, creepy, or otherwise messed up in the head?

Many people seem to think so when they ask, “Where do you come up with this stuff?” Sometimes they say it in a tone of awe, but more often they whisper it in a fear-laced voice while nervously shuffling farther away.

Horror stories are popular, and the best bad guys are the complex, creepy ones that make you shudder to read about or view on the big screen. Does that mean Mary Shelley was really a mad scientist so that she could invent Frankenstein? Or that Thomas Harris, the writer of The Silence of the Lambs, was a psycho killer?

Of course not.

That’s like asking, was Steven Spielberg really an alien, or George Lucas a Jedi Knight? As much as we want to believe they might be, of course they’re not.

So how can you write what you know and at the same time write something there’s no way you could know?

That’s where the artwork and the imagination come in, where the mastery of craft and vision meld with experience.

To write great horror, an author needs to understand what scares people. We’ve all felt fear. A good author knows how to trigger that fear, make the reader feel like they’re in the dark woods with the hero, smelling the scent of decaying leaves crackling underfoot, hear the soft moaning of the wind clacking dead branches together overhead, sense movement in the shadows nearby, and feel absolutely sure that something is out there . . . watching.

If they can do that, they can write good horror. Or fantasy. Or whatever other genre they decide to pursue. Because writing draws from the human condition, and that is something writers need to know. Coupling that understanding with a powerful imagination and a willingness to step into the shadows of the mind to give life to a truly creepy villain is what produces memorable moments in fiction.

Is it a challenge as a writer to consider evil and not be tainted by it? Perhaps. But it’s not really different from the challenge faced by actors who portray villains or other deviant behavior. They have to act out the evil deeds. Writers need to talk about it, delve into the mind, try to imagine what might motivate a ‘bad’ person to do what they do. In both cases, the actor or author who is well grounded in their own life need not worry about getting sucked into the darkness they’re exploring for their fans.

Those cases where they do slide into darkness are usually caused because they lack that grounding, that strong sense of self. It’s seen most often among popular child actors who haven’t had a chance to discover who they are before being forced to pretend to be someone else. That’s got to be tough, and I think that’s why a lot of child actors have so much trouble as they get older.

Most authors begin really writing as adults, and we usually need other careers to support us for the difficult first years as we perfect our craft and develop the skills to break out as a writer. That time and experience helps ground us.

So study the human condition, explore the boundaries of your imagination, and know your own heart so you can always find your way back home.

Then when someone asks you, “How can you write such evil people so well?”

You can give them a slow smile and shrug. “I write what I know.”

About the Author: Frank Morin

Frank Morin loves good stories in every form. When not writing or trying to keep up with his active family, he’s often found hiking, camping, Scuba diving, or enjoying other outdoor activities. For updates on upcoming releases of his popular Petralist YA fantasy novels, or his fast-paced Facetakers alternate history fantasy series, check his website: www.frankmorin.org

Using What Scares You

October 8, 2015

Leigh Galbreath

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I went to a publishing conference in New York some years ago, and an agent said that a great author is a great storyteller. You can have all the craft and technique in the world, but if you aren’t a good storyteller, you won’t become a true success. Alternately, you can have the worst craft and know nothing of technique and be the next huge star of the publishing world. Yet, she could not define what made a good storyteller, like it’s some nebulous thing that cannot be truly understood. She was in the “you can’t learn it, you just have to be born with it” camp, a believer in which I am not.

But what is good storytelling if it’s not the expert use of craft and technique? I’ve been puzzling over it for years and I think I finally figured out a rather large component—a good storyteller is one who can tap into emotion with every word.

We humans, above all else, are creatures of emotion. We like to think we are creatures of intellect and reason and morality, but these things are constructs we’ve created to put limitations and controls over the nasty, hind-brain, instinctual animal side that is human emotion. Emotion motivates us in pretty much everything we do. Our desire to feel happiness, love, safety, pleasure all shape our choices. Our desire to not feel pain, sorrow, grief, all push us to move in a particular direction, even if it’s subconsciouly. Every choice we make is rooted in our emotional health, or lack thereof. Our need to feel one emotion over another.

The crazy thing is, everyone human being past, present, or future feels the same emotions. Emotion is the one, true universal language. It is the one thing we all as a species, share, and no emotion is more familiar to us all than fear. Writing our fear, more than any other emotion, can truly raise a writer’s prose to new heights.

There’s two ways of writing what frightens us, and both are equally beneficial. The first is the obvious definition—if we want our audience to fear something, start with what we, ourselves, are the most afraid of. J.K. Rowling once said that she decided to put giant spiders in the Forbidden Forest in Harry Potter and Chamber of Secrets because she herself was afraid of spiders. Similarly, Peter Jackson’s rendering of Shelob in the Return of the King was built off his personal arachnophobia. Think of it as a mind hack. It’s easier to write what we know, how we personally feel about a particular thing or situation when we write about something that makes us feel the emotion we want to invoke. It’s easy to make spiders terrifying if the author is terrified of the creepy bastards, but harder to make a horse frightening if they make the author all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a monster. It can be a fear of rejection, a fear of success, a fear of fear itself. It’s making the fear personal that’s the key, no matter what genre or sub-genre we are writing. Every genre deals with some sort of fear, and the more we make that fear our own, the easier it is to make the reader feel it with us.

The second way of looking at writing what one fears isn’t so obvious, and it’s something we all face at one point or another. It’s taking on those scenes that make us cringe. You know those scenes, the ones that make us uncomfortable or leave us at a loss. Wether its fight scenes or sex scenes or scenes of moral uncertainty, we all have a scene somewhere that tempts us to just skip it and have it happen off screen. After all, the worst fear of any writer is that an important, necessary scene will suck and bring the whole piece down.

But nine times out of ten, that seemingly impossible scene will become one of the more powerful moments in a story. Dan Wells once said that a scene in I Am Not a Serial Killer, where the protagonist draws a knife on his mother, was an especially difficult scene to write, but the final product is one of the most emotionally impactful moments in the book. Alternately, I have a friend who kept skipping over scenes where people were fighting (verbally or physically) because he wasn’t comfortable with violence, but it left his work lacking conflict and the story suffered because of it.

Part of why this is so effective, I think, is that the struggle to get the scene written and fear that it won’t work makes us slow down and take a long, hard look at what we’re doing, much more so than a scene that just plops itself down on the page. Difficult scenes force us to pull out all the stops, to dig deep and give it our all, thereby forcing us to put our best work on the page because anything less would just prolong the torture. Also, fear is conflict, and whether it’s felt by the character or just subconsciously by the author, it puts an edge, an undercurrent in the scene that can lift it above simple prose. It’s always the scenes I didn’t want to write, the ones that kick my ass, that I always end up the most satisfied with, and I think it’s because of the fear. If I wasn’t afraid of what I was writing, the writing would not be as good. Period.

Use the fear, share it. It won’t be easy, but more likely than not, your readers will feel it, and what they feel is what will stay with the reader long after they finish the story.